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i mean the reason why star citizens is frowned from the early access tag is because, they received about 2million in their kickstarter and has since started selling crazy ship packs, while also remaining as an early access game.
theres zero mtx yet in the game and i don't think they had a kickstarter as well.
edit: they had a desura alpha funding, but i think it's close to early early access but i'm not too sure
Post from developer :3
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.
That being said, do your own research. Google is a powerful search engine. YouTube exists. This game isn't perfect, but there is a reason why 30 thousand people are playing it.
http://store.steampowered.com
Notwithstanding, I understand the jaundice of early access games. I can personally say this game, in particular, is monumental.
It's not another Valve+random indie dev cash grab game. It's on the road to somewhere good. It's just the devs keep stopping at every single service station and gift shop along the way.
A lot of people refuse to use the search feature, it might be easier to just ask a question who knows im not going to draw up a conclusion as to why lol, from looking at their post history It didn't seem like trolling to me. I like giving people the benefit of the doubt, regardless of how it makes me feel inside. Someone will ask again next week, it is what it is. How we respond is our choosing.
That's weird, because I'm still waiting for those NPCs they were talking about 12 years ago.
This is really the bottom line. Is it slow to develop, with some major features being anticipated for many years and not yet in sight? Definitely. Many areas where the game is lacking? For sure.
But there also wouldn't be over a hundred thousand positive reviews if it wasn't delivering enough of something valuable. You can't fool everyone forever and 10 years is a long time to be viewed as overall positive if you aren't doing at least something right.