Buzzword of the Week: Vaporware

A angry post inspired me to write a little post of my own on an old software industry buzzword that happened to be used to describe Starbound earlier today...

Vaporware​

This term was originally coined in the early 1980s as a term for a piece of software that fulfills the following criteria:

• The project is presented as complete (via media or live / recorded demonstration)
• The project has not been completed (often lacking substantial features)
• The project has been publicly postponed (usually on more than one occasion)
• The project has not been officially canceled
• The project perpetually remains in a half-developed state

The claim is that this project will remain in a constant state of "active development" and will never see the light of day as a fully featured and completed game. The offended party felt that the game was presented as being far more complete than it actually was, allowing CF to cash in on work they'd yet to complete or potentially never would.

Just based on the aforementioned criteria, Starbound is clearly not Vaporware. It exists, is tangible and is in active development. The anger seems to have spawned form several places, including some early "screen shots" which were actually mock-ups of the UI and potential game world. The media based hype-train didn't really help matters much. Seeing the potential of this project, people made assumptions without doing research. The presentation of the "screen shots' could be considered to fulfill the first criteria, but only if they were presented as actual in game screen shots. If I recall correctly they were presented as mock-ups and nothing more. The project has never been put on any kind of long-term development hiatus nor has it ever been presented as being complete.

While Vaporware is in fact a thing and there are companies that have pulled the wool over customers eyes with deceptive acts, this is clearly not the case with CF.

I would like to hear (in a constructive manner) what the community thinks about the accusation and if they think the term fits this project. Please remain civil and constructive while posting on this thread, I'd like to see actual discussion and not a flame war xD.

EDIT: Modified to be significantly more grammatically correct.

EDIT2: @Animator pointed out that the original mock-up screen cap I posted was not actually an early mock-up of the game, but in actuality a mock-up of a biome made several months ago. I've changed the screen shot to reflect an image available before Early Access started.

 

I believe to anyone sensible, this is addressing something that a tad resembles common sense. I mean most who complain of "vaporware" must either be looking for dumb attention or are simply silly.

 

The term vaporware in the context of starbound seems to be used to describe the finished state of the game. There is a belief among the skeptics that the game has been abandon, funds misappropriated to pay for houses, offices, games, and the creation of "pirate game". The belief is that after the initial success of the Preorder and Early Access campaign with no legally binding contract being enter that the developers have simply gotten bored of their project and have instead decided to move on to publishing so they don't have to work.

Basically it is a case of worst case scenario thinking. If the devs slow down on their work for a month (Yes, i go by last update no matter the content) that the devs must have grown bored. Since it is held that legally they could just slap some half-baked versions of what is mention on the steam page and switch it to finished to avoid any suits for false advertising and having already made bank of 4 million plus why do any more work on the game other then making sure it is lawsuit proof then take the fund and the publishing money and run, giving the shaft to anyone published under them and making their name poison for the price of a few hundred thousand per dev.

I have a calendar that gives the progress of the game from the eyes of someone who is disillusioned with CF if you would like to see it.

 

Most of the people I know will say that they stick to Terraria because "as far as they know, Starbound is content-less, not updated and therefore a dead project". I guess I see where they're coming from, since they don't hang out in the community and at best they lurk the steam store. It's also very easy to compare Terriara to Starbound on the fly and say, and I quote from someone who told me this, "Terraria's dev is also a newbie and he makes plenty of content come out".

They certainly don't see where I am coming from: aside from the fact that, even if many of the small updates there were were definitely content-driven (which I do not approve), Starbound is not about adding a new tier of armor every update to let players farm for it, it is also a very "contextual" project. If you follow the devs and see what they are doing... you can still legitimately argue about their speed or skills or organization or whatever, but you certainly won't be able to call it vaporware. Thinking it's just a scam would be plain silly or excessively distrustful. In the end it comes down to trust: I chose to trust the devs and their ambitions. If they won't become real I'll be as mad as the next guy.

Speaking of which, is this buzzword of the week thing a... thing? Can the next one be "whiteknighting"? That shit is all over the place.

 

I could do it weekly if people wanted, I kinda did do something like this previously for whiteknighting and whining.

EDIT: that was actually more of an appeal for civility than a definition and explanation

 

I can never figure out if I count as a white knight or not, I mean i defend the game but I do also do admit that CF has made some pretty bad mistakes in handling things.

Oh and the Calender, it is very passive aggressive and what not but it give you an idea how some people see the same news we get gitty over:

https://i.imgur.com/S7mdmb8.png (I left is as a link on purpose)

 

You probably wouldn't find to many people who'd agree with him on the Starbound forums.

Honestly, I've been tanking a large number of hours into Terraria again because well.... it has more content. It has more crazy weapons, bosses, monsters, areas, biomes, blocks, etc.
When Chucklefish finally decides to do their final planet wipe I might get back into Starbound, but for now I'll just play Terraria (which is still getting updates). I really do wish this final planet wipe would come soon, one of the few things Starbound actually has right now to compete is superior abilities to build.

As a consumer, there really isn't much reason for me to buy*/play Starbound over a game like Terraria which simply offers me more and honestly a more rewarding experience. *(I got my copy free from one of Tiy's reddit giveaways).

 

As Starbound currently stands... it appears to be a game in active development. Not "Vaporware" or, for that matter, Tupperware®.

I don't believe that CF is currently mocking up there current daily progress 'news' so they can suddenly cut & run... seems like too much work for too little money. If they were going to grab the money n' run, shouldn't they have done it long before now? Wouldn't it harm there company as a publisher, too? 4 Millllion sounds like a lot, but divide it & tax it... I doubt they are all running of to the Bahamas to hide out for decades... more likely they can stop eating just ramen for a while.

Sarcasm alert!
Chucklefish, you are lousy criminals! You should know better than to rob the bank, then stick around to sign autographs after! Shame on you for actual game making. Everyone obviously wants you to be the bad guys, so stop working on real games, and start making some super cool looking fake ones.

As for the buzzwords I'm already tired of, how bout toxic and entitled? Venom & venomous has yet to get over used, yet.

 

While the competence and professionalism of CF can be argued I agree that ''vaporware' is not a term that is applicable to Starbound at this stage. It is quite obvious that the devs are putting a lot of work and care into their project, and if they stay the course they will probably end up with an awesome product somewhere down the line. It's not vaporware as long as someone is working on it.

 

(Edit: Not sure why I quoted that, I think i am starting to get a little tired, the quote is pointless to the content)

I think that it has been the recent bad games in the news that are scaring people, DNF is the most commonly used as it was a highly anticipated game that took years past what it was supposed to and had a lackluster release. Towns is known for the guy who was placed with maintaining it leaving it for since it was not selling and he did not have the monetary stability to work on the game at a loss but has become the poster child for devs and users having a disagreement about the state of the game and developers "leaving before the community is satisfied". Paranautical Activity is constantly bashed for the developers mentioning co-op on the store page only to have a technical error that requires a total rewrite to fix and is used to show a dev not living up to the features they listed. Earth: Year 2066... well that was just a mess that is used to show EAcc got wrong.

Basically, rather then remembering the good EAcc games the focus is on the bad (Towns and DNF are not EAcc but they get honorary mention in most arguments) and the fear seems to be that a thigh leech must be kept on the game and a strict release schedule like that of Minecraft's snapshots in order to make sure the early purchase of an unfinished game reap it's full return. Not to mention with it's 15$ price tag starbound has to fight comparisons to Terraria and the possible perception that as long as starbound does not have more content it is not worth the 5$ extra. Right now people seem to feel the overpaid for a that has less then it's 10$ spiritual ancestor.

 

Can next weeks buzzword of the week be buzzword?

 

I'm not entirely sure how this relates to my post and the usage of 'vaporware'. Would you mind clarifying?

 

I am not really sure come to think of it. I think i am starting to get tired and whatever connection to your post i had in mind was since lost. Sorry about that.

 

It's already Whiteknighting, I can pencil you in for two weeks from now. Does that work?

 

Buzzwords and tech companies go together like ham and eggs.

 

Week 1: Vaporware
Week 2: Whiteknighting
Week 3: Buzzword
Week 4: ???

CF needs more synergy. Maybe the zombies of corporate lifestyle simulator (the game formerly known as "zombies.") can help with that by providing synergistic management solutions.

 

I'm sorry, I don't have the bandwidth to add more buzzwords to my actionable item list.

Seriously though, I work for a tech company that loves it's buzzwords. Nothing quite like having a "cloud data-management system" that doesn't actually use a cloud-computing structure. I thought it might be pertinent to give people some insight into the origin of some of the words that are hurled around often enough. I'm sure there are/were people who didn't know what vaporware was.

 

Having software in hand makes this not Vaporware...I guess you cant fix stupid.