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Getting a game into a 'Satisfactory' state to leave Early Access (Gamescom) - Satisfactory Interview with Coffee Stain Studios
We caught up with Torsten Gunst, Hannah Beuger, and Conrad Stroebel to chat all about the massively popular simulation game, which has just left Early Access and debuted in to its 1.0 state.
Audio transcription
"Hi and welcome to Gamescom 2024. We are here with Gamereactor and we are looking at some interesting game down in Cologne.
And right now we are with the team from Coffee Stain Studios based in Sweden and they are developing the early access title Satisfactory which is soon going to get its full release.
And yeah, Satisfactory, maybe one of you guys can explain what kind of game is that?
Okay, sure. Satisfactory is an open world sci-fi factory builder in an immersive first person perspective."
"You are tasked as a pioneer with building an efficient and optionally also very beautiful factory.
Optionally efficient?
Also optionally efficient. No, no, you have to be efficient obviously. That's your job.
Yeah, on a far away alien planet with vast different biomes, alien fauna, alien flora to explore and to utilize in your factory."
"So yeah, again it's a sum up of different factory building genres, sandbox genres in an appealing sci-fi setting.
Yeah, and of course Coffee Stain Studios is known for making the very silly game Goat Simulator. What is the tone of this game?
The tone of Satisfactory? Or Goat Sim? Satisfactory, right, yes. Satisfactory is a bit of that kind of satirical, capitalistic vibe going on."
"It's a little bit lighthearted and a little bit silly at the same time that it can get a little serious. It kind of depends what you bring into it as well.
In the game you can play both as a worker doing concrete things and you can be more of this manager building, like planning the grand vision.
How do you balance these two aspects of the gameplay?
Yeah, so it's a little bit hard to say because everyone has their own little style of how they would build their factories depending on what parts they need to make, what buildings they have available to them and also maybe to how many players they're playing along with together."
"So in multiplayer it's easy to form this manager-builder kind of relationship where one person may be more inclined to designing a factory, designing how all the inputs and outputs flow, where to get resources from and other people building the designs.
But it's kind of anyone can do any of those two roles, it can be mixed.
There's no really any set way of defining, well, you just do the managing, you just do the building. It's all really up to the player."
"The game has been in Early Access for about five years now.
So yeah, I can imagine with such a large time frame there must have been some big changes along the way.
What has been some of the major changes since your initial release?
So I think one of the big shifts in focus was before we went into Early Access we really thought we were building a management game."
"First and foremost. It kind of still is.
But when we got the community involved and we started getting feedback and all that kind of stuff, we realized that we were appealing to many more different types of players than we initially thought, including people that really cared about role play."
"And that kind of is where the aesthetic stuff comes from.
So we shifted way more from like, oh, it's all about automating pipelines and resource management, to, oh no, actually building beautiful factories and getting the people immersed in the world and really just making a universe out of it instead of just like you're doing the math, kind of."
"So, of course, factories are often very functional. They are often maybe not that pretty to look at.
So in terms of the art style, how do you, and with such a high degree of user involvement, how do you manage to make the game look nice still with all these ugly factories?
Well, I think one of the main appealing things, in my opinion, and again, a lot of players feel the same way, I suppose, is the juxtaposition of the factory of a brutalist metal and concrete factory with working machines that are efficient, chimneys and all that stuff, as contrasting the nice alien environment, like the fauna and the flora, the cliffs, the coastlines and everything that will eventually, of course, will be covered in factory and concrete, because that's your job."
"Which is also a little bit of cynical approach. It's wonderful and it's a common joke also among players.
It's like, oh, this is a beautiful view. I'm going to cover it all in concrete.
And I think it's also playing with that cynical, slightly dark, humorous thing.
And I think it's a very colorful alien world."
"The machines, though, have their own appeal, because they're a little bit exaggerated from real-world machinery.
They're a bit simplified in the logic and what they do.
And everything is a bit exaggerated and more fun to look at, with the mechanical parts moving and everything.
And there's a high amount, as mentioned, of customization, like color-wise, material-wise."
"You can decide where the railings go, where the stairs are.
So you can actually create a lot of different things in a sandbox environment.
So if you perhaps haven't heard of the game yet, or you maybe think it's not really your type of game, what should you do as a new player, jump into the game at this point?
If you have a friend obsessed with it, that's usually how that kind of goes."
"A friend pulls you into it.
We've heard a lot of parents playing with their children as well, which is a really cool, fun way.
If you want to figure out if you like or hate math in a more real-world scenario, that actually is something that we've heard, too."
"And that's something that kind of goes into what Cameron was saying with managing different players.
We try to, with every update, try to hit as many player types as we can.
And that includes the stuff that we're still doing.
And we've kind of identified them as management people that really like that kind of stuff."
"And if you like Vittorio, generally people like Satisfactory.
That's also a nice overlap.
Thrill-seekers that just kind of like to build crazy things and just try to break the game and see what's possible with all the tools that we give them."
"Because we give a lot of silly tools for them to just kind of do random things.
And then the role players who like to build entire projects.
So some people play the game not for the factories because they want to build a city or they recreate the Enterprise from Star Trek."
"Or there was a Dragon Ball character that they recreated at some point.
They make insane things.
I think that appeals to the more creative, even Minecraft crowd that comes to us as well.
In terms of if you are choosing to play in the role of a worker and not just building stuff but also traveling and finding resources, what kind of gameplay can you look forward to then?
So that may be something that players will be able to look forward to in 1.0 because we overhauled the narrative of the game where there's a whole new story for the players to find out which is then also worked into some of the items that the players can find within the world."
"And that gives them a reason to explore.
They already have the vehicles that we've had in the game for quite a few years to explore around.
They've all been updated and tweaked to make them feel nicer.
Hopefully this time they are."
"But in general there is something to find when you go out in the world.
It's part of the gameplay.
It's part of what we expect players to naturally do as they go into the world and find new resources, new locations, new places to build."
"So hopefully this will all naturally fall within what they're doing in the game.
Of course your game has been continuously updated as part of this early access.
Will this still be the case when the game releases for full here on September 10th or do you view it as essentially finished?
Well first of all we will not abandon Satisfactory for 1.0."
"It's not a done, buy, have fun.
We are not sure how we're going to do it but we are absolutely sure that we still want to put love into Satisfactory.
So we will keep developing stuff for the players."
"In what way we haven't tackled that yet.
We will have to look into it.
The question is how and what exactly but it will happen.
It will get some more love."
"I think you've already hinted a bit and touched on the topic why it is so satisfying to build these constructions but personally for you guys, why do you think this game is satisfying to play?
What do you enjoy the most?
I could say something."
"Strangely, of course building beautiful factories is my gem.
I hate math.
So if you hate math, don't worry.
I do too and I still enjoy the game greatly."
"So it's fine.
For me it's building the factories and having a believable wonderful big factory and watching it during sunset with the nature in the background."
"That's my gem and I'm just happy doing my own thing.
I think for me or at least what I imagine is a big factor is that you have a lot of games like this like factory builders or management games but Satisfactory is one of the few where you really can stand inside of the thing that you've built yourself."
"And I think that is a big factor for people like okay there's an amount of pride there where they can walk around the thing that they have built and it feels like it dwarfs them and that feeling I think is really appealing to people."
"I think the amount of creative freedom that the game offers too because we don't tell you how to solve anything.
We just tell you here's the problem, have at it.
Here's the tools, have fun."
"So people can really control their own experience within the game.
I think that's a big one.
For me I tackle the game just a little bit differently than these two.
I see it more like a puzzle game."
"So whenever there are some new parts or group of parts I need to make I kind of try to figure out okay well what kind of factory layout do I need?
What kind of system do I need?
How efficient am I going about it?
Where am I going to find resources for it?
I see it like problem solving, ticking boxes and just trying to take it step by step not necessarily making it look pretty at all."
"I'm one of the people that would concrete over an entire environment just to create space for a factory.
Each and everyone has their own way of playing it and that's what's also evident with the community."
"One more.
If you manage to hit perfect efficiency of a pipeline there's nothing quite like it because it's fully you that has done that."
"There's so much ownership in it.
So that's a big one too.
I got to mention that too.
When I first played the game the very first automated setup I did figuring it out how do I have to connect it?
How do I do this?
Literal steps back in the world looking at the conveyor belts working efficiently is so satisfying."
"It's wonderful.
You can lean back and say my work is done, the machine do the work now.
It's wonderful.
The final question."
"Shouldn't really have been the final question but I'm a bit curious about the storage setup and why are you even building these factories on this remote planet?
We have released a little trailer about that last week but I can go a little bit into what that says and maybe some more detail."
"But basically you are there for a company Fixit Incorporated.
So you are building this project called Project Assembly for them to save Earth."
"Now exactly the details of that you'll have to play the game to find out but the idea is that you're part of some larger projects for humanity and a lot of the story will kind of automatically happen as you go as it reacts to essentially what you do."
"We don't really have stuff where we take control or hijack a moment.
Basically we want to try to leave control in the players hands at all times and then try to deliver lore and flavor and the fun stuff as you go as you do your thing."
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