Hello hunters,
One week has passed since the dogs were released and it’s time for a postflight analysis. All in all, our labs have been a huge success. Both the devs and the community love them and we feel that we’ve achieved something very unique and special. Having said that, persistent game crashes following the release rained a bit on the dog parade, but from what we’ve seen and heard, people have still managed to spend some quality time with their hunting buddies. All major game crashes were fixed on Monday and, to compensate you for lost game time and membership money, we’ve decided to prolong all the events, sales, missions and memberships respectively. Here are the adjusted deadlines:
- Bird fest (free Pheasant, Mallard and Goose hunt + bird equipment bundles) – until 22 June 21:00 CEST
- Dog 20% discount + dog / founder collar bundles – until 19 June 21:00 CEST
- Dog missions – until June 24
- Non-typical Mule Deer missions – until June 24
- Non-typical Blacktail missions – until June 25
- Extra membership days – 5 will be added to all existing memberships
Our apologies to those of you whose weekends were affected by the crashes. We’ve discussed the matter internally, learned some valuable lessons and we’ll take measures to avoid a repeat of this incident.
Naming your dog
We’ve been monitoring dog naming stats and wanted to share with you some interesting stats on the most popular names. The good ol’ Rex is topping the charts with 88 labs having been called this name. Here are the top 10 most popular names:
- Rex 88
- Max 53
- Rocky 44
- Jack 43
- Buddy 39
- Bella 37
- Duke 36
- Lucky 30
- Charlie 29
- Sam 27
We’ve also started to receive reports of offensive or inappropriately named dogs, so we wanted to remind everyone that dog names should be in compliance with our terms and conditions, paragraph 3, which means you may not use sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive language when naming your dog, otherwise we’ll have to rename it and you will be prompted to pick a more appropriate name.
Our awesome voice artists
Tomas Sibo, sound designer, with the voice artists
Voice artists
We thought it’d be cool to introduce you to our three exceptionally talented voice artists who gave their voices to all the labs in theHunter. Please meet Oskar (yellow), Smilla (black) and Sacke (black). We met these three guys during a field recording in the north of Stockholm with the help of Marilois, who works in the working dogs society. With a wireless microphone attached to the dog’s head and with shotgun overhead mics (like this) we recorded audio material such as navigation, commands, barking, searching and many different presence sounds.
“Own limit” for items
After releasing bird equipment bundles last week we’ve been getting a lot of requests to remove the “own limit” for items, which was preventing people from buying bundles if they already owned one of the included items in their inventory. We’ve had an internal discussion about this and decided to take some action. So, starting from next week, you will be able to buy multiple items in the store, be it in a bundle or otherwise. Next to each item you’ll see the quantity you own highlighted in red. Please note that with the “own limit” removed you will now be responsible for taking conscious decisions about what to buy and in which quantity, since we don’t provide refunds for multiple items bought. We’re looking into the possibility to manage duplicate items.
Great debate – Let’s take it to the polls
Our first stab at a community debate with the topic “Realism vs. Fun” is over and it has been a blast! The contenders Knut and TundraPuppy have fought all the way through and the community contributed immensely. Great job, everyone! There is an ongoing poll right now to judge who is the winner – so, go cast your vote! I am going to prepare a short recap for everyone later, but you can always read the full debate here. We are planning to hold more debates in the future, so if you have a good suggestion for a topic or want to become involved, give me a shout.
Pim for president
Last week EW’s own Pim Holfve was appointed CEO of Avalanche Studios! You can find an official announcement here. As Pim will be moving to his new role heading up the whole studio, our producer Hannes will take over production at theHunter. We’re planning to organize an AMA with Hannes in the next months, so you will get a chance to get to know him better.
Summer break
On a final note, several team members, including me, are leaving tomorrow for summer holidays. The weekly status updates and newsletter will be taking a two-week break also, and will be resumed week commencing July 6. In the meantime the remaining team members will keep you posted about eventual game updates and releases via this blog, banner images in the launcher and the website, and our official Facebook and Twitter.
See you in two weeks and happy hunting!
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