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[Aklyon]

Well, good luck finding them then. I give you about as much chance of finding a reasonable review of PA as there is finding a good comment on a popular youtube thing.

[Neonivek]

Well, good luck finding them then. I give you about as much chance of finding a reasonable review of PA as there is finding a good comment on a popular youtube thing.

But that isn't even the argument Sean is making! His argument is that because a game isn't finished it shouldn't be beholden to any standards even if they charge you for playing it.

While you are just saying that unfinished games shouldn't have standards because by what standards could we hold them to?

Where I am saying, by heck you can judge an unfinished games on the merits of an unfinished game especially if that is one of the selling points... AND that anytime a company offers early access they are inviting it.

[alexandertnt]

IMO if you buy an alpha and its a buggy, broken mess its your own fault. Interestingly, it is still open to criticism.

reasonable criticism though. Hammering the game for "being buggy" seems silly because well durrrrr, but pointing out bugs is not.

Also I think $90 is a tad pricey...

[Neonivek]

Hammering the game for "being buggy" seems silly because well durrrrr

It does deserve mention though. As it is a category someone may gauge whether or not to get the game in early access.

If the game doesn't work it certainly deserves mention even if it is in Alpha.

[Aklyon]

You could hold them to the standards of other unfinished games if you wanted to; Xenonauts is fairly stable as a beta and has most of its features, yet War for the Overworld is also in (bedrock) beta and has hardly any features to speak of. PA (this thread) and PA (prison architect) are both in paid alpha, unfinished, and on Steam early access, do they both deserve equal amounts of complaints and wastes of time "metacritic reviews" for being similarly developed?

[Neonivek]

I am basically not saying you have to hold them to the standards of finished games, but they certainly have their own standards.

It would be like giving Potato chips the same standards as a main course meal. They serve entirely different purposes.

[alexandertnt]

I would think a better comparison would be comparing a half-cooked main meal to a fully cooked main meal, given a potato chip is a complete and finished product.

[Sean Mirrsen]

At which point does a mess of code become a "game"? There are no standards simply because there can be no standards for something as loosely defined as an "alpha", or even more generally, a "game in development". You can pick a title and hold it to a standard of your choosing, sure, but you can't generalize a set of standards for these, as each developer sets their own. In addition, each genre would have its own on top of that. A non-interactive series of pictures can serve as a sufficient gameplay representation of a visual novel for one developer, and another may consider a few plain text files the same, whereas a more self-conscious company will only release full, compiled segments for others' perusal - and they would all be correct, in their own ways.

For instance, since I am a programmer making a few programming projects of my own (though none so important as to be mentionable), I can work with an example. My applications usually start from the face - I begin by taking a form window and liberally sprinkling it with buttons, text fields, checkboxes, and all the other stuff that goes into the program's interface, in accordance with what features I intend the program to later have. Before I compile the executable with just this one nonfunctional form full of buttons, I do not have anything at all - unless you would classify "A thing must exist" as a standard, I have nothing to release. Once I compile the executable, I have something. That something represents a measure of work I have done towards the creation of the final program. It is not functional, it is barely representative of the final work at all (and I will likely remove some buttons and add others as my idea of how the thing must work changes), and yet it is there. Now, I would not make such a thing public and claim it to be a "release", or an "alpha" - because such are my standards, general, applied to all of my work. I would post a picture of it maybe, and keep working. But that doesn't mean that somebody else - somebody who has less personal standards - couldn't actually call it a release, and be justified in doing so. Because like it or not, it is a development snapshot, representing progress towards the final program that could be presented for evaluation - and the magnitude of said progress and the fact that its entirety could be summed up with an image, does nothing to counter that fact.

In other words, standards in regards to things labelled as "in development" are entirely personal. Whether or not you consider a given thing being "worth" the name of "alpha release", and whether or not you think it could be worth paying money for - be you a potential customer or a developer - it only speaks of your own standards. If the "release" is just a main menu leading to a loading screen, or just a main menu, or just a black screen - as long as it is anything at all relevant to the progress of development, it qualifies. From there it's just a matter of how much the developers care about whether or not anybody else tries to play their game at a given moment in time, and whether or not they care for any feedback at all.

[Gamerboy4life]

So, has anyone actually dished $90 bucks on this? I mean, it looks great, and the idea is incredibly ambitious, I could see it making some waves if ever finished. But that's a huge risk to take for a game that's not even close to finished yet.

[ank]

Surely anybody sane would just wait and get the game at retail price, around 30 bucks I think.

This discussion has gone as mad as the price tag, does anybody here actually know what is being discussed?

[Shadowgandor]

I don't understand why everyone complains about the high price; They're giving the option for fans to gain early access to a build that's still being developed, nobody's forcing you to buy the game!
I'm not buying Prison Architect because I want to enjoy the game in its full glory instead of a buggy mess of glitches. I understand that people want the game NOW because they're excited about it, but you need to remember that alpha and usually beta phases are usually kept behind closed curtains for a reason. Just think of a game that's being sold in alpha state as "unreleased" if you don't care about testing and bugfixing and just want to enjoy the game.

[kaian-a-coel]

The Alpha buyers get numeric artbook in addition to everything else (plus theta commander, digital soundtrack, etc... but those are also available for less. Not the artbook). Furthermore, Alpha access always has been priced at 90$. Always. It would be quite unfair for Kickstarter backers to allow random steam people to get everything they paid for, minus the Progenitor commander, for less. That would make one expensive Progenitor commander... And it is not denying anyone the final game, since said final product will be available to everyone for $30-40 anyway.

You have the right to complain about how it is expensive, but reasonably. You have alternative options. People complain simultaneously about how the Alpha is unplayable and how it is expensive. What's the point? They dont like it, they dont pay for it. They can get beta access for $60 and preco for $40. Some people see a point in buying $90 alpha access (supporting the devs, giving feedback, yadda yadda...), let them buy it consciously. Uber is not ripping off anybody.

[Mistercheif]

So, has anyone actually dished $90 bucks on this? I mean, it looks great, and the idea is incredibly ambitious, I could see it making some waves if ever finished. But that's a huge risk to take for a game that's not even close to finished yet.

I spent a total of $70, by backing $50 during the Kickstarter and then upgrading to the Galactic edition (the equivalent of the one on Steam) which was a bit of a loophole in the pricing, but I'm going to say that as a fan of Supreme Commander, and the Total Annihilation remakes in SpringRTS, it was definitely worth my money, and I do not see it not getting finished.

I've watched the dev liveblogs since the Kickstarter, and they've made a huge amount of progress from the start, as they build their own modular engine from scratch for this, as well as various tools for it, like the planet generator.  It went from literally nothing, to the quite playable, albeit buggy and not full-featured alpha.  The game is updated fairly quickly as well, though we've been warned we may find that sometimes there may be a couple weeks between patches when they have the game in such a state that they will start adding in more of the major features, such as only being able to place metal extractors on metal points, the orbital layer, and interplanetary combat.

They've also encouraged modders thoroughly, which at least for me, makes paying $90, let alone $70 absolutely worth it.  There were mods being made within a day of the release, and even I was messing around trying to enable the production of the few orbital units available in the game.  There are already plans for returns of some of the mods from SupCom, such as LABwars.

So yeah, definitely worth the price, simply because the level of mod support, and the amount of dev interaction with the community is nearly unseen in the gaming world.  The only other place with this level of interaction that I've seen is around Stonehearth.

[Neonivek]

I would think a better comparison would be comparing a half-cooked main meal to a fully cooked main meal, given a potato chip is a complete and finished product.

You do NOT eat half-cooked meals and it would be illegal for a chef to let you try it.

That is why I used Potato chips and Main dish, because they are different.

[alexandertnt]

I don't understand why everyone complains about the high price; They're giving the option for fans to gain early access to a build that's still being developed, nobody's forcing you to buy the game!

I am pretty sure someone has mentioned this, but you are never forced to buy any game ever. That on its own does not invalidate it from criticism. Often, people will complain about the price when they are a fan, and do want to purchase it but find the price too high (like myself).