Pre-order/beta thoughts

I wasn't at all trying to demand anything. That was a typo.


I'm apologize if I sounded at all rude or forceful, that was not the point. We are all here because we love this game. I'm just trying to stress my opinion that an open beta could in fact have many negative effects. You guys have to understand that there are people who will take the beta as the finished product and people who will break NDAs. Last thing we need is game critics butchering game reviews on Starbound based off of a beta. We all here would be mature about it, but unfortunately there are those who would ruin it for the rest of us.

 

I wasn't at all trying to demand anything. That was a typo.


I'm apologize if I sounded at all rude or forceful, that was not the point. We are all here because we love this game. I'm just trying to stress my opinion that an open beta could in fact have many negative effects. You guys have to understand that there are people who will take the beta as the finished product and people who will break NDAs. Last thing we need is game critics butchering game reviews on Starbound based off of a beta. We all here would be mature about it, but unfortunately there are those who would ruin it for the rest of us.

 

I never said it was evil; what are you talking about? I didn't take anything out of context either.

 

You just assumed that my tone was distasteful when it wasn't. I apologize, I wasn't trying to make it out to be that way.

 

The way you phrased your message was distasteful, that was all. I would suggest a more careful choice of words in the future.

 

Well I still stand with what the post says. People need to be more patient in general with this game. We all have the right to want to play the game, but we all just need to relax and wait.

 

I generally agree, but every game I have ever waited for is like this. You can't control it, so best to let it go.

 

You can try. Last thing we want is for this game's community to turn into a Minecraft Forum..

 

I prefer not to waste time and effort where I don't have to. I feel obligated to tell you though that statements like the one you made earlier are not going to get you very far.

 

People have to understand that "beta" means that a game is not in it's complete stage. Mostly it refers to the game's testing stage, finding problems within the game before it is considered as a full release. Meaning that it's at that point considered to be fully playable.

Those that judge a game completely by it's beta stage are not worthy of judging, that is because the game isn't considered to be complete at that point. Those that know that won't give a damn about what they have to say.

Even so, I'm sure Starbound won't be a disappointment to anyone if it gets released as a beta pre-order.

 

pre beta to people who preorder is a good thing, infact it helps sales
take a game like overgrowth for example (not linking it cus its agence the rules *go google it*)
another game that did the same thing
Minecraft
and see how that game turned out

 

Overgrowth is actually a pretty good example. The game is still technically in alpha, but I've never heard an unkind word said about it. I think the folks that are against the beta are, for the most part, doomsaying. They keep using Minecraft as an example of a game that did beta wrong, but the sales don't seem to point to that. Millions sold and still going. Sure, they pushed out a lot of tiny updates hither and thither, but I never recall Notch posting a hard and fast feature list either.

 

I bought wanderlust to support the game. What have YOU done to support the game?

Some of us aren't selfish, and actually DO want to support the game through helping test it.

 

No it's not. It's just you trying to feel better about yourself by being self-righteous and belittling those who disagree with you. Nothing more.

Stop pretending that you're doing it for any reason other than to boost your ego.

 

Minecraft got lucky, that's all there is to it. Do you really think a success story like that is likely to repeat? I've heard plenty of bad things about Overgrowth, though it still seems like more of a tech demo than a game to me. Is there actually a point to the game other than procedurally generated animations? I'm also surprised you didn't mention Prison Architect, though they're selling it for $30 minimum so I'm curious how many sales they're actually getting at that price.

But setting these examples aside for a minute, I believe those of us who are against the beta are thinking about the new industry standard of providing beta access to preorders (and in EA's case, beta access with the preorder of a different game now.) Do you remember how much negativity got thrown around with the BF3 beta? And guess what, it was mostly due to beta bugs that were fixed. Then there was Red Orchestra 2...beta for preorders, testers got put off by the sheer number of bugs and cancelled their preorders. Only half of the bugs were dealt with by the release date. I just remembered Cortex Command...beta for years, released buggy with no multiplayer and a tacked-on campaign mode with no thought to balance.

Then there's the other times when there's an "open beta" which is really just a demo for the game, like Crysis 2. The issue here is that it takes the developers time to put the demo together which would delay the release.

In any case, I don't want to say that public betas are always a bad thing but I feel like they do more harm than good most of the time.

 

Minecraft found a niche. There wasn't much like it when it came out, save for Infiniminer, which it was based off of, but nobody had heard of it. Also, I strongly credit Valve for its popularity for giving it a shout out in a TF2 blog post.

As for Overgrowth, yeah it's pretty much a tech demo, but it's a rather detailed tech demo and they update it pretty much every week.

Never heared of Prison Architect. Can't comment on it.

There's plenty of games in early development that have been highly successful. Dwarf Fortress, for example, is still technically in alpha, but it's got plenty of content. Granted, it's freeware, but I think that even if they charged, say, $5-$10 for it, it would still be pretty popular.

The bottom line is that if this game is going to be really successful, the hype will likely have to spread by word of mouth. I don't see Chucklefish forking out money for ads. Using Minecraft as an example again, it spread almost completely by word of mouth as far as I can tell. Beta or not will likely have little effect on its overall popularity. If we can get a big name to drop Starbound's name, people will Google it. When people discover it, they'll likely be interested and hopefully buy. If CF can manage it, invite some press over to play it. Think about Grand Theft Auto: If they hadn't hired that tabloid journalist to write about how "immoral" it was and stir up controversy (and interest), then we would be without it today.

To address the other part of your argument about big name companies selling beta invites, I believe they do that because they have higher production costs and they need to offset them somewhat to appease their shareholders. They offer the pre-orders so they can make a few bucks before the product is finished and investors don't sell their stocks. (Note: I know NOTHING about stocks, so take everything I say with many grains of salt.) Chucklefish, being a private company, doesn't have to worry about that, so they can do whatever the flip they want.

 

Both of those found a niche. Minecraft knew it needed money to ensure it's continued growth, and as such started selling copies that were extremely lower priced than the end product. Dwarf Fortress is freeware with a supporting community. Both have a ton of fan input through mods and reskins, and the product never suffered for it. Projects like this, that rely so much on communities, can only benefit from a beta. The community that has been supportive for all this time won't suddenly turn it's back on it. We've fallen in love with it because of what we already know and have experienced while not having played a single second. Then why would we suddenly stop supporting it once we do play it?

There is nothing wrong with a pre-purchase with open beta. On the one hand you get money that you can use for the game's production, thus making it even better/have more money available to refine it. On the other hand you get a reasonable sized beta team that can detect bugs and flaws way easier. Give them an outlet (part of the forum) to document these bugs in a constructive way and everyone wins.

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/list-of-announced-game-information.450/
First spoiler tag

Oh the irony!

Yes, yes I do. Minecraft was nothing but 100% hard work, constant updates and a close tie to the community. Writing that off as 'luck' is incredibly short sighted. Of course there is a luck factor to everything, but stating something is 'luck' and thus it means that somehow means a beta does bot work is plain stupid.