Community-Driven Development in Survived By

With every passing week we introduce new players to Survived By and its expanding in-game content. In return, we are lucky to have an engaged community who is excited to share their feedback and suggestions about the game’s development. As community manager, I have the opportunity to read through all of your input, both on our forums and official Discord channel. I’ve been continuously impressed by the level of detail that is put into your responses. This week, I sat down with programming wizard Alex Larioza to talk about how we process all of your feedback and integrate it into the game.

Alex is the UI programmer on Survived By. It is his role to make sure that the user interface is clean, effective, and bug-free. Each playtest, he takes time to browse through the forums and in-game chat to see what new insights have been provided by the community.

“It’s really important to see how our players feel about the game and to have a non-developer perspective on what we’re doing. After all, they’re the ones who will be playing it!”

He says that this perspective is especially important when he is making big decisions about the game’s interface. Having new eyes on his progress each week can help him determine if something looks “clunky,” or the interface isn’t as effective as he intended.

One example of this is the addition of a pop-up message when players attempt to purchase platinum. During the Closed Alpha, Survived By is in sandbox mode, which means that players are not charged for their purchases. Initially, players weren’t informed of this, and the game’s existing interface made it seem as though players were being charged. After a post was made on our forums suggesting that players should be notified otherwise, an informative pop-up message now appears on the purchase screen.

Every week, to-do tasks are created from posts on the Bug Reporting and Suggestions forum. As changes are made to the game, community-sourced suggestions are designated as such so we can track what is most important to our player base.

For many of our developers, being able to talk to the community in this way is one of their favorite parts of the job. Alex says that having an active role in a game’s community has been a longstanding goal of his.

“I’ve always wanted to be the developer for a game where I can interact with the playerbase, talk to them, and play alongside them. MMOs are a genre that I love playing, and Survived By is the first MMO I’ve been able to work on so it’s been an awesome experience. I love seeing what people have to say each week.”

As development for Survived By continues and we progress through our Closed Alpha, the community’s ongoing feedback will be crucial in making the game as player-focused as possible.

Do you have ideas about how to make Survived By even better?

Visit our forums or join our Official Discord to share your thoughts with our developers and meet other players.