Back in 2007 we thought about...
Let us create a new game for InnoGames and do something which is
different from our first game, Tribal Wars.
In The West, we wanted to have
we wanted to have an RPG but with a lot of multiplayer features in it, like the cities and
you can see players on the map.
And we liked watching Western movies, so one
of the ideas was then, let us create a game
in the Wild West setting.
I had no experience at all, with the genre Western
The West actually introduced me to the genre.
Ten years ago!
Oh my God that is so long ago, I barely remember!
That time, at InnoGames, there were not that many employees.
We were like a handful of people.
I remember that I translated The West to the Polish version,
which was also a huge challenge for me.
I learned about
that there is a huge diversity of weapons and
the vocabulary was new.
I had to google and also learn a lot about the Wild West.
The very first thing I did on The West was of course checking what the
what praying in the church means,
but I signed the NDA, so I am not allowed to discuss it.
When we launched the game, the player reactions were very strong, so more and more players
joined, and gave us also very good feedback, and then it was becoming clear for us:
Yes, The West will be a successful game.
The initial version was quite limited, we had a quest system,
we had of course the world map, and the city building elements
But we have added a lot of different features over time.
One of the biggest and nicest things I still remember was when we had the first
International Fort Battle Championship.
Magda originally did that on her Polish version
and then later pitched that to become an international thing.
When I started with the Polish community, I wanted them to be more active,
then I started with the events
like the Fort Battle Polish Championship
And after all I saw that our players really like it
and then I asked the Lead Community Manager
to create something like this
like this for everyone.
And yeah, we ran that, and it was quite successful, and we even had players stream it on Twitch.tv
and back then, in 2016, we even had up to 300 concurrent viewers,
which is quite the achievement for a browser game on Twitch.
We also introduced a wide range of belts and pants, so our cowgirls and cowboys would never
have a sore butt after riding their horses again.
One of the main things we worked on during my time on The West,
were internal tools for ourselves, to allow us to more easily create
questlines and items and bring high quality content to you, guys.
On the Admin Tools we always needed logs of the player like what the player was doing,
what actions they were performing.
So then later, when they had
you know, complaints about the items missing or something like that
we could easily track it down if they really did all the actions required
or if they missed one step somewhere on the road.
That was one part that was very important.
Another part that was super important for The West, because it is quest heavy:
we really needed the Quest Tool, wherein we had a great overview of what quests were available,
or what requirements are there for certain quests.
Before, we deployed The West worlds together with the developers
and as there were some transitional period then,
and we had a little bit less developing time and developers here,
we decided okay, lets not deploy the worlds all manually,
but we then wrote a full automation for it
and made it also possible to deploy a world in let's say, one to two minutes
and prepare everything for the players, so we were now faster and more agile than before.
So once, we did a cooperation with one of the most popular German soap operas.
It is called "Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten".
And we invited three of the main actresses to play a role in The West,
and we did a whole questline out of that.
So what we did was they dressed up as cowgirls in The West clothes, we put them in front
of our saloon in the game on a big screen, and they were acting and talking
a story that we then used in the game as a questline.
And unfortunately, we were only allowed to use the videos
in the German version of The West, but they were there.
The international events server is one of the biggest things
I did with our other Community Managers.
And in this server we will have more events like Duel Championships,
where players around the world can face with each other against other players.
The most interesting game feature I worked on was the early design of the city hall
That was the point where I really for myself realized that The West is
I do not know, like travelling in time almost, because we ditched the old looking tables
and it was cool and shiny and new and it really felt like you know,
it was being transported into the modern age.
The most important milestone being the release of West 2.0 in 2012,
with its beautiful handcrafted full screen map.
In The West, the map is the basis of the whole game
You do your jobs on the map, you have quest givers on the map
All the players are on the map, the towns the forest, everything is on the map.
And we thought that base feature has to be perfect in the game.
So we said, let's not only increase the performance of the map, but also the visual style of it.
It has to be beautiful!
And we had two options on how we could do that.
One was, okay, we create new graphics for it,
we write some system that randomly puts them on the map
or patterns that repeat on the map,
or we build a map editor, and put together a map by hand.
And we figured out that was a lot of effort, but we wanted to go for the best solution.
So we hired I think ten people:
players, colleagues, friends, we built a map editor, we built a lot of new elements: rocks,
mountains, clouds, rivers, trees, everything you see on the map.
And every single element you see is actually put on the map by hand.
And it worked out in the end.
The map is still as we built it back then, and I have not seen anything like that in
any other browser game.
I know that in The West, praying is always a bit of a sensitive topic
and people always want to know what praying does, and I am actually still one of the people
who wants to know what praying does, because I have no idea.
The best thing about working on The West was the team actually!
Together as a team we achieved a lot.
For example, we created a brand new event like the Pumpkin Hunt.
And the ideas came from the loveliest team in the world.
We were like a virtual family and this was just awesome.
In 2016, we created the team calendar that nobody outside of the in-house team has ever seen
and I actually brought it.
And everybody had to take a picture.
So, in this example you can see Steffi our Game Designer at the time, and yeah, everybody
had to do pictures and like team pictures with everybody, and we printed it and gave
it to every team member and former team members and yeah
I still have it hanging on my wall, and
I am waiting for 2023, when it becomes valid again.
It was really cool to see just how many of the Community Managers are also hard-core
The West players, and how deep they are into the game, and how deep their game-knowledge goes.
It was really cool to see the combination of Community Manager and a hard-core player
in the same person.
One of the cooler projects we did during my time on The West was a community event.
We did quest-line contests so people could actually suggest their own questlines.
The biggest achievement I had together with the whole The West team during my seven years
on the project, was being close to the community.
So from when I started as a Volunteer on the game, until when I was a Product Manager,
important was always that all the information from the community reaches the whole team
and the other way around.
So whatever we planned to do goes back to the community.
The influence of the community to the game The West was very strong.
One of the first features we added, directly after launch was adding an overview
of the world map, because otherwise it was very hard for the players to see where they are in the world.
This was one of the player wishes.
I think that on The West, the community is the biggest driver, especially now.
We have a lot of...
even when I was on the project in 2016, we had a lot
of ideas coming from players,
and it is a role playing game, so you can go in any direction
you want with your character, you can make a story for your character.
We had people who did that really, really nicely.
The community has a huge influence.
I think we all, the complete team read the forums, they asked players about
direct feedback about the game.
And we always tried to build this game together with the community.
And if you look at The West now with a smaller team, it is still super important to be in
close contact with the community.
And all the Community Managers have additional jobs, they work on quality assurance,
they create content for the game and all that is only possible because we are in such close
contact to the players and because of our history working with the players.
We have a very committed community,
not only in Poland, but around the world.
What we do in Poland is, we invite our players to join our annual meeting in August
and we get regular visits from our The West players, who really enjoy sharing their passion.
One of the main factors why so many players loved this game over years
was the multiplayer part.
You really can get some real friendships through The West.
And in the end, I think its not the game, it is more the community which keeps this
game alive for such a long time
and the friendships in the game, and not that they want to compete against each other today.
It's more, they want to play with somebody and want to chat and want to
communicate with other players.
And I think for that, The West is a great platform.
Hey! Come closer, I am sharing with you now the best kept secret of The West.
What does praying actually do?
So, when you pray...
Wow, ten years, that is a long time!
Thanks so much for sticking around!
The West is not just a game, it is an adventure.
Thank you to all of you!
You, and every single one of you, made The West successful!
I want to say thank you to our community for playing this game.
I would like to thank the players.
Thank you to all the players for the love and support for The West over the last ten years, and I
wish you a lot of fun for the coming ones!
You are playing The West for ten years now, and this is amazing.
All I can say is, keep on playing!
You helped us to develop the game, you give us ideas, you inspire us.
Thank you and all the best for the next ten years!
Thank you to all of you who played The West, who still play the West.
I hope you keep on playing because it is a very nice game.
Ten years is a really long time, and it is very special for a game to reach that stage.
It is your passion and interest in The West that has kept it going for so long, and will
keep it going for many years to come.
Do not forget to check the forum and find a little surprise!
I'm proud that we built a game that you enjoyed for so many years
That you give us regular feedback, which allows us to continuously improve the game.
We are really committed to give you new content, new features in the game,
and run The West for many many years to come!
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