5th January 2022
NOMAD MONTHLY MAILBAG - JANUARY 2022 EDITION
Hello everyone!
It’s a new year, and we’re super excited to get back into the swing of things here at Nomad. With Catan still buzzing in the background (along with some more secret stuff we can’t talk about yet), it’s looking to be a really awesome year for us.
What’s also going to keep being awesome, is all the questions you lot send in. When we started last year, we hoped we’d get a good amount of questions from you all. So far you haven’t disappointed! For our very first issue we got an absolute ton of questions in, and since then it’s dropped down to a more reasonable amount. So don’t forget to send your question to questions@nomadgames.co.uk to get featured too!
And what’s the start of the year, without some more community questions? Once again, you lovely lot sent in some fine questions for us to sink our teeth into, so let’s get to it.
From Marsh
“Would you rather make 10 small games over 5 years, or one big game in 5 years?”
We had a chat about this for a bit, and we all agreed that we’d much rather make smaller games than bigger ones! Being able to change what we work on is nice just to keep ourselves interested in our work, but also we’ve found that putting all your eggs into one basket isn’t a good idea for an indie studio like us.
If we make 10 small games and half of them make their money back, that can cover any temporary losses we might have on development costs for the other half. If a big game we’ve worked on for 5 years takes a long time to make it’s money back, we’d end up struggling to keep ourselves afloat.
Also, it’s important to note that during those 5 years of development we wouldn’t actually be making any money on the game we’d be developing. Which is alright for larger studios that have the capacity to do that, but we’re not one of those!
Our development team were also quick to point out that a game every 6 months was far too optimistic! Maybe a game a year, but even that would be a push.
From Justin
“How many of Nomad still work in the office regularly?”
We actually still have two members of staff who go into the office, and a number of staff who go in to check on things like our servers and office plants!
From Stephen
“What's it like being a QA tester at Nomad? I feel like all the stuff I see in gaming news about QA is how badly they get treated at bigger companies. I imagine being a smaller company where everyone knows everyone helps to stop that from happening. How hard is it to get a job in QA at somewhere like you?”
For this question, Mike (our QA manager) took the time to give a detailed response:
“For me personally, this year will mark 10 years of my time with Nomad Games as QA with a number of those years being QA manager. I’ve been able to grow a lot as a person over these years, with communication, knowledge of the industry for both video games as well as table top games, also creative thinking especially in terms of design and story writing. It’s also given me the opportunity to be a manager and to learn what it means to have others under my responsibility in a work place environment, something I never thought I would experience. Sure it’s not always perfect, there have been some downer moments in one form or another, but you can’t go 10 years without experiencing things like that to learn from. As you can imagine typing this out at the start of such a personal anniversary year has given me a lot to reflect on and over all my time at Nomad has been a positive one for me, hence why I’ve stuck with them for so long.
I too have heard negative stories with how QA is treated at other companies and Nomad being a smaller company does help prevent similar experiences. Not just for QA, but for every department, as we’re able to speak to each other about what's happening, raise issues more easily as well as just chat to each other in general. Even with a number of us still working from home, we’ve done what we can not to lose that part of us.
As for how hard it is to join QA for a company like ours that can be tricky. QA relies a lot on a company’s output to exist, which means smaller companies only need a small QA team to overlook their games. Smaller ones also tend to hold on to their QA members for much longer than larger companies do as well. As it’s better for them to keep someone who knows how they operate than constantly bring in new members, train them, let them go and repeat, which can eat up valuable time and resources. So a lot of small companies fill their QA slots up quickly and only open up new slots when they really need to. That’s not to say don’t send your CV out to any, as you may get them at the right moment or at the very least be on their radar for when they do open a slot.”
From CatanFan
“Super excited to see what you all do with Catan, not played any of your other games so I’m waiting to be impressed. When is the game going to be out?”
We’re glad you’re excited for the game, but sadly we can’t share a release date yet! Right now we’re still too far out from finishing the game to be able to specifically say when it’ll be coming out. These things take time!
As soon as we can share a date though, we’ll be shouting it from the rooftops!
From Kat
“What are you all hoping for this Christmas?”
Chocolate. That’s all we want.
And that’s the end of this edition of the Nomad monthly mailbag! Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, and don’t forget to send your questions to questions@nomadgames.co.uk if you want us to answer your burning questions next month!