Previous release date delays

Everyone needs to get something straight here....

You all keep saying "BETA RELEASE IS PUSHED BACK." It's not the "BETA" that is getting pushed back, its the release. Over and over people keep targeting the beta, if you pre-ordered this game..... guess what? You get to play this year...!!!!!????

How do I know this? Well I don't for sure. But taken from TIY's direct post on the home page, last paragraph... "But the finished game WILL be worth the wait, we’re all happy with how its shaping up and super excited to get it to the point where we’re happy with it. You’ll have the chance to help us do that this year with the beta and we’re looking forwards to that too."

Don't believe me? Well here is the link,

 

I have two observations to make regarding the announcement.

1. This is just another example of how "out of touch" Chucklefish has become. The informal announcement that Starbound would not make a 2013 release was back in late August. Almost two months have gone by and we're just now getting an official "press" announcement regarding the slippage. Yes, I know Tiy confirmed the slip on the forums shortly after I49, but this announcement is how it should have been done in the first place. Both Tiy and Mollygos need to improve their communication skills and "own" their roles as community managers...

2. The 2013 release estimate is the third or fourth missed estimate spanning about 3 years, but by now, Chucklefish should have a much better understanding of the project and expectations. It's possible they have been blowing smoke the whole time, there has been mis-management, or major feature creep has occurred. They've shown through screenshots, streams, and the I49 demo that they're not blowing smoke and why would they (?), so the only other explanation is feature creep or mis-management.

With a project this large, feature creep and mis-management is a given, but did anyone pay attention to the Bartwe stream that was recorded recently and posted on youtube? I think mis-management is more at the heart of Starbound's issues, because at the tail end, the discussion about team members not being centrally located in an office was the hot topic and it was stated that most members blow off the team meetings. It sounds to me that Chucklefish is having a very hard time managing the Starbound team. Even in today's announcement, Tiy references the fact that if they were all centrally located, he believes they would have made their goals.

I'm not sure which release date goal he's referring to... maybe 2013? Either way, it's obvious even $2 million can't bridge the gap or deliver Starbound as fast as everyone expected.

I wish Chucklefish all the best, but a 2013 beta deadline is looming and as others have said... if I don't see a beta in 2013, I will go nuclear.

 

Right, but usually, it's the baker who decides whether the dough is fully cooked or not. Tiy, being the baker for Starbound, have declared that the dough is not yet ready, so he's leaving the pizza inside of the oven until sometimes this year, or maybe next year. I'm sure he'll check on the dough, and bring the pizza out, when he is good and ready.

 

Since Molly actually responded to one in this actual thread, I'd say they read some.

 

Tiy seems to have the same problem as Eloraam, developer of RedPower for Minecraft: They're perfectionists. They'll spend an ungodly amount of time making updates and making sure absolutely no bugs exist before they even consider releasing a beta. What happened with Eloraam's project? The hype eventually deflated, people got disappointed with excessive waiting periods, and the fanbase started to dwindle.

You can only stall a beta/release for so long before hype begins to backfire, I hope Tiy doesn't take too long before deciding when to release beta.

And I do agree with you, a greatly delayed beta is going to give us nothing more than a pre-release rather than a beta. To be a beta tester, your job is to play the game while passively seeking out bugs which you report. If there isn't many bugs for beta players to find, whats the point of having beta?

 

That's also a bit over-exaggerating...still, the end made me smile, don't know why x)

 

Yes, and at that time, you could either forgive the pizza man for making such a mistake, or get a refund. I'm choosing the former, since I haven't invested too much into the game, and the refund won't affect my life too much.

 

Typical community response: TL;DR >.<

Here's a hint people, the thread wasn't about the beta.

 

I AM FROM THE FUTURE AND I HAVE BETA. NOONE SAID EVER

 

Well, he's proving the point with a sledge-hammer, but I can't really call it out as false.

 

Also, do mind the timezones. There's plenty of those, you know.

 

Pleaaaase, don't start the fire again T_T

 

Whether you accept the fact that Chucklefish wants to take its time before giving Starbound to the public or believe that they have been making excuses for too long, remember that this is their first game ever. They're still getting their metaphorical game-developing legs.

Hope to see the beta before 2014, but at any rate, keep rolling, Chucklefish.

 

If and also insulting the intelligence of a user, i see this now is like ... i dont know what tell about this

 

Lol, you actually didn't understand anything of what he wanted to tell us, and even less what good games are made of. Good games aren't made of quick development to satisfy unpatient people like you, they are made out of PATIENCE and SUPPORT. How about getting a life and stop refreshing the Starbound website all the time? wait for it, because it will be awesome. And just in case you aren't able to imagine how incredibly hard it is to develop a game with such a huge community with such high expectations, just try to think about the millions of reports Chucklefish would receive. Bugs, suggestions, compliments, insults, as if they don't have enough to do with all of the things they already know they have to change. I think this is the major reason why they still didn't release the beta. So. Just. Wait for it.

 

I can't say anything that hasn't already been said. I will say this.
-Thank you for the hard work.
-That quote about delaying games is a generalization and rarely holds up.
-There are more than 3 different kinds of games.

That is all, other people have already elaborated on this.

EDIT:

One more thing.

If someone says something mean on the forums, they are the loud minority, ignore them. Coming in with a snide comment is a bad idea. I know you're all only human, but you're also supposed to be professional, be the bigger men/women and just ignore those posts. Or at least respond with a semblance of a polite response.

 

Totally agree. . . and yet here we are, doing the same x). Irony never ceases to impress me lol

 

fixed

 

About a month ago I had posted a wall of text in a forum discussing... proper behavior when dealing with your clients in the context of business practices and ended up going into greater detail on the more discussed topics that seem to stumble around without really getting anywhere. These usually just degrade into the two sides throwing their poop at each other, so I feel my post needs to once again rise to the surface to address the more popular arguments that seem to plague the forums.

I apologize for the wall of text, but if you take a little time out of your forum-going adventures to indulge me I would greatly appreciate it.

Alright, so there seems to be the traditional two sides in this thread: we have the side that trusts the company Chucklefish and we have the opposing force that distrusts the developers. I'll state it now that I'm skeptical about this whole thing and don't trust Chucklefish myself, but before I get into that let's look at reasons to trust them.

1. The developers of Starbound have stayed *mostly* consistent with giving us feedback, or "progress" on how the game is coming along.
2. The developers have had adequate interaction with their (potential and pre-order) consumers.
3. They have given a demonstration of the previously current state of the game at I49.

They have shown us charts and data and that's good, but why are these things any reason to put the significant amount of trust that so many seem to have invested into Chucklefish?
It's important to remember that Chucklefish is a business-- no one here knows them personally, they are not your friends, they are out to make a profit.
I am in no way trying to paint them in a sinister light, as this is what all businesses do and that's fine and accepted.


The release of the actual game and how it bothers some people...: Alright, understandable. These kinds of things certainly aren't done over night, but how long should this game really be taking? Let's be realistic here; this game isn't really the epitome of advanced programming. It's a 2-D, sandbox-esque platformer with rogue-like elements. I can recall reading a post about the game by the developers that the game wasn't going to be very advanced at all and would play very similarly to Terraria (of course this was a while back before the masses flooded in). I'd like to refer back to the first time I heard about Starbound, namely this video:


Now as you can see, a lot of the things we see today in the game were there over a year ago. There's an environment and characters and they even have some equipment. Although, the highlight of the video is the fact that they've created their ideal mechanics on how the water physics in the game were going to work, which the developers had also boasted about as being massively improved over Terraria's water physics and one of the main features in their game. By this video you could assume development of the game was perhaps half-finished. The two other demos before the water physics video further prove that a good deal of progress had been made in creating the game. Take into consideration that these videos are each (almost exactly) two months apart from each other and these are pretty big advancements. What's also important to note is that this is before the team was helped being funded by the massive influx of pre-order money. I understand perfectly there is a ceiling as to how fast Chucklefish can spit out work on the game, but it's a team of fourteen people simultaneously working on one indie game around-the-clock.

Entitlement: as a consumer you are indeed entitled to the promised product. However, what the producer does with your money is their business, not the consumer's. As long as the consumer receives the promised product in its entirety within the expected time frame given, there should be no need for disputes (although when the company in question uses your money for nefarious purposes such as attempting to take over the world, that's when you need to contact the authorities).

So, about the beta...
It should be open by now.
Or, at least very, VERY soon.
A game's beta is not some VIP-early-game-access nonsense. Beta's are a quick and efficient way to get feedback from players that they, in their own eyes, believe how the game should function. When a developer plays their own game it's redundant and holds little value because players and developers simply don't have the same mindset. Players on their own can find countless bugs that developers could have gone a million times over because of the simple fact that they can't possibly fathom every little possible bug that any given player could run into.

(This was from before when the full release was supposed to be sometime this year, 2013):

I confess; I want to take part in making this game something great and lasting and I'll try my best to do my part, but the window for a decent beta test is nearly gone and this game's rather large potentional for all sorts of mishaps needs adequate time for bugs to be worked out: say, three months. As of yet I have seen no mention of the game being even near beta. I've combed the forums for speculations on what's really happening with the game and I've seen predictions ranging from both extremes and everything in between. All this has told me is that we don't have any real information on the game's progress that the developers have been feeding us. I can recall a speculation thread on the subject of the beta's release (original, amirite?) some time in late April of this year. In the thread's poll, the majority (some 70%) had May pegged as the start of the beta. The last and least plausible choice on the poll (at least that's what we believed at the time) was October. Chucklefish has gotten the release date wrong before-- which was fine because it was premature, but getting an estimation wrong within the time frame of a year?? As the end of the year closes-in I can't possibly help but begin to lose faith in this endeavor.

Unfortunately, I am finding a excessive amount of white-knighting in this thread than I would usually find in any other discussion. I feel I need to remind those doing so that white-knighting is not something particularly beneficial to the side you're defending as the remarks pertaining to their kind are usually spawned from emotions and hold no real value. Stop posting arguments such as "it's only fifteen dollars, get over it", "do something else in the meantime" or "development takes time".

And STAHP with all the terrible analogies. I think whomever reads them gets some -2 to int, if you catch my drift. My head...

 

I was thinking... Valve has made several great games. That's true. I'm playing Portal 2 and maaan. This is amazing! But ain't that a fact that Valve didn't wanted to steal our money? You know. You're gonna give us your cash, we'll give you bunch of words.