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Friday The 13th Developers Address DLC, Single-Player Plans
Despite a slew of technical and design concerns, IllFonic's interactive take on Firday the 13th has sold quite well. The developer has been hard at work trying to both fix these issues and release new content for the game, and this week, it layed out its plans for future updates.
On its forums, the developer posted in an image of what it plans to release and when. The dates aren't exact, but on the roadmap you can see that Halloween and Winter (or perhaps Christmas) are icons denoting that things like new counselors, maps, and items will hit before those dates.
The developer also addressed concerns about the fact that the Xbox One version of the game has consistently lagged behind schedule when it comes to patches. "The reality is that, as of right now, the cert process on Xbox takes the longest of the platforms and if something happens it starts the process over again," said IllFonic executive producer Joshua Gertz. Gertz details how the Xbox One certification process for patches caused them to "bottleneck" their updates to some degree.
Additionally, Gertz outlined their plans for a single-player campaign and addressed why they missed their deadline on the mode. "There are number of reasons why this is, but it all boils down to making sure we are not releasing new content while still having issues with the core game," Gertz said. There were a number of issues we needed to address with the game's stability prior to committing additional resources to making Single Player happen. We now feel we have turned that corner and have doubled down on Single Player to try and catch up." The team has hired additional employees in order to get the mode, and will be breaking up the mode into multiple pieces to streamline its release.
Finally, Gertz talked about the degree to which the team working on new content for the game stalled the release of patches and updates. "An artist working on outfits is not the same person that is programming AI," he said. "The designer setting up scripted events for single player is not making the new Jason models. What does impact Single Player are the bugs and stability issues; that AI programmer may have to shift to fixing a bug occasionally. The designer may have to shift to fix balance or gameplay bugs on maps. This is why we are delayed. We made the decision to fix rather than add new stuff which again, is what caused the delay."
Our Take
While it's good to see that IllFonic is communicating with its users, it doesn't make the technical issues and rollout of content any better. Here's hoping the team turns the ship around on their surprisingly popular game.
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