New World Looks Back On Its First Year With Advice On What They’ve Learned

Players who played New World at the beginning, and those who are still playing, would probably tell you how the game is vastly different than when they first started their adventure. This makes sense as even New World’s Game Director Scot Lane mentioned that “live games are owned by the development team until launch, and then at launch, they become the players’ game.”

New World may have started as a survival/crafting game, but soon became a full-fledged PvPvE MMO, an evolution, Lane explains, that came from the players. Lane goes on to share some tips and advice for how New World continued to move forward in its development track, despite having to transform into a different game than initially anticipated.

The first bit of advice is to listen to the player. This took place from multiple sources like in-game chat logs, Reddit, in-game feedback, and more. Lane would sometimes have just the chat window visible, allowing him to hyper-focus on what players were saying about the game, both positive and negative.

The next piece of advice is to play your own game and be the player. “I love to play our game and think it’s critical for anyone making a game to play it (a lot).” One important factor of any game, especially an MMO, is the strong communities within the game. Players who love the game will gradually draw in others to play as well.

Another important factor is to constantly measure the game’s health. In the beginning, there were many bugs and issues that led players to be frustrated, but a year later and New World now has a system in place where the devs often know about mistakes and issues before the players. Issues and bugs can ruin the immersion of a game, and it is one reason why it is so important to address the situation as soon as possible.

Overall, the biggest piece of advice seems to be to simply listen. Listen to the players, accept constructive criticism, and be able to address what needs to be fixed and added, or what suggestions to ignore. Those who would like to read the full scope of New World’s first year can check out the article on Venture Beat’s site.