| Bluetta:
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Move on to Potato (?) he's typing a question. Kargach, did you want to read it for him, or do you want me to do it?
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| Kargach:
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Sure, why not. Let's see, hang on. "Hi again, Cleaver. Are recent game design changes being directly influenced by the younger and/or less mature jerks out are they just connections to holes you never noticed?
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| Cleaver:
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There's no question that they're being influenced by the Miniclip kids. I mean, of course. It's very obvious that they're illustrating holes in the game that were there but that, you know, were not sufficiently exploited as to make it a problem. I mean, you know, the great example is Do Not Disturb. We could've implemented Do Not Disturb, it wouldn't have been a bad addition, but it was never super necessary. It was a little bit necessary when we got a flood of new players, but it was never super necessary, and the Miniclip kids really made it super necessary. So, yeah, certainly. That said, the things that have really [been] influenced though have not been major changes. I don't feel any of the recent, Do Not Disturb, or the Booty Share fiasco, this is not a substantial change to the game. There's certainly, if were going to go for that audience big-time, and we thought that was really the sweet spot for the game, there's probably more changes we would make. Frankly, if that was our sweet spot, and we thought that was really the best audience, then we'd be better off with a Runescape clone. And we could probably knock one of those off in three months. And good grief, save me, we may yet do that- I kind of hope not. Talking to some guys at E3, and they're like, "Why don't you just make a Runescape knockoff?" There's lots of reasons why not. Certainly, if we thought that was the right way to go, then that would possibly make more sense than Puzzle Pirates, which is just so- social interaction is so tightly bound up with the game, and that's clearly not the number one thing for a lot of those kids.
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| Bluetta:
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I think Stevedave was next.
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| Stevedave:
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Woohoo! I was going to ask a rather silly question. Will I ever be able to go into the Rub-a-dub Pub, which, by the way, really should be Rubby's House of Chicken and Waffles, and play a game of cribbage while wearing my Sea Cucumber familiar.
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| Cleaver:
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(laughs) See, if I say yes, you're going to say, "But Cleaver promised!" and then you'll be harassing Nemo about it in the future. I like the idea of cribbage, I think it's a fine idea. Some people would moan that we shouldn't be implementing more games like that, so I'm not going to promise it, because that might cause people to moan, but I think it's very piratey, and have fond memories playing it as a youth. I really like the idea of more kinds of familiars. So a Sea Cucumber would be great. Particularly more kinds of familiars... but yeah, more familiars sound good to me. So sea cucumbers, all sorts of funny stuff.
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| Bluetta:
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Okay. Do you have any questions for us, Cleaver? As your subscribers or whatever, pirates?
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| Cleaver:
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Hmm. That's difficult to turn around the ship and go back the other direction. Let's see. I guess- what's your favorite bit? That's a really short simple question that everyone could answer. Just like a one-word answer.
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| Bluetta:
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Let's see. I think we could probably do this without going in turns, just someone starts talking, let them talk.
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| Caspian:
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Okay, sure. Mine would have to be, obviously more than a one word answer, but the mix of social with gaming. It's not a lonely way to play. You're constantly reliant on other people when you're playing puzzles, or if you're not playing puzzles, you can just hang around and talk and have a good time.
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| Randall:
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I personally think that the really genius bit about the game is how the puzzles connect teamwork on a ship. That is really something I have not seen in any other game before, and it really works as making people play in a team.
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| Dorel:
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What I really like is that everything in the game is player-run, like shoppes aren't run by some nameless NPC that repeats the same thing all the time. It's real people that run the governments, that run the shoppes, and I also have to add that it's really impressive when you think about [it], to have 400 people doing exactly the same thing. Even the big name games don't do that.
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| (?):
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I guess as an alpha-tester, and someone who never played computer games, ever, except for maybe the occasional Bejeweled, before I came here, the fact that everybody's so accepting of both players like me, and people at a lot of different levels, and interests, but also, the reason why I'm still sticking around- Obviously, the social, but the fact that you guys have been both accepting and encouraging of crazy little things like the out-of-game contests and the crafts and things like that. And that really makes me feel like I'm a part of the game, and that there's still different things for me to do, whether they're in-game or out.
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| Jacquilynne:
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For me, I'd say there's two things. One of the things I love is planning events. My favorite thing to do is ping Artemis on the forums with wacky-assed event ideas. And the other thing I love about the game is whatever is [the] most recently implemented new puzzle, 'cause I just tend to zone out on whatever comes next.
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| Maiden:
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I really like the puzzles. I like carpentry the best, probably the most. But what I've been using the game for is I've been meeting a lot of cool people and meeting them in real life. So that's one of the things about this game that it helps me to meet some really cool people, and be friends with people I wouldn't normally talk to.
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| Cleaver:
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Quick question, do you think you could build a game, just around that idea?
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| Caspian:
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No, I think it would turn into bunches of random hook-ups. But yeah, I have to second Maiden on that whole meeting people in real life thing. I moved to a new town just a couple of months ago, and basically everyone I know here is people I've met through Pirates, and while that's kind of weird it's also really really nice that I have a shared interest with people and we're all on the same level and we can meet in real life and be just as connected as we were in the game.
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| Indeed:
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I totally used to laugh at people who met their internet friends, because, you know, I'm a jerk. But, yeah, one of them I drove down to D.C. to meet Llama this weekend, and it was comfortable and fun. When I went to San Francisco last year, everybody was super awesome. And I usually don't like people because I always think they're dumb. Anyways. But I've met people in this game that I actually like and enjoy spending time with.
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| Stevedave:
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Yeah, I'm going to... someone said, can you make a game where people just meet people. I think it's kind of the type of game that gets the variety of people we have. If this game were like Counterstrike, to give a bad example, you have a bunch of people who are only interested in fragging and it could just be a bunch of teenage kids mixed in with the processional older person. This game brings in a type of player, I've noticed a lot of players from this game like tabletop games, things like that, and it's really just the type of hobbies that people have that are very similar. I've met up with a lot of people, I hang out with Fronsac and Caspian a lot, which, well, Fronsac's a strange cat. I too went down to D.C. to meet Llama, which was an interesting experience. This weekend, apparently, I'm going to meet (?) with Jacktheblack and Cynestria. So it's neat that you get to meet people with similar interests.
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| (?):
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And in the game itself, the bits(?), I think I could say for Randall and myself, the parlor games. The card games. Adding the card games in really added a fun new level to the game, and with the addition of Treasure drop, it's kind of fun we're going to have parlor games that aren't specifically card games. I look forward to that.
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| Bluetta:
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Anyone else? Because I see Anne I think actually had a question. Does anyone else want to say a bit?
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| Madam:
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Well, I'll chime in for Homullus, who says that he enjoys the middle bit that everything else is plugged into, like the aesthetic and things like that, so that everything can jump off from that. And that's what really makes him happy and excited.
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| (?):
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I kinda like all of it, I can't pick a favorite bit.
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| (?):
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I think I like the fact that it's a place where I meet people from all over the world, and having lived in the U.S. for a while I kind of miss it. And logging in just makes me feel like home again. Being in Europe, I miss a lot of things I had there, the mentality of the American people. And I gotta say I get plenty of that in-game
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| Bluetta:
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Okay, Anne, you can ask your question, since you haven't asked a question, real quick.
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| Anne:
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Okay. Before I ask the question, I just wanted to say that I really enjoy the social aspect of the game. I think the puzzles eventually get monotonous, and stuff like that, but just meeting new people every day, that's what brings me back. Just learning about them and connecting on some social level. But anyway, my question is, when you're looking at international markets, or to make Puzzle Pirates for international markets, are you thinking of just doing language-specific servers, or are you going to try to bring everyone to Midnight and Cobalt or how are you going to handle that?
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| Cleaver:
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They would all be, they would generally be language-specific servers. Some of them may even be in English, but in particular territories. There's a guy I met at E3 who wants to have a version of Puzzle Pirates running on their website that they're developing in Australia, and this site is, their business is very much oriented towards mobile phones and ringtones and SMS for charging people and so-on, and so probably kind of a teen audience. They would have their server that would be on their servers with a different billing system, and so-on. So long as its not ridiculously cheaper, even then, if it's a bit cheaper I'm not worried about it, that'd be sort of off in the corner. Also, as with Germany now, and the Indigo Ocean, if we rolled out Brazil, that would be a separate ocean, and so-forth. For lots of reasons. Having people talking in Portuguese with other people in English is a little bit odd. But also, it's to do with the billing mechanic, it would be quite different in those countries and they're going to marketed separately. Assuming that they can get enough people, which is of course a hope, and otherwise it won't be worth doing, then it makes a lot more sense for them to have their own servers. That may not always be the case. A great example of where we may have one server for multiple countries might be a Spanish-language [server]. Where we could have a server that deals with Spain, and Latin America, and Latinos in the U.S. could all play that. Something like that.
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