It's That Time Again

[KoreanRedDragon]

Team17 have someone new in the position of community manager. He goes by the nicknames MusterBuster and now Mike_Team17, has a history of doing this for big companies like Sony, is passionate about gaming and just generally seems like a cool guy who wants to achieve something for the WA community too. He's only just starting, of course, and says he has a lot to learn about how Team17 function as a company as well as about the various communities across the many Worms games. But a little surprisingly perhaps, he seems to have started his office by approaching the WA player base and introducing himself on the game's Steam discussion forum, specifically asking for suggestions on what he could be doing to make us happy:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/217200/discussions/0/522730700441976868/

He then also visited us in the #worms IRC channel, asked a bunch of questions and said he'd be back for some games over the weekend. Here's the log of that in case anyone wants delicious details:

http://krd.clansfx.co.uk/dump/10ea14e42214455eaca553fca5d19813/0000005C.txt

Now, I don't think either gushing optimism or overwhelming negativity are in order here, we just don't know enough yet to be able to say how much of an impact he'll have in the grand scheme of things or whether this means Team17 are turning a new leaf as far as communication with the players of their games goes. But I do think it's obvious Mike has good intentions and, well, he's looking for suggestions on how to proceed. I see no reason for us not to share our opinions with him. At the very least, T17 will see there's still life in good old WA, right?

[Hussar]

RIGHT ! 

would be nice if u will inform us about hes work. !!!

[KoreanRedDragon]

Yeah, if anything interesting develops, I'm sure we'll end up talking about it here too. To those who already have Steam accounts or have no problem creating them (it's free) and want to be heard directly, I can only recommend posting in that Incoming! thread, though; he'll no doubt be keeping an eye on that!

[Impossible]

oh, thats awesome!

[theredi]

and what benefits i can take by combining all that steam stuff to my wa?

[Anubis]

At least he acknowledges the superiority of W:A and it's rope. Let's see what that will bring on the table.

#1337 post count. 

[KoreanRedDragon]

and what benefits i can take by combining all that steam stuff to my wa?

Well, you'd have to buy WA again first before getting some of the benefits. But basically Steam acts as a platform that automatically updates your games, serves as means of communication with other Steam users (buddy list chat, works when you're in-game too) and sometimes developers (mostly on forums like the WA one I linked to in the first post). People also organise themselves in groups on the community page, trade in-game items and a bunch of other useless stuff like that. The tradeoff is that if you want to play games you've bought on Steam, you have to keep the Steam client running in the background; the vast majority of titles there won't run without it, WA included.

Apart from that, the Steam store is a pretty nice place for buying cheap games, especially if you only buy them during sales like the big summer sale that's going on now. If you're weird enough to play other games, that is!

[Aerox]

Yes, but you can still be involved in the community aspect without buying the game as far as I know.

A new community manager for a community that has been managing itself - plenty of times despite Team17 - for 15 years.

I still rather believe you felt obliged to post that KRD, as opposed to it being fruit of having some sort of actual faith in what actual tangible good would come from this.

RANKS ARE COMING!11

edit: should of done a better effort about explaining why WA is better than the newer Worms titles. The keyword here is Sandbox, WA is one, the other games are not. The rope is just a result of a robust physic system, it's not a reason by itself. Not that we would accomplish anything by getting this guy to understand our way of worms, mind you.

[theredi]

tx for exhaustive answer, now i know im not missing anything. Im not gonna buy same game again for the buddylist (snooper ftw) and im not playing other games xDDD so no need for now.

[TheWalrus]

Get in his ear, KRD.  I can't think of anyone better to be turning the gears in his head than you.  The last chick seemed like an airhead.

[avirex]

ok cool, this guy is being proactive...

but if he is really interested in finding out what makes W:A tick, and why its the oldest running community t17 has produced, why didnt he come right to the source?

TUS


i mean... this site can easily be found on google... and yet, he raises discussion on steam? i dunno... hopefully something good comes out of it..

[Joschi]

Promising. avirex is right, he should be registered here

[Aerox]

i mean... this site can easily be found on google... and yet, he raises discussion on steam?

what do you mean easily? (what I'm saying is that worms on steam still get more traffic)

edit: the first result brings you here which does contain a link to TUS, but in between a bunch of much less relevant ones.

[KinslayeR]

shhhh... cybershadow reading..

[KoreanRedDragon]

I'd say it has more to do with the fact that as of the closure of the T17 Forum, the Steam discussions have been the most official way for them to interact with their audience (apart from social networks, but I don't care much for those). So it makes sense to me that as someone new to the job, especially since the WA community obviously isn't going to be the only one he'll have to try and take care of, he would pick the Steam forums for the first contact. That's just where (most of) their games are and can be bought, but I'm sure that in time, he'll figure out us WA players aren't that into Steam; this was actually one of the first things he asked after he joined the IRC channel earlier this week. Still, I agree there's valuable input to be found here on TUS as well, and we can certainly point him in this direction whenever relevant discussions pop up, although it wouldn't surprise me if he found his way here on his own.

I actually recently skimmed over that old TUS thread from 2011 where we were discussing the possibility of WA (4.x) making it onto Steam and it strikes me that a lot of the replies there were direct answers to things Mike has been asking about so far. How important official rankings are to us, why WA is the game for us, where we stand on the issue of seeing our community grow (potentially at the cost of it becoming less tight and cozy) and so on. This thread:

https://www.tus-wa.com/forums/worms-armageddon/if-wa-was-rereleased-on-steam-11425/