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Technically speaking, that isn't true. Here's how Valve puts it: "Early Access is a full purchase of a playable game. By purchasing, you gain immediate access to download and play the game in its current form and as it evolves up and through 'release'." Link: http://store.steampowered.com/earlyaccessfaq/ Put another way, if there was some final state of a game you were paying for, and that final state never arrived, you would be able to sue a developer or Valve as a remedy for breach of contract to get your money back. However that's not something you could successfully do in this situation because all you are paying for is something resembling a game in early development, and future updates. The idea that you get something that we would call a "final game" is essentially a gratuitous promise, and unless there are some stipulations Valve has for being on the Early Access program that I'm unaware of, it's not something that developers actually have any obligation to fulfill. I imagine most people here are already fans of Double Fine, and so there isn't any problem with giving them money to play an early build of a game regardless of whether you play it now or later. For someone that doesn't have that sort of attachment to a developer however this isn't an obviously good offer being made here.

To that point, there is some podcast episode in the 3MA archives from several years ago where there was a panel going on, and Tom Chick stated that he thought the mid-tier was doing fine, and I'm pretty sure every studio he named no longer exists in 2013. Very depressing!

Yeah, I am bummed by the shrinking of the mid-tier studios!

I really handled today's dark level poorly.

Sarcasm aside, I think some sort of popup asking a person if they really want to make a purchase for something that is an early development would be preferable to the current setup. I would also point to a lot of comments I saw about the game Eldritch where people thought they had purchased an early access game only to discover that it was in fact a completed game. That suggests to me that there is, in fact, a fairly high likelihood of confusion for some of the games on Steam. It's certainly open for debate what is an acceptable amount of likelihood of confusion, but I would tend to think it would be in everyone's best interest to reduce that quantity.

Yeah, people playing the game on consoles got a raw deal. I believe you would have to buy a new disc, and it costs $10 more than what it would cost you on PC. I have no idea why that is the case for any of those things.

Although some of the objections were definitely feeling like Space Base was still "too early" even granting that it is still an early alpha, a lot of the criticism had more to do with Steam not doing a good enough job of communicating that what you are purchasing is an alpha build, and not a game. And I am inclined to agree with that criticism. I know the store page has those disclaimers or whatever, but I do think these early access games should be sectioned off from the rest of the store page. The co-mingling to my mind suggests that these early builds might be offering more than they actually are.

I would say the real problem with mobile gaming is not that no one figured out how to make a good game (I've played quite a few!), but that no one figured out how making mobile games as a business plan made any more sense than buying lottery tickets.

Also as far as the new game elements are concerned, there is a bunch of new equipment available fairly early on, and you gain access to the gene and cyber lab pretty early on. Because of the scope of your economy early on, you probably only have the opportunity to build one initially. I built the gene lab which in retrospect I think was a mistake. I botched that run up pretty badly so I'm going to try the cyber lab next time around.

The difficulty level doesn't really impact how much of a priority satellites are (i.e. you can't win the game without them, and they are your economy), but I think you do have to plan a little more carefully than you would on normal. One obvious problem is you are probably going to go through more soldiers, so that's an extra cost you have to deal with...

Hey thanks to everyone that responded to my superficial assumption about the game. It does sound interesting. I'm hooked on XCOM: EW at the moment, but I'm gonna add this to my wishlist and pick it up at some point for sure!

I skipped this one because the procedural generation didn't look that interesting. Like In Spelunky you have different sorts of jumping puzzles, things like that depending on how the level is organized. With Risk of Rain it looked like I wouldn't be doing different things as a result of the procedural generation (Teleglitch is also like that). Is that impression incorrect?

I'll take fun games that aren't mod-friendly over game-never-would-have-been-made-in-the-first-place as a reasonable trade-off. Most people using something like GameMaker aren't programming experts for the most part.

Yeah, but they were talking about stuff like Journey, which is crap.

So using some semantic wizardry, if you categorize Device 6 as a word puzzle iPad thing rather than a game, and you categorize Foiled! as a weird sports game, then episode 132 of Idle Thumbs was the sportscast episode with a brief tangent on word puzzle iPad apps.

attaching a review score to a new console release... it boggles the mind.

So far the game I have that everyone I show it to always seems to love is Citadels.

Some further quick thoughts on the expansion: -Lots of nice minor UI touch ups that are greatly appreciated -The foreign languages really is nice, I wish it had featured more than just European languages though, I feel like my Asian squadmates got shafted! -Might be my imagination but the character movements seem a little less stiff than I remember them being -When you have to make that first decision between the gene lab or the mech lab... that was a nice difficult decision for me -I wish the amount of meld canisters on a given board was unknown. So far it seems like there are always going to be two, but more unpredictability would be appreciated. -The new maps are really nice

That's actually every video game podcast at the moment!

Just got through playing a little bit of EW. Gotta say I am pretty into it, feels like the game got cranked up to 11. It's the sort of thing where it doesn't really fix anything that people disliked about the game in terms of its overall design, but anyone that enjoyed the original is probably really gonna like this.

As a musician I gotta say that if someone really needs to feel the oneness with the crowd I would much rather they consume their illicit substance of choice rather than wave around a lighter app during a show. There's no way I could see something like that and interpret it as a sincere gesture.

Dune and Game of Thrones, both thematically excellent games about stabbing your friends in the back.

Last night I got an email stating I could download and start playing the expansion, but the reality was the 7 GB download didn't show up until this morning. So it was a bit of a tease, but at least barring unforseen circumstances I can jump in when I get home from work.

I've been following Dave Pittman on twitter, and it looks like he is working on an expansion for Eldritch that features a new world, and new items. Looks promising so far...

This is great. I've been looking for a reason to dive back into the game.