- Union Update
Union Update: gamescom throwback!
With the announcement of Anno 1800 and the start of our Anno Union initiative, gamescom 2017 marked the beginning of a new era for the Anno franchise. With the first full month behind us, we thought it would be a perfect moment to start the week with a gamescom recap video, so lean back and enjoy some impressions from the big reveal and reactions to our Ubilounge presentations. Classic QnA’s and Union Updates, such as news about the next vote, will return next week (we will have of course a new DevBlog with a new member of the team for you all later this week).
It surely has been a ride and we are still at the beginning. When we started, we had a clear vision for the Union and it is great to see that our appreciation for our fans and their experience is well received. We only managed to scratch the surface and there is still a huge list of topics to cover up to release of Anno 1800. As with the game, we will continue to improve the Anno Union initiative based on your feedback and might also try new formats, such as our first live stream which will come this October!
We want to thank everyone of you for joining the Anno Union and accompanying us on our journey.
Your Ubisoft Blue Byte team
Comments
Leave a Reply
Once again nice video!
I’m wondering, do our settlements in anno 1800 belong to a particular European empire of the time?
Thankyou for having shared this video 🙂 (with, I saw some beautiful images of the game 😀 )
Which part of the video did you like the most?
Hello. With all the respect for the Community Management, a lot of us have made several comments in the previous DevBlog post (the one about the monument), giving ideas and making questions, and there has not been one single answer from the BB team. And in this update, which doesn´t really show anything new, you have already answered 2 times about things that don´t have anything to do with the game itself. Is this the real purpose of the Anno Union?
If you read carefully the previous DevBlog you are talking about, they were willing to gather ideas about the future monument, to prepare a vote on the third exhibition (so we can expect that part of the comments will be taken in account in the next vote).
The other part of comments you are talking about is majoritarly about the disappointment of the Anno community about the fact that they have planned *only one* monument. To me, a Community Manager can’t answer this question : this is the dev team role to decide if they keep this “only one monument planned” or if they switch to “community seams to want more monuments, let’s implement more of them”, because of 2 possibles reasons : either they don’t planned it, so it will impact the deadline (and Winter 2018 could then mean March 2019), or they already have plan others monuments and they don’t want to tell us right now to “keep something under the gas pedal” to show us later (at least 12 months until release ! It will be long !)
So the time required to answer this kind of question is far more than the time required to answer to a comment like “Good job”, because it is related not only to one person (the Community Manager) but to the whole team, and communication policy (quite important in this particular period for Ubisoft, let’s support them instead of beeing kind of negative – No offense intended)
Our Community Update is usually the blog format where we answer a selection of your previously raised questions. This weeks Com Update was a bit different, which won’t mean that we will leave out questions from the last DevBlog. Just keep an eye on future updates and as stated, we asked specifically for your ideas and it will take us a bit to go through and discuss the big amount of great suggestions for exhibition events internally.
It was not my intention to sound negative, and I understand what you mean Mendahor. I´m a total supporter of every Anno game, I´ve bought every title Blue Byte has released since Anno 1404 and I´ll be the first one buying a collectors edition of Anno 1800 if one is released because it´s without doubt my favourite game franchise of all times.
However it´s not really fair to promote an early announcement of the game so the fans and players can “participate” in its development, and then that participation means we get to vote on some polls for an NPC character or a type of exhibition. That´s not really to “participate” in anything, but just take some superficial decisions.
I like to think that the Community staff read our messages and take them into account, but it is kind of frustrating not to see a richer interaction with fans in the context of a game which is supposedly developed together with fans. Of course I can imagine the reasons behind this behaviour, the communication policies you mention and all that… very sad, but I understand them. I really don´t want to sound negative but I think it´s more constructive to give some honest feedback rather than “Oh wow you´re doing such a great job!! Keep on doing what you´re doing!”. Of course I value Blue Byte, they make the best games in the industry in my opinion!
Personally I don´t mind waiting until March 2019 or as long as they need if that means we´re going to get a bigger and better game.
Thank you for your feedback, Paul. We do read every comment, but can’t respond to everyone due to time constraints. Which is unfortunate, because there’s a lot of cool thoughts going around the Community.
Our intention from the beginning is, to have our fans have a voice in development. However, we can’t evaluate specific wishes and ideas on the fly, as game development is a complex matter. Even ideas the Developers themselves have are discussed at length before they are potentially implemented.
We’ll continue to give you an idea of where development stands at the moment and will ask for specific feedback at times. Aside from that, we will always have time to hear your ideas!
More info will follow here, so stay tuned for that.
The game screenings. We are at least 1 (me) to want more videos showing what it will look ! I want to see more buildings, more factories, more of Anno, even in “pre-alpha footage”.
Noted, Mendahor. We’ll see what can be done. 🙂
Thank you for having shown some more buildings in the last art concept DevBlog 🙂
Thanks guys. People seemed to really enjoying themselves in the demo boot.
Another amazing post 🙂
Thanks, iruet!