Wasteland 2 Kickstarter

[Orchomene]

edit: oh, and sometimes I'm a "no steam, no buy" customer, because i want to spend $5 on the game, and i know for sure if it gets on steam, then sometime in the next 2 years, the game will be $5. If i actually want to pay full price for a game, then it doesn't really matter whether its on steam or not, so long as: if it has drm, the drm is not MORE restrictive than steam.

 

Every DD seller has such low prices, so that's not really a valid reason.

Most of the games I have on gamersgate were bought with between 70 and 80% price reduction. I only buy on steam when there is no way I can buy on gamersgate, but I'm not specially agains Steam. I just find that there is more freedom on gamersgate.

[Zoraptor]

I think I've said it before but the only reason I actually care about steam is its monopolism, else I really couldn't care less where people buy their games even if there are no circumstances under which I'd actually use Steam personally- much the same as I wouldn't object to someone else buying a Fiat but would strenuously object if the only thing being sold were a Fiat, even if you could buy your Fiat from a nominal 'BMW' dealer. I generally use GG because I prefer client free, they're equivalently cheap (probably not as cheap as often, but I think every game I picked up from there at christmas was cheaper than on steam especially given they had a 4/3 deal as well as 80% off) and they give me store credit for pretty much anything.

 

I've used clients in the past (Impulse, Origin, even Steam for games I've been given) and they aren't definite deal breakers. But I simply will not support an attempt by one company to turn PC gaming into its personal fiefdom by bundling its software and store with every release under the sun. It's anticompetitive, exceedingly bad for the customer in the long run and especially bad for anyone who isn't Valve as they are losing the best thing about digital distribution- cutting out the middleman- for a system where Valve ends up taking the place of MS and Sony in the console world and charging their console licencing fee equivalent for 80% of all games sold. It's frankly embarassing seeing PC 'purists' who are also uncritically supportive of someone who is trying to remove the PC's strongest and best characteristic for an iStore/ XBL/ PSN style future because it is monumentally hypocritical, and would not be supported in any other circumstances or if it were any other product. It ain't the hardware that's the console, you can make a console out of anything computerish from ARM to Cell or Intel; it's the software, and always has been. In the steamworks future it doesn't matter if GG or GamestopImpulse or "Direct2Drive" or anyone else exists and retains their small market shares, buy from any of them and you still become a Valve customer.

 

At the moment that may be an OK situation since Valve are warm and fluffy, and like kittens and want to give everybody a big hug, and their walled garden has pot plants and streamers and a fountain and pool table and Gabe tucking you into bed while singing lullabys at night; but it won't last, never does with a monopoly. They've already started leveraging their dominance to kill competition in the only place it counts, and that will just get worse.

[sorophx]

Wasteland 2 will be made in Unity

I can officially announce that we've chosen the Unity engine for Wasteland 2. It meets all the criteria we need. First screens looking good.

[Delfosse]

steam is bad bad bad

I'm just curious, so I wanna ask.

 

What exactly will happen according to you?

 

I just thought at some point there will be:

a) a universal engine for games because graphics are gonna hit a plateau and the engine will be so good, everyone will stop wasting millions on developing their own engine when they can just use this one, since it's already extremely good

b) one or multiple system of digital distribution of similar quality

 

At this point developers can stop worrying about these things and just start making games.

 

Unless Steam starts getting greedy and asks for a better cut, I don't see the problem. But according to you they will get greedy, correct? Well I agree, that's what companies tend to do in free capitalism. And this will lead to the creation of other "steams" then, because the system balances itself out. But those other "steams" will be comfy only for so long, before they form a cartel with Steam and the prices will go up and the quality will go down again.

 

This kind of thing is inevitable in capitalism, money tends to attract money and greediness tends to develop, and so forth, and in the end, the customer will always pay more than he should.

 

So what's your issue with Steam exactly? It's really not their fault. Don't blame the players, blame the game.

Edited May 13, 2012 by Delfosse

[Humodour]

Having read Valve's employee handbook, all the work Zoraptor did convincing me that Steam is bad just melted away into nothingness. They aren't bad now and they are a de facto monopoly (in the same sense Google is - few people actually want to use the other search engines/digital stores). Their corporate structure is even less evil than Google's (the other allegedly "bad" monopoly). And finally, Steam isn't beholden to money-hungry share holders, as they are privately owned and thus not listed on the stock exchanges.

 

When - if - any of this changes, I may change my opinion of Valve.

 

The most you could say while remaining truthful is that Valve are not as good as PD Projekt Red (Good Old Games).

[Tigranes]

I read their employee handbook too. Doesn't tell me anything about whether Steam is going to be good or bad for consumers in the long run. It sure sounds like a swell place to work, but that's a different issue, if you have some perspective on it.

 

I'm not sure how apocalyptic (or not) my view on Steam's effective monopoly is, but we've already seen it become far larger and far more overbearing than it ever 'sounded' with its frank 'we aren't evilcorp' tone. One of the key strategic functions of Steamworks DRM policy is to lock people and companies into Steam, for instance; Offline Mode was broken for so long because it can't have been a big priority to fix something that is mostly for people that aren't enthusiastic money spenders on the program; small annoyances with mod/patch compatibility/updates/etc. Steam sure isn't Ubisoft DRM or Nestle, but whoever said that? It has already been using its clout to do things that force their product on people and that's not swell, and that has nothing to do with how cool their handbook is.

[Hurlshort]

So in this scenario, EA's Origin is the plucky underdog fighting against The Man (Steam)?

[WorstUsernameEver]

Speaking about WASTELAND TWO, they're working with Unity and apparently will have the first screens to show in a few weeks.

 

EDIT: Oh I see, it was actually already said but completely ignored.

Edited May 13, 2012 by WorstUsernameEver

[Tigranes]

I've never played a Unity engine game, so have no basis for judgment. I look forward to seeing some screens this early, though, hwo does that work when they've just chosen an engine?

[WorstUsernameEver]

They haven't just chosen the engine, they have just announced it. They were doing art tests and checking functionality even before the Kickstarter was finished.

 

EDIT: They also more likely than not be first passes to show the camera perspective, ask feedback etc. Not the PR-doctored screenshots we usually see during marketing.

Edited May 13, 2012 by WorstUsernameEver

[Majek]

Hopefully some top down shots.

[Zoraptor]

..that's what companies tend to do in free capitalism

A monopoly is not in any sense free capitalism. Monopolies are a perversion of free/ perfect capitalism as they have both means and motivation to maintain their position against better products that would theoretically, in a perfect system, supplant them. Might as well start talking about perfect communism as perfect capitalism, they're both as practical as each other.

 

Really though, off topic. If you're really interested in a more protracted explanation it would be more appropriate in a new topic.

[Bos_hybrid]

Wasteland 2 will be made in Unity

 

I don't know what to think about that, if we look at the games made with that engine, they are mostly iOS/android and web browser games.

[Nepenthe]

Wasteland 2 will be made in Unity

 

I don't know what to think about that, if we look at the games made with that engine, they are mostly iOS/android and web browser games.

That might just be a sign that the license wasn't attractive to Big Publishing, and prior to the kickstarter fad, ios/android and browser games were basically the sum of possible users. Also, all the kickstarter games are targeting a pretty wide selection of platforms...

 

The LSL remake is using it, as well.

[Delfosse]

A monopoly is not in any sense free capitalism. Monopolies are a perversion of free/ perfect capitalism

Call it perversion or the natural development, makes no difference.

 

Free capitalism inevitably leads to the final historical stage of capitalism, which is monopoly capitalism. Lenin.

 

Might as well start talking about perfect communism as perfect capitalism, they're both as practical as each other.

 

Really though, off topic. If you're really interested in a more protracted explanation it would be more appropriate in a new topic.

Sure, feel free to talk about how unpractical perfect communism is, especially since not a single country ever implemented it, so I'd really like to see you try, it promises to be funny. Make a thread, PM me a link.

[Jaesun]

Obvious troll is obvious. Just FYI.

 

Is this the let's discuss STEAM thread or Wasteland 2 thread?

[Majek]

So i might hate EA, but the things posted on W2 forums because of the Origin deal are crazy even for me.

[Humodour]

EA is a pretty disgusting company. It's sad to see Brian Fargo, somebody who has complained time and again about how Big Publishers are destroying the game industry, only to see him palsy up with them because they threw a little cash his way.

[Zoraptor]

Strewth. WL2 only exists because of EA

 

1) They published the original

2) They didn't IP squat (as most other publishers would do) once they decided they weren't going to use it but sold the rights to BF/ inXile

 

Passing up 90 days of royalty free sales for the sake of some nebulous eCred would have been stupid and, again, it's not like it's using 'Originworks' and there's going to be any obligation whatsoever to buy from or use Origin.

[Blodhemn]

It's pretty funny to me. I don't know enough about the old school games to really comment as such, but the whole idea of old game designers who haven't done anything of note in recent years coming forth to ask for funds in promise to bring back pc gaming just seems a tad opportunistic to me. I hope it works out for the people who donated and expect a good game, but it just seems slightly strange.

 

I don't like EA and I only have 1 game on Origin and it doesn't really cause me any problems. Steam, on the other hand, I have many more games and I'm just becoming less of a fan as some games wont even run, endless downloads that come with the online games - uninstalled TF2 and never am reinstalling it, added features such as "cloud" which I don't like, etc. I don't think it's a bad thing if EA wants to provide competition with Origin as long as it's user friendly.

[Gorth]

It's pretty funny to me. I don't know enough about the old school games to really comment as such, but the whole idea of old game designers who haven't done anything of note in recent years coming forth to ask for funds in promise to bring back pc gaming just seems a tad opportunistic to me. I hope it works out for the people who donated and expect a good game, but it just seems slightly strange.

I don't know if I would call it "opportunistic" because it sounds so negative, but in some ways it is. The better question to ask is "why" they haven't done anything of note in recent years. Brian Fargo, Obsidian, probably a lot of small and medium sized developers will tell you pretty much the same thing as in the W2 kickstarter video about game pitching. Those with the money to fund it will tell you to change it into something completely unrelated to what you really want to do or outright forget about it

[Labadal]

I don't care if it's on Origin as long as I get my DRM free copy.

[Humodour]

I don't like EA and I only have 1 game on Origin and it doesn't really cause me any problems. Steam, on the other hand, I have many more games and I'm just becoming less of a fan as some games wont even run, endless downloads that come with the online games - uninstalled TF2 and never am reinstalling it, added features such as "cloud" which I don't like, etc. I don't think it's a bad thing if EA wants to provide competition with Origin as long as it's user friendly.

 

Um, you don't like the Steam cloud? Do you even comprehend what it does, Blodhemn? I highly doubt it.

 

The Steam cloud is an optional feature games can use to store your save games onto so that things like hard drive failure or switching to a different computer to play the game don't mean you have to start the game from scratch!

 

Steam Cloud is even more beautiful when you realise that it means you can play your game from where you left off across DIFFERENT operating systems.

 

Hate on it if you must, but voicing such a ridiculous opinion just devalues the rest of your post. I highly doubt Steam Cloud is intrusive to your Steam experience, given that you, personally, don't interact with it in any way - it's a passive service.

 

You had a valid point with Steam annoyingly constantly trying to auto-update all games, and you ruined it with your throwaway line about the Steam Cloud. Your pointless whining becomes even sillier given that you can turn off the Steam Cloud easily in Steam settings. Now, I personally just prevent the autoupdate annoyance by going into offline mode, or pausing the game's update, or going to the game's settings and changing update frequency to 'manual' (and thus it won't ever update again until I tell it to - you could have done this with TF2). It would be nice to have a feature in Steam to set all games to update manually by default, that's for sure.

 

As for alternatives to Steam - anybody who complains about Steam's monopoly with a straight face and then suggests EA's Origin as a good alternative is a smegging hypocrite. EA's Origin is the LAST thing you should be recommending over Steam if your concern is healthy competition. How about suggesting some real alternatives that actually will inspire healthy competition instead? Instead recommend that people use Good Old Games and Desura - two excellent digital game stores don't use DRM and don't see the customer as purely $ signs. Beyond that, you've got Direct2Drive, Impulse, and GamersGate.

 

Green Man Gaming is also an interesting digital game store because it allows you to 'sell' back your purchased games once you're finished with them for store credit to buy new games with.

[Rostere]

People say that InXile goes running back to the "big money". I see it the other way around. Origin is entirely optional. You can still get your DRM- free copy of the game. I think it's EA who's running back to the indie devs in order to create goodwill for their Origin service. InXile is probably going to end up with more money this way (which is a GOOD thing).

 

Just read the official quote: "PLEASE NOTE the game is not Origin-exclusive, Origin is simply one of many options that will be available, including DRM-free. EA will be the distributor and will have zero say on design and production decisions.

 

Of course, if it would be sold exclusively via Origin it would be an outrage. But now it isn't. So, simple as that.

[Blodhemn]

It's pretty funny to me. I don't know enough about the old school games to really comment as such, but the whole idea of old game designers who haven't done anything of note in recent years coming forth to ask for funds in promise to bring back pc gaming just seems a tad opportunistic to me. I hope it works out for the people who donated and expect a good game, but it just seems slightly strange.

I don't know if I would call it "opportunistic" because it sounds so negative, but in some ways it is. The better question to ask is "why" they haven't done anything of note in recent years. Brian Fargo, Obsidian, probably a lot of small and medium sized developers will tell you pretty much the same thing as in the W2 kickstarter video about game pitching. Those with the money to fund it will tell you to change it into something completely unrelated to what you really want to do or outright forget about it

Yeah, I just hope they're truly inspired to make these games and not doing it for some other reasons.