Don't give early access to big youtubers

Xander · Jul 5, 2013

Heresy said: ↑

FUCKING

THIS

Starbound doesn't even need any advertisement, the present community is already MASSIVE, and the team got 1.5 million dollaridoos by pre order alone.

This is more than impressive.
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Drops in the bucket compared to big name games. Theres far more out there, and they are shooting for those who they havn't gotten hooked yet. So it kinda does..

Heresy · Jul 5, 2013

Xander said: ↑

Drops in the bucket compared to big name games. Theres far more out there, and they are shooting for those who they havn't gotten hooked yet. So it kinda does..
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Yeah, because trying to get as high as shit like EA/Ubisoft/Beth' and so on is sure as hell a good idea when you're as small as Chucklefish.

Trust me they can be really proud of what they already achieved.

Spike · Jul 5, 2013

Heresy said: ↑

Yeah, because trying to get as high as shit like EA/Ubisoft/Beth' and so on is sure as hell a good idea when you're as small as Chucklefish.

Trust me they can be really proud of what they already achieved.
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Well, the devs have already stated in this thread that $1.5 million isn't enough for them, and that they need more money, and that they need more publicity so that they can get more money.

mollygos · Jul 5, 2013

Ahhhhhhhhhh because people are saying a lot of things that a) aren't true b) are common misconceptions, I am going to re-post everything I've said in here so far, and I hope it'll serve as some sort of decent Q&A about why press gets early access, why that is the industry standard, why games like Starbound still need advertising, why release date sales are incredibly important, etc. Then I am going to lock this thread so everyone can see it and calm down, because there is really nowhere else this discussion can go. The truth is the truth, as someone mentioned earlier. PM me if you have further questions.

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mollygos said: ↑

Honestly, this is just the way things work.
How do you think movie critics get reviews out before the movie is released? Games have reviews up days before they come out. Even toys, makeup products, etc are reviewed by press before being released to the general public.

It's not "unfair". Youtubers are just people who have gained popularity, subscribers, a large following of people who care about their opinion. When they get their hands on something before it's released, it's not some sort of nepotism, it's marketing.
We understand that fans have been anticipating the game for a long time, but Youtubers are people who have put the work in and built up a career that allows them the opportunity to play games early because that helps the developers.
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mollygos said: ↑

ReverseShadow said: ↑

I wouldn't exactly mind if youtubers got their hands on it first, but I would never watch any of their videos as there would be too many spoilers. Also, if the game were to be given to youtubers, how would you select who to give it to? If you give it to all the big-name youtubers, its going to sweep all the smaller channeled youtubers aside...
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That's...again, how marketing works.
Youtubers with a pretty moderate level of subscribers who ask for a copy may get one, but developers are always going to give copies to the big-name Youtubers first. Because they're the ones with the most viewers.

Big-name Youtubers didn't just become big-name Youtubers by praying hard to the Youtube Gods or something, they gained viewers by producing a lot of content, being funny or interesting, etc. They worked for it.
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mollygos said: ↑

Lusid said: ↑

Okay, i would love someone to explain to me please how them getting it early helps anything. Now please keep in mind, i said early. If they get the game at the same time as everyone else, the videos still get made and then when people see the vids they can come on over and buy the game. If they get it (very) early then the people see the videos and come to see it's not released. They may still buy, but they may be put off and not. But even if you were to assume they would not be put off at all, what is the benefit? The same amount of people still buy it.

Now if you refuse an early (probably free) copy to these people would they refuse to make a video? If so, is that the kind of people you really want showcasing the game? Not to mention someone Will make a video, even if they won't. It will spread, and perhaps someone else who isn't as well known gets the most popular starbound vid and people look into their stuff. Would that really be so bad?
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That's just not how marketing works, man.
You want your release to generate as much hype as possible, no matter what sort of game you're making. Therefore, you want videos of your game being made and viewed leading up to release.

Say you release a game and you have not given the game to a single journalist prior to release. Nobody has reviewed or covered the game, because they have not had a game to review.

...your release day sales will fall pretty flat, and release day sales are crucial. If your game is already popular, like Starbound is, then yeah, you may still get a lot of sales from people who have already been waiting for the game. But those are dedicated fans-- your central fanbase-- and many of them have probably already pre-ordered.

But outside of that dedicated fanbase, nobody's going to have much to say about your game because nobody's played it yet. There aren't any reviews online so they have nothing at all to go by, nobody to tell them if it's good or worth buying. So they'll wait, and if they wait there's a pretty good chance they'll just forget about it and not end up buying the game at all.

Because early access is already the industry standard for press and reviewers, when a game doesn't offer early access to the media there's sort of a default assumption that it's bad. Good chance of a bad reception just because nobody's said anything about the game.
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mollygos said: ↑

Lusid said: ↑

This is the part that i have the problem with: Release day sales. You guys are offering pre-orders (which have nailed over a mil and a half by the way) so it really doesn't matter how many sales you get on release day.
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It...really does. Release day sales are extremely important.
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mollygos said: ↑

Lusid said: ↑

Fair enough, i guess i just don't see why. I would imagine people are just going to buy the game whenever they hear about it. If buy-in is available through beta till release then people will just buy whenever it is they hear about it. If the beta shows up on steam, as tiy stated he wants to/is thinking of, then tons will buy when they spot it there. If the videos of these entitled few who get their early copy all come out on release day of the game then you'll have a number of how effective their contribution is. If you release the beta to those who wish to buy in on steam, you'd get to see how effective just a steam release is in terms of advertising. I dunno, it all comes down to timing the way i see it. But maybe there's just something i don't see. I know i usually wind up buying a game whenever it is i hear about it and decide it's a worthy game to purchase. Unless i see all the advertising for it when there's no actual way to purchase it, then it's either i forget about it all together or i wait till i can get it. I suppose i've come to feel that with pre-purchasing being so prominent now a days, a release day isn't what it used to be.
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A release day is definitely exactly what it used to be. It's very very important.

I'd like to clear something up that I think is a pretty common misconception. We made a lot a lot a lot more than we expected on pre-orders, and that's awesome! We also have a very large team who have poured a huge buttload of man-hours into this game.
$1.5million seems like a lot, and we were prepared to work with a lot less in order to get Starbound released. We took a leap of faith and opened pre-orders instead of taking an advance that realistically wouldn't have been enough to cover development, and the risk certainly paid off.
But when you divide the money made across the team and the business, yes, release date sales still matter very much. Haha. The team still needs an income post-release! And profits need to be made to sustain a business.

Budgets aren't just determined by how much money you put into a game, they're determined by the man-hours put into it too-- even if you're not actually making money on those hours. Time is money, right? If you put $500 into the development of a game that you work on by yourself for 40 hours a week for a year, doing a job that should normally net you, I dunno, say $50k a year? The game's actual budget is not $500, it's $50,500. And that's for a really small game! That budget quickly multiplies when you add more people to your team.

Dynafols said: ↑

This can become a touchy subject. It has both pros and cons and both sides of the arguments are half decent.

But the big question I have is... what happens when YouTubers become to powerful? Every since YouTube was bought by Google, its been ever increasingly hard for smaller channels to get attention. YouTube used to have "random daily feature videos", but now their entire layout is devoted to getting people to check out the already "popular" channels. While it is argued that the bigger YouTubers have "earned" the chance to get things earlier, it also means the playing field isn't fair and equal now. Bigger YouTubers will bigger and smaller channels will start to vanish even further. I'm not saying its impossible to get noticed, its just increasingly harder these days, and this doesn't help, even if it is a small factor in the overall aspect of things.
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I'm not sure I've noticed small Youtube channels having difficulty gaining popularity. I see videos going viral and Youtubers making careers of their channels all the time. Because they put the work in, and occasionally because they've gotten lucky and one particular video has gained popularity very very quickly. But for "big name" Youtubers, running their channel is often their actual job, and as with making anything fun into a career, you have to work very very hard at it.

If a small Youtube channel is having trouble reaching its audience, it needs to learn to take better advantage of social media, or rethink and adjust the way they produce content to be more interesting, funny or otherwise appealing to potential viewers. I'm really not sure it's an issue of the big dudes monopolizing Youtube game footage.

To be fair, it's not really our problem re: smaller channels having difficulties gaining popularity because it's not a developer's responsibility to make anyone a Youtube star (you don't see anyone expecting developers to turn their games blog into the next Polygon or Destructoid), but I wanted to answer anyway.
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I hope this is helpful.

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Don't give early access to big youtubers

Xander Spaceman Spiff

Heresy Master Chief

Spike Supernova

mollygos Former Staff

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Don't give early access to big youtubers

Xander Spaceman Spiff

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Spike Supernova

mollygos Former Staff

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