“How about an ACTUAL explanation of what happened behind the scenes?”
We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so. With each Alpha release there was the hope that things would change, but they didn’t. We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.
There's a lot more after the link. Schafer has the patience of a saint.
“How about an ACTUAL explanation of what happened behind the scenes?”
We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so. With each Alpha release there was the hope that things would change, but they didn’t. We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.
There's a lot more after the link. Schafer has the patience of a saint.
I have a strong feeling this is far from the last time we'll hear this exact same story of "Turns out we couldn't continue development once people stopped buying the game." within the context of early access. Still love Schafer and Double Fine, mind you.
Don't Buy Early Access.
I still really feel like Early Access is not a great boon to the consumer or the developer, when it comes right down to it. Nobody is going to recapture that Minecraft lightning in a bottle. It just isn't going to happen.
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
I've got pretty specific criteria for when I will buy Early Access, and if some game meets those criteria I'm still going to consider it. Basically, it has to already be in a state that I'd have fun playing it as-is, and it can't be a story game. Something like Divinity or Wasteland, I wasn't interested in playing part of the story and then needing to wait for the rest. Something like Mount & Blade, my first proto-Early Access experienced, I'd buy again in a heartbeat.
I understand the business decision behind Spacebase, but yeah, the effect is still a definite minus mark in any future DF offerings for me. I bought it when it came out, and I probably won't buy a DF product in EA, or a similar proposal, again the future.
When it went something like -60% during Summer sale I had a feeling that this was going to happen.
Steam has turned a page I feel, where because of the larger volume of games it is not at all easy to automatically get a huge amount of sales, especially over time. So many games exist now that your release window, and the quality of the product at release to get positive buzz, are much more important.
The SB9 buzz was basically (And I told other people this when they asked) "Only buy this if you want to support DF because this is barely a game"
early access games don't have to be a phenomenon like Minecraft to be successful
for example:
Starbound
Wasteland 2
Prison Architect
Space Engineers
Road Redemption
The Forest
DayZ
Rimworld
Rust
7 Days to Die
Gang Beasts
Project Zomboid
Kerbal Space Program
SpeedRunners
I'm really happy all of those are being made, and early access is funding development for them long after the creator would've ran out of money. complex games take a long time to make, and very few developers have the funds to keep a project going for years without income
there are going to some games like Spacebase DF-9 and The Stomping Land, just like there are huge AAA pieces of garbage that make millions in preorders. failures exist in every system
if you can't handle a game maybe not coming out in the shape or form you or the developer envisioned, don't support it through early access. meanwhile, the rest of us who can (who maybe really want to see a modern Road Rash game, for example, and are accepting of the risks) have the opportunity to help get a game made
Lockout on
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I feel like, and I am making some sales assumptions here and could be wrong, you don't get two chances to release your game.
Going 1.0 and releasing is at some point basically a formality, the narrative is going to be set by how the game plays when it shows up on early access.
Planetary Annihilation I guess was more a kickstarter success then an early access success but it still worked out pretty well.
Except when it turns out the guy who set up the planetary system you're playing on didn't test it enough and forty five minutes in when things are getting interesting and you're fighting a war on two or three fronts at once suddenly planets start crashing into eachother for no reason because their orbits were unstable and the guy you're fighting just happened to be lucky enough that his commander wasn't on one of those planets and FUCK
Usually planets start crashing into each other because people slap huge engines on them and deliberately fly them into other planets.
See, that I'm okay with! That's a normal expected part of the game. Also, incredibly badass. But the most recent one was that the four starter planets seemed to be in the same orbit, but for some reason some of them moved just slightly slower than the others - mine crashed into another guy's, and ten minutes later the remaining two hit eachother as well. The one guy whose commander wasn't still on one of those ended up winning.
“How about an ACTUAL explanation of what happened behind the scenes?”
We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so. With each Alpha release there was the hope that things would change, but they didn’t. We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.
There's a lot more after the link. Schafer has the patience of a saint.
I have a strong feeling this is far from the last time we'll hear this exact same story of "Turns out we couldn't continue development once people stopped buying the game." within the context of early access. Still love Schafer and Double Fine, mind you.
Don't Buy Early Access.
I still really feel like Early Access is not a great boon to the consumer or the developer, when it comes right down to it. Nobody is going to recapture that Minecraft lightning in a bottle. It just isn't going to happen.
I dunno man, I've already seen people find that lightning in the bottle, it's just not going to be the case for every game, or nessesarily to the 2.5 billion dollar scale.
You can look at Kerbal Space program, Prison Architect, Space Engineers, Rust, Starforge, Kentucky Route Zero, Lifeless Planet, Xenonauts, Mercenary Kings, Starbound to find success in that model, and that's just the easy ones off the top of my head. It's a bummer Spacebase wasn't feasible for Double Fine to make, but It doesn't make previous success stories go away.
Hack N' Slash was mostly done, the Early Access release was basically one big playtesting session and to take in feedback of how to bring the whole game full circle for the final chapter
Just finished Hack'n'Slash. It was an interesting game, and I had fun, but it felt very rushed, and I don't know if I'd recommend it to people. Gameplay spoilers and mild story spoilers:
I love the concept of hacking the code of rooms/events/objects to get through puzzles, but the execution was lacking. I often found it difficult to follow the code and figure out what was happening, and I have significant experience in multiple programming languages, so if I'm having a hard time, someone with little or no coding experience would probably be completely lost.
And even once I'd gotten used to the code, the puzzles felt a bit empty. The traps and encounters were stylish and had some neat ideas, but the actual hacking usually came down to a "needle in a haystack" situation where I was just looking for the right if statement to reverse or number to modify to defuse the threat. The hard-to-read code hindered things a lot here too, because instead of having those fun adventure game moments of "aha, I've figured out the solution!", puzzles usually came down to "uh, maybe this is the part I'm supposed to change... okay, yeah, puzzle solved, I guess". It didn't help that the puzzle pacing near the end wasn't great; the last few were oddly simple compared to the ones that came just before them.
Speaking of the ending, reaching it felt like suddenly running into a brick wall. The story still had so much unexplained parts and so little backstory that I literally went on Google to see if it was really the ending or just a puzzle disguised as one. You could argue that it's just a short indie game and I shouldn't have expected more than a few hours of gameplay, but I don't feel like I got $20 worth of game out of it. It felt more like finishing act 2 of a 3 act game, with all the really clever puzzles and story twists still waiting in the wings.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
“How about an ACTUAL explanation of what happened behind the scenes?”
We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so. With each Alpha release there was the hope that things would change, but they didn’t. We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.
There's a lot more after the link. Schafer has the patience of a saint.
I have a strong feeling this is far from the last time we'll hear this exact same story of "Turns out we couldn't continue development once people stopped buying the game." within the context of early access. Still love Schafer and Double Fine, mind you.
Don't Buy Early Access.
I still really feel like Early Access is not a great boon to the consumer or the developer, when it comes right down to it. Nobody is going to recapture that Minecraft lightning in a bottle. It just isn't going to happen.
I dunno man, I've already seen people find that lightning in the bottle, it's just not going to be the case for every game, or nessesarily to the 2.5 billion dollar scale.
You can look at Kerbal Space program, Prison Architect, Space Engineers, Rust, Starforge, Kentucky Route Zero, Lifeless Planet, Xenonauts, Mercenary Kings, Starbound to find success in that model, and that's just the easy ones off the top of my head. It's a bummer Spacebase wasn't feasible for Double Fine to make, but It doesn't make previous success stories go away.
I feel like not a lot of the games mentioned are really comparable situations though?
Like, I'm sure they all did or are doing fine but like a lot of those games are not really in any kind of early access fueled perpetual development cycle, and I feel like the ones that are I haven't heard fucking anybody mention in ages now.
For example I feel like Starbound sort of fell off the face of the planet a couple weeks after people finally got it in their hands. Apparently a quick look right now shows more people playing Star Trek Online.
So with that in mind, what does the landscape look like for Starbound once it actually releases if it's fallen off that hard now? I feel like they would have been better served "saving" that release rush for when the game is actually fucking released, instead of burning through the whole playerbase when the game is barely even there.
Minecraft lost loads of folks with each update, each year. A ton of folk jumped back in when the minecraft was released. I personally stopped playing before that game had an ending, but I had found +100's of hours of enjoyed content before then. Our forums are unique in that we have a ton of folk purchase games and get satisfied with them while they are in development. It doesn't mean the game is dead, but that a lot of that enthusiast crowd has given it a break. We've seen sales grow exponentially at release.
Some of those games listed earlier have been released already, but most of them started with the same gameplan of Spacebase, only it was done super cheaply or found enough of a playerbase to keep it financially sensible. They made back their development costs and came out with a way to make a living.
Starbound is actually a really great example, as it's still being updated and worked on and played by folks and isn't in danger of being dropped. You can say the same with Rust. Rust's story is exciting because they still have dedicated people updating and developing Rust, but are also using that success to finance developing other projects. Long term game creating studios that previously wouldn't exist, are being made out of early access games, who people love in thier current state.
A thing to remember about minecraft is that it found new life and effectively tripled their sales by releasing on phones and consoles. I wouldn't be surprised if these people follow suit too.
“How about an ACTUAL explanation of what happened behind the scenes?”
We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it. Some of its early sales numbers indicated this might be the case, but slowly things changed, and it became clear that this was looking like a year and a half of production instead of five or so. With each Alpha release there was the hope that things would change, but they didn’t. We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.
There's a lot more after the link. Schafer has the patience of a saint.
I have a strong feeling this is far from the last time we'll hear this exact same story of "Turns out we couldn't continue development once people stopped buying the game." within the context of early access. Still love Schafer and Double Fine, mind you.
Don't Buy Early Access.
I still really feel like Early Access is not a great boon to the consumer or the developer, when it comes right down to it. Nobody is going to recapture that Minecraft lightning in a bottle. It just isn't going to happen.
I dunno man, I've already seen people find that lightning in the bottle, it's just not going to be the case for every game, or nessesarily to the 2.5 billion dollar scale.
You can look at Kerbal Space program, Prison Architect, Space Engineers, Rust, Starforge, Kentucky Route Zero, Lifeless Planet, Xenonauts, Mercenary Kings, Starbound to find success in that model, and that's just the easy ones off the top of my head. It's a bummer Spacebase wasn't feasible for Double Fine to make, but It doesn't make previous success stories go away.
I feel like not a lot of the games mentioned are really comparable situations though?
Like, I'm sure they all did or are doing fine but like a lot of those games are not really in any kind of early access fueled perpetual development cycle, and I feel like the ones that are I haven't heard fucking anybody mention in ages now.
For example I feel like Starbound sort of fell off the face of the planet a couple weeks after people finally got it in their hands. Apparently a quick look right now shows more people playing Star Trek Online.
So with that in mind, what does the landscape look like for Starbound once it actually releases if it's fallen off that hard now? I feel like they would have been better served "saving" that release rush for when the game is actually fucking released, instead of burning through the whole playerbase when the game is barely even there.
So it’s no secret that a bunch of early access projects have run into trouble lately. From running out of money to ceasing development for political reasons. It’s not the best time to be a part of the early access party and it’s easy to see why people are worried about the health of the Starbound project.
I wanted in no uncertain terms to assure everyone that there’s no chance of Starbound going that way. Not only is the development of Starbound extremely healthy. (More so than it’s ever been in fact, with more team members than ever and all of us in the same location). But Chucklefish could fund the development of Starbound for another 9 years at least. Even if we didn’t make another penny in that time. This includes all our office costs, salaries and every other kind of company expenditure. Not only that but every member of the team is super dedicated to getting Starbound to where THEY want it to be. Which is 1.0 and beyond.
looks like the playerbase dropping off hasn't affected Starbound that badly. more than likely people will jump back in when some big new features are dropped or it releases on another platform
though I'm not really sure what you mean by a "early access fueled perpetual development cycle"
Like the thing to keep in mind is that a success story for developers and consumers is super simple. It's when developers can fund their work, have an income, and consumers can buy great satisfing purchases. Minecraft could have never fully released with an ending and it would have fullfilled that.
Xenonauts is a pretty comparable story. I pre-ordered/donated to it in 2009 after getting hooked on the original xcom, and reading our communities great LPs. They used that money to do a ton of development, hire artists, redo the website, etc.
Kickstarter became a cultural phenomenon years later, and they found more development income there, plus funded lady soldiers and things they otherwise couldn't budget.
They found even more income on early access and we now have a financially successful game fully released in 2014.
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
At the very beginning of Project Zomboid, when we released the first rough screenshots, outlined our goals, and asked for money to help us get there we had a discussion about the “what if” scenarios. What if we don’t really raise that much money? What if we do well initially but interest (and funding) dries up mid-way through? All these sorts of things. One thing was fundamentally obvious: If we take money up-front from people for a shell of a game, we have a duty to deliver the game regardless of how much money we make.
That’s why for the first year or so, Chris and I shared the same cheap apartment in Hartlepool (there’s very few cheaper places to live in the UK and not get murdered on the streets). When we did eventually move somewhere less horrid it was with the understanding that if things took a turn for the worse, we’d have to move back to an equivalent situation. Just turning round at that point and saying instead, “sorry guys, we’ve run out of money, the game as it is now is just going to have to do” was never an option. And it never should be.
So what is very clear to me, is if you can’t guarantee this from the outset then Alpha-Funding / Early Access is not for you. It’s too risky and were it just your own reputation on the line, that’d be fine. But failures tarnish the reputation of the entire model, so a failure (particularly a high-profile failure) is potentially damaging to the very developers who need this model the most.
Frankly, I find it bewildering that anyone would develop a game which relies on sales to fund development who is based somewhere with staggeringly high living costs (London, San Fransisco, Copenhagen, etc). You’re literally (metaphorically) burning that money. I know it’s easy to say but a lot more complicated to do, but you really should be based somewhere cheaper if you’re going to use this model. You need to be efficient and maximise the development you get out of every single penny that comes in. If you’re not prepared to do this then, again, alpha-funded / Early Access is not for you.
it reminds me of Frictional Games, who don't have office space either, or even live together. everyone works from home because it's cost effective. is an interesting strategy
Posts
what if your brain chip has already been hacked to forget that he already made it
Fibbage is incredible
After I had played Darkness 2 I went to read some of the comics. They were not very good.
I have a strong feeling this is far from the last time we'll hear this exact same story of "Turns out we couldn't continue development once people stopped buying the game." within the context of early access. Still love Schafer and Double Fine, mind you.
Don't Buy Early Access.
I still really feel like Early Access is not a great boon to the consumer or the developer, when it comes right down to it. Nobody is going to recapture that Minecraft lightning in a bottle. It just isn't going to happen.
When it went something like -60% during Summer sale I had a feeling that this was going to happen.
Steam has turned a page I feel, where because of the larger volume of games it is not at all easy to automatically get a huge amount of sales, especially over time. So many games exist now that your release window, and the quality of the product at release to get positive buzz, are much more important.
The SB9 buzz was basically (And I told other people this when they asked) "Only buy this if you want to support DF because this is barely a game"
for example:
Starbound
Wasteland 2
Prison Architect
Space Engineers
Road Redemption
The Forest
DayZ
Rimworld
Rust
7 Days to Die
Gang Beasts
Project Zomboid
Kerbal Space Program
SpeedRunners
I'm really happy all of those are being made, and early access is funding development for them long after the creator would've ran out of money. complex games take a long time to make, and very few developers have the funds to keep a project going for years without income
there are going to some games like Spacebase DF-9 and The Stomping Land, just like there are huge AAA pieces of garbage that make millions in preorders. failures exist in every system
if you can't handle a game maybe not coming out in the shape or form you or the developer envisioned, don't support it through early access. meanwhile, the rest of us who can (who maybe really want to see a modern Road Rash game, for example, and are accepting of the risks) have the opportunity to help get a game made
Going 1.0 and releasing is at some point basically a formality, the narrative is going to be set by how the game plays when it shows up on early access.
Patrick Klepek's coverage of BIT BASH, the Chicago indie game festival I went to a couple weeks ago, is now up
I'm actually visible like 4 times in this video, one time for a real real long time, so that is super weird for me
But it's a good thing he did this cause I forgot to upload all the pictures I took and now I don't have to
Except when it turns out the guy who set up the planetary system you're playing on didn't test it enough and forty five minutes in when things are getting interesting and you're fighting a war on two or three fronts at once suddenly planets start crashing into eachother for no reason because their orbits were unstable and the guy you're fighting just happened to be lucky enough that his commander wasn't on one of those planets and FUCK
See, that I'm okay with! That's a normal expected part of the game. Also, incredibly badass. But the most recent one was that the four starter planets seemed to be in the same orbit, but for some reason some of them moved just slightly slower than the others - mine crashed into another guy's, and ten minutes later the remaining two hit eachother as well. The one guy whose commander wasn't still on one of those ended up winning.
I dunno man, I've already seen people find that lightning in the bottle, it's just not going to be the case for every game, or nessesarily to the 2.5 billion dollar scale.
You can look at Kerbal Space program, Prison Architect, Space Engineers, Rust, Starforge, Kentucky Route Zero, Lifeless Planet, Xenonauts, Mercenary Kings, Starbound to find success in that model, and that's just the easy ones off the top of my head. It's a bummer Spacebase wasn't feasible for Double Fine to make, but It doesn't make previous success stories go away.
Hack N' Slash was mostly done, the Early Access release was basically one big playtesting session and to take in feedback of how to bring the whole game full circle for the final chapter
I don't know if it sold particularly excellently
And even once I'd gotten used to the code, the puzzles felt a bit empty. The traps and encounters were stylish and had some neat ideas, but the actual hacking usually came down to a "needle in a haystack" situation where I was just looking for the right if statement to reverse or number to modify to defuse the threat. The hard-to-read code hindered things a lot here too, because instead of having those fun adventure game moments of "aha, I've figured out the solution!", puzzles usually came down to "uh, maybe this is the part I'm supposed to change... okay, yeah, puzzle solved, I guess". It didn't help that the puzzle pacing near the end wasn't great; the last few were oddly simple compared to the ones that came just before them.
Speaking of the ending, reaching it felt like suddenly running into a brick wall. The story still had so much unexplained parts and so little backstory that I literally went on Google to see if it was really the ending or just a puzzle disguised as one. You could argue that it's just a short indie game and I shouldn't have expected more than a few hours of gameplay, but I don't feel like I got $20 worth of game out of it. It felt more like finishing act 2 of a 3 act game, with all the really clever puzzles and story twists still waiting in the wings.
I feel like not a lot of the games mentioned are really comparable situations though?
Like, I'm sure they all did or are doing fine but like a lot of those games are not really in any kind of early access fueled perpetual development cycle, and I feel like the ones that are I haven't heard fucking anybody mention in ages now.
For example I feel like Starbound sort of fell off the face of the planet a couple weeks after people finally got it in their hands. Apparently a quick look right now shows more people playing Star Trek Online.
So with that in mind, what does the landscape look like for Starbound once it actually releases if it's fallen off that hard now? I feel like they would have been better served "saving" that release rush for when the game is actually fucking released, instead of burning through the whole playerbase when the game is barely even there.
Some of those games listed earlier have been released already, but most of them started with the same gameplan of Spacebase, only it was done super cheaply or found enough of a playerbase to keep it financially sensible. They made back their development costs and came out with a way to make a living.
Starbound is actually a really great example, as it's still being updated and worked on and played by folks and isn't in danger of being dropped. You can say the same with Rust. Rust's story is exciting because they still have dedicated people updating and developing Rust, but are also using that success to finance developing other projects. Long term game creating studios that previously wouldn't exist, are being made out of early access games, who people love in thier current state.
A thing to remember about minecraft is that it found new life and effectively tripled their sales by releasing on phones and consoles. I wouldn't be surprised if these people follow suit too.
Starbound health check [Chucklefish Blog]
looks like the playerbase dropping off hasn't affected Starbound that badly. more than likely people will jump back in when some big new features are dropped or it releases on another platform
though I'm not really sure what you mean by a "early access fueled perpetual development cycle"
Xenonauts is a pretty comparable story. I pre-ordered/donated to it in 2009 after getting hooked on the original xcom, and reading our communities great LPs. They used that money to do a ton of development, hire artists, redo the website, etc.
Kickstarter became a cultural phenomenon years later, and they found more development income there, plus funded lady soldiers and things they otherwise couldn't budget.
They found even more income on early access and we now have a financially successful game fully released in 2014.
Heh. @World as Myth
Also, my 2-year old son, while watching that vid:
Alpha Funding / Early Access is not an “Alternative” [Binky's Blog]
it reminds me of Frictional Games, who don't have office space either, or even live together. everyone works from home because it's cost effective. is an interesting strategy
HOW TO BE A MINECRAFT EXPERT
what is going on around me all of a sudden
was it a minivan
Does... does that mean something
children like minecraft
minecraft is a Big Fucking Deal, has been for a while, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future
It isn't a terribly complicated game pre-modding, from a purely gameplay perspective, is it?
http://www.audioentropy.com/
But on the plus side you won't have to hear about minecraft
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I'll be the first one at the gate