Gamma Release - Time for Reviews?

No. Point being if you grade any game before release it sucks. Supcom had only 8 units this point in development. Its reviewed on its current standards. This game should too.

when you have a server side load for this game, access to several server side player mods, and the devs have done a few post release passes, then its a good time.

anyone before then is wrong. It was wrong to do for any game ever, and its wrong now. I personally have despised any reviews I ever read even mentioning C&C Renegade singleplayer.

its as wrong as me reviewing the legend of Zelda by saying, its a game you collect relics to defeat an evil mage. That review is terribly misinformed and is obviously someone who avoided spending 5 minutes of study into it.

The thing is that the classic development terms have been, uhm, let us say repurposed in PA's case so who can safely say that no one will take a game that is being advertised as a 'Gamma Release - 40% off!' on (all?) the major digital distributor platforms as being released and fit for critique? Still not advocating such (p)reviews but I do think that Uber opened a real can of worms with that whole Gamma stunt they pulled off.

See, I beg to differ here. Strongly, even. A good time to review a game is when it has been released. If a game promises to deliver new content and updates after that you are welcome to update the review along the line. But there is really no valid reason why a game should not be able to be reviewed fairly when it is being sold to the public. None.

And I strongly disagree too. If it is a work in progress, and free updates are to come, they should take that into consideration. Because that is part of the game.

That is like saying, Kerbal Space Program, just a sandbox space program emulator, doesn't even have completely realistic numbers in it's physics albeit scaled, a lot of useful parts missing and no copy paste feature, no storyline or campaign mode, prices for parts but entirely arbitrary and not used by the game, difficult to move things around or use all the keys, and not a real intuitive game since it isn't like many other games. You would play all you could, find it too hard or see a little bit of the game, and get bored with it. Not worth the price.

When that opinion of Kerbal Space Program isn't taking into account what the game is being worked on for free (and I know it did add career and copy paste rigs but five months ago it didn't), that there is any form of community or mods which give the game much more longevity and user friendliness, that there is a purpose or concept, that the game IS playable and there are guides out there, or the reasons for scaled yet inaccurate physics (because there are intentional reasons often). Generally, that would just simply be a bad review.

I believe Metacritic reviews on Planetary Annihilation were bad, nearly none of them mentioned gameplay because they stated price as reason and that was that. I beleive Rock Paper Shotgun reviews for C&C Renegade back in 2004 were bad, that game had a well established multiplayer even back then and the guy didn't even know or review on it and there is no reason to review that game's single player, it is like reviewing Zero-K on it's single player. I believe most reviews for Call of Duty games are bad, because they are misinformed as well, it is like they did a brief summary of changes between Call of Duty games, and then they again rate the single player which should be mentioned but not half the review. I believe most reviewers are bad people and they should feel bad. If they are going to review something, they should consider the evidence they present in their stance, and be willing to defend it. If they are wrong, they really need their reviewing liscense taken away.

If someone reviewed Planetary Annihilation, and gave negatives on 5 clearly stated to be coming soon features missing, I would remember their name, and do research, and then do a negative review on Youtube on Them As a Person, and email them the link. They deserve it, they clearly didn't do their research, it was an uneducated review, I dare them retaliate.

I see why you might perceive a reviewer only taking the current state into account as being unfair but at the end you just can't review a potential game. You deliver the money up front, so you expect the developer to do the same with the game's advertised features. If the game is being worked and improved upon in the future the developer is always free to monetise that additional content - neither side is forced to operate on goodwill and promises in this relationship.
It might come down to software as a product versus software as a service, though, at which point I would withdraw from this discussion.

It is software as a service instead of product. It is also partially "you handed your money out and they hand your game out" being they haven't handed the game out. This is like a customized computer, where someone presents you with a few pieces to build from, and when you are nearly done building you decide you don't like anything about it, whenever the computer isn't entirely finished being built for you. Do that to some custom computer builder you are working with, see if they see that as reasonable, like you are supposed to know the computer isn't poor quality just because it was only started.

The game is in gamma, not release. Even if it were in release, and a company was working on finishing it, it is called release, but is it? So if I genetically produced a type of rose that I named "sweet", yet it emitted the stench of a stinkbug gland, would what you call it mean everything then?

Honestly, I believe the game should not be critiqued as a full release until it is feature complete- Which is to say, galactic war, in case any of you have forgotten.

And the unit cannon.

If it was something that was in the KS, either in the video or a stretch goal, it will have to be in the game before I consider the game feature complete.

Reviews from the public are extremely important. As soon as people are invited to put their money on the table, they need to know what they are buying.

Period.

Brad is contridicting you in another thread, and he works for Uber so I'm inclined to trust him more. Just sayin...

Yes, it would get a very bad review indeed...

Please post here again after Gamma. I'd love you hear what you think of 1.0

Exactly why Uber should really triple think the decision to rush 1.0 out the door...

I agree, but Uber doesn't. They feel that with some polish it's ready to ship.... Man I can't say that with a straight face...

You can write a review whenever you want. Free speech and all that (also no NDA). Just keep in mind that the earlier you write your review the quicker it will become outdated.

IMO, with the advent of twitch, reviews are starting to become irrelevant. You can usually find somebody streaming a game you're interested in and then judge for yourself instead of viewing it through somebody else's biases.

When I started playing Hawken I looked into MWO because I wanted more mech customization and locational damage. After seeing metacritic I knew something was up. It prompted me to look deeper and eventually decide it wasn't worth the time to try it in the 1st place. I don't regret that decision. Don't assume reviews are pointless because you ignore them, they have a bigger impact than you might realize.

If you watch a game on twitch (or youtube) and like what you see, why does it matter what the past history of the game is? Also, in the specific case you mention, the game is F2P, you can try it out for yourself before you decide to spend any money on it. Why miss out on a game you might enjoy just because other people feel like they've been slighted by the devs (or more likely imagined they were)?

Fans of video games can be extremely biased, as evidenced by virtually any video game forum. I tried out MWO, and I don't like it because I decided that I don't like it. Not because somebody else told me not to like it.

I decided I didn't want to waste my time, which is worth about $50/hr going by my day job. I read things about the game that really turned me off and illuminated the grind/pay-to-win situation I would have taken hours to discover myself. Time is valuable too, that's basically the premise of free-to-play games....

I may have eventually decided that I didn't like the game, but that doesn't mean that I feel like I wasted my time. I enjoyed the few hours that I did put into it. It just wasn't the game for me.

I don't value my time by the amount of money I make during the day because I don't get paid for time I'm not working.

I can see the value in using reviews to get an initial idea of a game, but I always take them with a grain of salt and don't let them ruin the experience if its a game I'm truly interested in.

Trust that I don't get all my information from a single source either. Besides reviews, I talked to RL friends who've played it too. Word of mouth is the most powerful of persuasion tools, for good or ill.

Fair enough.

Well, at the present the list of bad reviews about PA on Steam is almost endless.

It did actually surprised me.

Probably the good reviews are 10 times more, but cautious people read first the bad news.

Polish IS a more important thing to focus on at present as a polished game gets fewer bad reviews and people aren't expecting a complete game ATM unless they're idiots. However, the big features that aren't done yet (Unit Cannon, Asteroids, Gas Giants, etc.) do need to be done before release if bad reviews are to be avoided. It will be more than idiots expecting a finished game then.

Is it also important to polish of the UI features, so the current gameplay that we have had for over a decade is up to scratch with what's expected.

Then they can figure out the best implementation of their actually new features to RTS games.