Letter from our Game Director: Beta and Beyond
Greetings Palians,
Wow, I can’t believe we’re already 1 month into Beta. I also can’t believe how much Palia so many of you have played! It’s so heartening to see how many of you have found something that really speaks to you in the game and all of the images and videos you’ve created are so inspiring to us as a development team.
Thank you for all the feedback - however given. Whether from a place of joy that you can’t help yourself but express, or one brought forth from frustration. We see you, and as a dev team that is always looking to bring you our best, know that whatever you feel, we feel as well.
And that’s a good thing.
We have the early stages of a great process developing internally that includes research (thank you to those that have received and completed one of our surveys!), analytics, which allows us to learn from what you all actually do in game. And, of course, your direct feedback that has been very artfully aggregated by our diligent community team into a space in which our entire development team can quickly get a sense of the top hopes, dreams, and pain points that you’re all discovering as you play.
This is the second letter in this format I’ve written, and you may be wondering at what cadence you can expect updates from the development team and/or myself going forward. Well, today we want to commit to you that we’ll be publishing at least one development update each month, but often more. These updates will focus on top topics in the community and specifically describe how we’re responding to some of your feedback over the next few patches.
The first of these developer updates talks about decor interactivity, storage, workbench improvements, and several other upcoming changes and additions. Check it out here!
With those base level expectations covered, I’m excited to jump into my main topic for today. Now that we all have a much greater shared understanding of the state of Palia today, I think it’ll be a lot easier to talk about how we got here and how we expect Palia as a game to evolve over the next year or two.
When we were starting out, we knew that the vision for Palia was grand and that it would take years beyond launch to fully achieve it. As such, we knew we had to focus on delivering a core experience that we could build from, taking steps each day towards achieving that greater vision.
By now I’m sure everyone can tell that the core experience we choose to focus on is very much steeped in community simulation genre traditions. We’ve put a big emphasis on genre staples like housing customization, creating a world that oozes cozy vibes, a suite of cozy skills and exciting non-player character interactions. It’s also why we’ve pushed the bounds on multiplayer in our home genre, so we could make it even easier to play and do things with friends.
We know we still have a ton to do to make Palia the best community simulation game it can be, and pursuing that will continue to be our core area of investment into the future. However, while we’ve been making progress on that core, we’ve also built a foundation and some of the accouterments that players coming to Palia with MMORPG scale experiences and expectations might expect. But we know we’re not there yet on the MMO side for a lot of players.
As such, I want to stress that Beta is not the end of Palia evolving and growing towards its ultimate potential. We have far more than just new content in our plans, with many exciting things coming soon for community sim and massively multiplayer players.
Afterall, can a Community really live up to its potential without a challenge to overcome? Without a home to call its own? Without a way to show off your collective pride and accomplishments for all of Palia to see?
What good is an open world full of players if you can’t converse with those in close proximity to you?
Indeed, what good is a chair if one can’t sit in it?
Palia will never be an MMORPG, but we will continue to embrace Palia as an MMO. Taking consistent steps, and sometimes leaps, towards meeting your expectations for what multiplayer and socializing can and should be when we’ve built much of the tech to enable multiplayer experiences at that scale.
For more detail on how we’re pushing forward both our MMO and community sim aspirations in the coming months, check out our first Developer Update!
Thanks for tuning in and for being a part of this cozy community! I hope the beta has brought you many fond memories, there’s so much more to come!
Aidan Karabaich Game Director
P.S. Tomorrow, WizardCrab will be addressing feedback regarding monetization that we’ve received recently, along with some upcoming updates. We’ll also be opening up some Q&A opportunities to make sure we can address additional feedback and questions from our community directly, after the patch goes live tomorrow.
