I'm going to try to answer what I think was the question at the start of the current discussion, which i'll paraphrase as "If you're going to do this, why not just do a kickstarter?"
We're in a strange position where the sort of game we're making can start playable and just get
more playable the longer we work on it, while also being interesting to replay. In such a circumstance, making people wait until the game is "finished" when they'd like to play something that's simple right at the start is not giving them what they want.
The important thing for us was that we not sell that experience until people could actually PLAY the game for a while. Once you hit that point, the ability to deliver becomes a very real thing: you're no longer backing an idea but a game that at the very least will be what it is at that moment.
There is one downside to this sort of development, which we inherit as a result: some people don't want to be
able to buy the game until it's done. Having the extra choice is itself something that they'd rather not have. I understand this. I play lots of games as well and I've been in this position before. And we weighed the detriment of this effect against the benefit of selling "in progress" games for people who enjoy that, as i discussed above.
I think, for many games, the consideration of these two effects would yield a decision to wait until release. But for the type of game that Clockwork Empires is, we felt there was so much to gain from having players log in and experience new things, that an early access model was the right decision.
Now, having said that, we had another hurdle which was that there were people who we knew would want to buy and play the game (and would enjoy it) as it is right now, but we felt that the Steam Early Access user base, and perhaps even just the average early access game player, wouldn't quite see the level of polish and accessibility that they HOPE these games have (to say nothing of what is typically provided). For this reason, we called our current release Earliest Access, as it was the clearest way that we could message "everything early about early access, but even earlier".
At this point, I think things have gone really well with this. Certainly, as I mentioned, for some people this isn't ideal, and if you are a part of that camp I sincerely apologize. We spent many hours discussing ways that we could make everyone equally happy, and sadly our plan wasn't perfect in that regard. Still, I hope we make a game that you're interested in playing when it's ready.
(I'm away for a few days so i'm not posting as regularly. I'm still reading, but forum posts from a smartphone are hard)
Oh! And a new blog post today! Huzzah!
https://www.gaslampgames.com/2014/07/23/earliest-access-week-one/
Author
Topic: Clockwork Empires - 1.0 release October 26th (Read 255335 times)