Dev Diary #34

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

Something very important happened a few days ago. The gaming company Tencent Games has announced that they will be publishing Ylands in China. Even though from the perspective of "western" Ylands players this may seem just like a somewhat interesting fact, it is a very important news for them as well. In today's Dev Diary I would like to explain why and also answer some questions you might want to ask.
 

Because many are not aware of who Tencent is, let me start by introducing our new partner. Tencent Games is the largest gaming company in the world by revenue and market value. With Ylands being more than a simple game, but also a platform for making games, a truly strong and experienced partner is needed to enter such a large market as China. With a focus on multiplayer and community, it's not enough just to have the game translated - a solid, reliable infrastructure and excellent support is a must, and we think we couldn't have found a better partner to help us with that. Even though the game itself will be the same, the whole "ecosystem" related to the game (the publishing platform, servers, workshop, payment gates etc.) will be completely separated from the Steam Ylands version.
 

Those familiar with some games that Tencent has published so far (or with how the Chinese game market works in general) probably know that their business model is more oriented towards free-to-play games. Some of you have already asked what this means for Ylands. The answer is very simple - Ylands in China will be published by Tencent as part of their WeGame platform, and as such, it will have a different monetization system than the one we have in the Steam version - one that Chinese players are more used to. We feel it's important to stress that we are not planning to make any changes to how the Steam version monetization is set up - it will stay as it is, just the way we've been discussing it for months with our players.

Marek Španěl, Bohemia Interactive CEO, introduces Ylands to Chinese players
 

Another question is if the current content will somehow be adjusted to fit more with the Chinese market specifics. Once again, the answer is quite simple. No. Actually quite on the contrary - some objects that have been removed from Ylands in the past (like bones) will return to the Steam version.
 

And that leads us to the most important question - how will the Steam version players benefit from this cooperation? 

Quite obviously this partnership is an amazing opportunity for Ylands to keep growing and getting better in the upcoming years... and that's definitely something every single Ylands player will benefit from. But you will feel the positive outcome of this much sooner. As a result of this partnership the team growth has accelerated even more. This will allow us to deal with issues like optimization and MP issues much faster, which, as I believe we all agree, is sorely needed.
 

I can say that the whole team is extremely excited about this opportunity - we consider it yet another important step towards the game we all envisioned.  

 

And that's it for this Dev Diary. We'll be back in a week - so have a great time until then, ylanders, and stay classy!

[Energritz_ 107]

Congrats on the partnership, i really hope for all of us this give ylands the boost it needs, population wise and development wise.

However looking back in china's history with "their own way of doing things" in mp games,  i really hope team have looked into this, and plan to take some action about it... as it could tarnish the name.

35 minutes ago, Aleš Ulm said:

Even though the game itself will be the same, the whole "ecosystem" related to the game (the publishing platform, servers, workshop, payment gates etc.) will be completely separated from the Steam Ylands version.

So to me this reads as " China's servers and players will be contained in their own eco-system and cannot play with international/steam users/servers, if this is true then that fine in my books, however if they can still use steam DS/official servers thats were

things will get 50/50 borderline... I really don't want to have to deal with "their own way of doing things" on my server, as i have run other various game server in the past with nothing but troubles from that region, however maybe ylands will be different, who knows.

Time will tell..

 

[BigBoss87 68]

Congratulations on the achievement!
That's great news. You all deserve  

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

@Energritz_ I'll say it in another words because it's really important that our players understand this fully and do not worry . Steam version will really be completely separated from WeGame (Chinese platform). They will be connecting to their servers hosted in completely different (local) datacenters, they won't be joining your MP sessions,  they will use their own workshop and the game itself won't change in any way because of this partnership.

We understand that there are significant cultural differences and our plan is for both communities to thrive separately while experiencing the same game. Let me put it this way - if we didn't tell you about its existence you probably wouldn't even realize there's a separate Chinese WeGame platform running alongside Steam version. On the other hand we will be getting feedback from Chinese players as well which is a good thing, because although it may not be that known in our part of the world, they are very creative when it comes to sandbox games which are become very popular there so this really is a win-win scenario.

If you have any other questions or concerns, I'll gladly answer those  

[bojo2736 1016]

How long has this been in the works?

 

[Miguel Preguisa 443]

Quote from a post in News category:

"Also, the Chinese publisher and Bohemia Interactive are planning to expand Ylands on different platforms and release the game on mobile devices in 2019."

Is that going to be just for China or not? And if not, even though I suppose that the mobile version of Ylands wouldn't have all the features at the start, is it really likely to be next year?  I can't imagine Ylands running on a phone. 

Edited April 27, 2018 by Miguel Preguisa

[A3_Melle 150]

Congrats with this huge step fowerd for the future on the Chinese game market (I know from social media experience how big that is).

 

I am sure Ylands will be verry popular and who known for the future Bohemia Interactive this can grow on for more future games now that the first "official" steps are taken with the biggest game industry in the world! 

 

 

Also good to see and hear that the word is finally out about @Myrik Greene, one of the few faces we don't see or hear a lot about as it is actually Marek Španěl ☺ it explains a lot! 

 

I really wish I could be of more help on social media and some streaming (I still do my best) but at the moment i have a real busy schedule at work with a new demanding function and 3 courses to study and do exams in within 3 months.

I do try to escape to the nice EU Explorer 21 server every few days for some gametime to lose some stress and just enjoy the game ? 

[TinyMonkey 33]

Will Tancent be taking a look at some of the game breaking issues that have plagued MP as well as offering their own expertise in the areas of server capacity and stability?

[V-Alfred 367]

Awesome BI! Have partnership with behemoth on the field is surely great achievement, congratulation!

Edited April 29, 2018 by V-Alfred
it's actually BI, not only Ylands Team.. :P

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Good Monday morning, everyone!  

@bojo2736 It really depends on what you mean by "in the works" since a partnership like this is preceded by lot of talks. Without going into any further details let me say that this isn't something one could achieve in matter of few weeks

@TinyMonkey As a result of this the team has already grown some more and in the upcoming months (weeks, actually) will grow even more with most of the newly coming people focus especially on the problematic parts (optimizations, MP etc.)

@Miguel Preguisa Ylands coming to other platforms in 2019 is not a thing specific for the Chinese market - there will never be two different games and you don't have to worry about the Chinese getting something you wouldn't. For many reasons the "western" (Steam) version will always our top priority.  I think since mobile phones have been mentioned some clarification is required:

Yes, even the mobile version is planned for 2019 (to make sure there's no misunderstanding or unreasonable expectations - definitely not early 2019  ) . There's a still a huge amount of work to be done before that happens but I can already tell you which is obvious - there's no point in even trying to implement the mobile version before PC version doesn't run much better than it does now if anything these plan actually create even more pressure that we make sure the game runs better asap. 

We are not saying that there will be a mobile Ylands version 100% identical with the PC version. We have some plans and things to test but we won't be discussing those before Ylands comes out of EA later this year because that's an absolute priority for us and that's the only thing we need to focus on right now. For the same reason we won't be commenting on other possible platforms. And one last thing that should probably go without saying - but I'll say it anyway   - Bohemia Interactive devs have a reputation of being avid PC gamers in the first place, of PC being our flagship platform... and, at least as far as Ylands is concerned, that's not going to change any time soon so don't worry that PC version wouldn't be getting enough love or suffer in any way because of other potential future platforms.

[Elchupac 1]

Tencent = China = endless possibilities .... Let the money pour in and may the money get us a premium quality game. Buying this game proves to be one of my best late decisions ... Pras!