Are you happy with the development speed? [Unofficial Poll]

(Chuckles) Seriously, every time I read EA... I read it as EA 'the game company' and not as Early Access.

 

Klei Entertainment sells pretty-much-finished games in EA/beta (Invisible Inc. being the newest example), and that really makes them look good. However, I don't really believe that's what EA is about, and some devs simply can't afford that.

 

The game was ready for EA though; it was doing great. Then it stopped. I'd have approached it like this:

1. Put some big marquee and fireworks announcement on the Steam forums that they felt they wanted to pull out of Early Access (at least for a while) to handle development more centrally. Make a big sticky thread about it. News post. Calmly explain it to people on the forums. That kind of thing.
2. Make Starbound pre-order enabled instead of Early Access, or if that's not possible, temporarily remove it from the store.
3. Enable nightly builds for people that had already purchased the game.

People still would have complained, but I don't think it would have been anywhere near as bad. I certainly don't think the Steam forums would have ended up as a cesspool. The only think I truly believe Chucklefish completely failed at is communication. And unfortunately, it's still something that needs a lot of work. I think a solid and dedicated presence on the Steam forums would make a world of difference. Make big notices. Keep people informed. Talk with people. Be vocal and highly attentive, at least until they become more steady.

People lose their **** when they feel like they've been taken advantage of or abused; they act a lot like scared animals, because that's ultimately all they are, even if they act tough and cocky.

 

This would not have worked. You think people are going nuts about Vaporware now? believe me current voiced concerns are extremely tame compared to what they would be if Chucklefish did any of this.

 

Why?

 

The uproar is mostly caused by misinterpretations, miscommunication (or lack of communication), lack of patience, and lack of tangible/playable updates.

Words alone will not calm down many of the people that feel they have been let down by CF and Starbound, and would only serve as fodder for ranting when taken out of context (OMG CF said they're cancelling EA, they're running away with the money!).

Removing Starbound from the Steam Store is along the same lines, people will feel that Steam removed it from their store because Valve doesn't believe in CF. Only notarized statements from Steam AND CF explicitly stating why it happened would possibly prevent the mass hysteria, but again, they would still only be words. The action (Starbound not for sale) would simply be fodder for angry accusations.

Enabling nightly builds for everyone would be a large mistake as well. They are NOT suitable for the vast majority of the gaming audience. Any gaming audience, imo. They might not work at all, they might have compile issues, they might corrupt your save files. Only a very small portion of the entire playerbase is comfortable playing on these. Forcing everyone to endure this would cause a significant loss of faith from people who are otherwise happy / patient, because now they can't even good around on a stable game and build cities and play with mods. On that note, wouldn't it tick you off if you need to re-install your mods every single day? Even every week, that would still be non-ideal.

Your suggestions have good intentions and would be welcomed by some people. However, I think they would have a much larger negative effect that dwarfs the positive results.

 

You can't state you're backing out of a financial obligation, even if you mean it only temporarily to get the full product out faster. That's absolutely horrible PR and people will instead take that as a sign that the entire thing was just a plot to take people's money, which is what many people already assume.
Changing it from 'Early Access' to anything else is equally irresponsible as the above.

You also can't remove a product from Steam without massive amounts of people freaking out about it.
And forcing nightly builds, which are sometimes broken, on people who haven't opted for it would not go over well, either.

No offense, but all of these are bad suggestions.

 

What is the difference?

 

No offense taken. I'm trying to think of ways in which they could have done what I'm assuming (because assuming is all I can do) Chucklefish wanted to do (functionally stop being Early Access). Earlier I went on about things like "make your bed, lie in it," but if that doesn't work here, then my on-the-fly throwaway suggestions are all I've got.

 

Indeed. *dons fedora with a smug smirk on face while smoking a bubble pipe*

Not really though........

 

Seriously, people would go ballistic, even with its current state its a fun game to play, and people who haven't had the chance to get into it, who want to, taking that chance away would just aggravate them.

 

Lack of functioning synapse. I mean just read some of the hate, I find it unconscionable someone can get so fired up over a video game. Imagine a real tragic event? When the Horse AI takes over the world we will know the probed from the unprobed, that much is certain.

 

Perhaps that is the conspiracy. Maybe Early Access is in fact all done by EA. It's EA's new method of marketing bad games to us simpletons. Easy money for them, yes?
The only way to stop them is to sacrifice the souls of baby seals and worship the dark lords. The seven lords of Hell. And pray to them to come for us and cleanse the world of EA.

 

I heard the only reason Will Wright left EA is because the dark lords never let him play with them. So he decided to create 'Stupid Fun Club' as an attempt to say "Hey, I can be my own dark lord and have fun without you", but in reality it turns out to be nothing more than a dark lord fan club...

*shrug*

 

That's depressing, yes. I am still upset by Spore. I had really high hopes, yes. I even got the copy 3 days before release. That day i bragged... but soon afterwards... there was nothing left to brag about if not complain about. Sigh.

 

Haha, me too! I was #1 fan of that game until it released..... Then BOOM, the game was 100% nothing like they had advertised. Awful people they are. Awful person he is.

 

I love how they keep us updated on how everything is goin', but at the same time I really hope the next stable update is coming out soon. It's... it's been a while...

 

Fu## EA, worst gaming company ever... Chucklefish did the right thing in selling it early on Steam, I'm glad they did it.

Yeah, would be cool to have a update for the stable build soon...

 

Speed is great!

 

I would like to see a update for the stable build soon, too. Update 8 is getting old. Does anyone know if something is scheduled?