Star Trek Q&A With TinyCo: Highlights

Hey there Tribbles!!

Matt from TinyCo was gracious enough to take the time to Comment to our AWESOME Readers personally in regards to your Questions on the Star Trek Event.

(For complete Q&A, go to the Post HERE)

There was some really great questions Matt from TinyCo (TinyMatt) answered that I wanted to highlight for you in case you missed it or don’t have the chance to go through all the comments. (The Original Comment will be linked to the Reader asking the Question. Feel free to tap on the link to see more.)

---

EVENT PLANNING
Q: Amber Tim
How far in advance are you guys planning stuff?

Do you know what the next event will be (planning stages of course, not asking for you to reveal it)? The next two events? The next district? The next two districts?

How do you decide how long the events will be? (Personally I LOVE the longer events. It seems like it gives you guys more development time to craft future content as well as giving us time to get everything we want!)

A: TinyMatt
We started working on Star Trek in January, and we had it signed well before that.
In fact, if you look through all of my Family Guy Addicts comments and blog posts since January, you’ll find a fair number of hints hidden in them 😉
To clarify: you’ll find Star Trek references galore

The length of the event depends on:
1) How much content a theme can feasibly provide. (Star Trek is packed with inspiration and ideas; “Adventure”, a bit less so.)2) How long players enjoy a theme before it grows stale. (Many felt that Comic Con lasted just a bit too long.)
3) If there are themes that fit right after that. (Halloween -> Thanksgiving -> Christmas -> New Years -> Valentine’s all have clear calendar periods. That makes the end and start of the year already packed.)
4) If we think we’ll revisit a theme again in the future. (Halloween comes around every year and is very popular, so we didn’t want to use EVERYTHING right off the bat.)

I want to stress point #4 some more – we plan on being around a long, long time. This means that sometimes, when you see an omission, it’s because we are keeping it in our pocket for some time down the line 😉

 

---

DO WE KEEP A TRIBBLE? 
Q: Geesica
Do we even get to keep a Tribble?

A: TinyMatt
Would you like to?

(He basically is saying if YOU want one, message them and let them know. It is YOUR response that could make something like this happen.)

 

---

DO WE KEEP THE ENTERPRISE?
Q: AmberTim
Is there any possible way you guys can let us keep The Enterprise?

A: TinyMatt
There is not. We looked for ways to make it happen, but with the way it’s set up, it would create a significant increase in server load and save game size. We’re looking into ways we can have a static Enterprise hang around for players to visit, but this would not be *your* Enterprise, and we aren’t sure what that entails engineering-wise yet.

That said, we wanted to make sure that you get to keep things you pay for, whether you bought it with time or money. Individual enterprise rooms you unlock will get beamed down to Quahog at event’s end.

The characters you unlock are yours to keep, of course.

 

---

PICARD CHARACTER?
Q: Oscar_T
Will Picard be an entirely new character or will it be a costume for Patrick Stewart?

A: TinyMatt
Can’t give too much away yet. Some things I can share:

– We approached this with the conceit that each Star Trek character is a unique being in the multiverse. We think a lot about whether it makes sense for something to be a skin. Like with Bitch Stewie – should that be a skin, or a separate character? We ended up with the latter because in the show’s fiction, it is a distinct being from the “real” Stewie.

– While we do re-release characters important to a storyline, such as with Cleveland, we want the ST characters we release to be consistent. You’ll notice that there is no Jonathan Frakes character walking around. (Though now that I think about it, perhaps there should be.)

A question for the community:
Which option seems the most interesting to you? Have Picard AND Patrick Stewart? Just one, and the other a skin? What would make the most sense, from a game perspective? How would you fit it in with the event?

(Feel free to message in to them with your response to this one.)

 

---

WHY STAR TREK EVENT? 
Q: Ducky1102
Hi Matt! What was your motivation behind doing a Star Trek Event? Why Star Trek and not something else?

A: TinyMatt
The short answer is: we’re all huge nerds and we adore Star Trek. It made is incredibly excited to give Star Trek a huge, hilarious treatment. So much so that we basically built an all-new game within Family Guy: TQFS.

There were other factors, of course. Star Trek has a huge following – tons of fans who we knew would love the game but hadn’t heard of TQFS yet. We knew there was a cross section of existing Family Guy fans who grew up on Star Trek, be it TOS or TNG.

When looking at stuff like this, we examine:
– The size of the fan base
– Whether it makes sense in the Family Guy style and universe (having episodes and cutaways in the TV show certainly helps prove the case)
– If the rights holder is interested

This kind of size, familiarity and fervor meant we saw a huge opportunity, and CBS agreed.

 

---

GETTING LEGAL RIGHTS FOR CONTENT?
Q: AmberTim
How do you amazing people (you’re the most amazing Matt!) go about getting the “rights” for franchises such as this? And in the same regard, how do you guys go about getting the INSANSELY AWESOME voice talent that you guys get? How does that process work exactly?

I always find it incredible how you guys are able to do that. It just wouldn’t be the same without the real actors/actresses doing the voices! Just incredible.

A: TinyMatt
We’ve invested a LOT in an amazing team who’s primary job is interacting with folks outside of TinyCo. They’re crucial to what we do. They brainstorm things like “what if we put the Ghostbusters in the game?” Then they shop that to the team, and work with outside partners to sell the opportunity. We’ve also spent a great deal of time building those relationships.

The other reason is Y’ALL. It’s because YOU have supported the game in a HUGE way. Like, we expected it to be big – but we had no idea the outpouring of love and excitement you would have. This meant that since launch, other companies have taken notice. It used to be our team arrived in a room with skeptical executives and a power point. Now, the industry has heard of TQFS and the avid community within, and they want to connect.

We tell them about the feedback you provide, the real time connection, the amount people play the game, and we even mention this very blog. It’s a new, exciting thing, and a huge part of it is because of the excitement you show.

So… thank you 🙂 we will keep working hard so long as it excites you.

 

---

VOICES FOR CHARACTERS?
Q: Bunny
Here is one that I see these guys bringing up all the time…. What goes into getting the ability to voice a character? Is there a legal process involved? Is that why some are voiced where others are not?

Can you elaborate on that at all? 😉

A: TinyMatt
Yep! There are legal things and there are people things. We have people and they have people, and everyone’s people talks to one another. When getting the rights to use someone’s likeness, we try to get the rights to some original audio as well.

So far, we’ve been amazed at how great everyone has been to work with. The Community team sometimes gets to listen to the audio before it goes in game. We laughed HARD at Benedict Cumberbatch 😀

The writers will write out suggestions, and the actor/actress will sometimes ad lib. It’s glorious.

 

---

BACK TO THE FUTURE EVENT?
Q: Eddie
I know this isn’t the proper place, but you’re here and I’ll just ask anyway.
Back to the Future game content. Should I give up that dream? Or do we at least have a Dumb and Dumber, “one in a million”, “so you’re saying there’s a chance” chance?

A: TinyMatt
There is always a chance.

While some things regarding outside IP is beyond our control, the best way to have an impact is to ask for it. If we see excitement about something, it becomes very interesting to us.

 

---

STAR WARS EVENT?
Q: SBC497
Since we’re seeing Star Trek now, what’s the likely-hood we’ll see Star Wars?

A: TinyMatt
There is always a chance. However, the opportunities available to us are dependent on the rights holders.

 

---

ST. PATRICK’S DAY EVENT?
Q: Skittles
I know it’s OT but why no St. Patrick’s Day Event? Seems like it would have fit perfectly in Quahog! Thanks!

A: TinyMatt
Well, we had this scifi-themed event coming up, and….

We’ve also gotten feedback that players enjoy focus. Back in November, there was a week that we had American Dad AND Thanksgiving at the same time. Some players liked the hustle, but many expressed to us that they didn’t know which one to focus on. This matters when sending characters away on tasks, etc. It’s possible we could have done it the weekend prior to St Patrick’s, but we didn’t pursue that.

There’s always next year 😉

 

---

DRAG AND DROP FEATURE?
Q: Chadlamasa
Can you guys disable the character drag option? I’d like it to go away permanently personally but I know some people like it. At least a settings option possibly. If not permanently maybe just for the event. While scrolling for tribbles it can aggravating to accidently grab a character. Love the event so far.

A: TinyMatt
This exchange of comments perfectly sums up Ragdolling™ – the term we use for drag and drop. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I personally love how, back in the day, each character had a unique “oh crap I’m getting dragged around” animation, but we felt it best to refocus on unique in-game animations and on doing more new characters.

From a design perspective, any time you get a split of people loving and hating something, you’ve got a cool thing. With the way people’s attention is drawn every which way in this day and age, having people pay attention to you is rare. Any change we make, we want to make sure we still have people who *love* the feature, rather than turn it into a feature that everyone likes but nobody loves.

 

---

TINYCO HELP DESK/HOURS OF OPERATION?
Q: BuddyV
Do you guys outsource your Help Desk? How many people are currently on support tickets? What are their off hours? So if we send a ticket in after ____ we shouldn’t expect a response.

A: TinyMatt
We do everything in house, with some remote agents to help take up volume. Peak hours are 10am – 7pm seven days a week, with a smaller staff on weekends focused primarily on catching new issues.

The time you send the ticket shouldn’t matter. If you don’t get a response of any sort after 5 business days, something went wrong. This happens more than I would like it to, and we are looking at ways to address it.

 

---

USE EXISTING CHARACTERS/NIMOY TRIBUTE?
Q: Reaganomics Lamborghini
I have to assume we will be able to use George Takei and Patrick Stewart for certain tasks or to get new skins… Oh, and now that I think of it, Benedict Cumberbatch, too!
What about other random characters we have gathered over time? Especially those purchased with clams. It would be great to be able to have them to help us, even if just to get drops here and there.
Also, please let there bit some sort of tribute (that we can keep) of Leonard Nimoy? Perhaps him singing Ballad of Bilbo? 😀

A: TinyMatt
1) This is a popular request.
2) We are looking at ways to respectfully tribute Mr. Nimoy. No announcements or promises yet, but it’s important to us.

 

---

CRASHING/LAGGING ISSUES IN GAME?
Q:Shauna
Not a question. More of a request. Please fix the crashes. The game keeps crashing after I collect money or after a get a new quest or when I zoom out to see my whole town or when I try to go to the other town or just randomly. It is a frustrating feeling when there is so much to do and I can’t do it all if the game crashes every 3 minuets. Aside from that, thanks for all the awesome stuff!

A: TinyMatt
Thank you so much for writing this. Please do send this to support from in-game – we are always gathering logs and crash reports to look for broader trends we can tackle.

 

Q: michele
Why can’t I visit my neighbors without the game restarting? Its been going on since before christmas. Sent several tickets and never received a reply. Love this game though.

A: TinyMatt
Visiting neighbors is one of the most memory-intensive actions in the game, which is why it can lead to crashes. You’re loading a lot of stuff you didn’t previously have cached on your device. It’s something we work on improving in each update.
You can alleviate this by closing out other apps before running the game. It’s not a perfect workaround, but it helps.

 

Q: Kerry
I play on an inexpensive (read: cheap) android tablet with a 32MB SD card that I pretty much bought solely for this game. The game is housed on the SD card and there is nothing else on the tablet other than the OS. With the release of the event, I am now getting an error message upon launch that my device doesn’t have enough memory. The game starts and I am able to play so far without incident. I assume they mean RAM as opposed to storage memory. I understand that there is a lot going on with the event, but is this going to be a trend for the future? Have your technical people looked into the various playing devices and what your cap is for RAM to be able to play the game? I haven’t sent an in-game message yet because I didn’t want it to get lost with all the immediate game stuff that people have issue with right now but I plan on sending screen shots and specs for my device to see if there is any advice.
Anyone else experiencing similar issues?

A: TinyMatt
Is there enough memory on your SD card? We’ve seen weird things happen on some devices when the game splits between an SD card and the built-in hard drive.

Additional Responses:
Kerry: FG game is only thing on the device and the memory card. Haven’t used the device for anything except the game on purpose. Glad (but not glad) that someone else has a similar experience. At least I am not on an island on this one.

John: Yes!! My tablet has partitioned memory, certain amount of memory dedicated to certain things. And SD card is only for music, pictures, and video. So while I have A LOT of unused memory I can only have 2 or 3 games at a time. I had to uninstall TSTO yesterday to make room for the Star Trek update..

 

---

ADDICTS IN THE GAME?
Q:AddictsFanatic
Are there any plans to add our favorite Addicts to the game? How awesome would it be to have Alissa & Bunny in Quahog?!

A: TinyMatt
One of the Tribbles is actually Bunny. I’ll leave it to y’all to guess which one.

 

Q:savorycook
Hi Matt. Is there any possibility we might see Bunny & Alissa as characters in the game? I’m sure those rights would be easier to work out than others you have had. 😉 We rely on them so much they might as well be in our game. 🙂

A: TinyMatt
We’re having difficulty securing the rights to Alissa’s likeness. She’s really expensive. We have a call in with her agent, though.

 

---

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS…
TinyMatt
That’s all, y’all 🙂 I’ve got to go deal with an issue involving a Trex on the main floor of the Enterprise. (Actual bug. Related note: I love my job.)

Thank you for the amazing questions!

Tell us! 🙂 the TC community team listens to ALL feedback – but if you like something, please do tell us, via support or comments or on this here blog. It gives us quotes we can give straight to the team.

 

There you have it. Matt from TinyCo stopped on by to communicate with you personally. As you can see, they really do listen and really want you to communicate with them. They are very much player involved and love it. You may not get a response depending on the contact reason, but they ARE paying attention and love your input. Give them more. 😉

What did you think of the Q&A? Cover some of the topics you were wondering? Answer some questions you wanted to ask? Let us know, and of course… let THEM know via your in game menu.

~Bunny