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| 0s | For the 12th Anniversary of Forge of Empires, we have gathered 12 colleagues who are connected to Forge of Empires, whether by work or play. |
|---|---|
| 4s | In this video, they will share anecdotes, memories, and bits on information from behind the scenes. We hope you enjoy their stories! Happy Anniversary! |
| 9s | Hi. |
| 9s | Hello. |
| 10s | Hi. |
| 10s | Hi. |
| 10s | Hello, everyone. |
| 11s | Hi. |
| 12s | Hi. |
| 13s | Hi. |
| 13s | Hello. |
| 13s | Hi there. |
| 14s | Hey, everyone. |
| 15s | Hi. |
| 16s | When did you start playing Forge of Empires? |
| 20s | 11 years. |
| 21s | 2015. |
| 22s | Five years. |
| 23s | Seven years. |
| 23s | More or less two years. |
| 25s | 2010. |
| 26s | 2011. |
| 26s | More than 10 years |
| 27s | For around nine years. |
| 28s | Last year January. Nearly seven years. |
| 29s | Nearly seven years. |
| 30s | 2020. |
| 31s | When you think of yourself working on or playing Forge, what story comes to mind? |
| 35s | Nastia: Your face seems honestly familiar, is it possible that we've seen you somewhere? |
| 42s | No, not that I remember, no. |
| 45s | [Kai, Game Designer | Tell us how Guild Expedition came to be?] We were working on a big feature. |
| 47s | It was going to be called the Guild Expedition. |
| 51s | And we had the mechanics first. |
| 53s | We didn't have a theme, and I was working as a Game Designer on it, |
| 56s | and I didn't know what theme we could put on it. |
| 59s | And then suddenly it hit me. |
| 61s | It should be like an expedition in the jungle. |
| 63s | And like Indiana Jones, and I tried to sell the whole team to this idea, and I promised, |
| 68s | if we pick this theme, then I will come dressed as Indiana Jones to the office the next day, |
| 72s | and I did because I love wearing this costume and we will use every opportunity to just do it. |
| 77s | [Thi, Game Designer | How did Space Ages come to be in Forge?] As you know, Forge goes through the times of human history and we |
| 82s | got to the point where we were at the present day and then we were thinking, |
| 85s | OK, we need to continue into the Ages going into the future. |
| 90s | And there were a couple of options here. |
| 92s | I was thinking as the lead at that time, |
| 95s | thinking of how we can make it more sustainable for the player, more realistic and more exciting. |
| 100s | So I delved into it more to see how we can feasibly do like a space future in Forge, |
| 106s | exploring things like another city grid. |
| 109s | That was a huge topic in the team. |
| 111s | In the end, I brainstormed with the team, and it just came down to seeing how much, |
| 117s | how rich that sort of topic was, and so I remember the ideas coming out, |
| 124s | like Venus and the Asteroid Belt, and all of that have now made it into the game. |
| 128s | And so, yeah, being on that, making the decision to go into space and having the |
| 133s | second grid for players to play was sort of what led Forge to where it is now. |
| 138s | [Aylin, Game Designer | What are you working on right now?] I was also, of course, responsible for some |
| 141s | things and one being, for example, the Settlements, |
| 145s | yery nice Polynesia one, for example, but also for the Ages. |
| 149s | And for most of the Space Age Ages, actually, which is from |
| 154s | Mars onwards. |
| 156s | The overall story, just going humanity travelling through our solar system, is really, really |
| 163s | nice. |
| 163s | And now we want to go even a step further. |
| 166s | So for the upcoming Age, you can take us on a journey to the outskirts of our solar system. |
| 172s | Maybe you discover something very interesting with |
| 175s | people that may not be in the same mood as your people of the town. |
| 180s | I am also very curious to see what you think about the Units |
| 184s | and what you think about the buildings again, especially in the outposts. |
| 188s | [Ameya, Game Designer | What did you like about designing the Fall Event 2023?] For Fall Event, we were thinking of changing the mechanic, which was the same since a long time. |
| 193s | Deserts for Fall are really nice, so we wanted to keep them. |
| 197s | We made them even more cuter by connecting the pop mechanic and making smaller deserts. |
| 202s | And then, instead of the chests you could get like nice jars and jams of different kinds. |
| 208s | We had a new ticket system in which players could play for five minutes without spending |
| 213s | a ticket. |
| 214s | But we thought that that's not enough. |
| 215s | We wanted to have something more. |
| 217s | While changing the probabilities, we found out that the game can be much more |
| 222s | faster, much more fun. |
| 224s | The pops became much faster, then we introduced new kind of a chess to it six stars. |
| 229s | The entire game became fun and happening. |
| 233s | [Thiago, Product Manager | When did the Forge Community surprise you?] One of the funniest parts of my work was actually implementing the card mechanic. |
| 238s | We played and we tried it and we tested it for almost three months and we thought we had all the mechanics sorted out. |
| 245s | But we were very wrong! |
| 246s | When we released it on beta and we started to interact with the community, check the |
| 250s | behaviours and see how you guys played it, you surprised us a lot. |
| 253s | You got way better than we expected, you showed us a lot of opportunities that we could improve |
| 258s | the mechanic. |
| 258s | And in the end, it was a lot of fun because we learned, we grew. |
| 262s | And since we believe that this mechanic was a very good one and we heard all the feedback |
| 266s | you guys gave, we are continuing with this, creating a brand new event with the same mechanic |
| 270s | and introducing all the changes you guys ask. |
| 274s | So make sure to have fun with a brand new event that is coming up soon. |
| 278s | [Nino, Head of Studio | What do you remember about early days in Forge?] I remember 2011, around that time, when we released the beta to the office, and everyone |
| 286s | was just playing and buzzing about the game, like how cool it is to build your city and |
| 291s | then fight other people within the office. |
| 295s | Back then we were like 120 people at InnoGames, and literally everyone was playing. |
| 302s | It was really cool and a real inspiration for the team as well, because, you know, they |
| 308s | got so fueled by everyone playing and the amazing feedback that we got back. |
| 313s | And this is kind of how we knew that we have a great product on our hands. |
| 317s | [Bartek, Community Manager | What's your funniest FoE CM story from the early days?] I think one of the most interesting memories could be the time when I had the opportunity |
| 322s | to bribe our developers with muffins. |
| 327s | So basically, they had the challenge of fixing as many bugs as possible within a day. |
| 332s | And we in Community Management had our own kind of list of bugs that we would like to get fixed. |
| 339s | So we published the list to the developers, and we said, hey, if you fix any of that list, |
| 344s | then what's gonna happen on top of a donut? |
| 347s | You're also getting a muffin, and it kind of worked, we got some fixed. |
| 351s | [Anna, Product Manager | How did you come to play Forge?] I had a flatmate that was playing Forge, and I was really annoyed at her once because we |
| 356s | were getting late for a bus we wanted to go to. |
| 358s | And I asked, what are you doing? |
| 359s | And she said she was still waiting for her Productions to finish. |
| 362s | I was like, What production? |
| 363s | What are you doing? |
| 364s | And, this was how I got introduced to Forge of Empires. |
| 368s | She showed me the game, and we were basically a flat of girls that was playing Forge of |
| 372s | Empires together, so that was pretty cool. |
| 376s | [Bojan, Software Developer | What's the most amusing mistake you ever made?] Let me think. |
| 377s | In this nine years, actually, there are many funny stories. |
| 380s | Back in the day, six, seven years ago, as you know, we have a lot of Forge events. |
| 384s | We needed to enable a Forge event on live servers, but it turned out it was very close |
| 390s | to the new year. |
| 390s | So in January, somewhere. |
| 393s | So I was the person doing this event, so I was enabling on our servers and, sadly, I |
| 400s | put the wrong year. |
| 402s | And then the next day, when I came to work, instead of playing the new event, I actually |
| 406s | had to fix this. |
| 409s | Luckily, nowadays we have better tools, so we are preventing this kind of scenarios. |
| 415s | So we have learned from our mistakes. |
| 417s | [Domi, Director CM | What inspired you to play Forge of Empires?] There was a company-wide call to join a company competition. |
| 421s | The idea of the competition was to as many colleagues as possible to get the first hand |
| 427s | user experience. |
| 428s | So during the challenge, we, of course, had a list with goals we would like to achieve. |
| 434s | Close to the end of the round, we figured out that very likely we will not achieve to |
| 440s | build 120 Great Buildings. |
| 442s | We collaborated our resources and actually to finish this goal and to build the required |
| 450s | number of Great Buildings. |
| 452s | I loved the collaborative feeling, I liked a lot the commitment of the team. |
| 456s | And the absolutely best side effect of the challenge, I kept playing Forge. |
| 460s | I liked it so much, and I'm an active player till today. |
| 464s | [Fiene, Community Manager | What do you love the most about working for Forge?] I had the pleasure to meet a lot of interesting people, especially from our external teams, |
| 469s | like community managers, moderators, supporters, everyone that really supports us on the front lines. |
| 476s | And I met a lot of them during team meetings that we organize annually all across Europe, |
| 482s | and it was always very fun time meeting them, talking to them in person. |
| 488s | And I made a lot of good friends this way as well. |
| 491s | And it's always super amazing to see the passion and the engagement that they bring towards |
| 498s | supporting us on Forge of Empires. |
| 501s | So big thanks and shout out to you guys. |
| 504s | [Nastia, Community Manager | What's your favourite Forge-related project?] My favourite project is probably the one that we are filming right now. |
| 508s | When I joined Forge, we were starting home office, so I didn't have as many water cooler |
| 516s | conversations as I wanted to, so I didn't know any of the stories that people share |
| 522s | today in this video. |
| 524s | And it was really fun to learn more about the history of Forge and many other people |
| 530s | that worked on it. |
| 531s | So, yeah, that was super fun. |
| 534s | And I hope you're enjoying it, too. |