Dead State - Early Access Update #1

DoubleBear Productions has released the first Early Access update for Dead State. Here are the details fresh off a Steam annouccement. Read the link for the huge changelog.

Welcome to the very first update of Dead State’s Early Access! In this update, we have a healthy mix of stability improvements and content additions. We’re happy to report that many crash and soft lock issues in the previous build have been eliminated.

We will be updating the Known Issues list here on Steam and on our forums as soon as we can with more detailed info about the bugs we’re aware of so far that aren’t yet fixed in the Steam build. We hope you enjoy the new update, and as always, please continue to share your feedback and bug reports with us either here or on our dedicated forums.

We have a special bug-reporting subforum available where you can provide your quicksave files and screenshots, which goes far in helping us track down and squash those more elusive bugs. Speaking of which, we want to say a big ol’ “THANK YOU” to everyone who helped us track down issues before now and reported reproduction steps to us on Steam EA discussion boards and on our forums. We’re also particularly grateful to our mods, Caidoz and DrunkZombie, who have worked tirelessly to answer questions, track down and report bugs, and help compile all the bugs being reported by the rest of the community. I don’t know what we’d do without them!

Have fun, and thanks for playing Dead State’s Early Access!

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More information.

So has anyone tried the EA of Dead State? I have it installed but I have to much of a backlog to play unfinished games. Would be interesting to hear some opinions though, without spoilers of course. Anyone?

I have put a little time into it. I am not, personally, a fan of playing unfinished games. Too many betas of MMO's beat any enjoyment out of me. Dead State and Wasteland 2 are games I am wanting too much to not try a little, however.

I see a lot of potential in Dead State. I really like what they are doing. As it stands, however, it was barely playable and not very enjoyable. I can imagine how great it will be, but combat kept crashing, and the area is so limited that it is hard to have a lot of fun.

Parse that how you want, but I fully expect an amazing game, and nothing in what I played has me worried at all. I am as excited as ever! But, overall, Early Access is not a fun experience IMO.

If you got it as part of your backing the game, by all means, run it for a bit! You'll get a good idea of what they are trying to do. But I wouldn't suggest playing it and judging the game on what is available now, let alone looking to really enjoy it.

Depends on games mattering enough to worry about their developpment and level of quality for games to be declared amazing.

I played the demo enough (three full playthroughs)to notice a few things.

This is a demo and demos are supposed to show case games in their best light.
Despite being in developpment for two years on a budget of over 300k, some points invite questioning,with one big question hanging: what is the stage of developpment of the game after those two years?

Quite useless to speak of gameplay (even though a few structural gameplay cracks were spotted) because players on this site value story above everything else and this game will be deemed a success as coming with a story.

But even on the story side, for a demo released after two years of developpment, it appears to be somehow questionable.

Thanks Merin and Chien, I think I'll wait until it's finished before I try it out, if I don't happen to run out of games which this year probably won't happen.

Just a small correction - this isn't a typical demo, it's Early Access. There's a world of difference, with most game demo's dropping really close to release date, and requiring so much extra work that often a separate team is made just to create the demo. DoubleBear is such a small group, and this is clearly Early Access (like an alpha build yet, I believe, though I could be wrong, but even if it's in beta...) that to judge this as compared to what is traditionally though of as a 'game demo' is being unfair.

Also - the game has actually been in development for well over two years, like since at least 2010, but as a side gig for almost all involved until the KS campaign. On top of that, some of the programmers live in the Ukraine so... you know... Russia, Crimea....

As reported last time, I never read Steam forums before that game. Were supposed to be a rude place etc
Players had a long discussion over Steam Early Access vs demo stuff, with posters using the same argumentation as it is used on this site when it comes to RPG.
Things are a bit worse though as Steam provides the definition of what an early access is, even though some posters went up to telling that the definition should be dismissed to get the dead state product to stand as an early access.

Here's the situation:
-Steam set the definition of Early Access
-Instead of enforcing their definition, Steam prefers to pocket the money and allow in products that do not fit the definition.

That is all.

With the same consequences as for RPG.

This Dead State product is clearly an incomplete/unfinished product. But it is not enough to qualify as an early access since by Steam definition, early access are more than incomplete/unfinished product.

On the demo side: just taking it as the studio sold it. They call it a demo.

Among other things, a demo has this advantage (in this case), demos are a part of a complete game.
So, if by some stroke of misfortune, after two years in developpment on a 300k budget, you have very little to show, going for the demo path might a very convenient way.

After trying the updated version, I noticed changes in phrasing. For example, in the previous versions, features were introduced as not available in the demo (that might imply they were available in a more complete version of the game)
Same features are now referred as not implemented yet.
When posting games files, some people might have the idea to unpack them to see what is in and what is not. Might be better to rephrase a few things.

The game is supposed to release in Summer 2014, so that is 6 months from here. Following the process will provide more information on what was developped in two years on a budget of 300k.

I think it is a bit worrying that it is not a bit more "finished"...

The game is both incomplete and unfinished.
Crowdfunded projects use the distinction to explain this or that.

Complete games come with the features that were announced.
Finished games come with the features that were announced and properly working (bug free)

It is a distinction to keep in mind because crowdfunded games use it to explain why they can pull the plug on a complete game (the game they commit themselves to deliver) while the game is still unfinished.