Following its recent early access launch, we got a chance to speak with developers from the Grounded 2 team at Tokyo Game Show 2025. Specifically, we asked a couple of questions to Executive Producer Marcus Morgan and Game Director Chris Parker.
As the game has been on Early Access since late July, the theme of our discussion was feedback. After all, any game in Early Access is heavily reliant on feedback from players. Of course, while this is useful, it can also be difficult to interpret or choose which complaint or suggestion to act upon. In that regard, the Grounded 2 team has an interesting approach.
[The following is a partial transcript of the roundtable interview with Morgan and Parker at TGS 2025, edited for clarity.]
How does it feel that Grounded 2 has been out on Early Access for a couple of weeks now?
Morgan: It feels great. I mean, you’re always really, really nervous right before you launch a game, especially in Early Access, because it’s not finished. You’re putting out something that’s still in development and just hoping it goes well. And of course, when you look at games like Hades and others that really set the bar for Early Access, that makes us even more nervous.
So to finally be out in the world and see the response, it’s incredible. We announced, and in less than two weeks, we already had 3 million people playing Grounded 2, with so much great feedback coming in. That’s the best part. That’s what brings the most joy. It’s a little relaxing, in a way, because you realize people are engaging with it and enjoying it.
But we always remind ourselves, when we do an Early Access game, that’s really the start of development. It’s like that South Park meme where they’re playing World of Warcraft and say, “What do we do now?” and the answer is, “Now we play the game.” That’s how it feels. This is the beginning of the journey.
We’re super happy that players are here with us, and we can’t wait to keep delivering more throughout Early Access.
Parker: I will say, yeah, I’m really happy with the feedback so far. There are definitely a few things we expected might be a little rough with the community, but to see folks out there playing the game and giving us good feedback—it’s been great.
As a game on Early Access, player feedback is key to your development of Grounded 2, but with plenty of feedback comes the challenge of how to address potential issues. What is your approach in this regard?
Morgan: I want to make one joke before we get started, which is: we listen to the community all the time. That doesn’t mean we do everything they say, right? And that’s really the difference between us as game developers and the community as players with their own experiences.
For example, you might think you’ve identified a problem and say, “Hey, just make the game harder.” But that’s not really what you wanted. What you actually wanted was more content, or more varied content, something that challenges your brain in a different way. And it’s on us to figure that out. That’s why we take the time to think things through.
It’s not about blindly doing whatever the community asks for. It’s about sincerely dissecting what the issue really is. And more importantly, like I said before, it’s about us trying to over-communicate, explaining why we do the things we do, how we’re doing them, and what constraints we’re working under.
Even if it doesn’t always make sense to the community, or even if they don’t agree, the more we share openly, the more it builds trust.
Parker: We go over community feedback every week. We have an hour-long meeting dedicated to it, and there’s always more feedback to go through. In those meetings, we’ve got the interface designer, me, our Community Manager, customer service, systems designer, some producers, and even my peer in game direction over in Montreal, Justin Vasquez.
When we look at feedback, the first thing we try to do is peel back the layers and ask: What are players really complaining about? For example, some people like a feature, some people don’t—but what exactly don’t they like about it? Sometimes it comes down to precision. Like, if you’re standing next to a big grass blade and there’s an item on the ground, it can be frustrating to try to pick up the item without accidentally chopping the grass. That’s the kind of thing we say, “Okay, let’s fix that first. Let’s make it work properly.” Then, if there are still complaints about how it functions, we take the next step.
Because often, the idea itself isn’t broken—it’s just buggy. So the question becomes: how do we fix it? That’s why it takes a group of us in development to peel things back and really understand the root issue. Sometimes we’ll even say, “Hey Chris, can you go talk to the players who filed this feedback and ask them what’s going on? Why do they think this works the way it does?”
Because sometimes, honestly, we just don’t understand at first. And that’s why this process, digging deeper, asking questions, and clarifying, is so important. So we’ll go ask the community.
Sometimes something is frustrating, and as developers, we have to figure out that it actually traces back through three different features to some other feature we’re handling poorly, which is what’s really causing the issue. It’s a bit like doing a medical diagram—what’s the actual disease? Once you identify that, you can solve it.
And it takes a group of us to really sit down, talk it through, and try to figure it out together.
Morgan: Because we love this topic so much—but I promise I won’t keep going on—the other big piece is that we play the game every single week. We play single-player, we play co-op, we play a ton. We’re constantly playing the game. And those same annoyances that players point out, we feel them too. Our “player brain” switches on, and we’re like, “Oh man, this part doesn’t feel right,” because we’re experiencing it ourselves.
The other important piece is not just reading feedback, but also watching people play. We watch streams, we watch play sessions, and we observe playtesters going through new content. That helps us move beyond just hearing, “I want X,” to actually seeing how people are playing the game. That observation is incredibly helpful.
So, between us playing a lot and watching players play a lot, we’re able to parse through the feedback in a much clearer way.
Grounded 2 is available now on PC and Xbox Series X|S on Early Access.