Crimson Desert continues to be in the news after its release, and for all of the right reasons. It began with what we can only describe as an onslaught of patches and updates that transformed it from a slightly shaky yet solid release build to an action-adventure sandbox that has kept its players coming back for more.
At the center of it all is Pearl Abyss, whose marketing director, Will Powers, sat down with The Washington Post. He went into detail about how the team has managed to keep those updates coming in an industry where efforts of that scale would have taken way longer. It’s an approach that treats Crimson Desert as a live-service title that’s primarily a single-player experience (without microtransactions), which explains the lack of a content roadmap for the game.
“Everything, patch-wise, content-wise, has been iterated in real time based on feedback, based on response..If you bake in a roadmap, you’re presuming. We are not baking in presumptions around what the players want.”
That certainly rings true, considering many player requests and complaints have since been addressed, so much so that we even gave it a second review in light of how much it had changed. It outgrew its early verdicts quickly and has garnered a lot of player goodwill thanks to the studio listening to suggestions and feedback from its community of Greymanes.
“We’re not onerous about it, if an idea didn’t come from us, then it can’t be in the game..I think that’s something that [other companies are] too ego-driven a lot of the time to be able to accept other people’s ideas. It’s almost Silicon Valley-esque. A good idea can come from anywhere.”
In short, keep those good ideas coming and allow Pearl Abyss some time to cook as it continues to make Crimson Desert a tale for the ages.
