Wasteland 2 - Beta For All Update

sakichop said:
I can understand disliking early access, but I don't understand having a problem with its existence.
Click to expand...

Everyone that doesn't own a game studio should have a problem with its existence. People are paying for the privilege of working for a company, something the robber barons of the nineteenth century that paid 10-year old kids a dollar for seventy hours of work never dreamed of subjecting their workers to.

From a labor perspective, it is horrifying to see how easy this concept is accepted by gamers.

There really is no reason why a studio can't add internal and fully paid testers to their kickstarter budgets.
 
Joined
Jul 9, 2013
Messages
7
pseudo - you are completely wrong and your comparison is deeply flawed.

Small studios often don't have the budget to add internal/fully paid - and quite frankly, the gaming industry has had non-paid testers since its inception. If they desire to keep costs down and people are willing - what is it to you?

"from a labor perspective" LOL - so everything has to be about money? If I want to offer my money or services free - again, what is it to you???

You just sound like a greedy self-centered person.
 
Joined
Oct 9, 2009
Messages
51
pseudonymous said:
Everyone that doesn't own a game studio should have a problem with its existence. People are paying for the privilege of working for a company, something the robber barons of the nineteenth century that paid 10-year old kids a dollar for seventy hours of work never dreamed of subjecting their workers to.

From a labor perspective, it is horrifying to see how easy this concept is accepted by gamers.

There really is no reason why a studio can't add internal and fully paid testers to their kickstarter budgets.
Click to expand...

The whole point for them is steam delivers the game to people. They are not really cashing in on people (steam gets 70% whereas in kickstarter they get 90%) but they keep prices up to keep too many people joining in and so they can get a decent amount of money from people who do. If they charged 20 bucks for early access they'd get only 6 bucks out of it, and they'd gain a ton of casual gamers who would give them bad reviews.
 
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
777
pseudonymous said:
Everyone that doesn't own a game studio should have a problem with its existence. People are paying for the privilege of working for a company, something the robber barons of the nineteenth century that paid 10-year old kids a dollar for seventy hours of work never dreamed of subjecting their workers to.

From a labor perspective, it is horrifying to see how easy this concept is accepted by gamers.

There really is no reason why a studio can't add internal and fully paid testers to their kickstarter budgets.
Click to expand...

Lets not get over dramatic. They aren't forcing kids to make clothes in a sweat shop or anything.

Participation is 100% optional. You are not required to beta test the game at all. You can play it as much or little as you want and give tons of feedback or none.

Actual beta testing requires playing the same level over and over again. Trying every possible dialog, weapon, combat and anything you can think of to try and find bugs. This can sometimes require 10's to 100's of play throughs of the same content. I'm pretty sure that almost no one is paying for the game and then doing that.

At best the developer can expect is people to play through once or twice and report bugs. I would bet most though just play and never report anything.

As I did with blackguards early access. Played the whole game actually. It had some issues but was overall more stable than many "finished" games.

It gets tiring hearing " I will not pay to be a beta tester!" good, then don't. It's 100% optional.

So again, I can totally understand not wanting to participate but bemoaning it's very existence is silly.
 
ManWhoJaped said:
The whole point for them is steam delivers the game to people. They are not really cashing in on people (steam gets 70% whereas in kickstarter they get 90%) but they keep prices up to keep too many people joining in and so they can get a decent amount of money from people who do. If they charged 20 bucks for early access they'd get only 6 bucks out of it, and they'd gain a ton of casual gamers who would give them bad reviews.
Click to expand...

Not saying your wrong as I don't know but does steam really get 70%. Why would anyone use them then?
 
sakichop said:
Not saying your wrong as I don't know but does steam really get 70%. Why would anyone use them then?
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's about 70% last I heard. If you sell a game to 2 million people and get 10 bucks each that's a ton of money. If you try to sell on your own you will get more money per person but you will probably get 1/10th the sales.

There's also the benefit they get out of early access, in that they get the game to the person.

To my thinking the big benefit of steam is to sell your game there AFTER you have made your initial sales and got as much as you are going to get on your own. Not only do you get money off steam but remember you get a lot of exposure. So if you release your game on steam then you run a kickstarter the next year you probably will get way more pledges, assuming they liked your first game.

I see how it looks like they are getting some huge gain off the beta but they probably just set the price high to encourage people to NOT get the game this way. Personally I think a very small alpha/beta is a lot more useful to a coder than a great big one with millions of duplicate bug reports rolling in, probably they feel the same. But by going on steam for early release it gives them an easyw ay to push out access to ALL beta testers not just the ones who buy in now.

So steam kinda sucks, but it has its good side as well.

When I someday release my game, it will eventually go to steam but I would never use that as my starting option or else your game will be priced at 5 bucks and you will get only 30% of that, and you have to hope you sell a million copies or you can forget about doing a second game.
 
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
777
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,424
Location
Spudlandia
i thought it was other way around. Good to hear I was wrong!

Actually reading that, I see this is for sega and it's on preorders. Big companies probably get a much better deal.

On some of the other game portals I know it's 50% so I'd be surprised if steam (which is much larger) gives you a better deal.
 
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
777
Early Access is a great thing for gamers who don't do Early Access. ;)
 
Joined
May 6, 2013
Messages
5,005
Location
Germany
pseudonymous said:
From a labor perspective, it is horrifying to see how easy this concept is accepted by gamers.
Click to expand...

Horrifying?? :rolleyes:

Then again, I have seen some pretty terrible software bugs before.... fearsome things. That people would risk life and limb being exposed to them!
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
5,228
Location
San Diego, Ca
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom