Release delay.

As much as this saddens me deeply, if find some hope in this news. I sincerely hope that this comforts some of the people who have been opposed to the prospect of an "early access" release plan, and shows that Gaslamp Games are not willing to release a product they deem "incomplete". tho i was looking forward to being defeated multiple times by Eldritch horrors, Cannibalism, Disease, Fishmen, my own incompetence, and lots of other forms of !!FUN!!. But perhaps it is for the best, since we will receive a more "complete" product in time. (and because my exams start in 2 weeks...)

(Edit: But i think i speak for all of us when i say we are all looking forwards to the release sometime this summer)

 

As long as it doesn´t turn FF 15 or The last guardian on us I am fine with delays (even more so since there never was a definite release date to begin with).

 

exactly. and i have full confidence that Gaslamp will deliver an amazing game once they deem it's ready. until then it's a comfort knowing that Tropico 5 will be out in a small month, to satisfy all my strategy needs ( as well as my life long dream of being a communist "dictator" )

 

Well, all they've done is to delay the early access release, which is either a genius marketing ploy to earn our trust, or just an honest sign of the developers taking responsibility and releasing it as a feature complete game with more to come.

Personally, I think early access is a waste of time and resources for the developers. The game is expected to come with a lot of free future content, but not any DLC. At least not until it's officially released. Personally, I'd like to refer to the new DLC for Don't Starve called Reign of the Giants which features less features added since they actually went out of Early Access that they added for free, which kind of makes it disappointing at first. This being a problem on the consumers side where as they've grown accustomed to a lot of free updates.

Not to mention that most people had already burnt themselves out on it. And this is the best scenario, as Don't Starve was one of the few Early Access games that did it well and the new DLC is most definitely worth the money.

But, FTL on the other hand didn't go through Early Access, although they added a whole new and free expansion after not having added new features for awhile. I was completely ready to purchase FTL's new expansion, had it not been free. I'd value it up to £10.


Now, hopefully this delay is show of that their Early Access will just be a quick in and out from Gaslamp Games and they won't lose any money in the long run. But, as a consumer I would of course prefer getting free content upgrades forever, but that's less than preferable for them.

 

Is it? I'm pretty sure there's going to be a good amount of evidence that free updates can and will boost sales.

 

I see what you are saying but i disagree with your views on Early Access. I myself play a lot of Rimworld, and that game is doing well with it's early access, it gives the developers a chance to have a "dialogue" with its consumers doing the development. which means that the consumers have more input on how the final product turns out, and for an indie developer that can be a HUGE plus. I would assume that Gaslamp could gain from their early access as well, since again i would assume that our opinions as consumers and as fans would matter to them

 

Any kind of early access is a mixed bag -- closed alphas and betas can only tell you so much -- any complex program will not reveal all of its problems until it's 'released into the wild'. So in that respect, it's good to allow very early access to programs. BUT the truth is that this also will create buzz, whether it's positive or negative -- buzz that might be fairly meaningless as far as a predictor of the quality of the ultimate game, but it does have a potential to hurt post-official release sales. So what a dev has to do is balance that against the desire to actually MAKE a quality game, and if the latter is more important, then early access is probably the best thing they can do.

That's basically the whole problem -- it's not that early access will result in a worse game -- it shouldn't by any sensibly logical thinking. But it might influence sales. I've seen it happen with other games for sure.

The main problem that some worry about as far as early access is concerned is that feedback may lead to bad decisions. But if its really a bad decision, it's not the early access that is to blame, but bad decision-making that is independent of the decision to grant early access.

 

It would be cool if they filled the delay with more dev blog goodness especially fleshing out some of the more mysterious systems like how fortifications equipment ammunition and deployment shall interact with each other.

 

I can see what you're saying, and I agree. I just don't think early access is the way to do it.

The player-dev dialogue existed way before Early Access. Small scale beta tests made sure that things were fixed. After the game was launched there was still dialogue and so on. Except it was symbiotic, the testers got their hands on the game early in exchange for providing valuable feedback from a perspective other than the dev, instead of the studio demanding money for the "privilege" of giving feedback.

There are, in my opinion, only two good reasons to go into Early Access;

1.
To help the product reach its finished state. And by that I mean purely monetary. Early Access will most likely lose you money in the long run, the only sane reason to utilize it is if unless you do it you won't be getting any money.

2.
By being a f2p game. You will only be able to gain money by doing this. Saying "The game isn't ready for launch where we'll release it for free, but if you're passionate about the game you can purchase Early Access" and then include some bonuses.


I realise that this is a cynical, purely economical standpoint, but other side effects are an increased amount of Dev-worship, too many people all demanding different things and of course the fact that the worshiping community will disregard and bury all negative feedback and criticism by claiming that the game is in Early Access and it'll be better later on. Encouraging the devs to listen to their greater playerbase rather than making sure the game is accessible to a wider playerbase.


And as a disclaimer: I am not accusing the gaslampians for being abusers of the Early Access model, I think that they've made educated choices and so on, but I still don't think that this is monetarily beneficial for them nor the consumers.

 

One of the bigger gambles with early access is a lack of a real "release date" it goes to early access and then rolls around all the review sites and they jump on the new content. After that it becomes a slow dirge of patches where the game has to compete with regular games for new press. there will come a day when they "release" it for real and no one will really care unless there are sizable new features coming at the release patch.

If any advice I could give I would point them out to how well banished did and still does. It went in the complete other direction of CE for trying minimalism instead of complexity and depth but it did really well in the early access model.

 

The way i see early access is that it's basically a pre-order where you get to play the alpha/beta. and the problem with small closed alpha-tester groups is that they will never be able to find the same amount of bugs, or give as much feedback as an early access. And to be honest i think it's very cynical to say

i have been a gamer for many years, never have i participated in this "dialogue" that goes on when a company only has a small beta group. it's not really a dialogue with the actual players, the people who will be the consumers of the product. it's a small margin of people who will only be capable of finding a smaller number of bugs. (And as a psychology student, i can assure you that there many dangers with having a small "focus group" like having a homogeneous group that gives that same feedback because of lack of diversity (in this case: playstyles)) and you are not "paying for the privilege of giving feedback" you are paying for a product, one that is not done (which is heavily emphasized before you buy it) and you dont have to give feedback, maybe you want to support the devs, more funds doing development means more features in the final product. which is a great plus in my book. maybe you just really want this game to succeed and therefor support development.

however different our viewpoints might be... i do agree with the danger of "dev worship"

 

This i agree with 100% It is a big risk and this is one of the VERY few reasons i am against early access for clockwork empires.

 

ahh that would be great, but honestly i love their dev blog. "The Fishman" remains to this day, the best game-related poem in existence

 

Whenever you post on a forum, or whenever you voice your opinion you are participating in it. Just like in Early Access. The difference is that indie game has a smaller following that [Insert your AAA game of choice] which means that they'll constantly generalize the community, letting a thread become the second party to the dialogue.

What you are speaking of are focus groups. A focus group generally falls under peer pressure as a lot of products show (e.g Bioshock Infinite, Thief, Watchdogs). Thing is, how social psychology works into it is through peer pressure. In the group, everyone claims to love their coffee black with a dark, rich roast because that sounds aristocratic, yet they will all succumb to the sweet delight of "girlish" drinks when they visit Starbucks on their own. Because Starbucks wouldn't be a big brand if all they sold was rich dark roasts to their male customers.

No, small beta groups consist of several hundred people minimum. Playing in their own homes and sending their feedback straight to the developer. It's not a beta where 20 000 people join in for 15 quid and shout whatever incomprehensible nonsense that happens to be on their mind at the time.

And I can assure you (I studied mathematics) that f (x) = x^2 - 2x is derived to 5. Although, I'm afraid I was never any good at it and that I only studied at a very basic level, but I did study it. But it's as applicable to the conversation as your very prestigious psychology classes.

 

I know this is off-topic, but I've never understood the appeal of Starbucks. "snooty sounding drinks that's really extremely overpriced, mediocre coffee with a nickel's worth of chocolate or cream in it? YES PLEASE!!!! They got into trouble at one point because someone actually called them on their overpriced drinks and it turned out that what they were saying was this premium Kona blend, actually was not. Having tried their coffee, it doesn't surprise me at all.

 

umm. please don't try to comment on what i do, or do not study? because with all due respect you have literally no knowledge of my life. because despite our different opinions on the matter i do respect you, despite you're albeit somewhat cynical viewpoints. so please don't pull "knowledge", about my life, out of your ass

that being said i hope we can continue this conversation as civilzed citizens of the empire

 

except most companies make members of closed beta's agree to an NDA, prohibiting them from talking about the games state, with others

 

i personally never liked Starbucks, their stores smell horrible! i don't understand how people can sit in there for prolonged periods of time, and survive....