Focus on a release date, then on more content in updates

Okay, guys, so here are my views. For those of you who have been in the gaming world for around ten years... Well, nah, I'll drop that. VG development is very tricky stuff, you can take any game out there as an example. How long did Bethesda take to develop Skyrim? If I'm not mistaken, they first started to think the game out back then in 2007. Companies have their own schedule regarding game development and well, they are the ones who really know what they are doing. Rushing a game because of the hype and lack of patience of some potential customers may lead to a buggy game that will be regarded as a failure.

If something, we have to let the developers make their game freely, because no other game company has ever been as involved as Chucklefish is with their fanbase. And I don't know about you, guys, but I'm not going to complain about a time frame that does not depend on me AT ALL. As mollygos wisely quoted, you can always make an unreleased game better and more polished. But a bad finished game will stay like that in the minds of fans forever. Also, I'm sure we all want our money to be invested in the best possible way, the guys are doing great by themselves, all of us should learn some PATIENCE.

 

People will hate you for making this thread, but personally I agree with you.

 

oh! oh ! i know i know ! hang on ! hang on !
...
wait for it...
waaaaiiiiiit for iiiiitt...
...
...
...
Your lack of faith is disturbing

BANG !

 

im fine either way, while it would be nice to have starbound early in time for christmas, im fine with waiting a month or two for them to finish tweaking before releasing it to the public

 

For every 1 person who wants a game released with just the core mechanics, there's 5 people who hate on the game for having been released as "An unfinished product."

DEAD ISLAND ANYONE? ANYONE? No? Just me...?

Okay.

Here it goes then.

Dead Island had a terrible release. Terrible. All the core mechanics work....mostly as intended. And the game was still tons of fun. Problem? Buggy and rushed release. Because of this release, word of mouth got around that it was a pile of crap with all the bugs and such. That led to a large chunk of their potential customers not buying the game, blacklisting the company mentally, and because of that, a massive amount of people have decided not to buy this game, or the upcoming sequel. The core mechanics were there, but some people don't want core mechanics. Some people want to buy a finished game. (Who knew?)

When a developer puts out a game, they put their reputation as a developer on the line. Releasing a game is like releasing your kid out of the house for the first time. For one, that kid's actions will reflect your own worth as a parent, whether you like it or not. Nobody wants to associate Chucklefish with "Omg buggy release why was this even released?"

Sure, there's a lot of people who are so desperate for the game they'd want to play an unfinished product just to get their hands on it. But then there's video game reviewers who will review and scrutinize this game with no mercy, which will directly influence future buyers and potential income. To me, it seems like a no-brainer answer. Wait until the game is finished before you put it out. Period. I don't really care what Minecraft does, or how fun it is, because I still would not have released the game in that state as a developer. It's risky, and I wouldn't want a game representing my worth as a developer to go out until I was convinced it was glorious.

 

.... Not another one of these threads. Its impatience like yours OP that leaked Terraria and made it start earlier than it wanted to. You must stop bothering Tiy with your "Bring it out with core mechanics only NOW!" tripe, and wait like the rest of us for a finished better product. It is as simple as that. Alot of us have waited awhile, it wont kill us to wait a bit longer to actually finish the game up. As is, alot of us are going to buy it anyway, so in relation to Sokinas statement, it WILL reflect how people see Tiy and his team ultimately, as developers.

So in the end, you only hurt yourself and everyone else by DEMANDING Starbound have a release date and release earlier. Please stop annoying the community (and the developers) (and me) with this demand.

As an edit to Omni, told you.

 

It'll be done when it's done. I can guarantee you that I want this game done much more than any of you do.

I'm not saying this because I want a handout or a donation. I don't. I'm just trying to put this into perspective for you. I haven't had a job since January, when I quit to work on Starbound fulltime. I've been living off of savings since then. Kyren and bartwe have also quit their day jobs to work on SB. Starbound has in a very real way cost us our own comfort and security. Getting a job in this economy is so difficult, and we threw our own away to get this out faster, for you and for us. So I can't help but take just a little bit of umbrage at the suggestion/insinuation that we're holding shit back because we like seeing you squirm and we're something less than completely dedicated to getting this game out as soon as possible.

It's taken longer than we've expected, this is true. But releasing a half-finished game? That's simply not something that I want to do. I have too much invested in this to just throw it all away releasing an unfinished game. I respect myself and you guys too much to give you guys less than my full effort.

 

Though I agree with your views; I personally don't share your view regarding Dead Island. I encountered zero bugs from start to finish and it felt to me like a complete game. The only problem with Dead Island was originality. Seriously, zombies have been done to death; even more so with garbage stories backing them. The game-play was fun, yet that was the saving grace of the game. The setting was tired, the enemies were tired, and the plot was generic and horrible. Just my opinion.

 

IRWIR. People need to get over this and move on.

 

The thing that I noticed the most is that the people who complain about something not getting released "early" are those that don't understand the process. Now, I've never made a game myself but being a Software Engineer and having been on many projects the process is the same. Have patience, if you really can't wait a few months for the developers to complete it then you really need to find something to take your time and attention away until it's finished.

 

I have when I was a kid. I tried making a map of a Generation 2 Pokemon game using their sprites. My own map. And its not all kittens and bunnies to do either. It requires a good eye for color and alot of coordination to get the pixels just right, not to mention getting the interactions between objects to work as well. I never even touched that. I never even finished the map, it was so huge. That said. It gave me an idea of the kind of time it takes to work on things folks like Bartwe and Entity do. Im just sick and tired of hearing these whiners

 

Hmm...
A full Canvas Picasso... or a Picture of a full Canvas Picasso.

I think i'd like the real deal, textures and all.

Same goes with starbound, Gotta get the pulpy goodness with the Juice; or else you wont get the full benefits.
Just gotta wait until it is fully squeezed.
(i'm watching every drop, mind you... and I'm getting quite parched, but I can hold out with dew drops on the grass)

 

They had to rush a Day-1 patch out to fix some of these massive problems, so most people didn't even get to see them. Steam's release of Dead Island was actually the X-box 360 Dev version, for starters. No-clip could be activated right out of the box with one keypress. (Y, for those of us who were playing with an X-box 360 controller.) There was tons of invisible fire that killed you almost instantly. All save progress made on this X-box 360 dev version (That somehow ended up getting pushed to steam as the PC version) was incompatible for the PC version they replaced it with on the second day. So basically everyone that played the game for 10 hours on launch got screwed over when they changed the version to be fixed.

Then there were massive bugs such as "Instead of saying the storage is full, any items you put into the storage while it's full vanish from existence forever." Also have fallen through the world more than a few times, and this was several weeks after the day 1 patch. Oh, and the Dev version that ended up on steam revealed that one of Purna's skills was codenamed "Feminist Whore." Since it was the dev version, tons of people got to see that little tidbit.

Not that I hate the game, I played the hell out of it and I don't regret a bit of it. But things like that ruined a lot of their income.

 

I, on the other hand, am fully prepared to wait as long as it takes, even if takes......

FOREVER!!!!!!!

 

Sir, we salute you. Respect returned.

 

yfw op only reads the last post posted when he first logs in and ignores the rest of them.. due to tl:dr's

 

I believe I've said this in a couple of other topics before, but I'll say it again,

Developers, please take as long as you think is necessary in order to have a stellar and high quality product. Most people who want the game right now are merely being tickled by a small bug called impatience. (Which I'm sometimes affected by, specially when I'd rather buy a Steam game instead of waiting for its price to go down )

We have high trust in you and are definitely looking forward for Starbound (Or we wouldn't be in these forums ). In all honesty, maybe this is hype talking through me, but I see Starbound has a game with a ton of potential to be one of the best games ever. ^^

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It's tricky to give a release date when they do not really know when it will be ready. It would be wrong to throw a date out there when it's not certain if it's true. People just have to be a little bit more patient and try to occupy their time with other activities. The game hasn't been released yet because it is not ready - Releasing the game now would be a huge failure, in my honest opinion. It comes down to a couple of options and I believe the solution to be quite obvious:

A) Would you rather get something right now that is incomplete and clearly not ready for the audience, regardless of the fact that content may be added later on
Would you rather have a game that took its time to come out but is a very polished gem that was definitely worth the wait


A poor release does not merely come down to people at home getting bored of the game a couple of hours earlier or so. As stated before, the developers and their families, people's lives are (star)bound to this (couldn't resist the pun, sorry), both directly and indirectly, and, as such, they must take proper caution regarding the situation. If they take it easy and keep it cool, they increase their chances of success.

To quote a very interesting special character from Breaking Bad...



'My name's Tortuga. Do you know what it means? Tortuga means turtle, that's me. I take my time, but I always win.'

Even though he's got his head chopped off later on, but nevermind that.

 

Like Xendhaius I agree with you, but also don't understand this attitude towards Dead Island (and I have run into it quite a few times.) It did have a release snafu on Steam where a developer build was mistakenly pushed out to Steam users on the first day, but after that was fixed it was fine. There's a few minor bugs here and there like the minimap being glitchy in multiplayer and some mouse speed issues in the menus, but other than that it was a very smooth and complete experience. I'm looking forward to Riptide.

Also thank you for taking the time to respond, OmnipotentEntity. A lot of people don't seem to understand the situation you guys are in and your commitment to quality. Hopefully some of them will read and understand your message.

 

Working for a mid-sized publisher that owns several dev studios ( I'm in the legal department though) I know how bad it can suck to release a game too early. (and i'm not talking about financial impact. Our guys and gals hate to release unpolished and unfinished games, it sucks to be responsible for crappy games, especially if you invested so much hard work into it.)

 

Of course if we survive