Game of Thrones is one of the most popular series on earth, and like many others, we've watched all seasons. Many episodes are absolutely brilliant. But like anything in life, it isn't perfect, and it has received criticism. This week, I was watching a video that criticized the development of a certain character, and when I thought about it, it reminded me a lot of the problems we're experiencing with 0.7.0. I'll try to keep the Game of Thrones spoilers to a minimum!

In GoT, there are two important continents. There's the "main continent", that receives roughly 90% of the attention, and a second continent that gets the other 10% of screen time. One of the most important and beloved characters spends the first four seasons of the show on the first, main continent.

It's great television. The main character is very interesting and entertaining. But the world he inhabits is highly compelling as well. The other characters are complex and have deep interrelationships. There are important and violent political problems with sensible motivations on both sides. And we know a lot about the "background" of the world. We learn about the most prominent religions, we learn how the rich and the poor live, we know about the history of the continent.

Watching our main character interact with this world is fantastic. But in the fifth season, he moves to the 'second' continent. Of course, this continent is also populated with interesting characters and political problems. We do learn some things about that world. But it lacks the depth and complexity of the primary continent. And our "main" character suffers for it. He's a lot less important and interesting on the second continent.

I don't think it's caused by any changes to the character. The actor is still amazing, the character is still very witty. But he's missing the deep and complex world to interact with. Apparently, the second continent is way more detailed in the books, but when converting the story to television, the showrunners had to cut characters and storylines.



With many things in life, returns are proportional to investment. Study hard, and you'll learn a lot. Work hard in the gym, and you'll lose weight and/or become stronger. It's also very often true in game development. We could easily release weekly updates with new cosmetic blocks, new jobs or new items. It's simple to add a new guard that does more damage or has a lower reload speed to Colony Survival. But we're sure that doing that every week will quickly result in bored players and a cluttered game. Developing new and complex features will probably result in a better game, but that takes time.

But it's not always that simple. Imagine you're a car designer, and you and your team have designed a pretty average car. It's good, but not particularly fast. So you spend months or years integrating an engine that has thrice the horsepower of the old engine. You've put a lot of effort into it. But is the car better? Arguably, it's worse. It lacks the brakes, the tires or the safety features to properly handle its new power. You have dramatically improved one aspect of the car, but it has only caused a lack of balance. Now you need to upgrade the rest of the car as well, turning a minor upgrade into a major redesign.

I think the showrunners of Game of Thrones faced a similar dilemma with the secondary continent. It's less interesting, so they spent less time on it. But now the viewers are less familiar with the characters, problems and history of the secondary continent, making them even less interested. It's a tough problem to solve. You need to cut some characters and plotlines when converting a book to a television show, but cut too much and the viewer won't care at all!

In my mind, I imagine a circle - or only a couple of fragments thereof. You can spend a lot of time developing a brilliant engine, but it's worthless if the rest of the car cannot support it. A main character can be very witty and charismatic, but all the effort is wasted if he doesn't have an interesting world to interact with. The engine or the main character is just a fragment of the circle, and it needs other parts before it's "fully round".

In a TV series, a supporting character can be added or removed from a well established situation without changing the "roundness" too much.
In a car, the audio system or the upholstery can be dramatically changed without affecting the "roundness" too much.
In a game, some new (cosmetic) content or complementary features can be added without disturbing the "roundness".

But add a new continent to your TV series, upgrade the engine of your car, or add a significant new feature to your game, and you've "broken" the roundness. While the change itself might be good, the lack of balance might make your product worse. But invest in the other parts of your product as well, restore balance or "roundness", and you might have just taken your product to the next level.



Colony Survival 0.1.0 to 0.5.0 all had some obvious "holes" in their "roundness". It needed more content, it needed the science system, it needed a way to let your colonists assist you in building. Plugging those holes made the game "rounder". But the latest version, 0.6.3, lacks big holes that can be fixed with fun new gameplay like the builders & diggers.

There's one dramatically underutilized thing: the large and diverse world that's barely ever explored and used by players. That's why we'll work on that in 0.7.0. But adding only multiple colonies disturbs the balance. It's not "round", it's just a fragment. You'll need a good reason for exploration as well. And a means of transport.



Separately, these features are useless. Multiple colonies need a purpose, and the happiness feature relies on the other continents. Transport is not needed in 0.6.3, why explore if you can only start one colony and it functions the same everywhere?

This is the reason why 0.7.0 is taking a while. Each one of these features is complex and significant alone, but they require each other to have a purpose. We've thought about releasing them separately, but the more we think about it, the more we realize that's a bad idea. We can't wait to see how those features will interact together!

Two weeks ago, we published a rough timeline that will most certainly change. We're still on track though! For convenience, here it is again:

September: New world generator, continents, new trees
October: Features like trading, multiple players in one colony, happiness
Closed beta starts here, we'll release a form where you can apply to become a tester
November: New crops, jobs and items + airships or boats
December: Finishing things up, patching issues found by testers, polishing, achievements

That was a long, philosophical ramble and I wonder if it makes any sense. Was it actually insightful? Let us know in the comments or on Discord!

Bedankt voor het lezen :)

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