I haven't really been following what all the fuzz is with Steam Early Access.
Seems to me every gamer should be pro the system. It opens up sources of funding which I wished were available when we did Divinity II or Divine Divinity. You can rest assured those games would've been released in a better state then. Well, maybe not considering the publishers we had, but still, it would've opened up possibilities where otherwise there were no possibilities.
With regards to people criticising alpha versions - that's the entire point, isn't it ? Getting feedback ? That's why we're doing the alpha for everybody on Kickstarter. We don't really care about the form or tone in which we receive the feedback - what interests is how we can improve the gameplay experience. So if somebody writes something like "this is the worst game ever because you can't change the turn-order. Larian designers are morons, XYZ did that so much better. " we only remember - changing turn-order seem to be in demand
We can't do that when people don't post their opinion, so I don't see why that's a wrong thing. This goes for let's plays too - I learn plenty watching let's plays about my own game and find it one of the best sources to understand what we did wrong/what can be done better. I really prefer seeing these lets plays now instead of after release of the game because now we can still fix things, and we do.
Besides, I also think our target audience is smart enough to read through certain comments.
With regards to Kickstarter promises - I don't think there's a long list of things we're not doing. We're struggling with the npc schedules, that's true, but otherwise? Maybe the form changed here or there but nobody at Larian has the feeling that we're not living up to promises, bar some necessary compromises that are inevitable in any production. We'll have coop multiplayer, companions & more live this week I think btw. Stats/abilities/traits/perks/balance have received some significant attention, so expect quite a few changes there too.
As for backer backlash should we put it on early access? I can't see an objective reason why there should be such backlash so I'm curious to hear the reasoning behind that. Backers got the game at 25US$ + extras + plenty of exclusive extras at higher tiers. Alpha is free to all backers. Given this, why would any backer feel upset if he sees the game on early access at a higher price point? It's an early pre-order with the advantage that the developers can still integrate your feedback in the final game (and if not in the game that is released, perhaps in one of the patches that comes afterwards). It makes the game better. I really see nothing wrong in that.
But probably I'm missing something so do let me know please.
Thx!
Swen
