I'm Maxx, the Project Lead on the new Steam game No More Room in Hell, AMA

I'm glad you all decided to leave children in the game. It definitely brings a great element to the game. Kudos to you! Actually, that post has convinced me to download the game and play it!

Awesome man! I'd be interested in knowing what you think of it after playing. Post back here and let me know!!

The game is pretty amazing for a mod. It is tense it is scary. The first game I played we were fucking with zombies through the fence at the beginning of broadway. They grabbed us and ate us in a couple bite and then I realized that these guys dont play around. Ive had teams that will work together to get to the end and share everything and I had a game where one guy kept hoarding things. We decided to put him down because he didnt share. That part is a lot of fun.

Suggestions..

Get better player models. Better player animations. Let the player watch first person style as they are reanimated unable to control their zombie as they eat everyone.

We are working on a full set of new player animations and have some new character models in the works! It has been very difficult for us to recruit a full-time player artist...

I was going to say: from the media (screenies), it reminded me of the good ol' HL mod scene -- models with the same skinny profile, limbs of same cylindrical proportions. I lead two HL mods and was involved in few others. Time after time, the mods would fail because of dwindling interest (thanks to RL(tm): Real Life, including school, women, etc). The other reason was that there just wasn't enough support to keep the momentum up and that was because of that crappy models the artists kept pushing out.

Either they would barge into ZBrush head first and come back with a 4 million poly model of a monster, or produce a "soldier" with shitty profile and crappy textures. Oh and guns.. shit ton fuck load of guns that the modelers would pump out weekly.

Talented modelers and texture guys are really difficult to come by -- those highschoolers and college freshmen contributing their time to the cause shouldn't be trusted-- I've had my fair share of that nonsense.

As an ex modder, I'd like to say that first impressions are everything. All that hard engineering work in the back hinges on the artist's ability to bring it to life and dazzle the crowds - marketing is everything. Delay the game if you have to, but the first "tease" images to come out should generate hype and be ready to exceed the hype when the product actually hits the CDN.

Also since I'm reminiscing in my golden days, I'd like to give a shout out to planet half life for putting up with my shit and IGN for fucking it up. Thanks.

I love absolutely everything about you, and your beautiful face.

Here's my honest feedback: I love the idea of NMRiH (been playing since you guys released the mod on Moddb) but I really dislike how it plays in execution.

First of all, controls and animations really need to be fixed. Shoving zombies and trying to hit them only for them to suddenly grab you and bite you happens way too often, especially if your latency is above 50ms. I understand you want your zombies to be genuinely dangerous unlike the fodder of games like L4D2, but right now it just feels much too clumsy to be fair or fun.

Gameplay-wise, there just isn't enough incentive to cooperate. Most games I've played I see the same thing happen over and over. The more experienced players will horde the best items leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. Then you are presented with a choice: either sit there for 10-15 minutes watching them as a ghost or disconnect and reconnect and respawn.

I don't understand the design decision to isolate dead and living players. If the game is about coop, let players talk without having to resort to all-talk.

Right now you guys have a nice set of maps to play with, I say future updates should focus on improving gameplay mechanics.

And, as a parting suggestion, I understand fully that as a developer a project like NMRiH is more than just a game, it's your "baby" and no doubt you are aware of the "issues" that I've pointed out, some of you may want to resist the urge to change what you consider the "formula" that makes the game what it is.

It's difficult to accept. It's like a film directory director who has to come to the conclusion they have to cut their favorite scene from the movie, but it's necessary. If you maintain the status quo NMRiH will, once the buzz wears off, be a ghost town, played only by the curious and the aforementioned experienced players. If that's what you want, by all means. But I'd really like to see NMRiH achieve its full potential. There are certainly glimmers there but it's not quite there yet (IMHO).

Personally I agree on many of the points that you're making on the areas of the game that need improvement but it is a very young game with a lot of room to get better. Really in this case what it comes down to is overlooking a few visual shortcomings like the animations for building barricades being off to see what's really there; a creative, gritty, and terrifying survival game. The comment about players hoarding and not playing cooperatively is exactly one of the points that the game is making. If people don't cooperate and help each other then people die. Those who think of themselves first and aim only to survive put the group in a moral bind- let then hoard materials or force them to one way or another. If it does come down to a "ghost town" situation then so be it. It's just one more aspect of survival if you look at it from a different perspective. Those still playing will have the sense that they are losing potential teammates and do what they can to keep the community running so that even if the numbers drop the game survives on. The bottom line is that this game has a wonderful concept that is being built upon by a clearly very talented team and I honestly believe that as they make improvements the game will get better and better and with any luck we may see a lot of diversification of the various aspects of the game. To the creators- Thank you for making such an excellent free game to keep me awake at night trying to figure out how best to make it through just one more wave!

I love and respect both of your opinions! Yes, nmrih is rough around the edges. We are flexible on quite a lot of the game as we ourselves are constantly revising it. We really appreciate and encourage player feedback to pitch us ideas and give us their general impressions as both of you have.

I completely agree. Nmrih could be improved in a lot of ways, and that's why we will still work on it constantly!

the exact same reason why im downloading it right now.

edit: i just saw my first zombie kid, came running from the dark at the beach house mission, scared the shit out of me... good job guys

+1, also downloading it, gonna play it on the morrow, can't play zombie games at night

I'll assume because of noise restrictions and not out of fear ;)

Is there no more room in hell because it's full of the souls of the bazillion other zombie games?

LOL well played... yeah we know it's a crowded scene but to be fair when we STARTED the project (way back in 2003) zombies were pretty fresh... and hot... we started development before most major zombie games (L4D, etc) were a thought hahaha

Why did the game take a decade to develop?

Fair question... It started in 2003 by a kid who really wanted to make a Romero style zombie game. He didn't know what he was doing and by 2008,even though he had gathered a team of people, was unable to develop a game. The project was... Ahem.. l4d... And that's when he gave me control of the project. I pulled in our programmer from yesteryear, Andrew Orner, and our original concept artist Sick Joe since his comic book style concepts were signature of our style. And I just built a new team from there. Two years and we had a working game :)

[deleted]

His name is Coleman Sweeney and he's a very rad dude.

Small, independent, dev team. And they likely didn't have a massive budget on tap for whatever they need.

No budget at all good sir!

I'm downloading your game as we speak and I haven't heard or seen of it before, so can you give me any tips on what to do?

Of course! - conserve ammo! Only shoot when necessary. Noise attracts attention! especially on Survival maps don't use ammo on the first wave - remember to SHOVE zombies if you get grabbed... hit V by default - you can use a maglite with pistols at the same time, and some one handed melee weapons -- hit F with the weapon out - Use Pills to temporarily cure infection, bandages to heal bleeding, and medkits to just.. not die! - hold down on Mouse 1 to charge melee - TNT IS KICK ASS

With this advice, I expect to walk through each server like Woody Harrelson from Zombieland and eff shit up.

I promise you, that will be the farthest thing from the truth. Prepare yourself for the grandpa shuffle.

More like walking around with clenched butt cheeks

Hahahaha haha yeah we are addressing player animations (we use the day of defeat source base player animations) and we are also addressing player stamina.

Are you guys considering making the player masses a bit more forgiving when moving into each other?

I can understand players not being able to just entirely walk through one another as a sort of realism aspect, but at the moment it's entirely too unforgiving on a large portion of the game.

There seems to be far too large an amount of cluster fucks =/

We are planning on implementing soft player collisions, similar to TF2

Now we won't get stuck in doorways anymore.

Also, is there any way to check your health while you're alive? (1-100)

When you drop below 50hp you start getting a desaturated, black and white view. The lower your health the more intense the effect. We are working on a feature to allow you to check you health!

If your from Toronto you should do a zombie rob Ford complete with a crack pipe.

I want to, more than anything. The Toronto Police found the tape!

TNT kicks ass but the hand grenades are weak sauce :(

As of last night we way upped the m67 damage. It will be in the next pushed patch

Can you explain the technologies behind No More room in hell. Are you using c++ with the source engine?

Does the development work similar to open source projects with you merging in pull requests using Git?

I'm not a programmer (I'm team leader and lead artist and designer) but I actually happen to be sitting right beside our lead programmer, Andrew Orner:

We're running on Source SDK Base 2013 which uses C++. We aren't open source but all of the developers work off of a single SVN repository, so they just commit all of their changes as needed.

Alright that was his response lol I hope it was helpful!

Haha, it felt like you were being possesed by the spirit of a programmer and then just woke up and didn't know what just happened.

That is a fairly accurate assessment lol

Proof: https://twitter.com/nmrih/status/396423464677957632

This IAMA, combined with the post on /r/gaming gave your website the infamous Reddit hug of death. Congrats!

My best friend explained to me what that meant, and I laughed pretty damn hard lol

Is your website down? http://www.nomoreroominhell.com gives me a 403.

Yeah our website got SLAMMED with visitors and our host temporarily suspended our account hahahaha it will be up again soon! in the mean time our ModDB page and Steam pages are live: http://www.moddb.com/mods/no-more-room-in-hell http://steamcommunity.com/app/224260

If you only had one shot to convince some random gamer to play No More Room in Hell, what would you tell them?

"I'll have sex with you if you play my game"

lol but to be real, I'd say something like this: No More Room in Hell is an old school style game that encourages co-operation but doesn't force it. It let's you be greedy and selfish, but doesn't reward it. We emphasize atmosphere and tension and difficulty. We push to challenge the player not to try and win, but to try and survive. Also, we have Walter Sobchak and Patrick Bateman and a rad dude with a killer fro.

"I'll have sex with you if you play my game"

Downloading now...

I'll be right over...

..and a rad dude with a killer fro, that we later realised was based on Rez

It's true!

I literally cannot play as anyone but Walter.

me too hahah

I was playing last night with a couple buddies, and one of them wouldn't stop complaining about how difficult it was and how slow we moved. Then he left and e and my other buddy kept on trying to get through the hijinks of the game.

I have always watched out for any of your updates since 2011 and was ecstatic when you guys were picked up by Greenlight. The atmosphere you guys have created makes this game so much better than something like Day Z or Left 4 Dead in my opinion not just challenge-wise, but also in that sense of helplessness when inevitably running out of supplies and getting surrounded by your careless shooting.

My only complaint right now are the new players who pick up guns and instantly use up all their ammo, but you can't really patch those.

One question, though: Are the zombies stimulated by noise?

They are! Zombies have a sight / sound / smell detection system that we are constantly working to improve. Expect some big improvements to that soon too!

Just wanted to say, I LOVE YOUR GAME. Every game i have been in people have been friendly and cooperative, and almost everyone have been british.

And congrats on releasing a game!

Science save the Queen! Glad you love the game man, and had a really good experience playing! You should tell your friends get them in on the fun! the more the merrier :>

Hey Maxx, I have nothing to ask you, just wanted to say thanks for putting an awesome game on steam. I randomly stumbled across it on moddb a year ago and love the challenge, the slow(er) zombies, and the overall environment and gameplay you guys have created. one of my favorite zombie apocalypse survival games on one of my favorite engines. cheers. Also random side note, my cat is named Maxx and we spell it the same way

That's awesome! By chance did you name your cat after Sam Keith's/Image Comics character The Maxx? :>

We know zombie games are a crowded world but we really set out to make something unique.. less of a game an more of a survival experience.. while still BEING a game. Day Z is great and all but I feel it takes things a bit too far away from the "game" aspect... I want tough and real but still fun and respecting it's video game heritage.

We are going further to try and make our immersion and overall experience better... the best part of being on Steam is the ability to release constant, regular incremental updates!

I just wanted to say CONGRATS and hi ... p.s. it's CobraBytez's girlfriend :-)

HEY LIANNI!

Hi Maxx, just wanted to wish you every success with this and say thanks for making the game a free download. Will be pulling a group of friends together over the weekend for a proper runthrough. :)

FUCK YEAH, thanks man! I really hope you guys like the game! My friends and I are going to be doing a booze and pot fueled LAN this weekend to celebrate the release. Good times for everyone!

is the download size (6660) on porpouse?

This is news to me and fucking awesome!!

Hi. What are the reasons behind the popularity of the zombie genre?

I think it is largely less to do with zombies themselves and more to do with some bizarre human fascination with the "end of the world" type scenarios. Ancient cultures were obsessed with religious end times (some still are) and in modern culture it was Nazis and Russians and now it's the environment and nature and the unknown. I think with the way the western world has been lately, with political and economic uncertainty, it's made people think more about these things as a "what if"... and games like Last of Us is a great example of that.

Why the double X?

As a little kid way back in the early 90s I was a huge fan of the Sam Keith/Image Comics character The Maxx.. you may recognize him from MTV's "Oddities" show http://www.watchcartoononline.com/thumbs/The-Maxx-Episode-1.jpg

:D

WHY DOES YOUR NAME HAVE AN S?! ;)

The Maxx is fucking incredible.

Mr. Gone: "You... killed... my hostage!"

Later:

Guy: "Wow, how did you know that was a dummy?"
The Maxx: "It was a dummy?"

hahahahahaha I love you

What did you guys do to make THIS zombie game different? Why should I try out NMRiH?

(Not saying it's a bad game, but for anyone out there who's not sure about NMRiH, it's a valid question.)

We emphasize realism with a huge focus on recreating an atmosphere of chaos and collapse. We put a lot of work in to our backstory, our lore, our zombie virus, and more.

Our game capitalizes on rare ammo, rare weapons, scavenging, slow zombies, head shots only, randomized objectives and gameplay elements, and also kid zombies because that seems to be a thing that people notice...

Hi Maxx, congrats on the success with the game so far. That post actually is what convinced me to download it. Were you expecting this much of a reaction from the community about your game? And similar to another question, any idea what's up with the LAN server restrictions?

Well we were really hoping people would like the game... to date our download history for our PRE-Steam releases was near 875,000 total. So far our Steam release is at about 170,000 -- so not bad so far! we are really happy with it.

But to be completely honest I was TOTALLY NOT expecting this kind of reaction to my post on our Community page! I was just getting tired of seeing posts of people complaining... I'm just happy to see that so many on the interwebs agree with me :)

The LAN server issue is being addressed right now by Valve. They are going to help us resolve it!

How would you feel if a game like GTA had children?

I actually worked on Grand Theft Auto IV, I used to work at Rockstar.... I think a game like GTA with kids, I think that could be a bit risky... people are quite perverts of violence on GTA, so it might not be wise. But really, it's a video game and they're imaginary... so who cares lol

Oh wow, I'm not the guy who asked you the above question but you worked at Rockstar? What made you leave, or more importantly was this game the reason you left?

Also, can I play this game easily with my friends? As in, can we all join the same server, or is it more random and I have to play with randomly selected players?

I can't talk about it but it largely had to do with the work environment and the way we were treated. I'm at Ubisoft now and I love it <3

We totally encourage you to play with your friends!!! Our game is best played with some friends with microphones :)

Awesome, we'll definitely try it out, or I will and I'll try to convince my friends to too. We have been playing Mod-Z in Garrys Mod and it's been kinda slow, hopefully this game with its own community will satisfy our survival-horror needs!

I appreciate you answering the question too about leaving Rockstar as much as you could, I understand not being able to go into it too much. Ubisoft is pretty awesome, any word on what game(s) you're currently working on?

I can't really go in to detail about what we are working on but I can say that it looks fucking hot as shiiiiiit :D big pimpin to my friends at ubi <3

What is Valve's attitude towards Source modding teams on Greenlight? Do they make a lot of problems with licensing, NDA etc? Is there even an option to NOT use Source 2013 or everyone has to port? Did they try to convince you to monetize the game? You know, Valve has to pay for the bandwidth and your game doesn't have a business model (do not generate a direct income), so they cannot cover it with fees.

It was actually a complicated process because Valve admitted to us that we were their guinea pig for Standalone mods/FREE games being delivered via Greenlight. The whole combination of all those things kind of stacked up to make it a unique situation for both of us. Valve kind of didn't really give us an option about porting to SDK 2013... that was kind of forced on us. But that's okay because it was worth it with all the improvements they've made in it! Valve was surprise about our ambitions to release the game for free, but they respected our decision. They have been incredibly helpful in this whole process so much love to Mike Dunkle and the rest of the Valve crew for helping us so much! <3

I hope there is a linux port.

We launched with Linux support!

If I don't hesitate when encountered by a child-zombie does this make me un-ethical or immoral? I find that it is no longer human, therefore no longer a child, & is potentially a threat to those still alive. that said your game sounds very impressive & I would love to play it.

See, that is exactly how I look at it. They are no longer children, or human, they are a direct threat to my survival.

I totally, biasedly recommend that you play nmrih! I hope you enjoy it and make it out alive :>

Lol biasedly, I plan on it, both playing & surviving.

Also, much love to my Canadian brother here! Toronto representing over here

Maxx, where is Diretide?

I .... don't know what Diretide is?

[deleted]

LOL I thought I'd be the one bringing the team down.. who knows, I was probably high. But no worries! We should play again!

Why should I play your game instead of Contagion (not counting the fact that it's free)? I just want to know the differences between this and Contagion, which is the spiritual successor to Zombie Panic Source.

We have a few guys on our team who also went and joined to help Contagion for a bit. They're good dudes, and Contagion is a pretty good game in its own right.

The differences though are mostly in our brutality of realism compared to theirs which still takes a bit more of an arcadey approach (albeit much more realistic than ZPS)

A lot of people have told me that Contagion feels a lot like No More Room in Hell, and to be fair my playtime with the game is quite minimal so I really don't feel like I'm qualified to make proper distinctions... especially based on hearsay. I just suggest playing them both :)

What are the reasons behind keeping body block in the game? Although it is "realistic" (Irl, people can squeeze by), I find that it does more harm than good, especially when a bunch of people all want to get through a chokepoint going in different directions (Doors with zombies or supplies behind them are a biggie). Will any changes be made to this to reduce the blocking?

We actually plan on implementing soft player collisions really soon, stay tuned!

Is being new to the game a kill-able offense? Or was the two fine fellows I met a few minutes ago just assholes? Either way the game looks great and keep up the good work.

I find that most players are actually pretty friendly, save for the trolls. Most people are good resource of information for newbies!

I just got finished downloading the game, but I can't connect to any servers. I get this message: "LAN Servers being restricted to local clients. (Class C)"

You're trying to connect to a Listen server set to be a LAN server. So this is a problem we are workign with Valve to try and fix, which is we are going to try and stop LAN servers from showing up in the Internet Servers list.

What about "Server is full" on every non-full server?

A lot of servers seem to be using private or reserved slots (probably for the server owners)

Hi, I know this is probably not the best way to talk to you about game issues, but on the map broadway (I think that's the subway one?)...I get a constant 60 FPS but the animations are really stiffy. I would shoot then 2-3 seconds later the gun shot animation would start. (even though the bullet is shot instantly). Any fix?

Is this ONLY happening on Broadway? Does it happen on all servers?

Actually broadway works fine. It's Chinatown. I only tried Chinatown and broadway. I could test more if you want.

We encourage all players to join on Github and report any issues: https://github.com/ZPSNMRiHIssues/nmrihissues/issues

I appreciate you not being a coward like the Stanley Parable guy.

and I ONLY just found out about his situation earlier today! I had no idea lol

Hey Maxx! Being a big Romero fan, I'm absolutely enamored with this game. Can you elaborate on some of your inspirations? Seeing as how development started in '03, I'm sure the team has had several.

Every Romero movie to date has been inspiration of course! Also the first season of Walking Dead, Max Brooks' books World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide.... 28 Days and Weeks Later albeit not zombie films were also inspiration. So was Quarantine, the American version of REC.

I actually didn't look at many video games as references to be honest.

Your game is really amazing.

Loads of fun to play :)

Thanks for making it free

No problem, man! More than happy to deliver some fun times!

Love this game. Going to fire up the new version tomorrow with some friends

Hope you like it man :)

I've always wondered this about various dev teams, so this seems a good time to ask: Are you, or any of the team members active players of your game? If so, do you find having a better knowledge of how the game runs a detriment or benefit to playing?

Everyone on our team plays the game to varying degrees. I'm project manager and team leader and I really should play the game more than I actually do (outside of testing stuff). Even as a developer in my day job, I rarely play the games I work on... Playing/finishing Splinter Cell: Blacklist is the first time in AGES that I actually played a game that I worked on. I guess it's just fatigue of exposure, and seeing flaws and problems.

... well with that said, I play No More Room in Hell from time to time and especially NOW with it out on Steam and my coworkers at Ubisoft dig it too so I play with them. It's actually enjoyable after being involved on it for NINE years lol

how do I use health packs?

Just Left click on them in your inventory!

If you're talking about the health boxes in Survival: you need to carry them back to a safe zone, where there is a silhouette of the box and a marking on the floor of where to put it. Deploy it, and then just hold E on it to heal up!

Hey Maxx I played a bit of your game today and really liked it. Only one problem. I am Australian and for some reason can't find any other people to join a server with. Will there be an option later to have NPC bots instead of other survivors? Maybe you could even set their personality between "trustworthy" and "psychopath" i.e the bots least likely to betray you are also the ones who would die the easiest because in the apocalypse the meek don't survive.

We'd love to include the option to have npc survivors take the place of human players but we are not confident we can make reliable enough ai to pull it off successfully.. Maybe someday!

Hey Maxx, love the game, been playing since it was open beta! Two questions! What was the choice on changing the zombies how they were from, I belive 1.4? Where it was much, much heavier then it was before in terms of spawning? Was it just because it was to hard back then? And two, any chance sv_lan can be set to 0 by default or is that impossible to do?

Thank you so much for the great game, 1.7 is amazing! The new maps are amazing, and the new models for everything is fantastic, so creepy! Stayed up all night playing! Thank you again!

We reduced some spawning partly for performance, partly for difficulty so new players could more easily get acquainted with the game before being brutally murdered, and because we improved the zombie behavior and AI and navigation a fair bit and felt that kind of made up for the high numbers we had before.

Also we are working with Valve to deal with the SV_lan thing... it should be addressed soon :)

Hi Maxx. Couldn't agree more with your argument. People think that zombie children in video games are "too much" when in reality they are posing the same ethical dilemma to the player as one could experience in a novel about a zombie apocalypse--zombie children have to go if they are a danger to the living human population, it's just common sense people!

I'm glad you agree, man!

Is there any chance we can get a votekick soon? Trolls in no friendly fire games that hog all ammo and run off with objs are ruining this for alot of people. Granted if FF is on then the trolls start killing others.

votekick was actually built in to our older versions, but when we had to port ove to SDK 2013 it hasn't made the migration..... YET. It will be there! We promise! Just not right now :(

Just got convinced to download it! Can't wait to play, it is a great idea for a game.

Hope you like it Daniel!!

How were you recruited onto the team?

Also, what qualifications/previous experiences do you have? (A whip, a very strong shouting voice, etc.)

I was recruited when I was in grade 11 (2004, I was 17) at that time I had no formal training (I still don't lol) but I was brought on by a friend, Nick. I was quickly made lead modeler. My team tells me I do a great job as lead, which is really humbling. I'm personable and friendly and laid back but throughout most of NMRiH's development time I've been fully employed as an artist in video games (Rockstar, Digital Extremes, Ubisoft) so I gained a lot of insights on how to build a sweet team with good chemistry :)

What skills are required of your roles as lead artist and and designer? It sounds like something I would like to do, but I can't draw for the sake of my life. I'm not that interested in programming either (just the basics), but I hope there is something I can do to contribute to a game sometime in the future.

Well, games are multi-faceted endeavor. Lots of roles to be filled, man! Programming, game design, level design, character art, concept art, technical art, animation, mocap, sound design, foley, composition, lighting, level art, environment art, QA and testing, and so much more. There are any number of positions in a game studio that you can fill! you just need a good personality, the right attitude, a solid portfolio and you are off to a great start. You just need to narrow down what YOU want to do :)

Really excited to try out the mod. I followed it closely way back when but kind of lost interest with the long development cycle but glad you guys got a good release out.

Did you ever play the BrainBread HL1 mod? Shit was fantastic, the dismemberment system in that game was super revolutionary for the time and engine.

I actually didn't play BrainBread until about... 2009 actually. It was super fun though! I only played it a bit with some friends from the nmrih community on our Ventrilo. It was a blast from what I can remember. To be honest though it had little influence on our design for nmrih. I actually looked more to movies and other zombie literature for inspiration on that.

Really glad you guys held your ground on the Zombie Children issue, I've liked games with reality in them. Like "The Last of Us", it gives something real to relate to, not just some cheesy cliche theme. Props to you!

Question: How do you think NMRIH is going to fare among the other zombie titles out there? Do you think it can gain footing?

P.S. I really liked the infection mechanism in the game, it's something I've always wanted out of L4D series. xD

Hey man, glad you liked infection! We are really proud of it too and we plan on making it even more intense and immersive.

As for how we are going to do against all these other zombie games... And to be completely honest with you man... I know our game is free and it has that going for it, and we offer a relatively unique experience... But it's a saturated market and people have shirt attention spans. We plan on continuing support for the game with new content and features and fixes and maps and weapons over time. We just want people to enjoy the game! The more the merrier but it's not a competition... This is free for us, it's nothing but fun!

Have you thought about building high capacity housing arrangements in Hell? Maybe a hellish arcology a la Sim City?

Holy shit that's a brilliant idea I love arcologies

Your post about not removing children lacked empathy.

I'm not saying that you are wrong for not removing them but your response was rather blunt for such a controversial subject.

You said "We are sorry that some people seem to be offended for one reason or another..." and you kinda trivialise the subject by doing so before flat out rejecting any possible change. It comes off kinda stubborn and arrogant.

To include murdering zombie children as part of your "design philosophy" is something I can totally see people having a problem with, just like rape and torture in video games. Only instead of having a dialogue that defends your position and explains exactly what the controversial subject adds, you basically say "We're not removing them. If you don't like it don't play it. They've always been a part of the game so tough shit."

You did mention that it adds to the moral aspect of the survival genre but I think this could've been done without the children and as a result it just seems gimmicky.

You also mention that you wanted people to feel uncomfortable as a result of them. Well creating a feeling like that requires some serious artistic sensitivity in order to pull off well... Otherwise it just comes off as atrocious and despicable. Play MGS2 to see how to tactfully make the player feel uncomfortable.

I'm kinda on your side. I think you should be able to make any kind of game you want but that post kinda irked me a bit.

For someone who says they welcome feedback, you're kinda dismissive.

It was a decision we mulled a community on our forums publicly for about 5 years non-stop. Afterwards it was concluded that it was acceptable to portray them in the manner we planned to do. Our community still stands by it. It's something we already discussed and ratified years ago, so I apologize that my post irked you but yes there was indeed an ounce of arrogance in that response, I won't deny it.