Announcement 🦍🗣Get To Know The Devs!🗣🦍

We took down our favourite questions we received from players over the years and sent them out to the team!

Questions​

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What's your go-to snack while working on a game?

Name: [ATA] Will
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in my Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms of Heckfire
Department: Community Management
Answer: It has to be Peanut Butter filled Pretzels! Those things are so seriously addictive that I have to hide them from myself or they will be gone in a day. The bonus is that when I find them it’s a nice treat for future me from past me

Name: [ATA] Claptrap
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in my Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms of Heckfire
Department: Community Management
Answer: Miss Vickies Salt and Vinegar chips. There is no other chip.

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos but I have to eat them with chopsticks so the keyboard doesn’t get all nasty.

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: When they conduct my autopsy, they will find my arteries clogged by mini eggs.

Name: [ATA] Barton
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in my Dorm, Kingdoms at War
Department: Design
Answer: Chocolate darker than my soul. That is, 85% or darker.

Name: [ATA] Yoshi
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City
Department: Design
Answer: Sour gummy candies. Bonus points for sour bubblegum bottles

Name: [ATA] Frog
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms of Heckfire, Witch Arcana
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Sour cream and onion chips. Every time I finish writing a line of Party in My Dorm dialogue, I get to eat one. In this way, JD and I are one.

Name: [ATA] Jace
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: Popcorn, mostly for when i'm looking at world chat

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: All
Department: Product
Answer: Sriracha

Name: [ATA] Hedgehog
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Behind the Scenes
Department: People Team
Answer: Cheese. All the cheese.

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If your life were a video game, what would the title be, and what genre would it belong to?

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: It already exists. It’s called Desert Bus. You drive a bus in the desert in real time for 8 hours, constantly correcting the steering or you crash and are towed back to the start.

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Whopper Waifu: A story-driven visual novel where you are a burger and date other burgers but it has a morality scale where the bad ending is the player becoming a burger eating cannibal.

Name: [ATA] Jace
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: It would be an open world RPG filled with plenty adventuring, beautiful landscapes and deep characters, but Im just focused on beating my high score on the fishing mini-game

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: All
Department: Product
Answer: Old House of Books and Naps - you have to keep your old house from falling apart long enough to enjoy a good book or a nap, when it rains things get really spicy.

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Can you share a funny or memorable bug from a game you've worked on?

Name: [ATA] Yoshi
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Single City
Department: Design
Answer: The “Cryptocalypse” in Heckfire. During a regular Tomes from the Crypt event, something went horribly wrong with the gathering node spawning and the ENTIRE WORLD MAPS filled up with crypt nodes. Players couldn’t teleport or do raids because the map spots were filling up too fast. Y’all had a great sense of humor about it.

Name: ATA-Ermine
Game(s) you’ve worked on:Smash Monsters, Kingdoms at War, Single City,
Department: Engineering
Answer: On Smash Monsters players started suddenly seeing monsters they didn’t own, it was pretty clear they had access to monsters from their clan members. The monsters couldn’t actually be used in combat, but it caused quite a stir. A game designer looked right at me, and asked me if I’d accidentally swapped users when sending messages back from the server. I was so confident I actually bet him that wasn’t the issue. Turns out… yea… I’d swapped users whenever they helped each other with timers. I lost that bet.

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: One time I accidentally deleted all the Heckfire competitions that were running at that time. My story is that I spilled mustard on the computer and I’m sticking to it.

Name: [ATA] Dennis
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, FC, Party in My Dorm, The Meego, PD, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana
Department: Engineering
Answer: I misconfigured some item data in The Meego and as a result, players could get them unlimitedly for free. Oops.

Name: [ATA] Jace
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: One time on Kingdoms at War when we released a new emoji spell, some players were reporting seeing a Banana instead of the intended emoji. This confused our team but apparently it was related to a long forgotten banana emoji that had been made with the text “There's always gold in the banana stand”. That then led us to create the Victory Banana emoji spell given out for top finishes in Competitions
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What's the most unusual inspiration you've drawn from, for a game idea?

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: Some of the best ideas I’ve ever had came to me in strange dreams I can’t quite remember.

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: All
Department: Product
Answer: A lot of the trade economy and furniture is based on my experiences playing Diablo and Everquest and dropping items in front of people to trade. We wanted to create a unique experience where people had to be socially connected to trade to recreate that feeling of connecting with another player rather than a dull and mechanical auction house.

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If you could swap roles with any video game character for a day, who would it be and why?

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Being Cooking Mama for a day sounds great.

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: All
Department: Product
Answer: I’ve really liked the world universe building in Starfield so far and I think it would be a cool place to exist.

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Tell us about your most epic gaming achievement outside of work.

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: I finally beat Alien: Isolation on Nightmare difficulty! Also getting to 3k trophies in Clash Royale was a big deal for me because I crumble like apple pie in high-stakes PVP.

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: I was top 2% of Lucios in Overwatch for a while. LET’S DROP THE BEAT!

Name: [ATA] Strange
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Heckfire, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: Finding a bizarre broken team combo in the early days of Guild Wars 1 that more or less deleted the entire enemy team if you executed it correctly.. The combo was necromancer's mark of pain and warrior's hundred blades. If you could cluster the enemy team and coordinate the marks to all be on different targets, then everyone presses hundred blades at the same time. Poof. We held the hall of heroes until we collapsed from exhaustion. I think they patched it soon after that.

Name: [ATA] Jace
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: Competing in the Pokemon card game World Championships as a kid, I didn’t end up winning like Ash finally did, but one day I’ll be the very best, like no one ever was

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: All
Department: Product
Answer: I had never played LoL, missed the whole era of MOBAs for reasons (a story for another time), so I picked up iPad version (Wildrift) and spent a lot of time learning how to play and made it to Grandmaster in a few months. This was a particularly noteworthy one for me because it was personally very challenging and I had so much to learn. I think I could go higher if I had more time to devote but other games are calling.

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If you could bring any in-game item or ability into the real world, what would it be?

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: Sleeping immediately whenever you want to. That would be sooooo nice.

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Eating cheese wheels during a fight to regain health. UFC would be so much more interesting.

Name: [ATA] Frog
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms of Heckfire, Witch Arcana
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Fast travel as a thing. I am really sick of the plane ride back to my hometown. Why do I have to repeat it again and again? Poor world design 0/10

Name: [ATA] Jace
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: Quick save and quick loading so I can try all the bad ideas I have

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: All
Department: Product
Answer: Mech suits from Anthem

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What's the nerdiest thing you've ever done or are proud to admit?

Name: [ATA] Claptrap
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in my Dorm, Kingdoms at War
Department: Community Management
Answer: Camping out for the release of Halo 3. My friends played Halo 2 all the time so this was a big moment!

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: I recently went to see a Neil Breen movie in the theater!

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: I flunked college trying to beat someone else to #1 on the realm leaderboard on a social game I played. And now here we are, so I guess it was meant to be!

Name: [ATA] Frog
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms of Heckfire, Witch Arcana
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: For a while I had a very popular Tumblr account where I made lovingly crafted memes about a certain RPG. That’s as specific as I can get before my pride turns into shame.

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: all
Department: Product
Answer: I have a pikachu tattoo

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Share a favorite gaming-related meme or inside joke among your team.

Name: [ATA] Jace
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: KKKAAAAWWWWWWWW deer

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Do you have a gaming-related superstition or pre-game ritual?

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Gotta break everything and punch the wall over and over before the Overwatch round starts.

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What's the most challenging part of game development that players might not be aware of?

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: No game has a monolithic community of players. For all the strong passion and great ideas one player has in one direction, another player will feel the exact opposite. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to satisfy people with very different goals and desires, and not letting an update for one type of player hurt another player’s experience. Also to make sure not only the loudest voices are heard. It’s a super difficult balance, we’re constantly making mistakes and learning from them, but we’ll never stop trying.

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Keeping track of the 10,000 browser tabs you have open constantly as a designer.

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: all
Department: Product
Answer: Designers are trying to make the game fun for as many people as possible but there are always thousands and thousands of people trying to exploit and break the game. There are so many mechanics I think would be fun and would love to build that won’t work in a multiplayer game where people will find ways to break the mechanics. It’s so hard but also more fun when it comes together.

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Describe the most memorable reaction you've seen from a player enjoying your game.

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: Someone wrote and recorded a song about a game I worked on once! It was really sweet of them, I still remember the lyrics. Also players finding each other and getting married is always really affirming about the type of games and spaces we’re trying to create, even if we were only a small part of it.

Name: [ATA] Frog
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms of Heckfire, Witch Arcana
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: I love checking into the Party in My Dorm and Kingdoms at War forums to see our players working on detailed lore guides, character guides, beautiful fan art, and more. Every single time I see our players engaging with our games that way it makes me emotional!

Name: [ATA] Hedgehog
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Behind the Scenes
Department: People Team
Answer: A player sent flowers to the office for someone who had just recently joined the community team. That was pretty memorable.

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What's the best piece of advice you've received from a fellow developer?

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: Remember you’re not making games for yourself to play, get to know the people you are making them for!

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: A second monitor is never enough.

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: all
Department: Product
Answer: Nothing ever survives contact with the player.

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Tell us about your all-time favorite gaming moment, whether it's a clutch victory or a hilarious fail.

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: There are so many moments in Baldur’s Gate 3! Sneaking up to a boss and shoving them off a cliff, hitting an enemy then picking the enemy up and throwing it closer to your other party members, romancing Gale…

Name: [ATA] Yoshi
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City
Department: Design
Answer: WoW, circa 2010 (Lich King era). Two friends and I (Horde - lv 29 holy paladin, lv 29 protection paladin, lv 21 firefrost mage) were rushing through Alliance territory to get to a dungeon. We ran into a lv 58 Alliance death knight that decided we were easy targets to pick off… but boy were they wrong! We couldn’t hurt them, obviously, but they couldn’t put us down either. I was blinking around as the mage, trying to get away, but the DK kept death gripping me back into combat. The pallies took turns setting lay on hands to prevent our deaths. After an arduous 30 minute battle, the DK finally gave up.

Name: [ATA] Strange
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Heckfire, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: Standing just through a doorway, making my back look as juicy as possible to invaders in Dark Souls, meanwhile allies are standing on either side of the door waiting in ambush.

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What's your guilty pleasure game that you secretly love to play?

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: Nanaca Crash, 100%. I go through phases of playing it endlessly and then not touching it for a while. It has a surprising amount of skill involved!

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: I’m not sure if it’s a guilty pleasure but I’m always hesitant to tell people just how many hours I’ve played Rimworld.

Name: [ATA] Strange
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Heckfire, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War, Party in My Dorm
Department: Design
Answer: Miracle Sudokus.

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If you had to survive in a video game world for a week, which game would you choose, and why?

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Minecraft on peaceful mode so I can subsist on porkchops and play with blocks. Wait, did I just describe my childhood?

Name: [ATA] Barton
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party In My Dorm, Kingdoms At War
Department: Design
Answer: Party In My Dorm lol you spend all your time partying and getting paid obscene amounts of money to do it!

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In a zombie apocalypse, which game character would you want as your ally, and why?

Name: [ATA] Ripley
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Party in My Dorm, Kingdoms at War, Witch Arcana, Kingdoms at War
Department: Live Operations
Answer: My ally would be the real main villain of the story only finally revealed after 5 sequels. Being off-screen would be cushy. As long as I don’t betray them, I should be safe.

Name: [ATA] Burger
Game(s) you’ve worked on: Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City, Kingdoms at War
Department: Narrative Design
Answer: Gordon Freeman would keep me safe all while not talking my ears off.

Name: [ATA] Mark
Game(s) you’ve worked on: all
Department: Product
Answer: Yoshi, can ride him all around, thick hide, eats zombies and jumps on them, is your BFF

Fin!