Originally posted by
gluepot1
This came across as very PR "The team are throwing themselves at this challenge"
We all know covid has affected things. But the excuse doesn't hold up for everything. In the period that Archaeology and PVM hub were getting ready for release, there must have been others working on something else since the start of the year which many would have expected to be getting ready for release a month or two after archaeology, but there hasn't. Then working from home happened and for me personally I got next to nothing done for the first month due to technical problems. But it got better and by the 3rd month I was back up to full speed, maybe even more efficient than working in the office since there was no annoying meetings and beurocracy taking up time.
So after 3 months of working from home, there's one update almost ready. There's still something wrong there. Some people will have it worse than others due to family etc. But by this point technical issues should be sorted out. Jagex should be supplying employees with the necessary equipment to do their job if this is a long term thing. The tech and games industry should be one of the best suited sectors when it comes to working from home.
\Rant over.
Two questions:Adapting the approach to the reduced capacity sounds like this monthly update thing is temporary until you can work from the office again? Or is it a permanent thing to manage workload?
What are "existing plans"? It would have been nice to know these before the plans were shelved. Are these gaps a 3/6/12 month gaps between large update/expansions? And by changing plans does this mean no longer doing large updates/expansions?
Honestly, I'm fine with that if it did sound a little PR'y because they really are throwing themselves at it to be honest.
A team actively look to react and find opportunity in a situation that impacts production output is very rare in my experience. It would have been easier from a development standpoint to stay the course and just accept the slower delivery cadence - and many teams would pick that option and throw out the COVID excuse.
Speaking as a witness to it, pivoting direction is no small task. There's a huge knock on in so many areas - brainstorms upon brainstorms, scoping, reformatting teams, working out how to make meaningful content on much smaller timeframes and so on. That all takes time, effort and a lot of coordination - and then you have to go execute on it. But, ultimately, the hope is that this is the right way to go to deliver more additive content and prevent big gaps.
On the WFH front, your case is the same for some others here at Jagex too, but not for most (especially those with children or less than ideal work environments). We have internal Wellness surveys that people respond to along with Production Estimates that have shown the gradual decrease in productivity - last estimate was over 30% down. I can safely say I'm definitely more mentally taxed and not working at my best in these conditions. It's a tough situation for many.
RE Your Questions:
On temporary or permanent approach: This is an adaptation to our situation right now. We want to go back to those huge Archaeology sized content hits in the future. That said, if this approach is really popular, I can't imagine we wouldn't take cues from that in our post remote-working plans either.
On the existing plan: This refers to the stuff we announced at Runefest - which were mostly all big pieces of content. The timeline for Desperate Measures is a prime example of that extended length of time things take at our current productivity.
We announced Orthen is still in the works today and that - more long term - EGWD has a very small team continuing to move that forward slowly over time. The goal is to deliver meaningful Small and Medium additive content more often (like the next Alchemical stuff we mentioned today), with occasional hits of larger content (something like Orthen).
In terms of that cadence or dates for larger content hits, we have plans on how often we'd like that to be but it's not something that we're in a position to communicate today. As we get into the rhythm of this new production approach, we'll start to build a more consistent picture and talk timelines in a bit more confidence.
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