Ditto, I think a lot of us would like to help out in some way at this stage. They tweeted that they’re looking for an ass kick game-designer, but what a designer is- is really a facilitator for creativity and problem solving. Thing is, by my judgement at least they’ve already got the tools and the mindset to make the magic happen.
First thing a designer would do is sit down all the stakeholders together- and the surveys are a way of doing just that. With improvements to the community infrastructure we can engage in the process of testing, brainstorming and providing feedback perhaps to a more useful and engaging extent. The community is the lifeblood and also perhaps the greatest resource any game can have, so building a functional bond is hella useful.
What you want carlos is probably twitter- send them tweets! There’s also a backer level for unlocking a dev-chat ingame (dunno if it works yet) but it would be nice if we had a cleaner solution.
Forums are okay but a bit impersonal, and it’s basically a full time job keeping track of everything that’s going on (once the forum gains many more active users). Community managers usually take care of that kind of thing, building a sort of bridge between peeps and devs. A golden design solution would be incorporating a system that automatically helps the community manage itself. Tricky!
Dialogue is super important, you really need a feedback loop to make any progress, and I’m sure that’s exactly what the devs have with one another. Just need to tap into that super computer of community creativity!
