Hi community,
We’d like to bring you up to date on what’s been happening with Extraction, as well as our plans for the future. There’s a lot to cover, so we’re splitting this up into several smaller, easier to digest chunks. This first one will cover the Closed Beta, communication, as well as the overall community experience. Part 2 will go into what we’re doing on the game-side. Here goes:
New Team at Nexon
The Nexon chaps have been building a brand-new, very experienced team to support the game on their end. Extraction is their flagship title for the year, and they’re committed to doing whatever they can to ensure it’s a success. The new team immediately took a long look at Extraction and spent quality time with us at Splash to work out our plans for the beta and launch.
One of the things we decided is to reboot Extraction from a branding, community, and marketing standpoint. This includes improved communication, more regular game updates, and a better online presence. Nexon are also working to improve these forums (their new guys all had the same reaction as you) and the game’s launcher.
New Branding & Website
Alongside this, the Extraction brand itself is getting a full rework. We’re evaluating everything for this: logo, colours, look & feel - even the name. This also means taking down the present Extraction website and building one that better reflects the game. There is going to be a dark period here, but we think this will actually work in favour of the game and getting everything on track.
Better Communication
Let’s talk about communication. First, we’re going to do a better job of telling you what’s in our updates. That means more details about big features and new content, garnished with plenty of media. The Sparks update was a test for this, and you can expect to see more of that for our other big updates. On this note, please do let us know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see here.
Second, we’ll bring back the private roadmap. Context is essential for being able to judge updates, and the roadmap will let you see where the game is at right now and where it’s going. We’ll have more details on this in the next State of Play update.
Third, Nexon has just brought on a new, experienced community manager who’ll be building a team for the game and run the ship from here on out. His handle is 1CIRE and you might have seen him around already. He’s community-managed a whole bunch of big games in the past, and he’ll be working with SD to get things on course.
Beta Keys and Growth Plans
Right, keys. One of our big goals right now is to get Extraction to a place where players are having fun and don’t fall off the train after a few days. There’s a bunch of work still ahead of us in this area, and we’ll have more to share on that soon.
In the meantime, we’ll keep growing the beta through referral keys given out to you. We reckon you’re far better at bringing in the right kind of players than we, Nexon, or any automated system is able to. Once the Beta’s there, we’ll be opening the invite fire hose and scale things up in a big way.
Welcome, Exedore
Finally, give a warm welcome to Exedore who is now on the project full-time leading Splash’s design team. Exedore has been taking a look at all of the features and content in the game to ensure they serve and fulfil our goals for Extraction. He’ll be providing an update on what his team has been up to in the next State of Play. Exedore will also be around on the forums to prod you for information and answer questions.
TLDR: More regular updates, better communication, more transparency, and actual plans for things. We’re working hard to make your experience in the next couple of months far better than that of the months just gone. Some of it will take a bit of time to sort out, but both Nexon and Splash Damage will do our best to keep you informed.
If you have any questions about any of this, post away. We’ll be keeping an eye on this thread and answer what we can.
All sounds good though, looking forward to the coming months (and hopefully an NDA lift to start getting the word out more)