2020 - A Look Back

COVID Strikes

Everything went smoothly at the top of the year, or at least as smoothly as one can hope, until the pandemic hit. I still remember the last time we all shared the office back in March, when I made the announcement for us to just work Monday and Friday for a couple of weeks for the virus to blow over. We haven’t been together as a group since; over that weekend I informed the team that we will go full remote due to the growing pandemic and issued plans on how to deliver computers to staff along with anything else they might need.

Fortunately we stabilized quickly, and got back to work. We’ve been getting Osiris: New Dawn ready for a string of updates through to completion and made the announcement. While we prepared to deploy these updates it became clear that we would need to publish the game ourselves. After much negotiation we found a way to acquire the publishing rights back for Osiris.

Clearing the Tech Debt

Since our focus has been on Osiris we began updating again on Steam now that we’ve done the heavy lifting of repairing all the tech debt the project had. Not to go into it too deeply, but the code was a in dire need of clean up after being in Early Access for a couple of years. When we updated we were thrilled to have accomplished it - to rewrite and clean 95% of the game with only a handful of content left to transition, and all features survived.

Reconnecting With The Audience

We knew there would be a bit of a “ripping of the band aid” when we launched in November, since it has been a while since a main branch update and some changes were made. There was also a changing of the guard in communication, Fenix Fire was now speaking directly to the audience, which was a breath of fresh air for us. In the past year we have learned how to streamline our development so cleanly we can now handle live ops development. A huge feat for any development company, and in looking back at this year can see live ops and community as a driving force of the industry going into 2021.

It’s Not All About Efficiency, It’s About People

It’s easy to get caught up with knocking tasks off the list and getting that next feature in, but more and more I found myself taking the time to just talk to our team members on Slack. 2020 has been a tough year with the pandemic, homeschooling, economy, and everything else that’s been going on in the world. As a manager I’ve been looking for ways to find and spread normalcy in a such a weird time, and in many ways got to know the people I work with even deeper than I probably would in an office setting.

I’m not sure how we’ll continue in 2021, if and when the pandemic is over, but it likely won’t be the typical 5 day work week at the office. In some ways we’re even more productive in our distributed style, but there’s a lot to say for being together as a group too. Whatever we decide I’m sure it’ll be a healthy balance, allowing staff flexibility while at the same time boosting productivity.