111–120 of 335 posts
Has there ever been a high profile early access game that crossed the finish line? It seems like studios usually take the money and run, like Bohemia Interactive with DayZ. Five years and tens/hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and the game is abandonware. I guess Minecraft is one notable exception.
Warframe would be another, imo.
He lost because of a forced arbitration clause. This massive privatization of justice where any boilerplate service or product now comes with forced arbitration is making my blood boil. The justice system should always be an option when arbitration fails, and arbitration should take no more than a reasonable time to fail (say, two weeks for this $5000 amount). The whole point of a small claims court is to handle such…
> According to Lord, the terms of service when he made the initial pledge aren’t the same terms of service they are today. The original terms of service, according to RSI’s own records, make no mention of arbitration before February 2015. “These Terms of Service (TOS) do not affect any transactions made before its effective date,” RSI’s terms site said. “All prior transactions are governed by the TOS in effect on the date of such transactions.”
> Lord came to court prepared. He had printed out multiple versions of the terms of service, all records of communication with RSI, and a long document recording the 77 promises RSI hasn’t fulfilled in a timely fashion, including citations showing where and when RSI made those promises. But the case never got that far. He said RSI’s representatives understood that Lord’s pledges weren’t covered by the arbitration clause, and he offered to settle, again, for $3,800. They declined.
> According to Lord, when RSI’s representatives stood before the judge, they tried to argue the arbitration clause of their TOS. “Right off the bat, they assert the arbitration clause applied to everything, even though it plainly didn't,” Lord said. “I had to give the judge a copy of the first terms of services that clearly show that the arbitration clause was not there for the first few transactions.”
> ...According to Lord, the judge decided to apply the current TOS to all of the transactions in dispute. “He said he didn’t want two rulings floating out there,” Lord said. He may have lost this case, but he’s not done fighting. “I’m going to pursue it further. I’m not sure in what direction. I’m going to be speaking with a couple of different attorneys to evaluate my options.”
I mean... what? So even if you do exercise your choice as a consumer to avoid a forced-arbitration clause, companies can simply add it to their ToSes later on and retroactively make it apply to all interactions ever with the company?
>one of the worst cases of feature creep in history crowdfunding campaign that exceed expectations put the developer in a really tough spot. Star Citizen asked for $2 million but got 6. If they had said they keep everything the same, the schedule would stay sane but everyone would call it a money grab because they take $6 million to develop a $2 million game. The other option is to make use of the additional $4 milli…
I pledged a fraction of this fellow's total in Star Citizen, probably the lowest tier that would result in a digital copy of the game once complete. I was after a modern Privateer reboot, essentially, and figured it was worth the gamble. I haven't followed the development with anything more than a casual, occasional glance and accompanying eye-roll. I doubt I'll ever see anything come of it. A shame, not necessarily…
For me, Elite:Dangerous had a better model (although still not without it's troubles). They delivered the base game in reasonable order and have been iterating and adding content since then. Whilst the early game was pretty sparse in terms of content, at least it was delivered and reasonably complete.
Star citizen abandoned its MVP (Squadron 42) awhile ago. That's why the combat sucks and there is still no core gameplay loop. A management fiasco that would be impressive to recover from.
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However, in the process they seem to have fully embraced the waterfall method which seems to me to be the root cause of the problem. They could have delivered the original concept as an MVP and continued to build towards their long-term vision through patches and incremental updates, much like rockstar did with GTA V online. Instead they're working slowly towards shipping a gigantic monolith where all that's playable…
Part of the problem is that they're hacking MP into an engine that hasn't really been proven out for MP so until they get that sorted MP is gonna be rough.
At the moment it seems like they are a content production company for a game that doesn't exist.
That sucks, but it seems almost inevitable with these new funding/purchasing models: the risk necessarily shifts from the developer and onto the consumer. This is a big reason why I'm a "patient gamer:" why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention?
If you put like $600 in, you're hoping for a return on that investment in 8 months of a product. You might get something amazing, or something okay or nothing at all. Just like any other venture.
Okay, so you might say, "Well I don't want to invest, but I'll buy it once it's build if other people put up the funding." It's successful aaaaaand that's it. No more units.
That's a big issue, because now people with existing units may not even have a repair path. Devices could start getting rare and go on eBay for tons. This might even violate some basic product warrant laws in some country.
This doesn't apply here though, because games can always be purchased and distributed to people later without having to get them made in a factory.
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And this is the unfortunate problem with the agile “release an MVP and iterate” approach when talking about a game. Unlike a SaaS product that might initially solve a problem, a game needs to be compelling, make a good first impression, and be fun, all out of the gate, to retain player interest. The Early Access model has continued to fail because people try the early version, dislike it (because it isn’t finished),…
Didn’t Minecraft release (obviously successfully) with this approach?
I'm a backer and I have no problem with this. Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. For example, between Diablo 2 and 3. I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. I'm not holding my breath, just living my life and when the game is finished I will be happy to play it. Although, I also did not drop 5 grand on this game.
I'm not a backer, but your sentiment seems right. It always seemed like a game that wanted to be "the best space sim", and that is going to take a while. All the demos have looked incredible, a the features are extremely ambitious, but cool. I think that all backers should just feel lucky the project hasn't burned through all their cash and shut down yet.
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And how does a judge seriously decide to retroactively apply an arbitrarion agreement when none existed at the time of the transaction? Is the argument that the new ToS were accepted when Lord participated in the bug test? The article seems to be missing that detail if there even is some logic that was used in the ruling (as I assume there was, beyond not wanting to have two rulings).
It seems the argument could be that since he didn't object to the new ToS when they were changed, and kept using parts of their service, the clause forbidding arbitration towards RSI is/was still binding. One oddity, except the usual insanity that click-through agreements should be valid for anything above, lets say $100, is that it appears the newer ToS explicitly states it doesn't apply retroactively. However, sinc…
No body reads these. We're talking about the literal I'm surprised there isn't more backlash against click-through EULAs.
I'm a backer and I have no problem with this. Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. For example, between Diablo 2 and 3. I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. I'm not holding my breath, just living my life and when the game is finished I will be happy to play it. Although, I also did not drop 5 grand on this game.
Except the existence of D3 wasn't even announced until 2008, releasing four years later - and they didn't rely on the donations of backers, nor did they promise it'd be out in 2-3 years or bolt on feature after feature (and a FPS), nor did they push the limits of graphics cards and whatnot and design it for two generations over. I could go on, not sure though, I think it's a moot comparison.