This is not a dinosaur game!

[x4000]

Exciting on Saurian!  That sounds pretty slick.

Regarding early access: it's a good way to get a lot of testers, build up a playerbase, and have a lot of interaction/feedback with the players as things go.  I don't think there's anything wrong with early access as a tool -- rather, it's how some people game that system to take advantage of players.

[crazyroosterman]

Exciting on Saurian!  That sounds pretty slick.

Regarding early access: it's a good way to get a lot of testers, build up a playerbase, and have a lot of interaction/feedback with the players as things go.  I don't think there's anything wrong with early access as a tool -- rather, it's how some people game that system to take advantage of players.

of course your aboustley right but to me testing is well what I've done with starward and stars I just don't principly like the idea of paying a developer for the curtsy of paying an unfinished and depending on their goodwill/luck that it actually gets finished unless its from a company like klei for instance were its pretty much guaranteed to be finished(although their early accesses are usually barely early accesses at all apart from don't starve really) but any way before I do a second derailing I wish you the best of luck with this game I may even opt into its early accesses if its still going on when stars is hopefully finished(since I definitely won't enough time while I'm testing that) although you might want to make it abundantly clear that its actually going to get finished since I'm sure your quite awere of the massive amount of survival early accesses games that just don't.

[x4000]

No worries.  My hope is that this also counts as a "barely even in early access" sort of game.  There's a reason why I don't tend to do early access in general.

[Cinth]

No worries.  My hope is that this also counts as a "barely even in early access" sort of game.  There's a reason why I don't tend to do early access in general.

This is #2 IIRC.

[Draco18s]

Exciting on Saurian!  That sounds pretty slick.

Indeed.  Seeing as how some of the people working on it are writing the leading edge of paleo research, not just reading it.  My friend talks about barely-public papers all the time.  Cool stuff all around.

[x4000]

There's a reason why I don't tend to do early access in general.

This is #2 IIRC.

Kinda?  It depends on how you count it.  Early Access wasn't a thing the last time we did something like this -- Valley 2.  But it was on Steam and marked as "coming soon" while being on sale for those who wanted to buy it.  With the first 4 expansions to AI War we made those available for people to purchase as soon as there was one iota of content for them (like literally one ship), so we started getting feedback immediately and people got to participate a ton.  That was only through our site, though, not Steam.  All of the above went well.

We also did a public on-sale alpha/beta of Valley 1 through our site after about 9ish months of development on that one and a couple of months of private tester testing.  It was definitely too early for that one, which scared me off of the process quite a bit.

Exciting on Saurian!  That sounds pretty slick.

Indeed.  Seeing as how some of the people working on it are writing the leading edge of paleo research, not just reading it.  My friend talks about barely-public papers all the time.  Cool stuff all around.

Yeah, that's incredibly exciting for that bit.  Their site doesn't do a great job of making me understand just what the game is, but it highlights all the research and dinos really really well.

[Draco18s]

Indeed.  Seeing as how some of the people working on it are writing the leading edge of paleo research, not just reading it.  My friend talks about barely-public papers all the time.  Cool stuff all around.

Yeah, that's incredibly exciting for that bit.  Their site doesn't do a great job of making me understand just what the game is, but it highlights all the research and dinos really really well.

AFAIK (which is admittedly little) it's a survival multiplayer game where you play as various dinosaurs.

[x4000]

I kinda got that impression, but before they start trying to really push this they definitely need to clarify their message on that, heh.

[Draco18s]

I kinda got that impression, but before they start trying to really push this they definitely need to clarify their message on that, heh.

Definitely.

[Misery]

It's funny that the dinosaurs bit is the part that everyone latches onto the most.  This is not chiefly a dinosaur game at all.  Just as an fyi, because folks seem to be getting the wrong idea in the absence of other information.  Yes there are dinosaurs.  But there are a lot more aliens and robots and corrupted human enemies.  Dinosaurs are one of a variety of genetic-experiment-style creatures you'll run into in the wilderness, away from the main enemy towns and forts.

...and yes, it's possible you might be able to turn into a dinosaur for a while in the game at times, but that's just one feature among many many more core ones.

Just throwing this out there so people are not disappointed later.

CLEARLY this is a direct result of you not spoiling-  I mean, offering enough information on the upcoming game. 

Obviously, you should just do an infodump here.  Am I right, everyone?

Early Access wasn't a thing the last time we did something like this -- Valley 2.

These terms confuse the heck out of me nowadays.  Everyone seems to just mix "early access" and "beta/alpha" now. 

Granted I'm usually a little confused, but still. 

[Cinth]

There's a reason why I don't tend to do early access in general.

This is #2 IIRC.

Kinda?  It depends on how you count it.  Early Access wasn't a thing the last time we did something like this -- Valley 2.  But it was on Steam and marked as "coming soon" while being on sale for those who wanted to buy it.  With the first 4 expansions to AI War we made those available for people to purchase as soon as there was one iota of content for them (like literally one ship), so we started getting feedback immediately and people got to participate a ton.  That was only through our site, though, not Steam.  All of the above went well.

We also did a public on-sale alpha/beta of Valley 1 through our site after about 9ish months of development on that one and a couple of months of private tester testing.  It was definitely too early for that one, which scared me off of the process quite a bit.

Ah, some history lessons!  I wasn't around back then.  I'd say buy in betas are EA.

Early Access wasn't a thing the last time we did something like this -- Valley 2.

These terms confuse the heck out of me nowadays.  Everyone seems to just mix "early access" and "beta/alpha" now. 

Granted I'm usually a little confused, but still. 

It's because it gets misused everywhere by dev/publishers as a marketing ploy.

[x4000]

Oh, for all practical purposes I would say that a buy-in-beta is early access.  I mean, there's no difference from a developer-player transaction point of view.

But in terms of "have we ever done the Steam Early Access program," which is a very specific thing with a lot of specific connotations, requirements, blah-de-blah: no we have not.

On the one hand it doesn't make any difference, and I'm not trying to dodge saying we've done it before.  But on the other hand doing an actual "Early Access on Steam in the modern sense of the actual thing" is new to us in a literal sense, so there are some bits there that are relevant for a practical point of view.

[Cinth]

I don't count on Steam for anything other than being a pita at times.  I know you haven't used EA through Steam.  Steam is just a tool/method/platform/over boiled water for you to reach consumers.

[crazyroosterman]

you know I am very much looking forward to see your take on the survival genera trying to find an actual survival game that isn't in real early access is really hard and the way its tagged on some games is ridiculous for instance did you know that the division has the survival tag? now from what I've seen of it it appears to have no survival elements what so ever and it goes on from there in terms of ridiculousness although flame in the flood looks pretty solid.

[Misery]

Steam tags can be kinda ridiculous in general.

I dont even look at them much.