Ah, alright so I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the recorded streams, at least in part.
*** LONG RANT INCOMING! ***None of the presenters are prepared; no-one has a script or solid presentation to sell. I understand that things didn't go as planned, but someone in the know needs to be there, up front, selling a face and a plan and doing damage control. To my knowledge, that's Tiy, right? At the very least there should be a script with high points.
During the dev panel, Armagon didn't have a script or a plan, and the con hosts did a shit job of getting the mic around for questions. The thing is, if he had trouble hearing the questions, someone else probably did, too. He should have repeated them aloud for everyone (and the stream camera) to hear what was being asked, if the hosts were being lax on the mic.
The Yogscast LP gave me a bad vibe as well. Again, Molly and Bart had no script. I haven't seen YC much, but what little of their stuff I have watched... they do know how to play video games. Keep in mind, they're paid to be entertainers first and gamers second. The POV screen (Simon? I think...) had played the game before and knew what to do. The others really, honestly didn't, which leads me to believe they hadn't played the game before. I'll say that again...
The "world debut" presenters for this game hadn't played the game beforehand.
I'm not sure how that happened... if the one pre-build copy was supposed to go to everyone or not, but... They were handed a game they hadn't played with zero instructions other than "entertain a crowd of people with this thing" and the first thing you get to show off is a box of text. No, they aren't going to sit there and read dialogs in front of everyone.
There's no available schedule of their events on their website, but there is at least one person available (not at the festival) who could be doing so. Tiy has time to get on his phone and post wank about the demo hardware, but no one can post when all the streams and panels will be up for actual gameplay and info. And speaking of...
There's no real new info for long-time supporters. The filler trailers they keep playing are months old in some cases. I've heard rumors that they were going to show the first boss, but I have no idea when, what stream it's on, or if it's even happening.
Take a minute and erase everything you've read about Starbound and look at what they just presented. It's a flashier Terraria, with a spaceship and pokemans. There's pets, but we didn't see them. There's mechs, but we didn't see them. There's a food and survival system that got glossed over. There's racial armor and a wide variety of weapons, but most of the gameplay I saw was default clothes and one melee weapon. Planet variety is limited to forest for starters. Spaceship upgrades, elaborate dungeons like the Avian crypts, NPC party or crew members, fun armor effects, racial item descriptions, higher-tier gameplay mechanics... None of that was shown and barely mentioned. So, everything that sets it apart from Terraria, barely mentioned.
I get the feeling that these people were tossed out with a half-assed demo, no plan, no outline, no press, and told to wing it. That's remarkably unfortunate, because I believe the product is worth far, far more than the treatment it's gotten this weekend. I doubt any of this is something that Hemmingjay hasn't told them already but since I think some of the team do read this thread, have some free advice:
1) Have a script or at bare minimum an outline with your selling points and pitch.
2) Have pre-made characters setup at places you want to show off, instead of hoping to find an X-biome planet off-the-cuff when playing live, especially if you couldn't show off that planet with lack of prep anyway.
3) have someone post an itinerary or stream schedule on your site. You have fans who aren't there there are still interested, and being left in the dark sucks.
4) Have some cool stuff to show off. The starting bits are interesting and all, but there have been videos of rocket launchers, laser cannons, sniper rifles, racial melee weapons, tons of armor and vanity sets... Show them off. Differentiate yourself. This weekend would have been a great time to discuss survival elements to a Minecraft audience.... didn't happen.
Blah, this turned into a text wall. I'm just going to end it here.
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Topic: Starbound - We have lift off. (Read 995406 times)