Content production priority change
Let's
be honest, SCEE Home is behind the other regions in the number of
Spaces we have to offer. That's not to say we dont have some really
good clothing and furniture, we've actually got some excellent partners
in the Shopping Centre. And we've also got Red Bull and Xi (the latter
still has some way to run and some more surprises to bring you.) And
Red Bull have another trick up their sleeve too...
But overall,
we're short on Spaces in general. In isolation we dont think this makes
SCEE Home a bad place but we fully understand the regional comparisons
and why they're made.
In the spirit of openess being requested
of us, and that we've committed to, we're going to say what we're going
to do about this and in short, we're going to switch our priorities to
the production of Spaces for the forseeable future. We will continue to
support our partners in the Shopping Centre but our primary focus will
be to improve our output and range of Spaces.
The transition
from one to the other will take some time but we acknowledge that
trying to do both lines (Spaces and Content) at the same time is
something we do not have the resources to do currently here in the SCEE
team. We have just recruited a new Production Assistant to help tackle
this and once this person starts and is up to speed you should start to
see improvements.
I should also mention that the SCEE Home team
is entirely seperate from that of the Core Home team, the guys who
build and develop the engine. They sit in World Wide Studios rather
than SCEE. Each region has its own team and the Core Home team delivers
the base service and client to the regional teams, who then bring their
own content to the service.
Our first task is to get up to date
on some of the older content that we've been missing for a while now.
For example, Uncharted and Warhawk and the update to the Resident Evil
5 space. Then bring you some of the more recent spaces like Guitar Hero
and then finally ensure we're able to release new Spaces at the same
time as the other regions whenever possible, and theres a few of those
coming your way.
The
SCEE Home Producer is currently investigating 17 spaces in all but I
dont believe all would be suitable and therefore not all would be
published here. The timeline for this is probably about the next 2 to 4
months and there is likely to be a drop in output before it starts to
really pick up and improve.
Communication
The
second change to discuss is the way we talk about our new content. As
explained in another thread recently, right now we wait until the very
last moment so we know what is going to be published. And it's at this
point we write the messages and get them translated and this leads to
last minute communication or even, as we've seen recently, the content
being released before the communication.
What we're going to try
and do in the future is quite a big change in that we're going to aim
to communicate what's coming to Home in SCEE one week in advance.
Instead
of waiting until the last minute we will be asking the production team
to commit to a package to be published, as best they can, about 2 weeks
in advance. We then write up the messages about this content and
localise it, (which takes 1-4 days depending on text length, but 2 days
is the norm) and then publish in the forums, hopefully on the Thursday
the week before.
Sometimes things will fall out of the publication package at the last minute, 2 weeks is a long time in content production.
This
means we will publish what we intend to bring to you about a week in
advance and any last minute changes to this plan will be communicated
at the last minute. This may be a better experience for everyone than
messaging everything at the last minute when we know for sure whats
going to be published. There will be disappointments when content fails
at the last minute and you've been looking forward to it for a week,
but you'll be much better informed overall.
Message Edited by TedTheDog on 12-05-2009 11:38 AM
