| # | Zach's Version | Alex's Version |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "For gamers, by gamers" is our general motto. As gamers we want to develop games that we ourselves will enjoy. Our aspirations are not to focus on profits like other companies in our industry. Given that, we also aspire to make games that other gamers will enjoy too. To accomplish that, we look to community input when it comes to the vast majority of our game development process. | "For gamers, by gamers" says it well. We won't be focused on maximizing profits like the big game publishers; we want to make fun games that we'd enjoy ourselves, and that players will enjoy too. This means we'll actively seek out and listen to feedback from players to try to make the most fun games we can. |
| 2 | As gamers we believe every game should have the option to be played in single-player. At the end of the day not everyone will want to play games with or around other people and we aspire to have every game we make accommodate that potential need. Even if it's an arena shooter we will integrate bots to facilitate that. | Our games will always be playable in singleplayer one way or another. Multiplayer games are a lot of fun, but sometimes you just want to mess around and test the mechanics, or decompress alone after a long day. Even if we made something like a PvP Arena Shooter, we'd make sure there's a singleplayer vs. bots mode available. |
| 3 | We have the core fundamental belief that live-service is bad. We wouldn't want to deal with it, so why should anyone else? An internet connection will only be necessary to install one of our games. After that if you want you can host a LAN server, play it single-player, whatever you want all without a network connection. | None of that "always online" nonsense. We're here to sell games, not user data. Play it alone without an internet connection, or play on private servers, or whatever. Servers we provide will be an option, not a requirement. |
| 4 | Matchmaking should be an extra utility not a dependency. At the end of the day you should have the sole power to choose who you play with and when. I met Alex in a game made in the early 2000s when we were kids. Games were our escape and in a lot of ways we found friends that we have come to see as family, or at least I have. That kind of close connection is something we find is missing in gaming today and we aspire to bring it back and show just how important it really is. | I loved the games growing up where I could pick a server to join, and feel a sense of community on it. It's sad to see so many modern games have matchmaking-only, with arbitrary global bans from distant corporate moderation teams. With private servers, you can pick what players you'd prefer to play with, and if you suspect another player of cheating, well Bob the Admin is right there to deal with it. This is how we believe multiplayer games should work, and matchmaking once again an option, not a requirement. |
| 5 | Again live-service is bad in our eyes. A game should be perfectly playable twenty, thirty, even a hundred years after it was made long after our company has moved on to other things. Once our games loose our direct support they will still be able to be enjoyed by everyone, including us. | If we shut down our own support for a game, we will make sure the game can live on by releasing any information or files needed to ensure the community can take the reins. |
| 6 | Modding makes the world go 'round. We ourselves have dabbled in modding games and firmly believe that modders and modding communities extend the life expectancy of games tenfold and just make them more enjoyable all around for everyone. People should be able to mod any games we develop. | I've been modding games since I was 8 years old, do I even have to say it? Of course we'll make sure all of our games are extremely moddable. Even in multiplayer games, server owners should be allowed to mod their servers. |
| 7 | Games should be user-friendly even for hardware that isn't optimized for it. We ourselves don't like having to go into files to change the resolution to a game that's too large for our monitors. Why should we expect anyone else to? So, we make our games boot up in windowed-mode by default. We ourselves don't like losing our hearing because games start at max volume. Why should we expect anyone else to? So, we make our games start at a lower volume than max by default. | We've been playing games all our lives, and know what the common mistakes are. Too many times I've booted up a new game and had it try to alter my monitor's resolution to enter fullscreen and break my desktop, or it blasted max volume audio before I could access the settings. We'll make sure our games don't do things like that. |
| 8 | When you buy a game you should own it, period. We are gamers ourselves and hate micro-transactions. With that in mind we aspire to be a beacon in the gaming industry that you don't need micro-transactions to make quality products and make a living to do it. The only way to make change is to stand and be the change. Which is exactly what we plan to do. The only content that should even be purchasable outside of the base game is expansion content that rivals the size and quality of the base game itself or purely optional cosmetics that have no baring on gameplay at all. | No pay2win. No DLC. No skin economy. None of that. Bad. If we sell content, it will be either (A) a full blown expansion pack that truly adds significant content to the game, or (B) explicitly donation/supporter items like minor cosmetics. |
| 9 | Communication is important. If we are honest with our community then our community will be honest with us. Like any relationship it's a two-way street and if we want our community to trust us, we need to trust our community. So, active communication with our player-base is absolutely critical to us. | We will do our best to actively communicate with the community, to share our plans and progress, and even to open-source the code for most of our work. |
| 10 | Proper documentation should be the only documentation. We strive to put clear and concise documentation in everything we touch. Including things like our own community Discord and any other media platforms we may use in the future. Even guides for various third-party tools we utilize such as VS Code, DaVinci Resolve, et cetera. | We will do our best to document things well. Seriously, go look at FreneticUtilities or FGE Core, I have covered these things in code docs and I'm just getting started. |