A little about deadlines and business

[Olof]

Thanks for the interesting discussion here. I think the least we can do is comment on your opinions and questions.

@Oestvang

1. We are talking about an early alpha release of the game, we who want this game will buy it anyway, so polishing is stricktly speaking unnescessary at this point. By pushing back release and stuff, you are only setting the expectations you’ll need to meet way higher, and thus many people will expect a fully-functional beta, not an Alpha.

I have to disagree here, polishing is never unnecessary, and especially not as we are polishing stuff that’ll serve as a foundation for us to expand upon. Time we invest in making sure that stuff (hopefully) works from the start, so that we can (hopefully) avoid launching a title with stuck passengers and deadlock aircrafts are considered as a long-term investment. I’m saying hopefully because running closed tests on up to 15 clients versus having several hundred try out the game is impossible to compare, but 15 people doing a lot of testing should at least somewhat make the product more ready for larger scale testing.

While it is impossible to say, my personal perception is that when we delay something people don’t automatically go “oh, that means they’ll release something a lot bigger and better down the road” because that would defy the purpose of delaying the product as of now. We simply needed more time to listen to peoples suggestions, test systems and prepare for future expansions.

@Oestvang

3. It would be better to have a statement saying “we won’t release the game before it is in late Alpha or Early Beta” to set the crowds expectations at the same level as yours.

The problem here is that we’re not releasing a late alpha or an early beta, we’re releasing an early access pre-alpha (early alpha). Our strategy to make sure that our expectations are aligned is a completely transparent development process as well as sending the title prior to release to YouTubers so that they can try out the game, and then people can decide for themselves whether or not they like what they see.

@Oestvang

4. It’s important as a provider to remember that you are not providing a velfare-service, but you are going to sell a product. This product is going to compete with other products and will have to be priced accordingly, and meet the expectations set by the pricing and set through marketing. This forum and website are a form of marketing. This means that already set deadlines and promises will either have to be kept, or you’ll need a valid reason for not keeping them. Alternatively you can revert to step 3 here and change the ground rules. After all, that’s your descision. Caring for your potential customers, and setting their expectations on the right level is very important to ensure satisfaction upon release.

I completely agree, but according to what’s been said here a financial transaction is yet to be made. In the instance of a financial transaction, yes, the relationship changes, and we have a different responsibility in terms of being transparent with delivery dates. However, the price as you mentioned will always be adjusted for the risks involved in this project. We might still fail at delivering deadlines in the future ahead, albeit none will of course be as critical as the first one (release). But as you said, the price will always be adjusted for that, and this is one of the reasons to why indiegames are cheaper than titles developed by real studios.

@pderuiter

But the developers did not say that the pre alpha release would be on Steam (although it is kind of implied in a post) I can imagine that a pre alpha release is done outside of Steam to get some initial feedback, and when they deem the game ready for Alpha, they publish to Steam.

We will go for a Steam Greenlight early access release. We purchased the entry free months ago and started looking at Steam SDK integration today!