Installa Steam
Accedi
|
Lingua
简体中文 (cinese semplificato)
繁體中文 (cinese tradizionale)
日本語 (giapponese)
한국어 (coreano)
ไทย (tailandese)
Български (bulgaro)
Čeština (ceco)
Dansk (danese)
Deutsch (tedesco)
English (inglese)
Español - España (spagnolo - Spagna)
Español - Latinoamérica (spagnolo dell'America Latina)
Ελληνικά (greco)
Français (francese)
Indonesiano
Magyar (ungherese)
Nederlands (olandese)
Norsk (norvegese)
Polski (polacco)
Português (portoghese - Portogallo)
Português - Brasil (portoghese brasiliano)
Română (rumeno)
Русский (russo)
Suomi (finlandese)
Svenska (svedese)
Türkçe (turco)
Tiếng Việt (vietnamita)
Українська (ucraino)
Segnala un problema nella traduzione
Regole e linee guida per le discussioni
0 
Segnala questo messaggio
Now I see why folks have a less than stellar opinion of Tim Shafer nowadays. The video game industry has changed since the '80s, and those within it have changed. 'Course, I still need to fact check everything you mentioned but I've seen enough to understand why folks feel the way they do.
Any hoot, I look forward to play this with the changes outside contributors have made.
Article about how first two weeks of EA sales recouped double the initial investment
By the way the game was fully funded before coming to Early access... for more funding.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/08/this-is-kickstarter/
Article contains the Pictures released (Photoshopped or not its still an insult) and discusses the other game thats part of the scandal. Asked for 400k on Kickstarter got 2.5 million and still "ran out of funds"
Cant say how good the article is/isnt so just use it as proof of the images I mentioned. Oviously doublefines origional release was taken down because "oh ♥♥♥♥ that wa sa bad idea"
All the rest can be found here on steam if you want to bother digging through old forum threads.
The whole fiasco basicly turned into the Flagship example of how Bad of a concept Early access is (Both on and off steam) and how eaisly exploitable the community is when you have litteraly no obligation to make true on your promises.
i've been super alert to that lately. Pre-paying for games and "kick starting" major companies by crowd sourcing instead of venture capital just needs to stop. Add "Early Access" to that fire as well. We've got be smarter as gamers.
People were more than happy to toss a couple bucks at someone who had an idea they liked because the whole concept was new. Seemed like a great idea. Help out the development finatually for something that fits a nich that your interested in but is too small for a large scale developer to dump time and money into. Get an advance copy of the game and help out the process with direct user feedback and bugtesting. How could that possibly be bad?
No one had any reason to suspect that so many developers such as, CodeHatch, SMP and even established dev teams like Doublefine would stoop to scamming and fraud.
Its like the first people who won the nigerian lottery. They had no reason to suspect it was a fraud because such things didnt happen untill then.
Lessons were learned now Kickstarter requires projects to fufill thier promises or they will refund donations and Steam has a 2 hours-2 weeks refund policy. But unfortunately the damage was done and the level of trust given to inde devs plumited because of a few scammers who pissed in everyones cheerieos.
The next house of cards to collapse is the AAA budjet Hype train. Given the ammount of skepacism and pessamism I now hold for the gaming industry as a whole. Because of dissapointments on both sides of the industry, Indie and Mainstream. I honestly feel that the entire industry is going to be draged down with the giant publishers once they start to fall.
Their big claims to fame are Psyconaughts, Brutal Legend, Stacking and The Grim Fandango. Persoally none of them were spectacular games with the Exception of Grim Fandango which i cant really speak for since i dont really like Point click Adventure games. All of them contained highly repetative gameplay.
An Early Access game can be 300% funded and the dev could just walk the ♥♥♥♥ away from it with all that cash - no accountability at all on their part. Something to consider when entering EAs, which I simply wont do anymore - too many sheisters/incompetents in the industry now
What would you guys think of a way to hold companies accountable for taking the money, or only being funded half if it only produces half of a game?
Say, if (and im not saying we are or will be in the future, im guaging the general mood of people) Derelict were to say "hey guys, we have a game we want to produce, interested in funding us for early access. The rules are that we complete the game to the specs agreed to and that we are only released half the funding until those specs are completed or suitable changes are made in agreement with all backers"?
As far as im aware, the Early Access thing has its perks, yeah, but also the downfall of accountability and general greed. But really, if you could legally bind that, would it be a more suitable way to raise money in that format?
-Skenners
It depends on the project in question. Youl alwayse get some support simply due to law of averages. How much support depends on how tempting your offer is.
In the early days of Early access and crowdfunding I was happy to toss 5-20 bucks at a game that looked fun on paper. Now however after having lost out on my investment a couple times, my willingness to support an in dev project has subsided severely.
Suppose i came accross 2 Early acess projects. one featured 3d graphics on par with Half life 2. Featured space exploration and building such as what you find in minecraft, terraforming. crafting, yada yada baiscly minecraft in space that looks really good.
The other project is similar in concept slightly different in themeing and more simple 3d graphics, the only signifigant difference as that the 2nd project provides a clause in their lisence agreement that stats that if the features listed on the project concept are not completed by v1.0 then all EA backers recieve a half refund.
In a heartbeat I woudl support the 2nd project and ingore the first simply because there is some security offered in my investment. Either I get what was promised or I get part of what was promised, and part of my investment back.
It stands to reason im not the only one who thinks like this so i assume if you could provide and appealing project concept and some sort of investor security you would have proportionately more supporters.
See, thats what I was thinking. The majority of complaints about how DF handled things pre, during and post game were completely different, but some had a major theme of trusting what was being done to completion, communication throughout the entire process and accountability at all stages.
To me, I come from a corporate background where everything is in a contract and has clauses that state that if you dont complete something, you get penalised. So seeing this, no wonder its so attractive to people who have to run a creative output, but also for people that want freedom of accountability. Thats great if you have the integrity to state what you're going to do and do it, or at least, explain why it cant be done.
In any case, accountability, integrity, communication are the factors that would go toward a better crowd funded venture from what I can see. Im happy to be wrong about this, if someone could clarify it better.
Im also asking because one day, Derelict will start producing our own titles, we have a few ideas in the pipeline for some smaller games, text/sound/gameplay based style ones that can be knocked out pretty quickly with reasonably low to no funding at all. But we also have bigger ideas as well.
Seeing how the current publishers go about business feels like a giant kick to the pants in that you're just making a game to break even, instead of making a game to help fund the next one.
Getting these Ideas is a great way for us to evaluate what would and wouldnt work per title and to feel around without ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it up like others have in the past.
-Skenners
From what i have observed (Samples being Factorio (not on steam yet) Kenshi, Spacebase, Starbound, Starforge, Towns, Gnomoria) Communication is vital to the continuing support of a community. To me the only bad news is no news. Towns, Starforge, and Spacebase DF9 all had extensive periods of no news all 3 eventiably ended in an abrupt end to the titles development and quite an angry community.
Starbound has had its share of no news which at the time made its community rather unsettled but overall they keep people informed as to whats going on. Factorio makes weekly progress reports on their website and basicly tell the comunity exactly wahts going on, even if its a period of time with little to no development happening. They let the community know why and usualy share some new ideas they came up with during their "Vacation."
Kenshi for a long time I was deeply invovled with gettng the devs to resume communication as it was a very long period of time with no news. I dont mean to brag but Through constant coy naggig I got the developers more active on their own steam subforum and they started making montly progress reports to the community, the result was an increase in public support and optimism.
I cant hope to speak for an entire community or pretend as if im some sort of PR professional so by all means take my word for what its worth.
But it really seems to me to be a reassuring factor to both the current and potential future community to see community reviews that say "The develoeprs frequently engage the community in discussions about current goals mini projects and recently acomplishments." Or even to see a list of stickied Updates on the forum.
When you think about it nearly the whole world today is connected by social interaction of indaviduals. Word of mouth alone is a far more powerfull tool that direct advertisement. Billboards and commercials for the most part go on ignored by everything except the subconcious. Internet ads are eaisly blocked by Browser plugins.
Social interaction though is something nearly everyone seeks out to some extent or another. While you cant possible hope to reach everyone People interested in certain games or ideas tend to gravitate towards similar people and social communities. At worst youl be noticed by your target audience. At best your target audience may invite people from otuside the loop to join in. Either way a developer who actively engages these comunity's with News of progress, setbacks and even idle banter simply looks good to anyone who is considering supporting the project.
It even provides some motivation for the developers when they see the community they are working for grow.
Sorry for rambling a bit, its just ive had alot of time to think about this exact topic with everything that has happened in Steam EA and crowdfunding.
Being that Im both one of the co-founders of Derelict Games and for the most part, the most vocal of us as and am now officially the Project Lead on the Spacebase DF9 Restoration team, everything boils down to me. If its great, its on me. If its ♥♥♥♥, its DEFINITELY on me. But its not just about the game itself, its about how the community will interact with us if they're in the loop.
Ive been putting back releasing our document to the public on what our plans are, time frames and stuff as we (read: I) need to work on it a bit more to incorporate a few other things that we were looking at, as well as the input from some of the team.
Im thinking that its time i complete that, start a new thread and update everyone on the progress of v1.08.
Like you guys, I like to know whats happening, but like a developer, I know how lazy I can get and how the time can shoot by pretty damn quickly without updates. As well as my results oriented way of leading people ("I give you the module to work on, come back to me when its done" style), updates can be sporadic, but i can work around that.
Thanks for the input, man!
-Skenners