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We talk to Crema Games about all things Temtem at BIG Conference 2022

Lucía Prieto was in Bilbao to talk to indie devs about the importance of community management after her experience with such a community-focused game, and she doesn't shy away from Pokémon comparisons.

Audio transcription

"We are at always rainy, always beautiful Bilbao for the first BIG Conference and first of all we are going to talk about Temtem and Crema Games, so thank you so much for joining us Lucía."

"Let me ask you, the game released on its final 1.0 version in September if I'm correct, so as you deal with the community, you are close to the community, what's the feedback, what was the reception like and how do you feel about the game so far?
Okay, so you have to think that we have been managing a community for a long time because Temtem has been out for a long time and you had this community that was already used to the game and to the devs and you knew them and they knew you and all of a sudden there's all these people who have never played Temtem because the game had never been on Switch or Xbox up until now, so you got all these influx of new players that don't really know the game and I think that the feedback has been mostly good, people discovering how good the game is, how good it looks, people paying attention to things they hadn't really realized before."

"How did you guys work on this sort of strategy and how's the communication between you and the dev team, how do you define what to say, when to say it?
So there's not like a foolproof way to go about this, like we mess up sometimes, so I usually speak to the community as a whole, I know what they're waiting for, I know what's the hot point from that release and I'm the one who writes the batch notes for example, so I always know what's coming next."

"I have all this info from the developer side of things, you know people on the internet can be a bit mean, can be rude, so I take that and I try to polish that a bit and I try to convey what's the biggest deal we have right now, what's this need and attention.
What was like the sort of takeaway, what did you share with the audience here in Milbao?
What I shared with them was a couple of lessons I've learned from the time I've worked at Crema, things that I didn't do well at first and now I think I do better or handle better and it was about not obsessing over the way the community ebbs and flows, letting things happen, trying to anticipate of course but not punishing yourself for not always being on the spot and then there's how to handle a community when it starts getting a bit spicy, a bit toxic, how and when to stop that."

"How important do you think it is to have great art?
I think one of the highlights for Temtem is the art of course.
Like that's important on every level.
The big issue with Temtem is that it's like Pokemon, similar to them but they're not the Pokemon that people are used to, so you have to work really hard on getting people to care about these creatures and that's important on your role when you're the one talking to them."

"And you know in social media an image speaks super loud, way louder than a thousand words, it's like massive, so I usually try to make the most out of what already speaks.
About gameplay we don't usually share that much because there's a story in Temtem, there's plot twists, there's things and since we knew that not everyone who wanted to play the game had yet to play the game, Xbox players, Switch players, we couldn't share any big detail about gameplay."

"We do share a lot about the combat mode because it's impressive, it's like there's a lot going on there and we usually try to share that, to highlight that because that's where we think people get hooked on the game.
Are you worried about the Twitter situation?
I am on my professional level and my personal level, like Twitter is the one social network I like the most, it's where I interact with people the most, it's like the one I grew up with and then there's TikTok and you can try get your hands on TikTok but it is not the same."

"So I'm hoping it magically resolves itself, I'm hoping there's a way out that's not losing Twitter.
What else can we expect from Karema Games in the future, is there something you can communicate already?
Yeah, like everything's out there already, like we have been really transparent about that from the get-go and we are planning to have updates every three months or so because that's where we said something called seasons, there's seasons, then we change that."

"There's new content coming in, there's new features coming in, we still have Temtem missing, we are not super keen on the idea of having more Temtem because like every game needs to have a finite point, you don't have Pokemon games with like 400 Pokemon, you have to stop at some point."

"All right, all right, you mentioned the elephant in the room and I have to ask you about that because today is the Pokemon day and it's probably going to be like the biggest launch in Spain in some time, right?
So how do you think sharing the same genre, of course being compared a lot because it's the same genre and you tame monsters and you use them, etc."

"How do you think that helps or affects in general the performance of the game and perhaps going forward as well?
I actually love this question, you know, because there's like this stigma about the Temtem devs that we hate Pokemon, that we see them as competition and I also like love a chance to dispel that."

"We actually love Pokemon, Temtem is like a love letter to Pokemon, like we wanted to give people what Pokemon wasn't really doing.
We wanted to make the Pokemon game that we would have liked to have.
So comparisons happen and I'm not mad about it."

"As long as people are like fair about it, like some people forget that Crema is like 30 people and not 25 years old company with the most money in the world.
So like, I don't think it's bad because Pokemon keeps changing and we learn from them and we think they are learning from us too, like there's been some changes that seem suspiciously similar to Temtem's changes."

"So like, I think it's good that there's some sort of healthy competition.
It helps both games to stay up and if you're a fan of the genre, I don't see why you would need them to compete because that means you get twice the content that you like.
If you like the genre, you should like that there's more games like that."

"Thank you so much for your time, Lucia.
Thank you for having me.
It was really nice."

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