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MrBims posted:If you put out your Early Access game for some amount of money, 10 or 15 or whatever dollars, then when most of the market audience for the game has already bought it at the low price point, you don't have much incentive to continue working on the game to get it 'worth' the higher price point you plan to have for release. Development stops in its tracks and we get to the exact place we're talking about here, where a game makes its development cost back in Early Access and then is never heard from again. I think the idea is that if you want a sustainable business model you have to finish the game, so then people will buy your next game. Of course that doesn't make a lot of difference to people just out to scam people out of money but, well, cavet emptor. Use your judgement. I so far haven't been burned on any EA titles except maybe natural selection 2, and that's because they ended up making NS1 all over again but with worse handling and balance when I was looking for an improvement and variation. Considering how many lovely traditionally published games are out there too, EA being full of lovely titles designed to make a fast buck before the hype falls through isn't really saying much.
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Sep 27, 2014 20:21
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Everyone wants to be the next Betacraft. Early Access and other various incarnations of paid Beta scams prey on the same loose, Honeymoon gamer that wants that new game smell every week and is willing to dish for it and forget the last 20bux they dropped eight days ago on the same hollow, content-challenged jank.
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Sep 27, 2014 20:26
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:Since you're new I am going to do you a favor. You should not have made this thread. Your entire OP would have been right at home as a post inside the Steam thread though. Then I wouldn't have been able to put my two cents in because the Steam thread is a clusterfuck of different conversations going at the same time. We should be able to have a thread to have a discussion without someone asking if some game is good or not.
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Sep 27, 2014 20:29
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EA is such a mixed bag since a bunch games seem to just cash in so my advise would be to only buy into it if the game at it's current completion is worth it to you for the price. Like, I won't feel as though I was ripped off if crypt of the necrodancer stopped developing because the base game is good and it has a fair amount of content (I wouldn't buy the company's next EA game though). I also respect devs like Red Hook (Darkest Dungeon dudes) who will only do EA for their game if it's practically done even if people are begging for it now.
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Sep 27, 2014 20:42
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Oh, and gently caress companies who do the whole super expensive EA thing. There's no way a alpha should cost as much as a brand new AAA $60 game.
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Sep 27, 2014 20:44
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DrManiac posted:Oh, and gently caress companies who do the whole super expensive EA thing. There's no way a alpha should cost as much as a brand new AAA $60 game. I dunno, Planetary Annihilation is probably the exception to that. Definitely worth it, but get it on sale obviously.
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Sep 27, 2014 20:49
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karl fungus posted:I dunno, Planetary Annihilation is probably the exception to that. Definitely worth it, but get it on sale obviously. Please don't troll.
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Sep 27, 2014 20:53
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DrManiac posted:Oh, and gently caress companies who do the whole super expensive EA thing. There's no way a alpha should cost as much as a brand new AAA $60 game.
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Sep 27, 2014 21:04
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karl fungus posted:Sometimes you end up with something cool and with a future, developed by competent individuals "Competent individuals" who put a bitcoin miner in the client for their free-to-play game.
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Sep 27, 2014 22:01
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Accordion Man posted:Most of the time though its Kickstarter games that have a beta reward for a pledge tier so they price the EA at that tier price so not to cheat their backers, which is understandable,i.e. Wasteland 2, aforementioned Planetary Annihilation. If you're pricing your alpha at $90 then you need to keep that exclusive to Kickstarter, not put it on Steam to make a fuckton extra money for a barebones game.
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Sep 28, 2014 01:56
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Economics bro.
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Sep 28, 2014 02:29
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I actually old enough to remember the original EA logo:  From this bad boy on the C64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXAIt9IhybQ
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Sep 28, 2014 02:43
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That brings back some memories, but drat.
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Sep 28, 2014 02:48
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Pirate Jet posted:Agreed dude, people should be afraid of making new threads and should just consolidate everything inside of massive megathreads instead. This is a good strategy that has worked for Games before. Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Then I wouldn't have been able to put my two cents in because the Steam thread is a clusterfuck of different conversations going at the same time. We should be able to have a thread to have a discussion without someone asking if some game is good or not. I just feel the execution of this thread is a little weak. The OP is just a single sentence making an old and tired joke that most of us have heard a hundred times in the Steam Thread. Pretty much the "what's the deal with airline food?" of Early Access jokes. I'm not saying we need to consolidate everything into megathreads but I don't think a tiny bit of effort is too much to ask for. The guy's regdate is less than a week old so I was just trying to maybe bring some new information to his attention. I guess I came across as kind of a dick. My intentions are good, I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad or shame them or anything. SolidSnakesBandana fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 03:16
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Something that really bothers when projects like Spacebase go under is the people whose reaction is "Well, you can't get too mad. Early Access is a gamble. Not every game is going to come out." All true, but gently caress you, I absolutely can get at mad as I want because I put money in and didn't get the product I was promised. Yes, on an overarching level, there is a chance that any game on Early Access might not come to fruition. However, no game on Early Access is actually sold under that pretense. You'd never see a developer put on their store page that the game might not come out if the numbers turn against them, because no one would buy it. When developers put a game on Early Access, unless they specifically state otherwise, they're making a promise that their game will be completed and everything they're saying will be in the final version will come true. If the game goes under, that's a broken promise, and customers are well within their right to be come as angry and indignant as possible when that happens.
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Sep 28, 2014 03:28
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"Those developers lied to me. They're not supposed to do that! I'm gonna post angrily about it even though it won't make my money go back into my account." You brought the game it's your own fault. The only way to stop is to buy smarter next time and let somebody else guinea pig for you. Also stop trusting double fine they haven't been good in forever.
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Sep 28, 2014 04:00
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Zigmidge posted:That would be the sweetest irony because EA in either case is still poo poo for idiot consumers. It is kind of funny how complaining about games are buggy and unfinished pieces of poo poo could be relevant for both EAs. I just think that overall the pricing is messed up. Most EA games, you save like 25% at most, usually only like $5 or $10 or whatever. The price should be based on how far developed it is. If the game is only 20% done, charge 20% of the final price. People are crazy to spend big money on "potential". That's also the problem with KS, people hear a pitch, it sounds pretty good and they imagine what the game could be like (of course the game will definitely satisfy all your expectations, and poo to anyone who thinks otherwise!) KS is nothing but "idea men", with most projects either having amateur programmers or not even having one, planning to hire one with the budget. We're starting to see the effects of the "golden age" of KS games 2 years ago when bizarre things got funded, and many of those projects are either delayed into infinity or just dead. It is also annoying when people try to point out EA game flaws and others just yell back with "it's EA, it's not going to be perfect! Go away if you don't like the game!"
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Sep 28, 2014 04:00
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Rocketlex posted:Something that really bothers when projects like Spacebase go under is the people whose reaction is "Well, you can't get too mad. Early Access is a gamble. Not every game is going to come out." If what you said was always true, you'd have a point, but it's not. Some devs do make broad sweeping promises, and in those cases what you say makes sense. But usually developers go out of their way to specifically say that they're not promising anything and warn you not to expect too much. People gloss over those qualified statements because they've gotten all hyped up by snazzy videos, and then act all shocked when things go sideways. Like, even specifically with Spacebase, they literally had a warning for their feature list that said "Nothing on this list is carved in stone, and we can’t promise any date for when it might go into the game". They very specifically did not make a promise. Spacebase was a project that looked shaky as gently caress from the moment it was announced as tiny experimental offshoot of an in-house gamejam. You didn't do your due diligence, and you got burned. It sucks, and it's mostly Doublefine's fault, but it's not like you can completely abdicate your responsibility. Or, you can, but if you do you're just gonna keep getting burned and never understand why.
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Sep 28, 2014 04:50
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XboxPants posted:Like, even specifically with Spacebase, they literally had a warning for their feature list that said "Nothing on this list is carved in stone, and we can’t promise any date for when it might go into the game". They very specifically did not make a promise. Spacebase was a project that looked shaky as gently caress from the moment it was announced as tiny experimental offshoot of an in-house gamejam. You didn't do your due diligence, and you got burned. What would "due diligence" be, in this case? Did they say anywhere on their page that the project would be canceled if not enough people bought into Early Access, which is the thing that happened? Having an uncertain schedule is very different from being uncertain if you can deliver the game you're promising at all.
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Sep 28, 2014 04:53
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Bieeardo posted:That brings back some memories, but drat. I tried to find the bit from the loader where the cube/sphere/pyramid would show up on a grey background and flicker rainbow colors(?), but everyone cuts right to the opening screen.
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Sep 28, 2014 05:15
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Rocketlex posted:What would "due diligence" be, in this case? Did they say anywhere on their page that the project would be canceled if not enough people bought into Early Access, which is the thing that happened? Having an uncertain schedule is very different from being uncertain if you can deliver the game you're promising at all. It wasn't just an uncertain schedule, though. They flat out said that "nothing was set in stone" and that "We may decide something isn’t worth it". They plainly warned people that, while they had plans for the game, they might not materialize. So what's "due diligence"? Optimally, you would only buy the game if it's already good enough to justify the cost. If you're gonna lay down money for a game that doesn't exist yet, you better make drat sure things are guaranteed to go well. In this case, you should have gone to their website and checked out their plans and seen that they were not guaranteeing things would go well. That would have been the bare minimum. So, yes, even if all you did was looked over the game's website, you'd see that there were no promises that you'd get the features you wanted. Ideally, you would have looked into the projects extremely sketchy origins. If you did, you would have seen an even less stable project. In case you never knew: Doublefine did an in-house gamejam, called, "Amnesia Fortnight", largely just to experiment, with no guarantees that any of those games would be fully developed into a real game. They then let people vote on which prototype they liked best, again, with no guarantees. The resulting winner was Hack 'n' Slash. Doublefine eventually decided to pursue that game as a serious project. Spacebase was one of many losing prototypes from that contest, but it still managed to get a greenlight. Spacebase was like the the sad, loser brother of Hack 'n' Slash, like Danny Devito in Twins. It was always just barely squeaking by, just barely being allocated just enough resources to keep going. There's a very telling quote from LeBreton from the initial release interview: quote:But until then, it’s like we’re just alpha one, alpha two, alpha three – however long we can keep going, based on how much people like it. In other words, he almost directly does say the thing you asked about - that they're only going to be able to keep going so long as people keep supporting them. XboxPants fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 05:40
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Early access is just proof capitalism doesn't work. Socialize games.
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Sep 28, 2014 14:36
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If you wanted the ultimate Kickstarter scam, you just need one good 3D modeler/animator, maybe a fancy pants UI designer too. These two team members would allow you to create a really cool and polished looking gameplay video (and screenshots) for a game that doesn't exist, without much programming needed at all, and you can fill out any buzzwords you want in the descriptions because nobody knows otherwise. It's just you, your small team, and piles of money being thrown at you for stretch goals that don't mean anything. You could also technically use the money to deliver the game at some point, just to prevent legal issues, but nobody said the game has to be competently made or anywhere near your funded budget.
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Sep 28, 2014 15:04
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Fintilgin posted:I tried to find the bit from the loader where the cube/sphere/pyramid would show up on a grey background and flicker rainbow colors(?), but everyone cuts right to the opening screen. Found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOdj5UTH6A I remember that Mail Order Monsters had some sort of fastload program that made those colors cycle crazy fast. No idea if it actually helped actual load times, but it definitely made it look like it was doing something important! Jon Joe posted:If you wanted the ultimate Kickstarter scam, you just need one good 3D modeler/animator, maybe a fancy pants UI designer too. That one asshat who squatted a woman's airbnb managed to do this with a handful of pixel art animation loops. Doing it with 3D art that wasn't obviously from the Unity toychest would probably sucker a lot more people in, like you suggested. Informal 'rules' for what to put in your pitch, and what to look for in a pitch that doesn't cut the mustard, have emerged over the last couple of years, but new people are still coming in on both sides and most of that is carried by word of mouth.
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Sep 28, 2014 15:36
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:I just feel the execution of this thread is a little weak. The OP is just a single sentence making an old and tired joke that most of us have heard a hundred times in the Steam Thread. Pretty much the "what's the deal with airline food?" of Early Access jokes. I'm not saying we need to consolidate everything into megathreads but I don't think a tiny bit of effort is too much to ask for. The guy's regdate is less than a week old so I was just trying to maybe bring some new information to his attention. I guess I came across as kind of a dick. My intentions are good, I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad or shame them or anything. I've bought some early access games in the past like if they are pretty cheap and look somewhat decent but then again I'm also really bad at spending money. in EA logo news I like the one used in LHX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE3Yg6RAb3I&t=10s
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Sep 28, 2014 15:57
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I believe that whatever game I'm getting, in whatever state it is right now, should be worth the money I'm paying right now. With a Kickstarter you're just buying a promise. Maybe it gets fulfilled. But the difference here is that you get full control over how much you spend. You could spend a single dollar and not really lose out on much if no game is ever delivered. But there's no real need to go near early access stuff when games are cheap and go on sale all the time. I have no shortage of unplayed games. And by the time games go on sale, they've received patches for bugs. I can check out reviews and Let's Play videos to get an idea what it is I'm paying for. Maybe there's even a demo version.
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Sep 28, 2014 16:06
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Rocketlex posted:Something that really bothers when projects like Spacebase go under is the people whose reaction is "Well, you can't get too mad. Early Access is a gamble. Not every game is going to come out." I agree with you but sometimes poo poo happens and companies go under. That's the one acceptable scenario for your Early Access project to die. The problem is when devs treat it as though they've made all the money from the project that they ever will and simply abandon it. Once the project is up on early access they'll get a bunch of first day/week sales that will trickle out, giving them very little monetary incentive to keep updating their project.
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Sep 28, 2014 17:35
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Jon Joe posted:If you wanted the ultimate Kickstarter scam, you just need one good 3D modeler/animator, maybe a fancy pants UI designer too. These two team members would allow you to create a really cool and polished looking gameplay video (and screenshots) for a game that doesn't exist, without much programming needed at all, and you can fill out any buzzwords you want in the descriptions because nobody knows otherwise. It's just you, your small team, and piles of money being thrown at you for stretch goals that don't mean anything. You could also technically use the money to deliver the game at some point, just to prevent legal issues, but nobody said the game has to be competently made or anywhere near your funded budget. This is one of the biggest lessons I've learned regarding early games - that you can't judge how far along a game is just by how good it looks. If a project has a big, skilled art team, then even a very early prototype might look way further along than it actually is. Just because it has really polished art instead of programmer art and untextured models, doesn't mean the game itself is that polished. Starbound is a good example. They have a big art focus for that game, and so when they showed off even the very earliest build, many players (myself included) thought the game looked pretty far along. It had really sweet spritework, UI, and animation, but in fact it was still a very barebones, unpolished framework of an alpha. When we all started playing this, we realized this really fast. Point is, it can be hard to tell how far along a game is, especially just from some hypeshow 2-minute video, so I guess I can sympathize with people who get hornswaggled. Turns out you gotta go more than skin deep but, as others have said, that's a lesson that's always applied to video games so I guess nothing's really changed, in a way.
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Sep 28, 2014 23:10
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Fintilgin posted:I actually old enough to remember the original EA logo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMN87YoFaug
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Sep 28, 2014 23:18
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Megadyptes posted:don't listen to this human being, op. making threads is good. Cool, way to not only use hatespeech but not actually read my post at all.
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Sep 28, 2014 23:40
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XboxPants posted:This is one of the biggest lessons I've learned regarding early games - that you can't judge how far along a game is just by how good it looks. If a project has a big, skilled art team, then even a very early prototype might look way further along than it actually is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6wLP2_RLU4 3 team members working with a freelancer for concept art. Though to be fair, it's turned out great so far SolidSnakesBandana posted:Cool, way to not only use hatespeech but not actually read my post at all.
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Sep 28, 2014 23:43
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Great Joe posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6wLP2_RLU4 Nitronic Rush is the exception, not the rule. You want to see the norm then go to the games section on Kickstarter and scroll way the gently caress down or go to greenlight and dig through some of the garbage on there.
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Sep 29, 2014 01:22
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The purpose of both kickstarter and greenlight is, ostensibly, to weed out the gems from the dross, however. So yes, if you look at their unfiltered listings, you will get a lot of dross.
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Sep 29, 2014 01:26
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:Cool, way to not only use hatespeech but not actually read my post at all. Lol look at this post. Oh my.
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Sep 29, 2014 01:54
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:Cool, way to not only use hatespeech but not actually read my post at all. Haha go cry about it nerd.
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Sep 29, 2014 02:32
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:Cool, way to not only use hatespeech but not actually read my post at all. Look at this guy. Don't be like this guy. Op made a good thread. Please stop buying games that aren't out yet.
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Sep 29, 2014 02:41
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Stick Figure Mafia posted:Look at this guy. Don't be like this guy. You may as well ask nerds to stop buying bad games in general. It'll never happen.
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Sep 29, 2014 02:43
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Certainly not as long as they can justify poor judgement on their part as being the fault of the system, developers, and everything but them.
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Sep 29, 2014 02:46
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Meth heads are probably more fiscally responsible than gamers.
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Sep 29, 2014 02:50
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:Cool, way to not only use hatespeech but not actually read my post at all. Shut up you loving baby. Go back to your Steam megathread.
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Sep 29, 2014 18:42
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