HoI4 Dev Diary from the Product Manager

HOI4

Hello everyone,
嗨大家好，

For those of you following these Dev Diaries, you know that we are taking a short break from the regular diaries to talk about other things we do in order to bring a game your way (not to worry, next week podcat will be back with more juicy stuff on what we are working on). Last week KimchiViking, the Project Lead on HoI IV, described what our development process looks like. This week I will try to give you some insight from a publisher’s perspective, as I work as the Product Manager for HoI IV at Paradox Interactive.
对于那些追我们开发日志的人来说，你应该知道我们刚刚从休假中回归。这几次日志都会讲一些与开发内容无关的东西。(不过别担心，下周podcat就会带着更多的干货回来了)。上周我们的项目领导KimchiViking讲述了我们的工作流程。本周我会以发行的角度来谈谈我的看法，毕竟我是钢4的产品经理。

Many of you probably already have an inkling as to what a publisher does, but just to set the bottom-line straight, the publisher finances the development of a game and is in charge of the distribution and marketing of it! My role as a Product Manager is to make sure that we can deliver the best possible game to you guys whilst ensuring that the teams involved get the resources they need to do so.
你们之中很多人或许已经对发行的工作有一个大概的了解，但是还是说一下最基本的吧，发行商给开发组提供资金并掌管游戏的出货与市场营销。我的工作是产品经理，也就是确保我们能把最完美的游戏呈现给你们。同时确保游戏开发组能够得到他们想要的资源。

In the case of HoI IV, I work closely together with the Product Team, meaning the Game Director (podcat),the Project Lead (KimchiViking) and the Product Marketing Manager who coordinates all the activities dealing with the marketing & sales department. It is in this constellation we discuss what we need to do for upcoming months/year. The Game Director is the one who is responsible for coming up with ideas for the expansion(s), the PL works out when we can deliver these and the PMM is in charge of how we market the expansion in question. And I am responsible for the budget (profit/loss).
在钢铁雄心4的角度上讲就是说游戏监督(Podcat)，项目头头(KimchiViKing)以及负责协调各种市场活动的营销经理和我会有比较密切的工作来往。就是在这个群体中我们一起讨论下一个月或者明年要做出些什么东西出来。游戏监督是负责想下一个扩展包要加入什么内容的工作，项目头头则是决定什么时候游戏需要交付。而营销团队负责我们如何去营销我们的扩展包。我则负责我们的预算。

Normally we work with yearly plans (even though we naturally also have a more long term vision of where we want to take the game). This means that around this time of year we start planning more concretely for what we want to do in the next 12-18 months.
通常来讲我们有一个年度计划(不过我们自然还有另外一个长期的目标)。 这也就是说现在这个时候我们已经预计好了之后12-18个月我们要做些什么

This is an iterative process where we look at:
这是一个迭代的过程，在这个过程中我们会着眼于

• the content we want to add to the game (i.e. what each expansion should be),
• 我们想往游戏中添加的内容(即，每个扩展包应该是怎样的)
• what development staff is required to do this (no of programmers, content designers, QA etc),
• 我们需要哪些开发人员来做(程序员，内容设计师以及测试的数量)
• the optimal timing of release and the cost of marketing to make you, the players, aware of the expansion (competing releases, campaigns such as the Paradox Weekend on Steam and various trade shows etc.),
• 发售的最佳时间以及让玩家知道这个扩展包的广告花费。(花钱砸发行以及广告位，比如Steam上的Paradox Weekend等其他的类似活动)
• and finally the business case for all of the above.
• 以及以上所有的商业案例

(For a more detailed description how we work within the Product Teams around an expansion, I recommend my colleague Gruffa’s, PM for CK2, dev diary. We work in a similar way to them; https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ck2-dev-diary-59-publishing-ck2.1036690/)
如果想知道关于我们是如何与产品团队合作的详细内容，可以参考我们CK2的项目经理的开发日志。我们的工作方式还是比较相似的。
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ck2-dev-diary-59-publishing-ck2.1036690/

When all of this is done I look at the budget requirements and compare that to my initial estimates and goals. Hopefully those match, or else I have to revisit and change the plans or I need to request additional funds from management, be it that the developers need additional funds to add amazing new features to the expansion or that we would like to buy 30 seconds of airtime during Super Bowl. ☺
当上述所讲的都完成之后我会看一眼预算的要求并将其与我的最初预计与目标做对比。他们能互相一致是最好的，如若不然的话，我则要么重审并改变我的计划了，要么去像管理团队索取更多的预算。能要到钱的话开发团队就能添加更多有意思的功能了，或者这笔钱也可能会去超级碗上打30秒的广告。

So, in a world of infinite money and time, I would say yes to most requests, but alas it is also for me to sometimes set tighter deadlines and/or budgets due to whatever constraints we may face. But normally we sit down and try to agree together on how to best proceed.
所以说，在一个有着无限时间与金钱的场景下，我会答应所有的请求。不过事实是我有时候会设置更紧的死线和预算，毕竟我们要面对很多限制。但是通常来讲我们都会坐下探讨得出最好的解决方案。

The Product Team busy planning the next move for HoI IV
产品团队忙于计划钢4的下一步

A very concrete case for HoI where we have had to alter our plans was for the first expansions which has affected those of you who bought the Expansion Pass. Our initial plan was to include the first two expansions at a USD 50 value for USD 40. After the launch of HoI IV we realised after your feedback that certain aspects of the base game needed attention. We already had plans for these expansions, but we decided to scope Together for Victory and Death or Dishonor down and put more effort into the free updates and bug fixing.
一个这方面的例子是我们一开始对第一个扩展包的改变。这着实影响到了买季票的玩家。我们的初始计划是季票只包含2个DLC，售价40,2个DLC的售价为50。而在钢4项目启动之后我们看了你们的回复后意识到这个游戏一些基础的部分也需要我们花精力上去。因此就算我们对扩展包有了计划，我们也决定把《共赴胜利》与《玉碎瓦全》延后，把更多的时间投入到免费更新以及bug修复上。

We believe that we have made the base game a better experience thanks to these fixes but this has made the Expansion Pass holders confused as to what and when they will get their promised content. And rightly so. What I can say is that we are aware of the situation and are working on a solution. Our goal is to make the holders of the Expansion Pass feel it was worth the wait even though it is taking longer than initially planned. Stay tuned!
我们相信这些免费更新与bug修复会给游戏体验带来很大的提升，但是同时这也让那些买了季票的玩家比较失望，到底什么时候我们才能兑现季票的内容呢？我能说的就是我们对这个情况非常了解，我们也在想办法来解决这个问题。我们的目标是让拿着季票的人觉得比原计划更长的等待是有意义的。游戏一直在调整。

KimchiViking mentioned last week that I would mention how we decide our release dates/frequency. This is really down to two things: how long it will take to make the content for a particular expansion and secondly how much money we need to make in any given period of time. If we were to need 52 weeks to create an expansion with all the people that are involved, it would be pretty hard to recoup that cost. So it’s about finding a balance between the time we spend on making the expansion and how much we can charge for it. We want to have a dedicated team working on the game over the year to ensure continuity. We also want to support the game long term, just like we are doing with other titles like CK2 and EUIV. This means that we will have a certain amount of cost that we need to recoup. This will be done by releasing a certain number of expansions over a year. Meaning that with smaller expansions we normally need to have a more frequent release schedule and less so for larger expansions. With this logic Death or Dishonor should have come out sooner after Together for Victory. In this particular case we decided to put extra effort on bug squashing and other fixes during Q1 this year rather than releasing an expansion. Additionally having paid content allows us to work on the free stuff that we provide with all releases.
KimchiViking在上周已经提过了我想提的关于我们如何决定发行日期与频率的问题。这取决于两点： 要花多少时间来做出一个扩展所需要的内容，以及这个扩展包要在一定时间内卖出多少份。如果我们要花整个项目组一年的时间去做一个DLC的话，那恐怕我们会很难收回成本。因此这也就是说我们要在扩展包的开发成本和售价上找到一个平衡点。我们还希望同时有一个能干的团队去处理其他游戏，比如CK2和EU4.这就是说扩展包必须能填补我们的开发成本。换而言之我们一年不得不发售好几个DLC。小的扩展包则意味着下一个扩展包会来的更快，而大的则相反。从这个逻辑上讲，《玉碎瓦全》本应在《共赴胜利》后不久就推出。但是事实上并没有这样，这是因为在这个特定的例子上我们决定把在第一季度额外的精力投入到bug的修复上而不是发行新的DLC。另外，有收费DLC也就让我们有资金来开发一些和DLC一起附赠的免费更新。

We also want to ensure that we reach as many as possible once we do release an expansion. Once we have decided on the expansions that we plan on releasing within the next 12-18 months, we need to look at when it is deemed best to make them available to the players. In the Product Team we decide on a release window (usually a couple of weeks) and then our marketing team gets back to us with a proper release date as we approach that “window”. This date is based on other competing releases and when we can have suitable campaigns on platforms such as Steam, Green Man Gaming etc.
我们还想确保在发行扩展包的时候能有尽可能多的内容。当我们给之后12-18个月计划扩展包的时候，我们也会计划一下最佳的发行时间。在产品团队中我们会计划一个发行时间窗口(大概有几周的跨度)，之后营销团队会在这个时间窗口前告诉我们一个合适的发行日期。这个具体的发行日期是根据竞争对手的发行以及合适的平台比如steam，green man Gaming之类的来决定。

Once we have released an expansion we always look at the reception from you guys and the sales numbers to see if and what we need to address going forward. We value your comments and strive to make adjustments where it is feasible. We are thrilled and happy to see that so many of you keep on coming back to the game on a regular basis. This doesn’t mean that we are content and sated! Hopefully you will be pleased with the stuff that we have in the pipeline which podcat will start revealing next week in the next dev diary.
当一个扩展包发行之后，我们也会时刻关注着你们对它的建议以及销售量来决定我们以后要解决哪些问题。我们非常尊重你的建议并且也努力去实现你们提出的可行的建议。看到你们日常活跃在游戏中让我们倍感欣喜，但这并不意味着我们对现状满意了。但愿你们你们能对下周Podcat的日志中揭露的新内容感到满意。

Please continue giving us your feedback! I will stay around the thread to answer as many questions as I can.
希望你们能不断的给我们发来反馈，我会在关注这个帖子并时刻进我所能回答你们的问题。