As the community get on with their day to day lives, cashing in their hard earnt money for guns, protection and bullets, or gambling it away, in the darkest corners of the internet, you'll find a building. Within this building lies a team of Elite Guard. Unlike the players of the community, they are hard at work bringing you the game you play today. From patrolling the forums to banning those members who don't play by the book, and designing new features to hitting that reset button. What actually goes off behind the Scenes as the Bootleggers' Head Office?
Ever wondered what goes off behind the scenes when it comes to implementing new features? Some may think it's a simple case of create a name for the new feature, check it looks good and then send it out for everyone to use. That's certainly not the case. Sometimes, it's as simple as one of the Moderators posting an idea in the Elite Guard crew forum, sometimes one of them notices a good suggestion from the forums, and in some cases they're a result of a conversation between two or more members of the Elite Guard. However, everyone gets involved in the release of a new feature. If one of the moderators come up with something then they first run it past the Elite Guard to get some thoughts and ideas about it. Then once they have got a rough draft that works, the moderators gets them to test it. Once those bugs are sorted and if it's a big update or feature, the Help Desk Operators are asked to test as well and to become accommodated with the feature so that they can answer questions that are asked by the players. After that it's released. With every new feature introduced to the game, it needs to be tested, but how do they test it without the other players having access to it? Do they have a completely separate game they run it on? No, it's as simple as a separate page, which the Elite Guard control who has access to see this 'hidden' page. These new features are always tested, whether it be for just five minutes for a small simply feature, or longer for bigger features. Once the new feature has been tested and approved by all Elite Guard, then it's just a case of unlocking the page and watching how the players react. As with all new features, there are bound to be bugs, but having only a small handful of people testing it cannot always bring the bugs to the surface.
We asked Sky what he thought was the best feature to be released. He said "I really like the idea of the gymnasium and the way it forces players to put effort in to be able to achieve anything in the game. It's sort of a central point that can connects all corners of the game and I look forward to seeing it be more integral in other aspects in the future." Seems this idea was put together by either BSF2000 or Riserva, but Sky cannot be 100% sure. Either way, it seems like this has become a very strong feature. When asked what he felt was the worst feature to be released and why, he responded "I can't really think of any that could be classified as the worst but I was never keen on Arm Wrestling. When it was still a feature I never used it because I never really felt the incentive to. I know that many people did use it and some made a small fortune from it, I just never found any use in it."
Bootleggers has just welcomed a new feature, although small, it tells a player how much he/she has earnt or lost during their current session. When asking Sky why he felt this needed to be added as a new feature, he responded "It wasn't needed necessarily but I thought that people might like to know how profitable their day can be when they try hard. Now people can with ease see what they achieve and how beneficial certain actions can be if done consistently."
Another new addition to be introduced to the game this week was the ability to hide images in bootmails which are not from players on your friends list. You can now specify when you can see images in bootmails by checking "Only show images in messages from friends?" in the list of options on the Profile page. We caught up with Sky to find out the reason behind him releasing this feature in to the game. "This was at the behest of Aldarion and Mika, and was actually a suggestion from Adiuvavo (Accuso). We've been having a problem lately with people spamming horrific and pornographic pictures to people and unfortunately there's no way to prevent that from happening, we can only react to it. Aldarion and Mika spent a few days discussing the best way to resolve it in the Elite Guard Crew Forum and then both agreed that Accuso's way was best. I implemented it for them, and then a similar system in the forum, and now we should never again be bothered by this issue!" Another example of the amount of team work which goes in to the game, as well as ensuring the safety of the players as well.
It seems that it's not just a case of thinking of a feature, and throwing it out in to the game, a lot of planning, designing and testing is involved.
