Game is dead?

[sparkydill]

so is this game abandoned by the devs?

[Gladi8er65]

The Dev is one person and the game is not "abandoned", but rather it was completed and released years ago and no need for any further updates.

[Pancake]

The game is developed by a single person who's been making games for a very long time.

He's currently working on a city builder that is based on this game, so he's most likely not working on patching it.

https://shiningrocksoftware.com/about/

Overall when I played it, it was pretty stable, had some issues.

[Stillaute]

Banished is borderline Perfect. And now with the CC Frontier mod, its almost another completly new game. Other game Devs use some of the best features of Banished to make their other new games. I got my $ worth buying Banished.

[Teut]

Where does the asinine trend come from to call finished games 'abandoned' or 'dead'?

I see this stupidly often.

[dctoe_US]

No game is dead as long as someone is playing it. Enjoy the moment. Happy New Year!

[olympe]

Originally posted by Teut:

Where does the asinine trend come from to call finished games 'abandoned' or 'dead'?

I see this stupidly often.

It comes from all those games that grace the world with "DLCs" that you have to pay for if you want them. Many of which are important to have to be able to (continue to) enjoy the game you already purchased (because they come with a "free update" that messes everything up if you don't get the newest DLC). Like, uh, there was some city builder that literally did that - mess up the game to force every player to buy the newest DLC.

Of course, there's also the EA model ("Sims" 3 and 4, I think): Make a game, give it relatively little content to start with, then hype up brand new extensions or DLCs that are not must-have, but really, really great to have and give you so many more options that you hust have to have them. Rinse and repeat. (I think I once counted over 30 additions for Sims 3, some of which were almost as expensive as the original game.)

[waynel140]

Or a subscription in order to not have to buy hundreds of dollars of DLC's? I'm looking at you Paradox.

[Wolfen]

Originally posted by Teut:

Where does the asinine trend come from to call finished games 'abandoned' or 'dead'?

I see this stupidly often.

Well, because many are buggy/unfinished when the devs move on to trash out the next crappy game in line.

Banished however is done since years indeed.
And we owe the Dev alot of other city builder games, for without the success of this one the genre would most likely still hibernating.

[maiden4meldin]

Back in the day, games came out, there were no updates, no bug fixing, and no DLC's You bought the game, played it, and continued to play until you bought another new finished game.

I personally, preferred buying a finished game. They came to us fully formed and highly playable. But along came the "next generation " of gamers, and how they need new games every day of every week. Even willing to play games that are barely ready to be played. Called, Beta Testing, Then Early Access. So that by the time the game is complete, Nobody is playing it anymore, cuzz they are fed up with all the updates, messing up their saved games. Screaming at the Dev's for game breaking updates. And if the Dev's put a game onto the market, finished, without Early Access, and do a few updates, to fix any bugs, as Banished did. Once the bugs were complete, The Developer called the game complete and finished, and has moved on to his next project. And still people are screaming, the game is dead, no dev followups. no DLC's etc etc etc. Even though, when Banished Modders went to Luke, begging to be able to do more with their mods. Luke did return, and did a whole new update, so the Modding community could have better access to the game itself. Then Luke said, I am done now! It belongs to the world now.

And yet, at least once per week, like clockwork, we end up with posts that claim this is a dead game. So dead in fact, it has thousands of faithful players all of the time. And a huge mod community that is working hard to provide new and fun content to expand the game. Along with New Players every week, learning to play it. And with hundreds of copy cat games that have attempted and failed to produce as great a game as this so called dead game.

I suggest, to those claiming Banished is dead, Go play a different game,

[Jeebs]

Originally posted by Teut:

Where does the asinine trend come from to call finished games 'abandoned' or 'dead'?

I see this stupidly often.

I have no idea, but it annoys me to no end as well. I find it idiotic to call a game "dead" just because it's finished. I guess people think game devs should be chained to their desk and keep pointlessly churning out updates until they die.

I've seen people whine about a game being "dead" and "abandoned by the devs"... in the forums for a Sierra game that came out in the 90's... just boggles my mind.

[RecalledMeat]

Geez, a lot of you obviously knew what he meant by "dead", otherwise you're assuming what he meant and built your comment off of that assumption. Shame shame.

Regardless, dead to me means that the dev is finished with the game and no further development will be spent on it. Finished, dead, completed, etc, etc. In that aspect, it sucks a little because the game was a solid piece of development with the mods making it even more addictive. It would have been great if the developer did put more time into it and add even more features but that's selfish on my (our) part.

It will go down as a re-playable game many times over on it's own with the mods adding even more to it. Thank you for the amazing game and I wish you even more success with your next projects!

[maiden4meldin]

Originally posted by RecalledMeat:

Geez, a lot of you obviously knew what he meant by "dead", otherwise you're assuming what he meant and built your comment off of that assumption. Shame shame.

Regardless, dead to me means that the dev is finished with the game and no further development will be spent on it. Finished, dead, completed, etc, etc. In that aspect, it sucks a little because the game was a solid piece of development with the mods making it even more addictive. It would have been great if the developer did put more time into it and add even more features but that's selfish on my (our) part.

It will go down as a re-playable game many times over on it's own with the mods adding even more to it. Thank you for the amazing game and I wish you even more success with your next projects!

Indeed, you have relevant content here. But, Banished players are very protective about Luke as the Developer of this game. And also very passionate and protective of the game he created called Banished. That is why we almost all universally come running to defend this game and the developer. Shining Rock is a One Man Show. Luke does it because it was a labour of love from my understanding. And his fans repaid that labour of love tenfold.

It is not like a Paradox game, that provides skinny content to begin with, leaves it to the modders, and then abandons the game itself, Erhm, surviving mars much. Banished is a completed finished game.

[olympe]

Originally posted by RecalledMeat:

Geez, a lot of you obviously knew what he meant by "dead", otherwise you're assuming what he meant and built your comment off of that assumption. Shame shame.

Since he also called the game "abandoned" in the next sentence (and didn't add anything else), I have to wonder if that "assumption" is so wrong. Considering the context, it's less of an assumption and more of a deduction.

Dead means it's not alive any more. Like a game that nobody plays. Which Banished is not. And the mods and the forum community make it feel even more alive.
Abandoned means that it was left somewhere when it needed to be taken care of. You can only abandon someone who is helpless - like children, or an unfinished project. However, banished isn't a half-finished game left to rot, it's a finished game able to stand on its own. It doesn't need further development any more.

Not to mention that we get these threads about ever week (or every other week at the latest) pretty much dissing banished for not getting more $$$ content all the time.

[Sarsgamer]

Originally posted by maiden4meldin:

Back in the day, games came out, there were no updates, no bug fixing, and no DLC's You bought the game, played it, and continued to play until you bought another new finished game.

I personally, preferred buying a finished game. They came to us fully formed and highly playable. But along came the "next generation " of gamers, and how they need new games every day of every week. Even willing to play games that are barely ready to be played. Called, Beta Testing, Then Early Access. So that by the time the game is complete, Nobody is playing it anymore, cuzz they are fed up with all the updates, messing up their saved games. Screaming at the Dev's for game breaking updates. And if the Dev's put a game onto the market, finished, without Early Access, and do a few updates, to fix any bugs, as Banished did. Once the bugs were complete, The Developer called the game complete and finished, and has moved on to his next project. And still people are screaming, the game is dead, no dev followups. no DLC's etc etc etc. Even though, when Banished Modders went to Luke, begging to be able to do more with their mods. Luke did return, and did a whole new update, so the Modding community could have better access to the game itself. Then Luke said, I am done now! It belongs to the world now.

And yet, at least once per week, like clockwork, we end up with posts that claim this is a dead game. So dead in fact, it has thousands of faithful players all of the time. And a huge mod community that is working hard to provide new and fun content to expand the game. Along with New Players every week, learning to play it. And with hundreds of copy cat games that have attempted and failed to produce as great a game as this so called dead game.

I suggest, to those claiming Banished is dead, Go play a different game,

Just to note on this... i actually avoid early access now.

for 1: i played a game in early access, played as much as i could. By the time the game was full release i was bored of it and it start me over so had to start from the beginning. It was an offline game to.

2: i forgot about the game and ended up coming back to it year+ later. The early release was good, but the full release was better and a bit of a different game. Though I did enjoy both.

[ObiWanPEZ]

Originally posted by Teut:

Where does the asinine trend come from to call finished games 'abandoned' or 'dead'?
I see this stupidly often.

Some games are incomplete, and never are completed. Occasionally a user will release an update / patch either by themselves or as a mod. These are "abandonware", a term from the early-to-mid-'90s.
Typically, I use the term for a product that a developer has not released updates to for many years, and also has not released another product which supersedes it.