First off, thank you for participating in the Steam Game Festival and supporting indie games! [h3][b]About Game Director Story[/b][/h3] In Game Director Story our goal is to take you behind-the-scenes and provide you a sense of what it is like to try and develop a AAA (large blockbuster) game, while still keeping the experience of playing GDS entertaining and accessible for anyone. [h3][b]About the Demo[/b][/h3] The demo we have in the Steam Game Festival is a portion of an Event from the full game, and can take ~30-45m to play through, not including variations from replay. In the full game you will experience all major phases of development, from concept to post ship, and within each phase you may encounter several iconic Events - situations that challenge you and your team, usually with a very short deadline. For the Steam Game Festival demo, the Event is based on a last minute request from your publisher to have a part of your game ready in time to present at E3, a notable industry tradeshow, but well ahead of your current schedule. [h3][b]Why are we doing this?[/b][/h3] You do not have to search too hard to find articles about difficult game productions, industry challenges, or toxic fandom. But few players (unless they are devs themselves) have ever been on a team trying to cope from being directly impacted by these issues, and even most devs have not had the opportunity to be in the room when those kinds of decisions are made, let alone in a position to influence or outright make the decision. In addition, while there is a growing interest by players and fans in the overall process of making games, and support for developers as more of them bring their stories to light, the industry in general remains quite insular, secretive and closed off to most outsiders. Unlike most games about gamedev, Game Director Story is based on first-hand accounts - with creative license used in order to adapt these to the game mechanics, and of course to change names etc - and made by a team that collectively has multiple decades of experience in AAA game dev and publishing, in addition to contributions from other industry veterans. To be clear, Game Director Story is not an expose of any specific individuals, companies or situations. However, as a dev you will likely recognize many of the situations in GDS as sadly these issues tend to be fairly common across most dev teams & game cycles. Game Director Story is also not about the macro management of making something - for example, you don't hire more 'skillset widgets' to make a progress bar go faster. GDS focuses on the various relationships that you must forge, and maintain, as a Game Director in order to have the influence needed to accomplish your goal. As a player, by placing you in the role of having to make those decisions, and seeing the impact of these play out on your team members, we hope to provide you a unique perspective - as well as a better understanding - of the process of making games, and the toll it can take on those that make them. Please visit us on the Steam forum and let us know what you think - there is a link to a survey that we'd greatly appreciate you filling out once you've played the demo. Thanks again from all of us at Double Blit.