{"id":609,"date":"2014-07-11T13:21:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T13:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/?p=609"},"modified":"2014-07-12T16:24:39","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T16:24:39","slug":"staggeringly-high-alpha-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/2014\/07\/11\/staggeringly-high-alpha-prices\/","title":{"rendered":"Staggeringly High Alpha\/Beta Prices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source article, on Eurogamer<\/a><\/p>\n

Please Note: I don’t want this to sound like a bash of David Braben – he’s still the guy who co-wrote arguably the most important videogame in history and spear-headed the Raspberry Pi and I don’t believe that this pricing is a cynical financially-motivated manoever, so he’s still in credit in my book \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I’ve also singled out Elite because it was in the news but it’s not the first game to set alpha\/beta access at this sort of price *glares at Planetary Annihilation and Galactic Civilizations III*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ever since Minecraft did it, the alpha-funded model has been a pretty popular\u00a0way to get a game off the ground. You charge very little for very little, and the price raises over time to reflect the level of completion of the game. It’s a tremendously fair<\/em> system – you reward those who believe in your project with a low price and those who are on the fence don’t need to make an immediate decision. They can wait a bit,\u00a0see how the game develops, and join in later and\u00a0still<\/em> get the game for a lower price than release.\u00a0The price reflects the state of the game as it is\u00a0right this second<\/em>. You’re never paying for content yet to be made – at least, in theory.<\/p>\n

Then came Kickstarter. In theory, Kickstarter is a really great way to achieve similar results – albeit one designed for a short window of high exposure rather than a slow burning build of momentum. The “all-or-nothing” approach rather gamifies the process of getting your game off the ground, but I can’t deny it has yielded some terrific games which may never have seen the light of day otherwise.<\/p>\n

The problem comes down to the tier rewards, which are marvellous within the context of a Kickstarter\u00a0but the problems set in when a Kickstarter project slams into another system – say Steam Early Access, for example.\u00a0Suddenly, those tier rewards start to make less sense. A high level tier granting access to alpha or beta builds which otherwise would remain closed works, but come the point that you release on Early Access you can’t suddenly offer that same access for a reasonable Early Access price without pissing all over your Kickstarter backers. So you’re stuck in a quandary – you either skip Early Access entirely, or you’re somewhat forced to reflect that KS tier price in your Early Access price.<\/p>\n

So what do you do, when you find yourself in this situation?<\/p>\n

This is where you need Captain Hindsight to remind you, “maybe you should have thought about this before you decided to make ‘alpha and beta access’ a high level reward tier, eh?”. Because using reward tiers in this way is like this:<\/p>\n

“Hey there, poor person. Thanks for the \u00a320 which might represent your ENTIRE game budget for this month or so, which\u00a0you’ve chosen to spend on a currently non-existent game that\u00a0you crave, but you’re \u00a380 short of sufficient PASSION to be involved in the alpha process.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

“But the important thing for the alpha is, for it to be a genuine alpha, we didn’t want huge numbers. Maybe we shouldn’t have restricted it by price but it seemed like a logical thing to do. It seemed like a fair thing to do.”<\/span><\/p>\n

David Braben<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, Mr. Braben. You’re a flupping intelligent chap. I know that because you co-wrote Elite. I cannot believe that you honestly consider this to be “fair” or “logical” – not in a general sense, at least.<\/p>\n

But let’s take him at his word – he genuinely wants to restrict numbers. Are we saying, then, that the co-developer of one of the most ground-breaking technical achievements in gaming\u00a0history<\/em> is unable to think of a fairer way to restrict numbers than simply slapping an enormous price-tag on access?<\/p>\n

\n

“We could have thought more carefully about that.\u00a0The intent was actually to keep the number of players down. But it looks like a terribly capitalist way of doing it. That’s the trouble. I mean it in the nicest possible way. It’s when you think about it you think, oh yes, that does look a bit bad. But it’s because what we’ve got is a group of people who really care about it. And that’s been so helpful.<\/p>\n

We’ve gone into this not knowing exactly how the process would pan out as well. We were one of the first people to use Kickstarter in the UK. I didn’t know how it would pan out.”<\/p>\n

David Braben<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It seems not, that by his own admission they didn’t really think too hard about it despite it being really rather important.\u00a0You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to predict that\u00a0outside the context of Kickstarter<\/em>, a \u00a3100 or \u00a3200 price tag for an unfinished game might raise a few eyebrows.<\/p>\n

So the question is, then,\u00a0does it work<\/em>? Do you get the reduced numbers that you claim to want, and only those people passionate enough to commit to such a price? And is this fair?<\/p>\n

Well here’s the thing, you’re not selling\u00a0some unknown and unproven game, you’re selling\u00a0Elite<\/em> –\u00a0a game which time and time again people have pleaded with you for. “When will we get Elite 4?”, asks everybody whenever they interview you. You’ve\u00a0teased us about it for over a\u00a0decade<\/em>. I went to a GDC session in San Jose in… some time around 2001 when you were making\u00a0A Dog’s Life<\/em> and the subject came up during the Q&A. You had a glint in your eye, “we’re working on it”, you hinted. And here it is – finally<\/em>, after all these years. People will pay any<\/em>\u00a0amount for it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This price tag takes huge<\/em> advantage of that.\u00a0Does it restrict access to only people who care? No. Because flupping shit loads of people care<\/em> – but comparatively\u00a0few have\u00a0a couple of hundred quid spare to\u00a0throw at it. You’re restricting based on income<\/em>, not on passion. You’re taking advantage\u00a0of those who can’t afford it,\u00a0but will pay<\/em>, because it’s a new flupping Elite game. We criticise those free-to-play games which target the vulnerable too regardless of whether or not that was the intention<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If you\u00a0really<\/em> want to restrict access fairly then have a closed alpha\/beta –\u00a0application only. Treat it like a job application.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And don’t charge them a premium for the privilege of\u00a0HELPING.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What\u00a0other<\/em> ways are there to advise only the passionate to play your game?<\/p>\n

\u201cDayZ Early Access is your chance to experience DayZ as it evolves throughout its development process. Be aware that our Early Access offer is a representation of our core pillars, and the framework we have created around them. It is a work in progress and therefore contains a variety of bugs. We strongly advise you not to buy and play the game at this stage unless you clearly understand what Early Access means and are interested in participating in the ongoing development cycle.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Does\u00a0this work? Probably not, probably only a few people read that on the Store page.\u00a0But\u00a0it’s\u00a0fair<\/em> and that should come first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source article, on Eurogamer Please Note: I don’t want this to sound like a bash of David Braben – he’s still the guy who co-wrote arguably the most important videogame in history and spear-headed the Raspberry Pi and I don’t believe that this pricing is a cynical financially-motivated manoever, so he’s still in credit in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-rants"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p326tq-9P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}