Store Page
Project Zomboid
All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos Workshop News Guides Reviews

Project Zomboid

Store Page
This topic has been locked
Sinatr Dec 22, 2022 @ 6:57pm
1
Labor of love, huh?
I am very confused. How did Project Zomboid even gets into that nomination?

LABOR OF LOVE
This game has been out for a while. The team is well past the debut of their creative baby, but being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation. This game, to this day, is still getting new content after all these years.
Implicitly means "released" (out) game. Early Access games are not released and they are naturally obliged to receive new updates.. well, until they are released.

All other nominees are not in EA.

I recall during initial nomination, some of the game tried "Labor of Love" too and gets a feedback "release your game first" from their players pretty quick.

P.S.: disabling comments for news is something I dislike very much. Why disabling them?
The author of this topic has marked a post as the answer to their question.
Click here to jump to that post.
Originally posted by lemmy101:
Forgive the wall of text but I have some stuff to say on this. A few of the comments here rubbed me up wrong and hopefully I can provide a good explanation as to why.

We could have polished up PZ and called it 'finished' seven years ago or so, released out of Early Access, and then started working on PZ 2, then worked on that for 3-4 years then started working on PZ 3. We'd have been fully justified in doing this, and the graphical and feature upgrades between them would have been sufficient to justify as sequels in most people's eyes.

But we'd have the same goals and ambitions, the same things we'd like to add, the same team, the same engine, the same amount of time.

We'd be selling the **exact** same thing you are playing right now, selling it to you three times over.

Or we could have gone "1.0" seven years ago and you be on your third paid DLC by now.

Either way we'd have the exact same thing we have now, and would have instead charged you and any early adopters 3x for the privlege of playing it.

Or we could have gone "1.0" seven years ago and be working on something completely different now, and you'd have had nothing we've added in the last 7 years. No option to even buy it, it just wouldn't exist. But we'd have 'finished' a game!

We worked on the game for 10 years with relatively small success, only 'making it big' this year. We had no way of knowing we'd ever have 'made it big'. It'd have been extremely easy to give up on it at any point in that time, call it 1.0 and move onto a new game, and ironically many of those who chastise us for 'still having not finished our game' would presumably look at us as doing a better job despite in my eyes of us doing the exact opposite.

I'm immensely proud of us still being Early Access, and kinda sad that the reason that should be the case isn't more obvious.

Early Access means you're sold the game as it stands now, we're not selling future features, its priced to be worth the price for what currently exists at the point of purchase. Check the Early Access rules on Steam. Yes we have stuff we intend to add, we have a roadmap of features we plan, yes we'll stand by our word as we always have. But this is not a legal obligation, we could 1.0 it and move on at any point, it's a single button in our Steam backend we can click at any time. And 'et voila' its no longer 'In Early Access'. Does the arbitrary nature of this stick out at all?

We could have reframed that future roadmap, our plans, as DLC plans instead, never mentioned we intended to add them, and no one would look at our game at 1.0 and say its not a feature complete game that's worth the money. Despite, literally nothing having changed apart from not suffering these arbitrary optics people apply to us because we keep the Early Access tag, and our plans instead to actually charge you multiple times for these new features you have now for free the same as someone who bought the game in 2012. And somehow this makes us worse, or less worthy of a labour of love.

We chose to keep Early Access tag, much to our own pain and suffering in how arbitrarily differently people treat us, because we want this one single base game to have everything we consider to be the perfect and most feature rich zombie survival game in history. Could we in theory 1.0 release, and then just release stuff as post release free DLC? I suppose.

But we're subjecting ourselves to Early Access because until we have our perfect game, we don't want to call it done, lest of all because the temptation to move onto pastures new may be more intense if we had a 1.0 game out of Early Access, or the justification to consider charging for any additional content, and the game is not what we want it to be yet. We want it all to be free additions, we want it all to be assumed to be part of the base game and part of the price of entry.

We don't want to say 'the game is 1.0' when it's not representative of our desires for our final vision. We want the day we hit 1.0 to represent the most feature rich and deep survival game ever that we're happy to consider 'done' and have no more ambitions to add more to. That doesn't mean it could not have justifiably been made 1.0 countless times in the past.

We have it in Early Access for that reason and it'll remain so until the day we likely hang up our PZ spurs.

Not throwing shade at Rimworld, as I adore the game and devs, but to purely use it as example of a different path we may have taken that suffers none of these same criticisms.

If they kept in Early Access and instead planned to give all their 3 DLCs away for free in the base game, yet crucially they released everything they have on the exact same dates, but for free, some people would have been complaining this last few years that they *still* haven't finished adding children and genetics, "they mentioned they were adding it. Still not in!" Every update that didn't have them there'd be some criticizing the company for letting them down or being slow. What about the royalty titles and gameplay they mentioned a while back? They mentioned in a blog 3 years ago they plan to add different ideologies to the colonists, I was really looking forward to that! Is that still not in!?!? How are they so slow? It's STILL in Early Access? They're not doing their job properly, the very opposite of a 'labour of love'.

Of course these three DLCs are out now, but what about the 4th? Whatever their planned 4th DLC is would also be a chain around their neck, instead of some unannounced DLC of 'extra' stuff, it'd be stuff people 'expected', something still 'missing' to call Rimworld as base game 'finished', people's vision of the 'finished' game would have morphed to include that content. and without it the devs would have 'still not finished developing Rimworld'. Because they had that little Early Access tag, entirely of their own choice, the exact same work would be entirely perceived in a completely negative light, delayed, slow devs, 'vapourware', despite version on version being identical to how people are getting it post release, coming in the same amount of time and instead being free. It's crazy, but you can't deny I speak the truth of how it would go down. I can't wrap my head around it, honestly.

They release from Early Access, and sell that stuff as paid DLC instead of freely added to their Early Access development, and no one bats an eyelid. In fact they are somehow 'better' for doing that, because they finished Rimworld, unlike those slow ass Zomboid devs who still 'haven't finished'. No judgement on Rimworld devs selling DLC, that's completely fair, they've paid their dues and made an incredible game. 1.0 and are now funding extra dev with paid DLC. Totally fine and the normal way these things go. But we're not doing that, and are just putting *everything* we want to add into the base game for free, and yet are getting punched around the face by some about it when the distinction between these two routes is entirely smoke and mirrors, arguably we're doing what's actually in the better interest of you and yet somehow we're worth less due to it. Drives me to the pits of despair, frankly.

Don't your realize how arbitrary these expectations and perceptions are? It's an unending continuum of development on a type of game that can be indefinitely added to and deepened. The 'finished' point, the 'released' point is completely 100% arbitrary and chosen by us. There's not some objective finish line we've failed to get to by our own incompetence or slow speed. We're not some trash fire Early Access game that was a disaster and got removed from Steam, we're the ones who've provided people 11 years of active dev and free content, with some of the most major game changing and most well received additions coming within the last couple of years. We've had a high review scoring and fondly regarded game for most of our entire game's dev history and could have called that a good job and out at any point, and instead commit to just pushing it as far as we possibly can, all for free to those that bought it 11 years ago. How are we the bad guys to some, or just doing some expected amount of obligation of development of 'finishing our game' to others? Look around and point out how many devs do that and wouldn't be on their 4th game by now and this game having long been abandoned and considered 'complete' with 1/8th of the feature set it has today.

This is our choice, not something imposed on us. Year on year we're not measuring PZ up to some checklist of Valve 'completeness' and thinking 'damn, we can't 1.0 it this year, we don't meet the requirements!' No one would look at PZ and say it was lacking enough content and worth to stand up as a complete game, putting aside any things we've mentioned we're planning on adding.

Moving onto pastures new and working on something new and exciting and different like so many Early Access devs have gotten to do by clicking that little button, despite (trust me) 11 years on the same project making this an extremely enticing prospect for any game dev. There's a phrase to describe our reason for not doing that, moving on, or trying to monetize our last 11 years of development to the maximum we could have. It's called 'labour of love'.

Don't expect to win, we're absolutely overjoyed with the nomination and there are some amazing games we're up against. But I resent the implication that because of a little tag we've chosen to keep, 11 years of dedication to this game doesn't mean anything and we shouldn't be eligible for any recognition of dedicating a sizable chunk of our time on this earth to this game that the vast majority of people love and have nothing but kind words to say about, because we have chosen not to click this button https://imgur.com/a/SM8uIqH, that I could do right now in the time it takes for you to read my reply, to remove the ball and chain that so many arbitrarily judge us by.

It's on Steam to buy. You bought it and are playing it. It's 'released' and after 11 years of which we could have moved on at any time, we're still adding free content to it. Does it deserve to be nominated? Does it deserve to win? I'd never be so arrogant as to assume it does.

But it deserves to be eligible for consideration by its fans as much as any other game.

< >
Showing 1-15 of 72 comments
Sinatr Dec 22, 2022 @ 7:11pm 
Found that game. It was a Vallheim who tried to be "smart" earlier.

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:
It’s Steam’s show
Ok, but players are voting. Even if Steam allow us to vote EA games, this is, I repeat again, simply unfair.

As for disabling comments, look, my issue is that there is an edit box and I posted my comment first there, but got an error. I know no other developer who does that, don't tell me something about trolls, subscribing, etc.. >< Then don't post Steam news at all, huh?
Last edited by Sinatr; Dec 22, 2022 @ 7:11pm
#1
Sinatr Dec 22, 2022 @ 7:22pm 
2
According to Vallheim story - not just mine, but many. Sorry for bringing that obvious way of thinking into this silent and over-friendly community who doesn't care..

And you should begun to care. Is this game released? No. Can it stand on a stage with others? Hell no. Why it stands? And this is a good question I think..

The "Project Zomboid" may be a cool game and will become a labor of love in some years, but currently it looks like this[vsememy.ru]. ><
#2
Karl Pilkington Dec 22, 2022 @ 7:49pm 
Personally I think being in early access for almost a decade is the opposite of being a labor of love.
#3
Puppers Dec 22, 2022 @ 7:56pm 
Today we woke up and chose violence, engarden
Last edited by Puppers; Dec 22, 2022 @ 7:56pm
#4
The author of this thread has indicated that this post answers the original topic.
lemmy101  [developer] Dec 22, 2022 @ 8:09pm 
7
5
4
3
5
2
3
17
Forgive the wall of text but I have some stuff to say on this. A few of the comments here rubbed me up wrong and hopefully I can provide a good explanation as to why.

We could have polished up PZ and called it 'finished' seven years ago or so, released out of Early Access, and then started working on PZ 2, then worked on that for 3-4 years then started working on PZ 3. We'd have been fully justified in doing this, and the graphical and feature upgrades between them would have been sufficient to justify as sequels in most people's eyes.

But we'd have the same goals and ambitions, the same things we'd like to add, the same team, the same engine, the same amount of time.

We'd be selling the **exact** same thing you are playing right now, selling it to you three times over.

Or we could have gone "1.0" seven years ago and you be on your third paid DLC by now.

Either way we'd have the exact same thing we have now, and would have instead charged you and any early adopters 3x for the privlege of playing it.

Or we could have gone "1.0" seven years ago and be working on something completely different now, and you'd have had nothing we've added in the last 7 years. No option to even buy it, it just wouldn't exist. But we'd have 'finished' a game!

We worked on the game for 10 years with relatively small success, only 'making it big' this year. We had no way of knowing we'd ever have 'made it big'. It'd have been extremely easy to give up on it at any point in that time, call it 1.0 and move onto a new game, and ironically many of those who chastise us for 'still having not finished our game' would presumably look at us as doing a better job despite in my eyes of us doing the exact opposite.

I'm immensely proud of us still being Early Access, and kinda sad that the reason that should be the case isn't more obvious.

Early Access means you're sold the game as it stands now, we're not selling future features, its priced to be worth the price for what currently exists at the point of purchase. Check the Early Access rules on Steam. Yes we have stuff we intend to add, we have a roadmap of features we plan, yes we'll stand by our word as we always have. But this is not a legal obligation, we could 1.0 it and move on at any point, it's a single button in our Steam backend we can click at any time. And 'et voila' its no longer 'In Early Access'. Does the arbitrary nature of this stick out at all?

We could have reframed that future roadmap, our plans, as DLC plans instead, never mentioned we intended to add them, and no one would look at our game at 1.0 and say its not a feature complete game that's worth the money. Despite, literally nothing having changed apart from not suffering these arbitrary optics people apply to us because we keep the Early Access tag, and our plans instead to actually charge you multiple times for these new features you have now for free the same as someone who bought the game in 2012. And somehow this makes us worse, or less worthy of a labour of love.

We chose to keep Early Access tag, much to our own pain and suffering in how arbitrarily differently people treat us, because we want this one single base game to have everything we consider to be the perfect and most feature rich zombie survival game in history. Could we in theory 1.0 release, and then just release stuff as post release free DLC? I suppose.

But we're subjecting ourselves to Early Access because until we have our perfect game, we don't want to call it done, lest of all because the temptation to move onto pastures new may be more intense if we had a 1.0 game out of Early Access, or the justification to consider charging for any additional content, and the game is not what we want it to be yet. We want it all to be free additions, we want it all to be assumed to be part of the base game and part of the price of entry.

We don't want to say 'the game is 1.0' when it's not representative of our desires for our final vision. We want the day we hit 1.0 to represent the most feature rich and deep survival game ever that we're happy to consider 'done' and have no more ambitions to add more to. That doesn't mean it could not have justifiably been made 1.0 countless times in the past.

We have it in Early Access for that reason and it'll remain so until the day we likely hang up our PZ spurs.

Not throwing shade at Rimworld, as I adore the game and devs, but to purely use it as example of a different path we may have taken that suffers none of these same criticisms.

If they kept in Early Access and instead planned to give all their 3 DLCs away for free in the base game, yet crucially they released everything they have on the exact same dates, but for free, some people would have been complaining this last few years that they *still* haven't finished adding children and genetics, "they mentioned they were adding it. Still not in!" Every update that didn't have them there'd be some criticizing the company for letting them down or being slow. What about the royalty titles and gameplay they mentioned a while back? They mentioned in a blog 3 years ago they plan to add different ideologies to the colonists, I was really looking forward to that! Is that still not in!?!? How are they so slow? It's STILL in Early Access? They're not doing their job properly, the very opposite of a 'labour of love'.

Of course these three DLCs are out now, but what about the 4th? Whatever their planned 4th DLC is would also be a chain around their neck, instead of some unannounced DLC of 'extra' stuff, it'd be stuff people 'expected', something still 'missing' to call Rimworld as base game 'finished', people's vision of the 'finished' game would have morphed to include that content. and without it the devs would have 'still not finished developing Rimworld'. Because they had that little Early Access tag, entirely of their own choice, the exact same work would be entirely perceived in a completely negative light, delayed, slow devs, 'vapourware', despite version on version being identical to how people are getting it post release, coming in the same amount of time and instead being free. It's crazy, but you can't deny I speak the truth of how it would go down. I can't wrap my head around it, honestly.

They release from Early Access, and sell that stuff as paid DLC instead of freely added to their Early Access development, and no one bats an eyelid. In fact they are somehow 'better' for doing that, because they finished Rimworld, unlike those slow ass Zomboid devs who still 'haven't finished'. No judgement on Rimworld devs selling DLC, that's completely fair, they've paid their dues and made an incredible game. 1.0 and are now funding extra dev with paid DLC. Totally fine and the normal way these things go. But we're not doing that, and are just putting *everything* we want to add into the base game for free, and yet are getting punched around the face by some about it when the distinction between these two routes is entirely smoke and mirrors, arguably we're doing what's actually in the better interest of you and yet somehow we're worth less due to it. Drives me to the pits of despair, frankly.

Don't your realize how arbitrary these expectations and perceptions are? It's an unending continuum of development on a type of game that can be indefinitely added to and deepened. The 'finished' point, the 'released' point is completely 100% arbitrary and chosen by us. There's not some objective finish line we've failed to get to by our own incompetence or slow speed. We're not some trash fire Early Access game that was a disaster and got removed from Steam, we're the ones who've provided people 11 years of active dev and free content, with some of the most major game changing and most well received additions coming within the last couple of years. We've had a high review scoring and fondly regarded game for most of our entire game's dev history and could have called that a good job and out at any point, and instead commit to just pushing it as far as we possibly can, all for free to those that bought it 11 years ago. How are we the bad guys to some, or just doing some expected amount of obligation of development of 'finishing our game' to others? Look around and point out how many devs do that and wouldn't be on their 4th game by now and this game having long been abandoned and considered 'complete' with 1/8th of the feature set it has today.

This is our choice, not something imposed on us. Year on year we're not measuring PZ up to some checklist of Valve 'completeness' and thinking 'damn, we can't 1.0 it this year, we don't meet the requirements!' No one would look at PZ and say it was lacking enough content and worth to stand up as a complete game, putting aside any things we've mentioned we're planning on adding.

Moving onto pastures new and working on something new and exciting and different like so many Early Access devs have gotten to do by clicking that little button, despite (trust me) 11 years on the same project making this an extremely enticing prospect for any game dev. There's a phrase to describe our reason for not doing that, moving on, or trying to monetize our last 11 years of development to the maximum we could have. It's called 'labour of love'.

Don't expect to win, we're absolutely overjoyed with the nomination and there are some amazing games we're up against. But I resent the implication that because of a little tag we've chosen to keep, 11 years of dedication to this game doesn't mean anything and we shouldn't be eligible for any recognition of dedicating a sizable chunk of our time on this earth to this game that the vast majority of people love and have nothing but kind words to say about, because we have chosen not to click this button https://imgur.com/a/SM8uIqH, that I could do right now in the time it takes for you to read my reply, to remove the ball and chain that so many arbitrarily judge us by.

It's on Steam to buy. You bought it and are playing it. It's 'released' and after 11 years of which we could have moved on at any time, we're still adding free content to it. Does it deserve to be nominated? Does it deserve to win? I'd never be so arrogant as to assume it does.

But it deserves to be eligible for consideration by its fans as much as any other game.

Last edited by lemmy101; Dec 23, 2022 @ 12:57am
#5
RaideR Dec 22, 2022 @ 9:08pm 
Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1vBesOFURek

Don’t see any point in this if you’ve already made up your mind, honestly. No one here is going to change it.
oh wow
That is some extra spicy
i love it
#6
RaideR Dec 22, 2022 @ 9:11pm 
ahahahahahhah that dude is russian
looooooool now i get it
They always saying what people should be like, should do like, and there is only 2 opinions theirs and a wrong one
Dont even bother try to explain or reason with those guys
His chair is on fire for unknown reason, we dont need the water let a mf burn

Love the comments tho, love sarcasm and irony, honestly that made my day
#7
Arc Flash Dec 22, 2022 @ 9:18pm 
Does anyone here know where I can post this question to get an answer t a problem I am having?
This is my Question I wouls like to post......


I just updated my game and when I am playing my cursor is a Big Green Square like the one you see when you want to give a command such as lifting. However this Big Green Square is used as a "Go To" Big Green Square. Can anyone please tell me how to turn it off? Thank you.
#8
Armagenesis Dec 22, 2022 @ 9:34pm 
Originally posted by RaideR:
ahahahahahhah that dude is russian
looooooool now i get it
They always saying what people should be like, should do like, and there is only 2 opinions theirs and a wrong one
Dont even bother try to explain or reason with those guys
His chair is on fire for unknown reason, we dont need the water let a mf burn

Love the comments tho, love sarcasm and irony, honestly that made my day
Dude's just salty his favorite buggy "full release" AAA game is being contested by a full featured early access game that has been constantly getting improved over 10 years.

Let's not be mean to the guy.
Last edited by Armagenesis; Dec 22, 2022 @ 9:34pm
#9
M.D Geist Dec 22, 2022 @ 10:16pm 
"Implicitly means "released" (out) game."

Not directly however, and imo anyone who puts a lot of consistent work into something that goes above and beyond the industry standard could be claimed to have made such an endeavor.

Whether or not the game is 1.0 is irrelevant to me, I've watched this game change over the years and I'm impressed at what they've done and how they've refined it, to some people that would qualify as being worth such an accolade.

In the end unless not being a 1.0 release is a disqualifying factor I think it's more a matter of opinion.
#10
RaideR Dec 22, 2022 @ 10:54pm 
For me is like that
And i did vote for this game
Platform ask you to vote, gives you an option to choose from, you chose from option you have been giving and that is done
Like, common, are we electing president here?
Or perhaps devs have payed steam to squeeze in?
This is surely big corruption plot!
#11
Zifnab Dec 23, 2022 @ 12:05am 
Originally posted by lemmy101:
We could have polished up PZ and called it 1.0 7 years ago or so, and then started working on PZ 2, then worked on that for 3-4 years then started working on PZ 3.

We'd have the same goals and ambitions, the same things we'd like to add, the same team, the same engine, the same amount of time.

We'd be selling the **exact** same thing you are playing right now, selling it to you three times over.

Or we could have gone 1.0 7 years ago and you be on your third paid DLC by now.

Either way we'd have the exact same thing we have now, and would have instead charged you and any early adopters 3x for the privlege of playing it.

Or we could have gone 1.0 7 years ago and be working on something completely different now, and you'd have had nothing we've added in the last 7 years.

We worked on the game for 10 years with relatively small success, only 'making it big' this year. It'd have been extremely easy to give up on it at any point in that time, call it 1.0 and move onto a new game, and ironically many of those who chastise us for 'still having not finished our game' would presumably look at us as doing a better job despite in my eyes of us doing the exact opposite.

I'm immensely proud of us still being Early Access, and kinda sad that the reason that should be the case isn't more obvious.

Early Access means you're sold the game as it stands now, we're not selling future features, its priced to be worth the price for what currently exists at the point of purchase. Check the Early Access rules on Steam. Yes we have stuff we intend to add, we have a roadmap of features we plan, yes we'll stand by our word as we always have. But this is not a legal obligation, we could 1.0 it and move on at any point, it's a single button in our Steam backend we can click at any time. And 'et voila' its no longer 'In Early Access'. Does the arbitrary nature of this stick out at all?

We could have reframed that future roadmap, our plans, as DLC plans instead, never mentioned we intended to add them, and no one would look at our game at 1.0 and say its not a feature complete game that's worth the money. Despite, literally nothing having changed apart from not suffering these arbitrary optics people apply to us because we keep the Early Access tag, and our plans instead to actually charge you multiple times for these new features you have now for free the same as someone who bought the game in 2012. And somehow this makes us worse, or less worthy of a labour of love.

We chose to keep Early Access tag, much to our own pain and suffering in how arbitrarily differently people treat us, because we want this one single base game to have everything we consider to be the perfect and most feature rich zombie survival game in history. Could we in theory 1.0 release, and then just release stuff as post release free DLC? I suppose.

But we're subjecting ourselves to Early Access because until we have our perfect game, we don't want to call it done, lest of all because the temptation to move onto pastures new may be more intense if we had a 1.0 game out of Early Access, or the justification to consider charging for any additional content, and the game is not what we want it to be yet. We want it all to be free additions, we want it all to be assumed to be part of the base game and part of the price of entry.

We don't want to say 'the game is 1.0' when it's not representative of our desires for our final vision. We want the day we hit 1.0 to represent the most feature rich and deep survival game ever that we're happy to consider 'done' and have no more ambitions to add more to. That doesn't mean it could not have justifiably been made 1.0 countless times in the past.

We have it in Early Access for that reason and it'll remain so until the day we likely hang up our PZ spurs.

Not throwing shade at Rimworld, as I adore the game and devs, but to purely use it as example of a different path we may have taken.

If they kept in Early Access and instead planned to give all their 3 DLCs away for free in the base game, people would have been complaining this last few years that they still haven't finished adding children and genetics, they mentioned they were adding it. Still not in. What about the royalty titles they mentioned a while back? They mentioned in a blog 3 years ago they plan to add different ideologies to the colonists, I was really looking forward to that. Is that still not in!?!? How are they so slow? It's STILL in Early Access?

Whatever their planned 4th DLC is would be a chain around their neck, instead of some unannounced DLC of 'extra' stuff, it'd be stuff people 'expected' to call Rimworld as base game 'finished', their vision of the 'finished' game would have morphed to include that content and without that DLC content they would have 'still not finished developing Rimworld'. Because they had that little Early Access tag, entirely of their own choice, the exact same work would be entirely perceived in a completely negative light, despite coming in the same amount of time and instead being free. It's crazy. I can't wrap my head around it, honestly.

They release from Early Access, and sell that stuff as paid DLC instead of freely added to their Early Access development, and no one bats an eyelid. In fact they are somehow 'better' for doing that, because they finished Rimworld, unlike those slow ass Zomboid devs who still 'haven't finished'. No judgement on Rimworld devs selling DLC, that's completely fair, they've paid their dues and made an incredible game. 1.0 and are now funding extra dev with paid DLC. Totally fine and the normal way these things go. But we're not doing that, and are just putting *everything* we want to add into the base game for free, and yet are getting punched around the face by some about it when the distinction between these two routes is entirely smoke and mirrors, arguably we're doing what's actually in the better interest of you and yet somehow we're worth less due to it. Drives me to the pits of despair, frankly.

Don't your realize how arbitrary these expectations and perceptions are? We're not some trash fire Early Access game that was a disaster and got removed from Steam, we're the ones who've provided people 11 years of active dev and free content, with some of the most major game changing and most well received additions coming within the last couple of years. We've had a high review scoring and fondly regarded game for most of our entire game's dev history and could have called that a good job and out at any point, and instead commit to just pushing it as far as we possibly can, all for free to those that bought it 11 years ago. How are we the bad guys to some, or just doing some expected amount of obligation of development of 'finishing our game' to others? Look around and point out how many devs do that and wouldn't be on their 4th game by now and this game having long been abandoned and considered 'complete' with 1/8th of the feature set it has today.

We don't want to call it 'done' by releasing out of Early Access until we're ready to move on from it and until we consider it 'done' we don't want to charge our early supporters any more money for the additional work we've done. This is our choice, not something imposed on us. No one would look at PZ and say it was lacking enough content and worth to stand up as a complete game, putting aside any things we've mentioned we're planning on adding.

The game is feature rich and could be considered (perhaps with a bit of final 1.0 polish we could have done at any time without further development of features) a complete game by any metric. We've chosen not to do that, moving onto pastures new and working on something new and exciting and different like so many Early Access devs have gotten to do by clicking that little button, despite (trust me) 11 years on the same project making this an extremely enticing prospect for any game dev. There's a phrase to describe our reason for not doing that, moving on, or trying to monetize our last 11 years of development to the maximum we could have. It's called 'labour of love'.

Don't expect to win, we're absolutely overjoyed with the nomination and there are some amazing games we're up against. But I resent the implication that because of a little tag we've chosen to keep, 11 years of dedication to this game doesn't mean anything and we shouldn't be eligible for any recognition of dedicating a sizable chunk of our time on this earth to this game that the vast majority of people love and have nothing but kind words to say about, because we have chosen not to click this button https://imgur.com/a/SM8uIqH, that I could do right now in the time it takes for you to read my reply, to remove the ball and chain that so many arbitrarily judge us by.

It's on Steam to buy. You bought it and are playing it. It's 'released' and after 11 years of which we could have moved on at any time, we're still adding free content to it. Does it deserve to be nominated? Does it deserve to win? I'd never be so arrogant as to assume it does.

But it deserves to be eligible for consideration by its fans as much as any other game.

I was wondering should I buy this game and that response confirmed it for me. Now to play!
#12
Ratsmon Dec 23, 2022 @ 7:41am 
This dev reply should be pinned somewhere, I know they wouldn't do it but my god... As soon as I'm into some money I'm buying gifts of this game for people, yall deserve it. Wonderful reply, thank you for being so nice and giving a well thought out response. Really makes me feel like at least some devs out there care about their community. Love you guys, gonna go play the ♥♥♥♥ out of the game now!
#13
Kilgore Dec 23, 2022 @ 7:55am 
I dont know why people are being ♥♥♥♥♥, Project zomboid has come a long way since i first started playing and in my opinion totally deserves this award and the success it has gotten. If the devs are still even reading these posts, keep it up you are creating a masterpiece.
#14
Sinatr Dec 23, 2022 @ 7:56am 
Originally posted by RaideR:
ahahahahahhah that dude is russian
looooooool now i get it
Are you talking about me? How is nationality matter when someone is asking a question? What did you get exactly out of my nationality dear Mr. Rasist? Btw, I am ukrainian and I am not going to check your profile or anything, only your last comment to stop talking to you.

Originally posted by Simple:
This dev reply should be pinned somewhere
Yeah, it's good, humble opinion on EA games and despite I am disagree with it, let it be pinned.

@Devs, my question is not about choices here, my question is rather about morality. Are you going to run into that long explanation for any other game player, who knows nothing about Project Zomboid, but just stumble like me, what unreleased game is doing on the stage? I hope you are not.

As a player I prefer released game instead of various re-vamps, over-hauls, etc. which often being happening with EA titles. I don't know if it was a case with Project Zomboid. Look, I simply bought game long time ago and tried it once. Just once. It was ok. I will not play it again until it is released. Why? Because I don't want to be a beta-/public-tester, I just want to play one of the games I own after devs decide "oh, we are finally ready".

I own many EA games, some of them went poof "1.0" and they got negative reviews. Some still in EA for decades soon. I heard this game will be released.. soon.. /sigh But it's not released. And the devs are already want to be rewarded in my opinion very wrong category, which obviously imply, that game must be released.

If I am alone in that thinking, let me be.
#15
< >
Showing 1-15 of 72 comments
Per page: 1530 50

Project Zomboid > General Discussions > Topic Details
Date Posted: Dec 22, 2022 @ 6:57pm
Posts: 72

Discussions Rules and Guidelines