Hello Descendants!
Pomona here to offer an exciting update. There have been changes on our side and I’m happy to be able to share more with you today! As promised, we’re amplifying the player's voice in a big way. As of December 2023, we have officially restructured the development team. We knew that if we were going to strengthen the trust and feedback loop between our awesome players and our team, we needed to radically change how we develop this game from our side.
Previously we have relied on gaming industry experts and veterans to design and lead the charge in developing the next era of RFB. Team efforts over the last two years have seen varied success. To be clear, everyone on the team has worked closely with Aela to triage and discuss incoming suggestions and feedback on new and existing content, and she has done an outstanding job being your voice at the table. While this has had some success, we have decided to simplify things so we can hear you even better.
To that effect, at this time FriendlyFixer and Standard have moved to other projects at KIXEYE. We wish them the absolute best as they continue on to exciting new adventures! Additionally, Aela is still here as your Community Manager but is now also spending some time lending her incredible talents to other teams within KIX. We love Aela and to watch her continue to grow in her career has been so fun! I personally can’t wait to see what’s next.
The other big change has been to my own role. I am stoked to share that I have been appointed as the RFB Game Lead!
This means that I am no longer only the team’s Producer (who is responsible for my team’s resourcing and their connection to the community), but now I’m also responsible for feature planning, release management and the overall long-term success of the game. And I do need to be honest with everyone and with myself: I am not a development expert nor an industry veteran. My team members are. But the reason I was chosen is because I have truly come to love the community of players here and I am 100% dedicated to upholding the virtues of this game that you’re passionate about. Your voices are the ones that matter most to me, and that’s a huge part of my core values that I bring to the team as a leader. As I continue to grow into this role, I will make mistakes and blunders I’m sure. But what I’m really hoping to make more of are strong connections to each of you and to this game.
I’ll be continuing to engage as much as I can on Discord among all the other duties I have that keep our team moving in the right direction. This may mean that it takes me a few days to get back to DMs, mentions and questions - but that is no different than the way it has been for the last few months. I enjoy chatting with and learning from folks in our Discord very much! If you’re not on Discord yet, I’d love it if you stopped by and said hello soon! https://discord.gg/rbNMexEzSk
We’ll set up an “Ask Me Anything” session soon - so keep an eye out for that along with the long-awaited auto hunt update, fair play improvements, a Producer Pomona “world tour”, and much more that will be coming your way!
Anyways, thanks for reading - you’ll hear more from me soon! In the meantime, please remember that I appreciate you and wish you and your loved ones well.
tl;dr - RFB dev team has changed; Aela is the best and is still your Community Manager; Pomona is now in charge and you can blame her for pretty much everything and she’ll still love you.
Warmly,
Pomona