Why Chucklefish lowers the bar for developers and hurts consumers

While chucklefish is of little concern to me these days, I do feel they've vexed me enough to warrant a protest on their product Starbound. I want to shake the fanboy out of you and look at the big picture. We have a lot of problems in the world, and Chucklefish is a minor concern when put beside them, yet supporting a business that exploits the use of early access sales does have a small impact in the economics of gaming, and the standard of gaming related products, and perhaps consumerism as a whole.
I feel like the project as a whole really hasn't changed since angry koala, and in fact has gotten worse as they choose order, predictability, and functionally for planets and planet types, rather than the mysterious nature of planets of patches past.
Smaller independent game companies producing a product for early access, then suddenly coming to a halt with progress, hurts gaming consumerism. It makes consumers doubt the quality of a product, and early access now already has a bad name because of companies such as chucklefish not releasing a finished product or making dramatic progress within a reasonable time-frame.

These "daily updates" where they add a new lamp or some silly bone digging mini-game is not what we need to release the game. We need the core game mechanics tweaked, and stability to be making dramatic improvements with every patch. Stumbling to release after a year of waiting for a stable patch, upbeat giraffe finally comes out with a few improvements, and MORE than a few backwards steps and foul-ups to make the game way more tedious. This isn't ok for a game that's been in early access for two years.
You are seeing more toxicity on the forums because that what happens to game companies that screw over consumers, and then refuse to give them an outlet! They get backlash. Now only the most loyal of fanboys cling to chucklefish, and moderators happily ban any forum post with negativity, sometimes over-eagerly out of delusions of duty and self importance, but it ends up ostracizing large chucks of the community. What's annoying is, that if you guys engaged in the dialogue (and if the mods actually allowed it without closing the thread) and admitted that their progress isn't what it should be, then things would probably change in a better direction. But this blind fanboy defending and ban happy mod mentality is just going to hurt the game in the long run, your critics are your most important insight to making a better game! The consumers who are angry with a product also have something insightful to say sometimes if you don't take their rage personally. And they say that this is not an acceptable developmental process for an early access game. It is because of projects like this that early access has proved a failure for consumers, and continuing to support this game, or other early access titles, is to say that you support more products being released in this fashion. What if this style of marketing became popular, and we were doomed to buy games early in development that never make significant progress after release?
You don't see that everywhere, because that's bad marketing, it's bad for developers, consumers, and merchants. Supporting this game and it's level of progress after it's release on early access is supporting bad products being sold at full price without a reasonable date for release. That's not the kind a product I, or any consumer should support.

 

We are not fanboying. What is happening is that we get black knights like you popping out the wood works and grey knights have to get off their asses and be white knights because you don't think early access games have honest people working in them.

If you look at the rest of the early access games on Steam, you will realize that Chucklefish is one of the companies that keeps updating their game with new, if drastic, changes to their game. There are tons of early access games that got green lighted, but the developers completely ditched their product, leaving customers with a half completed product. Chucklefish has been hard at work for the last few years cranking out updates. Nightly is a brewing pot for testing and while extremely volatile, proves without a doubt that this game has active developers thinking and working on this game.

And mods are not ban happy. I have seen them do their best to calm down situations before handing out warnings and then bans. There have been users that I would have banned on sight, but the mods here waited and observed with cooler heads before intervening.

 

I'll admit to a bias on the mods...

 

I stopped reading here. If you honestly believe that it hasnt changed, then you can just scoot your butt out the nearest door.

I don't feel that Chucklefish has used, abused, swindled, exploited, or otherwise, me in any way, shape, or form. Ive actually been following every update they make, and compared to Koala, I believe the game is many times better. Sure, some steps back have been made, but overall, its improved quite a bit.

http://playstarbound.com/5th-august-island-in-the-sun/

If liking what I am seeing and enjoying the game makes me a fanboy, then so be it.

 

*Reads title* Not another one!

 

We should have a forum section just for situations like this so we dont have to explain the same thing over and over again. But I will do a brief explanation

1) All/Most of the devs had to move to the new offices so they can work together in the same room
2) These "Steps back" you speak of are because of the community telling the devs we wanted certain aspects of the game reworked, and they did e.g. the planet systems
3) They dont put out as many small updates anymore and wait for large patches (aside from nightly) in order to add changes, which again the community pleaded for.
4) This game went through the "early access" side of things when the concept was still quite new and fresh in peoples mind. Many other titles failed to use it properly. The only thing I will say the Devs of Starbound did poorly was giving us a proper release time but I think it's cuz they felt rushed.

There are other things but I don't have time to go through them atm. This is the jist of things that have been going on if you missed it the last year or so.

 

I usually ignore this type of thread but I am going to address some issues I am having with your post as politely as possible

First of all. If chuckle fish is of little concern of you, then why even start a thread in the first place? Why do they vex you so much if they are of little concern? Please, go on with something important in your life, then giving the entire community your steam. If youv'e really got a vendetta against them then send them a hate mail. But, would that really be worth it?

Second. Chuckle fish hasn't come to a halt. If you check their blog page it is updated almost every weekday. The little random things they update is what gives Starbound quality. Would you rather have Starbound with the core mechanics and that's it? To me, diggin then beating bosses and becoming bored after the lack of furniture decoration, colonizing, e.t.c. doesn't really sound like a lot of quality to that kind of Starbound. Things in Starbound has been changing from the get go, and this makes me want to believe that your either a troll, or a very grumpy person who just needs some hugs from us. *hugs*

Third? Okay. You complain about the daily updates not suiting to your needs. That's understandable! But, again, this is to achieve quality. otherwise a lot of people in the fan base are gonna grow bored after 1.0 release! Pressuring the team to make a 2.0 release because you wanted to "eat the steak now."

Do you assume everyone on this Forum is a "Fan Boy"? They are not. Some don't even play Starbound on the daily. Mods delete threads with backlash when they become too out of control. Generally when the back lasher is one who doesn't give a hoot about anyone other than their own opinion. If you really want to cause a rukus, then please, send hate mail to the developer and tell us if you felt any better. (And I hope you don't send hate mail. This thread was enough!)

The rest of your outlet, we are ALL consumers. To tell you the truth, your argument is of little concern to most people here in the community, just like your little concern of Chucklefish. While your thread is not too out of order, I can see it turning out of order really fast. This is all my opinion, so shoot me if you'd like. I hope I haven't come off as mean, or pushy. I really hope, you come to understand what this wonderful community is trying to help you understand. We don't hate you. Just be chill, and we can all get along fine.

NOW WHO WANTS SOME DOUGHNUTS!!?

 

I was going to weigh in on this thread. But everyone else seems to have handled it pretty nicely.

With a little bit of research, and a keen eye on the updates -- all of your concerns can be abated. It really is up to you to cling to a hatred that doesn't make any sense to those who simply follow development. Being informed doesn't make you a fanboy. But it does allow you to more easily defend CF because logic.

 

I have to agree with some of the OP's points here. It's hard to deny that Chucklefish as a company has definitely done SOME things that were not really cool to do. If you do some searching, the game did initially have an initial general release time frame, and Tiy said it was almost finished and so on. Then they pretty much rebuilt the game from the ground up which added over a year in development time. To be honest, I stopped playing after upbeat giraffe came out. Most of the new changes utterly crushed my interest in the game. The dungeon shields for example... It's a sandbox game, part of the whole idea to me at least about sandbox games is that if you have a problem crossing a pit or so on, you can build a bridge to cross it. The shields kill that ability. That's just one of a multitude of issues that has inevitably made me completely uninstall Starbound and generally forget it even exists. To say the least, however, there are a lot of unsatisfied people with Starbound, and their actions have undeniably shaken a lot of people's faith in the company as a whole.

 

The shields are important though. And they are only in specific places that are entirely optional otherwise.

They are needed in missions for the sake of progression, and dungeons for the sake of the adventure. If you could dig past everything, then where is the fun, the challenge, etc.?

 

It's either a sandbox game, or it's an adventure game. This mishmash they turned it into destroys both elements for me. In the end you CHOOSE to dig or not dig. And shields preventing you from mining things out is not the same as preventing building as well. these are two entirely different animals.

 

Its either a shield you can turn off in the end, or an indestructible block. Take your pick.

Plus, does it not make sense that something like the Apex would opt to protect their labs? A shield is not out of the question. If you don't like them, then pass them up. By the same token as you mentioned, You CHOOSE to partake in such content. Don't like it, then don't do it. Boom, free-for-all sandbox restored.

If you decide to dig through a mission of a dungeon, you have zero room to complain about lack of interesting things to do because CF is trying to provide that and you are wanting to bypass the whole point. What good is a puzzle you can cheat to the end on? You CAN have a sandbox and an adventure mix. It works out just fine.

 

The idea that games can only fit rigidly into set "it's either this or this" is... well, horrifying, really. That kind of thinking is the very antithesis of creative endeavors like game-making. Breaking the mold is what got us amazing, record-smashing games.

 

No one on this thread even mentioned how moddable this game is. So many great and interesting things have been coming out of the modding community's woodwork. (Global penetrating radar station, anyone?) I enjoy having the extra options that we have provided to steer Starbound the in the direction we desire.

I've learned so much from looking at other's hard work, that it empowered me to come up with a few ideas of my own, and learned what I needed to know in order to make it happen. Now because of my ideas, I've thrown a lot of time into this game. Building, modding, music playing, or otherwise, I have no regrets.

 

I ain't even gotten into the modding yet. I'm waiting to see how 1.0 turns out before delving into my own silly additions, let alone others'. I'm keen to see what they produce before expanding the universe further.

(also most of my mods would be decor and Vanity Armors and new building tiles 'cuz that's the major appeal of the game for me.)

 

I wont say that chucklefish has done everything right (You wont run into a company in general that does everything right). For example the time between stable updates is way to long for my likeing.

But your post still has a lot of faulty logic.

Why are you against the daily updates? They are working on the core mechanics, but those take time and they cant all be working on them. So in the mean time they also make less vital content. Why is this bad? If they didnt do this a lot of the devs would just be sitting there doing nothing (especially the artists). You just cant see "the devs" as one entity that can choose to put all their effort into one area, the devs are a group of different people with different areas of expertise. Also these updates are in the nightly branch, they keep things stable for the stable branch.

Welcome to game development? Didnt you read up on game development at all before you put money into a early access? Games in general often end up way different from the starter concept and as such its common practice that things are rebuilt and remade during development. When they change things from a old system to a new the new system is likely to be unpolished, and a unpolished system can often be tedious but it will get better eventually (at least thats the idea), thats just common sense. But dont get me wrong, i do get that it frustrates a lot of people, im just saying that it should have been expected.

I realise that this is your personal opinion, but i have to ask why not? I mean yea they screwed up big time on the time estimate for the game (like REALY big), but two years is still a very short time when it comes to game development. Many games have been in development longer then that before they are even revealed.

When it comes to moderators stopping negative posts on the forums, thats more a issue of the posters then the moderators. If posters could give negative feedback in a civil way that dosent start a war (this also includes people posting in negative threads, not just the creators) then this wouldent be a issue. But as it is these thread often (not allways) include offensive comments and hatefull comment that quickly devolve the whole thread into a hate thread, in such a case its better to just lock it becuse there will be no valid feedback hade in it anymore. So while constructive criticism could improve things, the negative threads appearing on the forums quickly devolve from such a status and thus cant be of use. This is our (the community's) fault (seen as a group, im not blameing individuals), not the devs/moderators fault.


Sigh, I realy think someone needs to write a big fucking "READ ME BEFORE YOU BUY" for early access games that explains how game development works and common issues that may happen. Becuse people simply do not do enof research before they click buy on early access, expecting it to be more of a public beta then anything else (off course it also dosent help that some early access titles are more like a beta then a proper being part of development from the start).

 

In being a crafty digger, there's the fun! And the places the shields appear are mandatory to get to endgame.

 

My issue is that I feel the core gameplay should be done first. It should always have been the focus, and it isn't. I have no problems relying on mods for other, interesting features, but it's been more than two years, and we don't have the main progression, bosses, or quests completely finished. The problem isn't that they're not done, it's that they aren't even close.

Give us a game first, THEN give us fluff like mini games and decorative lamps. I'm just so tired of waiting. Tired, and disappointed.