Indies, Steam and Early Acces - gamedev revolution or impending crash? - by Yakoob
demagogue on 12/2/2014 at 02:31
I don't think the barrier to entry can be too low since it allows a few jewels to pass through, and more mountains of crap is the price you pay to mine for more little jewels in the rough. I'm not a fan of perpetual-beta, but I am on board with games perpetually versioning up once they've passed the 1.0 mark. But on dev costs, I think devs should have a plan that doesn't rely on early access. But it's up to the market to enforce it. If the market lets devs get away with it, it's their own fault.
Tony_Tarantula on 12/2/2014 at 03:39
Quote:
gamedev revolution or impending crash?
The two are not mutually exclusive.
catbarf on 12/2/2014 at 05:01
Quote Posted by Pyrian
I think it's interesting that "early access" is now premium instead of discounted. Remember Mount&Blade? The earlier you bought in, the less you paid. Betas used to be free. Now, you pay
more for the dubious privilege. Coincidence? Something that stems directly from people looking for Kickstarter rewards that won't cost them much to give out? Or is this the market speaking - the demand is really so strong?
Kerbal Space Program is a pretty recent game that charged less for a pre-order.
Pyrian on 12/2/2014 at 06:25
We're discussing trends in general terms. I'm aware that the "old ways" have not disappeared entirely, and probably never will, and did not mean to imply otherwise. Merely that the notion of paying extra for early access is now common, where only a few years ago I'd never heard of such a thing.
Yakoob on 12/2/2014 at 09:48
Quote Posted by faetal
I contribute to kickstarters because I think some ideas are worth voting for with money, whether they work out or not. Even if the idea never reaches fruition, it sends a message, written in money, that an idea is valuable and publishers can detect messages written in money,
Hmm I see your point and logically it makes sense but...I also fear that if such a project flops, that in turn ends up sending a discouraging message about the experiment (even if the failure was entirely due to management and not the actual design).
Quote Posted by Al_B
The app flipping article may well be genuine (and considering some of the rubbish on mobile platforms I'd believe it) but I could equally see it as a carefully constructed advert for the code and advertising services discussed in the article over-hyping the potential income.
Honestly that's what I think it is, if not just a clever satire. But either way it does a wonderful job of explaining a horrible trend...
Quote:
Low barrier to entry means some good things get made that would not otherwise have been made. The fact that it also means that many, many more things that should not be made, do get made, is, well, a sorting problem, at most.
Yes, but it does turn a game's success from "how good the game is" to "who can shout the loudest" which is especially problematic for Indies whose marketing budget and experience is often nil. And the whole point of GreenLight was to help those out...
(for the record, I'm not referring just to my game or claiming its some sort of unappreciated gem. I mean in general.)
Even as a consumer, it's hard for me to look at 10 almost similar clones and need to "sort" through to figure out which one the actually good one is. And no, the voting/recommendation/populairty system isn't really a solution. Cue flappy bird).
faetal on 12/2/2014 at 09:58
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Hmm I see your point and logically it makes sense but...I also fear that if such a project flops, that in turn ends up sending a discouraging message about the experiment (even if the failure was entirely due to management and not the actual design).
My point is that if it flops, but a large amount of money is raised, that tells the gaming industry as a whole that there is x amount of interest in y. If you want y to be a more prevalent thing, this is good.
Re the whole paying more for early access issue, Monsieur Moyer already mentioned that it's more likely to be there so as not to snub people who paid more for the Kickstarter in order to get alpha/beta access. Also, the dev has to go with the market wither way. If the kind of people who like to play alpha / beta builds are willing to pay that much, then that's how much it's worth. If you asked me what I honestly thought, I'd say that Moyer's got it right and the devs probably even wish they could set it a little lower and sell more. I suppose a third option is that they
don't want too many people playing the unfinished version, so they raise the price to limit the number of people seeing it at its worst. But then I guess if they wanted that kind of control, they'd just sell limited licenses.
PigLick on 12/2/2014 at 10:38
Quote Posted by faetal
My point is that if it flops, but a large amount of money is raised, that tells the gaming industry as a whole that there is x amount of interest in y. If you want y to be a more prevalent thing, this is good.
it also tells the industry that we can make a decent amount of money off a half-baked idea.
june gloom on 12/2/2014 at 10:52
Trust me, they already know.
faetal on 12/2/2014 at 11:13
At the very least, the Star CItizen story has written in large capital letters that the space exploration (or whatever it is called) genre is far from niche. Though KS may have saturated that genre with good potential offerings already (Limit Theory, Elite Thingy - plus others), I wouldn't be surprised if a few publishers are looking through their IP portfolios looking for a coma patient to perform a fiscal Fonz miracle on.
PigLick on 12/2/2014 at 11:21
the thing is, I am still waiting for even a half decent space exploration game (except ftl how I love thee). I soooo badly want a new Elite, but I really cant see big developers making any kind of game like SC. That is the nebulous idea of what SC is supposed to be.
