Welcome back for another devlog! Today we’re going to be sharing some inside information, as well as teasing some future plans. 

Taking a deep dive into the development of our demo, who better to talk to then our own management team? I’ve asked our project managers to all sit down for a short interview to talk about their experience managing Tender Treats.

What are your thoughts on Bob Velseb?

“I have thoughts about Bob Velseb that are dastardly, nefarious, and fiendish. My mind is a hallowed antechamber wherein I conjure up my most wicked brews, potions of newt's tail and ox eyes, all in the hopes of combatting the evil cranial demons that lay in wait for a mere second's chance to strike. I also think he's insanely hot and right now I represent the vocal majority because SOME OTHER PEOPLE who ALSO got interviewed DON'T AGREE WITH ME.” — Rae

“At first? I was obsessed. It was pretty embarrassing, looking back. While I still have a special place in my heart for him, my views on Bob have changed from wanting to smooch him to wanting to psychoanalyze this poor man. I’m very interested in what SrPelo hasn’t done with him, and what secrets there’s left to uncover!” — Ivo

“This character is nothing more than a potential halloween costume to me. I’m simply here for the love of the game. It was pretty cool to see Bob strangle Corey in the intro cutscene though.” — Paco

“I do not hold any personal affection for Bob, but he is on my roster of favorite Spooky Month characters (I am really normal about Lila.)” — Polly

“Damn, does he have a following. A really passionate and talented following. He may not be a favorite of mine, but I can at least recognize that much.” — Tass

How were you first introduced to Team Treats?

“The previous iteration of this team— the one with the crummy leads— made a post on Twitter advertising their community server. In that server, they made a call for writers. I was browsing around, looking for dev teams to join, and I thought it would be nice to try my hand at helping with something like this. After that team fell apart, I put Team Treats together with Ivo's invaluable help and the participation of the old team's still super passionate members.” — Rae

“Soon after the 5th Spooky Month episode came out, I discovered Bob’s voice actor had an active community! I joined Corey’s community discord, where I met someone looking for writers for a certain game. I eagerly applied, and got dumped in a group chat. Rae, Myself, and a few others from the original team are still here today out of the passion for this project. The rest is history, despite going through hell I couldn’t be happier to work with the folks I have.” — Ivo

“Miss Rae introduced me to it a long time ago during an IRL Project Management Traineeship I was a part of. At first I thought it was a weird choice of game to invest time into, but I eventually warmed up to it and got introduced to the team as a project manager. (Thanks Rae!)” — Paco

“I was looking for my first opportunities for social media and community management in indie games over the summer (of 2024). I had a great interest in helping out a team focused on visual novels, so part of the channels I scoured for openings included DevTalk, arguably the largest online community dedicated to visual novel development. I found Rae's recruitment post for a Community Manager, so I applied! I was then eagerly onboarded in May, and since then, have been a part of Team Treats. Thank you once more to Rae and the Project Management department for granting me this spooktacular opportunity to support Tender Lovin' Cannibal.” — Polly

“I came across Rae's recruitment post on DevTalk when she was looking for additional help with project management. It seemed like an interesting undertaking to get experience with, so I shot her a message and we went off from there.” — Tass

What was one part that was harder than expected for you?

“There were a few, but the main one is just how insurmountable the beta testing stage feels. When you're sure you've squashed all the bugs, more come out of the woodwork and make your game unplayable. It's like playing whack-a-mole, but you've got a blindfold on and have the mole's location whispered to you through a Nokia 3310 brick phone.” — Rae

“I’ve had to learn a lot while working on this project, as TLC is my first game. There’s been a lot of learning curves, but my biggest hurdle has been communication. Being able to communicate with others takes patience and resilience, even now I’m constantly thinking of new ways to communicate with my team. I’ve had to learn to have confidence in myself, and to trust that my team has my back. It may be hard work, but it’s worth it!” — Ivo

“Writing Screenshot Saturday posts. It’s not easy to be creative within 140 characters as a person who writes way more than he should. And that’s not even including the 30 characters of hashtags at the end of the tweet!” — Paco

“Because my role as a CM for Team Treats was my very first formal responsibility regarding community management over Discord, I was learning a lot about moderation and de-escalation techniques on the spot. The TLC Community is extremely amicable, friendly, and all-around a very positive space. Sometimes though, there were instances where part of our audits over user activity led to moderation decisions that myself, or our fellow moderation team were unsure about. Thankfully, Ivo was always taking the initiative to support us, and I am very grateful for their direction and guidance for ensuring we could continue upholding our TLC values and providing a safe and inclusive community!” — Polly

“Keeping up with task requirements and who was handling what. Since I joined mid-project, I was sort of out-of-the-loop on the current happenings, but I guess that's exactly what I was brought on for. A big part of my contribution was organizing the expected workload with schedules and spreadsheets. I genuinely don't know how they were keeping track of everything without written documentation beforehand.” — Tass

What was an unexpected issue you ran into during the project, and how did you overcome it?

“College, mostly. During the game's development, I went from a sedentary NEET to a full-time college student, and as expected that did a huge number on how active and helpful I could be. This ended up leading to communication issues, but the other management leads— Ivo, Polly, Paco, and Tass— stepped up and made it so much more pain-free. They cooked up spreadsheets, contacted people, managed the community, and made SO many social media posts... I was able to lead the game's development without ruining my offline life, and that's something I'm immensely grateful to them for.” — Rae

“Communication. Either I had work, or Rae had college, the combined unavailability made both of us suffer because of it. It took awhile to find a way for us to both do work and be on the same page, and after a period of trial and error, we have a working system we still have in place today. Similar to communication issues, I’d say having to redo things? Sometimes there would be assets that had to be scrapped and remade for a variety of reasons, it made things harder to keep track of. After a hefty lesson or two, we’ve gotten better at doing things right the first time!” — Ivo

“Thankfully for me I was never too wholly integrated into the biggest problems of the job, but I served as a reminder for the people that needed it here and there, which on top of a full time job on a construction site is a little difficult to keep track of. I’m sure if I dug through my phone I’d be able to pull out the ~10 alarms I had for 3 days of the week. For four people! I have poor time management.” — Paco 

“In my brief time with Team Treats, the only unexpected issues I encountered were related to personal schedule conflicts, which were pretty minor at most. I like to plan very accordingly and draft community events for TLC well in advance. Should an unexpected event that interferes with the calendar occur, it was simply a matter of communicating to our moderation team for a host to take over, or to reschedule! Communication is key for making sure everyone is on the same page, and I always made sure to notify the team as soon as possible.” — Polly

“Finding my place within the team dynamics, maybe. Not that that was anyone's fault. Everyone's energy was different from what I'm used to, so it took some time for me to get comfortable with the environment. I adjusted eventually though.” — Tass

What has been your favorite thing about managing for Team Treats so far?

“As corny as it sounds, getting to see the final product come together was one of my favorite things. I've had my hands in every pot, learning so much from everyone on the team, so seeing all their hard work come together into a cohesive product was awesome. I was kind of worried having so many people on the team would make the final demo janky and inconsistent to the point of unplayability, but it didn't. My confidence has been restored.” — Rae

“Learning. Ever since my first day on the team back in December 2022, I’ve been working my butt off to learn new things! A project can tap into its true potential in the hands of a good management team, and I wanted to ensure we could do that for Team Treats. I have a strong admiration for Rae and their ability to lead others, it’s motivated me to always strive to do better so they can feel proud to have me as a co-lead. It’s been an exhilarating ride, and I’ve learned so much since then from so many wonderful people. I’ll never stop aiming to do my best, for my sake and for the sake of our project.” — Ivo

“Being with the team in the last hour or so before launch. You would not believe it, but Ivo and Rae spent like, 15 hours consecutively coding. I was just moral support in the last hour or two! I’m super proud of the team for getting it done though. Maybe next time I’ll have figured out how to code and I can give them a hand.” — Paco

“I've had a blast in organizing the live community events for TLC, but my absolute favorite project for Team Treats was the work I did for their Dev Log Recap Event and assisting in the promotional campaign for the release of the demo. In July, I began working with Rae and Ivo to ramp up their social media presence and community engagement as their demo was nearing the final stretch in development. I pitched the idea of a "Dev Log Recap," where Team Treats would fondly look back on the incredible progress and milestones for Tender Lovin' Cannibal over the last two years. The event would follow with what the current timeline was for the demo, and a Live Q&A with our Discord community. On August 16th, I co-hosted with Rae and Ivo for our Dev Log Recap Event, and we had around 40 audience members in attendance! It was such a fun event, and equally inspiring for myself, since I am also involved with game development and love learning about the BTS and creative process for visual novels! I took the recording of the livestream and edited key highlights for the production of short-form content over Twitter/X and Instagram. The event was also transcribed, and was posted as the 4th Dev Log for TLC!

I mentioned as well that I loved helping out with the promotional/launch campaign for the demo. During our Dev Log Recap Event, we had announced that the demo would drop in Q4 of 2024, but we intentionally kept it a secret from the public that Team Treats would launch around Halloween. It was super exciting getting to witness the development of the Movie Poster inspired illustrations that the art department whipped up; Ivo coordinated with Team Treats artists to produce a total of 10 Posters, which were made to post ten days prior to release on November 3rd. Ivo also crafted each lovely caption for the illustrations, and it was my job to make sure that each post included artist credit (if applicable), and dropped at its scheduled time. The launch campaign was met with a very large reception on Twitter, and with a budding, rapidly growing presence on the official Team Treats Instagram as well!” — Polly

“I think the best part of any project is seeing the end product slowly finalize. Not every idea reaches that point, you know? So when it all comes together, it's a real accomplishment.” — Tass

Now that the demo is released, how do you plan to continue?

“Nothing exciting! I'm gonna brew other possible stories and projects in my mind cauldron. Then I'm gonna keep working on patches, get us ready to move on to Chapter 1's development (and maybe dabble in it properly) over the next 40 days or so, then rest throughout December. By January-ish we should have a pretty neat pre-alpha in the works, but don't quote me on that. I'm just excited to show you guys this game's full potential.” — Rae

“While the demo is released, it’s definitely not finished. As we begin shifting our full attention to Chapter 1, we will continue to tweak the demo from behind the scenes. I will be working on a few things for you guys to keep you all fed for December, then all of us will be taking a short break until January 2025! The true fun will begin then, but you’ll see it when the time comes.”— Ivo

“Well, now I’m working a more consistent job, so I'd like to sink my teeth into the games development a lot more as a project manager to try and keep everything on track with time programmes and the somesuch. Hell, later down the line maybe you’ll see me as one of the characters delaying the whole game because I’m too busy to re-record my last line.” — Paco

“As some of you may have seen, Team Treats began a call-for-recruitment for a Community Manager. I formally announced my departure from the project in October, as I have been readying for new roles in game development! My time in supporting Team Treats as their CM has been super duper fun, extremely insightful, and very rewarding for me. The last 6 months have certainly flown by, but I've come out of Team Treats with newfound confidence in community moderation and engagement. It would really not have been as successful without the support of Rae, Ivo, and our moderation team on Discord. I wish nothing but the very best for all endeavors at Team Treats, and look forward to all future developments for Tender Lovin' Cannibal!❤️” — Polly

“I spawn when summoned, whether that be to help out, give feedback, or get work in myself. My involvement in the demo was generally for organization and chipping in here and there. We'll see what role I need to fill as production goes on.” — Tass

What is something you learned from leading/managing a team?

“Three words; communicate, communicate, communicate! If you get worried that people will think less of you for needing help, it's important to realize that they only might think less of you for not communicating your needs. Once you learn to open up about things you need help with, life gets easier and your product gets better. If you're surrounded by decent people, they won't judge you for not being able to bear the weight of the world on your shoulders. Cultivate or find a team that'll support you without making you feel like shit about it. 

And no, decent is not just a fancy word for boring. It's a compliment. ❤️🍔” — Rae

“Management is no joke. It takes a lot of work, coordinating the creation of the demo was a hot mess and I’m still in shock we made it out alive. If any of you want to explore managing a team, make sure to work on your communication skills and your ability to try again. Recognize what is keeping you from your goals and start chipping away at it, even if it takes forever and a half. You and your team should have the ability to share ideas freely, team building exercises and simply being a good listener to them can do wonders. We all start somewhere, no matter how far you fall you’ll always be able to pick the pieces back up.”— Ivo

“There’s a lot more nagging than I thought. Like, me nagging people. It’s fun though! But sometimes you feel a little bad nagging people over and over to get things done. I’m sure I'll get better at it as the game goes on!” — Paco 

“This coincides with my previous point of the importance of communication, but I learned that when leading a team of moderators, it's extremely important to give clear and actionable feedback on moderation decisions. Ivo provided a brand new resource for our moderation team this summer- A Guidebook that formally outlines the layout of the Discord server, the conduct and expectations of each moderator, and other supplementary resources that would aid us in doing our jobs with ease. With the creation of the guidebook I'm able to refer to exact sections where our team may be unclear about regarding a moderation decision, and if discussions are still uncertain, they're able to rely on myself or Ivo to override and point us in the right direction. I've learned that a tool like the guidebook is essential to have for community moderation, and will definitely be replicating for teams that foster online communities for my own endeavors.” — Polly

“I've managed teams before, but Team Treats is the biggest one I've been a part of yet. The massive scale of the project really complicates the coordination, but somehow, the management team is able to bring it all together and shape it into something great. Out of everything, I think I've learned the most just by being in the presence of the other devs as they go about their daily business.” — Tass

And with that, we’ve finished our round of interviews. It’s been a long ride, and believe it or not it’s only the beginning. We’ll keep doing our best to tell our story, thank you for sticking with us!