thainatos

Spacebase!

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Man, this is kind of a bummer. The game doesn't feel "fun" yet, it feels kind of like janky busy work, I was expecting a little more, but I guess that is the risk you take with early access stuff. As much as I dig doublefine this will probably put me off buying anything early access from them again.

 

Ah well! 

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Yep, this sucks. When I bought it and played the early access version it was barely playable and I felt like it probably shouldn't have been released in that state, but I assumed I could trust Double Fine to actually finish it eventually. Caveat emptor, I guess; I'll be more cynical next time.

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True, but that's a little harder to accept when the company in question is large enough to have several irons in the fire and they have explicitly decided the one that you're interested in isn't their priority.

 

Yeah that's true, I can see how it's different coming from a multi-project studio where you're specifically invested in one of their titles. 

 

It must have been a difficult call for them. It's still a shitty situation though, and one that sadly happens all the time the game industry (though often in much less visible ways).

 

I totally agree with that, but I also think it's fair for buyers to express some disappointment and frustration that it didn't pan out (as long as they aren't being dumb and hyperbolic about it...oh, wait, right, gamers).

 
Yeah for sure. Didn't mean to poop on the emotional aspect of this. You really want the game to succeed, you're invested in it, and then suddenly it fizzles out  :frown: Lame

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Tim Schafer answers common questions about v1.0

 

We started Spacebase with an open ended-production plan, hoping that it would find similar success (and therefore funding) to the alpha-funded games that inspired it.

 

Was it ever communicated that the continued development of Spacebase was incumbent on it being a runaway success while it was barely presentable?

 

We put every dime we made from Spacebase back into Spacebase, and then we put in some more. Obviously, spending more money than we were making isn’t something we can afford to do forever. So, as much as we tried to put off the decision, we finally had to change gears and put Spacebase into finishing mode and plan for version 1.0.

 

Maybe I'm missing the point here but I don't think anyone expected DF to make less on a game then they were spending on it forever... but they probably can be forgiven for expecting DF to spend more money than their making on a game they're still making.

 

I know this is the danger of buying into an alpha funding game and I get that business realities sometimes trump best intentions but... wow. 

 

Am I being unfair? 

 

I don't feel like I'm being unfair.  

 

OK, I know I am being unfair. I'll write it off as a session in not buying a game based on what it's promised to be. Not because developers can't be trusted, but because reality isn't always accommodating. 

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It's a no-win situation, everyone is disappointed. I mainly fault Double Fine's lack of communication and marketing skills.

I appreciate Tim's candor, especially since he has the slight tendency to whitewash. Also, good of him to answer the questions himself, since he could have just as easily dumped this task on JP.

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I haven't played any of Spacebase myself, I came in here just because I had heard there was some story about it. In reading your answers I feel compelled to point out that a common truism of game design is that the game should start off being fun. If you're starting from an unfun point and trying to find the fun, then scrap it and start over because it's much easier to retry from the start and avoid the issues with what you had.

 

It occurs to me now that Early Access (and the response of the audience) makes that approach pretty impossible, which is a shame.

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Well, one would think the game should be fun by the time it hits Early Access.

 

You'd think that, but a surprising number of games aren't "fun" until the game is almost out. Having seen a number of articles and videos on game post-mortems it's a fairly common thread that the finished product ended up far down the road from the original design document, and that crucial decisions made towards the success or failure of a game only came after long periods of testing and iteration.

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I didn't purchase this because I tried the demo and saw it would be a very long shot before it would be really fun, and didn't want it cluttering my library until it actually was fun. Looks like a sound decision but I'd obviously be happier with a success story.

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I don't think DF-9 was ever "not fun", but, for me at least, the issue has always been game-breaking bugs that forced me to start my game over. I think the difficult thing about a game like this in Early Access is that they need the game to succeed financially during stages of development where bug fixing needs to take a backseat to the development of game features. With such a small team, it almost seems now like Spacebase DF-9 was unfortunately doomed from the beginning. Most people are not going to buy into a game that they know is hardly playable, even if they think it looks promising.

 

I also think the surprisingly large number of "new things" and announcements that have come from Double Fine since DF-9 was put on Early Access have kind of buried it. Spacebase is a fairly niche title and I think it might have just gotten overlooked. Whatever the case, it's really sad to see the Double Fine game I was most excited about cease development. I hope the community hasn't lost all hope and some capable individuals expand on what Double Fine has put out. I think the game deserves more, for sure. 

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That was... a much shorter blog post than I expected. I thought he was going to criticize the entirety of using a traditional development model when developing an Early Access game, but instead it was just criticizing living in an expensive city while developing an Early Access game, which is... I don't know, fair enough, but not exactly cutting to the heart of all possible criticisms.

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Fuck, I know this is partly because California is an insanely expensive place to live for anyone who did not already reside in California and that they deal in insanity money, but the fact that people are making $120,000 a year at Double Fine is fucking insane to me.

 

I guess when you pay something like $1000 and up to have a room in a shared apartment in the Bay Area that's what you need if you maybe wanted to live in a house or duplex with your spouse and maybe an office?

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Fuck, I know this is partly because California is an insanely expensive place to live for anyone who did not already reside in California and that they deal in insanity money, but the fact that people are making $120,000 a year at Double Fine is fucking insane to me.

I don't think they make 120k a year, Schafer said it cost 10k a month to employ someone. That's not what they get paid though.

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Yeah, some of Chris's recent comments on the podcast lead me to believe they don't get paid all that much.

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Yeah, that was pretty stupid of me not to consider the overhead of employing said person like snacks, drinks, office space, computer, equipment, software, and on and on.

 

Sorry, nevermind.

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I get what the Indie Stone is saying to an extent, but I think it's sort of odd to compare Indie Stone with the Spacebase team at Double Fine. Double Fine isn't a studio making an early access game - it's a studio making several games, some of them being released as early access. It's based in San Francisco for historical reasons, and also because it's one of relatively few American cities with the job market to sustain job mobility among game studios. This feels to me like two different problems...

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They are talking about committing to finish the game regardless of sales during Early Access in order to give their customers what they paid for. I don't see how Double Fine being a studio means they get a free pass on that. It helps to be cautious when buying Early Access products, but buying a Double Fine game shouldn't be considered a risky investment.

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So what does releasing the source-code mean? Do the mods in the Steam Workshop of other games require source-code to be released? Is setting up Steam Workshop a difficult thing to do?

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As I mentioned in #idlethumbs this doesn't seem to be the type of game that an established studio should take on with long term goals of hoping it to becoming successful. Usually these types of games are small affairs until they blow up super huge ( if ever ) or one or two man teams toiling in their apartments i.e. Gnomoria ( which is great )  

 

While the concept itself is unique and would of been cool to see it be a success, it seems like the cards were stacked against it. 

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From what I understand, releasing the Lua source code effectively means that you can change names, variables, and stuff like that but you won't be able to fundamentally build on the game's systems. Of course, I could be wrong because I really don't know a thing about that stuff.

 

I think that in general, people don't know how to regard Double Fine. They work on a lot of different games, they have several teams, and they have some relatively ambitious stuff in the pipeline. That said, they're still really small and each game has multiple separate sources of funding. I saw someone on the Steam community forums for the game seriously suggest that Double Fine rent out a house, buy some bunks, and have the Spacebase team buckle down to make it the game that that specific person was hoping for. He might as well have suggested they eat ramen to cut down on living expenses. Double Fine is a real business, not a hobby.

 

Of course, none of that automatically excuses DF from any wrongdoing, but I just think that many people's expectations are really out of touch.

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That's kind of what the Zomboid guy was arguing, that if you start an EA game, you are ethically obligated to finish it no matter what kind of hardship it creates for you...which is a really problematic thing to argue for me. 

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For me, the whole point of Early Access (please don't abbreviate it to EA, I spent a good minute trying to figure out if Electronic Arts has some crazy contract where someone can't quit if they start development on a game :P) is that you're not guaranteed anything except for exactly what you're buying when you're buying it. If you look at an early access game and it doesn't look like something you'd enjoy in that early stage of dev, there's a great way to ensure you get the game you want - wait for the full release and reevaluate.

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Ha!  That's funny, because I've had the same reaction when other people have abbreviated it EA. 

 

Otherwise, I completely agree with you.  We are far enough into early funding now that buyer expectations should be set pretty appropriately for what may or may not happen with early access games. 

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