Can you see why he is saying this?

Well, that early access fear, is a necesary evil.

There is no risk in "Call of Duty" franchise. People are so familiar with it, and it is so braindead simple, everyone swarms to it. This is not an entirely familar thing

Few people are familiar with RTS, the ones familiar are familiar with a different kind. They aren't familiar with RTS, they aren't familiar with what they are buying here. They aren't familiar with PA, they are with RTS, they won't know what they are buying. When they first play it, they will play it expecting something else. Hard AI thread and too much to control threads and balance bad threads will ensue.

So, that is what this game is doomed to, no matter when it sells. It chances offending people who dislike what they weren't sure about. That is bad, I agree with totalbiscuit.

However, how does release sale alleviate it? People will still buy not knowing, unless they educate themselves with a source of some kind. Not opinion, gameplay video. They watch it, see if they can do what they see.

Really, the sad thing is, that is the whole key. Proper display of what the game is. Totalbiscuit is afraid this will cause a lot of people not to understand the game and spend money incorrectly. I think people should always take personal responsibility, and I do think to enforce it somewhat, nordic and uber should force people to read and sign a EULA before finalizing purchase, stating at top in big simple text, THE GAME IS A NEW CONCEPT GAME AND IN BETA, THE USER IS EXPECTED AND IMPLORED TO SEEK REFERENCE TO THE GAME TO DECIDE FOR SURE IF THE PURCHASE IS IN THEIR BEST INTEREST, followed by details and suggested knowledge.

Did EA already do this with Battlefield 4 ? sort of unofficially early access.

I mean with Planetary Annihilation, the more people who buys the game the more funding to make it better.

In Star Citizen you get a ship for backing with X amount of money. Here people get a box. personally i dont really care for boxes anymore, but i will say that PA box is pretty nice actually.

Well the problem is fundamentally about protecting the uninformed buyer. Steam atleast gives the developer the opportunity to give information about how the game will be in its finished state. This isn't something you can really do with a boxed edition.

Basically, you can have someone come in and buy the boxed game. But what is he/she really buying? They arn't necessarily informed about what the actual finished state will be, and probably will be less informed than the kind of person who would buy on steam.

Step back abit about this being all about PA specifically. It's more about PA setting a precedent in the industry that can just as easily be used by other companies who may or may not have the interests of the consumer. Doing early access boxed copies can be argued to be very morally ambigious, as it's much more open to predatory behaviour.

You can say caveat emptor, but generally when you need to say that in the first place, you're admitting to there being moral hazard issues.

Do i personally really care? Not really. But i can definitely see why someone like TB who takes the big picture view of consumer rights and the gaming industry might.

Thats another thing. Why no rage on Star Citizen? That takes the "common complaint" about the business model here, to 11. That got so much money, a lot is expected. I really like the rise in space games, I don't do Star Citizen myself but it exemplifies the interest in "crowdfunded development", where people put a huge down payment on a game larger than most other games, and that is what makes the game afterward.

I didn't find that a fad, I find it a complete alternative to AAA publishing. AAA publishing is usually retarded, I love many of the games that lose a "significant backing" and instead of scaling with the game's profit they drop the game and dev team and just kill dat SOB because it's less effort. The only way a game can be made to someone depressed from that drop, is through an independent source, and crowdfunding is a pretty large pool of money and it is a down payment on a game the crowd wants, be it a large or small crowd, if in total they can pull the money needed.

PA really falls under that indie catergory. A crowd wanted an RTS, this has created this rts, but Uber never locked the doors on the funding crowd, anyone can become a backer anytime. Totalbiscuit doesn't like the possibility of the large surge of people, who back it thinking it's a trend, then realize the game is unplayable for them. I don't either. I just don't see that as the fault of the crowdfunding or early physical release. I see that as a fault of the niche game seeking too large an audience perhaps, and one solution is educating the potential buyer, hopefully you detail it enough that they know without a doubt what they are actually buying.

I'm really hoping there are more people who do the same as you then!

As far as misguidance goes, it is plausible. Here is the Nordic Copy on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Planetary-Annihilation-Early-Access-Edition-Import/dp/B00K8PWIWK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403281712&sr=8-1&keywords=Planetary Annihilation Early Access Edition

The description of the game on the amazon site, to sell the game to customers, is:

Planetary Annihilation - Early Access Edition (Mac/PC DVD) (UK Import)

THE SOLAR SYSTEM IS YOUR PLAYGROUND Mine planets and entire asteroid belts to expand your economy, colonize worlds, and launch planet-destroying weapons at your enemies. Fight for control of a single solar system or launch Galactic War and claim an entire galaxy CONTROL A MACHINE OF WAR Annihilate with naval, air, ground or orbital units. Control rumbling, powerful tanks of war, massive bomber jets, and an assortment of subs, bots, orbital units, and battleships. MULTIPLAYER OR SOLO PLAY Fight the Galactic War on your own or in a series of multiplayer games. Play a skirmish to keep your skills honed.

Typical questions asked about products:
- Does this game have multiplayer mode?
- Are the graphics in this game good?
- How many controllers does the console come with?

Some of that IS assanine. controllers the console come with, mac/pc dvd, fight the galactic war on your own or in a series of multiplayer games? That is HIGHLY misleading, a lot of people could buy this incorrectly unfortunately. If I were new, asked these questions here, I would look ridiculous, what do I mean galactic war multiplayer? Then there is the question of internet access, and the linked issue of the game running slowly based off those test servers and the beta optimization pre-process.

This stuff is in the bag, Uber isn't in the bad on any of this stuff, they are making great strides on a functional product fitting this description, but this isn't the description people are buying it now for. It should say somewhere more clearly it is basically a preorder with an online beta access.

Elder Scrolls Online did something like that, without the preorder thing I believe, and honestly if that was a preorder with early access it still would have been cool. It just needs better education for the masses.

Actually, the biggest stretch, is Subs! Those are just about a confirmed no, a very doubtful maybe even to the devs at this point. Why would the description say that except for the fact the amazon seller wrote it and Uber isn't liable lol?

Anyway, the point is, I love the game because I overlook issues that aren't real issues but are issues with a reason behind them. Poor game performance, reasonable with the resources and in it's current state. Threads explain in detail the state of the condition. The way the game is, I could care less, it is a new engine and platform, I can build the units I want to play with. A lot of changes since conceptual kickstarter, well subs for instance, makes sense in hindsight, stuff genuinely was not predicted, that is actually the reason we are now in 2014 with the games release to begin with, the "who knew non-flat and orbital was a pain in the ***" wrench in the gears.

I wonder how much of this marketing was handled by Nordic and how much by Uber. It's not really relevant since Uber has a responsibility to do it right, but maybe they're not the ones making those mistakes.

It's more about information assymetry.

When you go to kickstart a game or pledge to star citizen, it is made very very clear to the consumer what they are getting themselves into. This is less so with steam, but still kinda present. There is a real chance that what they're kickstarting will fail, or turn out differently from initial expectations, and the customer knowingly takes on that risk

The problem with a boxed copy is that this isn't necessarily the case. Imagine if on the box it spelled out very clearly the risks involved with buying early access games. You can't market that in a brick and mortar store. Which is why it's specifically phrased 'early access', which has some potentially misleading connotations.

I can still tell you everything you want to know about how i envision the final game to be, but if i don't make clear to the customer the risks involved, that is a legitimate issue someone might want to take up.

The following was a rating and my comment, on the amazon seller. I feel it is a direction of education that is honest and a type of awareness.

Caregiver commented:

Got it on Steam, bought 3 licenses to play w/family & friends who are all fans of TA/CC. This game is just terrible in the state it's in. So much lag on pretty much state of the art gaming PCs that could play all of the above games easily with large armies. The controls are awkward, the graphics are pretty terrible (understandable for an "early access" version) but the lag even on small games in this genre of game makes it unplayable, especially if you're used to SupCom/FA and SupCom2 on modern PCs.

The maps being "planet" (really tiny spheres where you literally can't stand in the same plane as another unit next to you) and the camera being locked (in SupCom you could hold space and move the camera around for a different view) just make for an awkward game. If the planets were actually big so that when you zoomed in your map would appear flat (like you know earth does) that would be something, but the scope of these maps is actually smaller than those in SupCom and FA and even some of the SupCom2 maps.

If the game is to be released this year I don't see how they can really fix everything to make the 3 licenses worthwhile. I wish I could get a refund.

TrophySystem commented:

The graphics are pretty simplistic by style, the maps are fairly small in this state in relation to "playable size", the games are limited to 10 players, and the computers currently play the game extra slow. However, all these things are in fact for reason and circumstancial around that.

The graphics are simple by choice a la tf2, the maps are fairly small given the server cap and the confortable playsize of normal players, the games used to allow 80 players and run like a slideshow, and any game runs 12fps because the servers ran through Amazon server machines run 8 games a computer and that throttles the performance serverside so no godly client machine can speed up the other end of the simulation.

Those are all existing problems in prerelease. It is frustrating to play, like a clunky old car. If you are worried for what you paid for, in fact listen to this review. It is in faith that you trust without a capped serverside that you calculate the local singleplayer with optimization to run faster than 20fps. There is no physical player serverside yet, Uber runs the only servers, but it is a beta bugtracking effort, in good faith that the game will be finished proper and released to players this year.

Buyer beware. Do your research. For the well-informed. I like it, results may vary, internet connection required until release in a few months, ect ect.

END OF RATING

so, with that being said, I would hope with Uber's work in the next few months, those 3 liscenses will become more useful that that fellow would initially believe. Hopefully with server release and release polish, local lan games with his family will run smooth if even one of them has a decent machine, plentiful FPS and no sacrifice in size and graphics and plenty of flexible gameplay and scenarios, tons of entertainment to be had. It is just, nobody is informed enough to know what to expect and when to expect what.

As if the box of a finished game tells you much more. If you care for the money you're spending you should generally look for information yourself. You can surely find that for PA, just like for any other game, so I can't really see the issue.

Actually with this game you can do a whole lan party with only one key! Because the game is DRM free that means you can use one disk to play with as many people as you want in Lan games.

I know what you are saying, you really can exaggerate the **** out of even a finished product game.


I am just not encouraging the amazon site to do this with PA. PA doesn't have subs, just like Big Rigs doesn't have cops

Which is what i did. But this is like saying we shouldn't have labelling on food products, because we should all just do our own research if we care about what we eat.

People are either dumb, inexperienced, or don't have the time to truly dig for informaiton. More so the people who buy boxed copies (larger percentage anyway). I mean, why else is a game like the sims consistently a top seller in boxed sales, but not electronically. We're talking about a totally different consumer segment when it comes to boxed games. They traditionally carry a reputation of being complete products, which purposefully or not is transferred to early access boxed copies.

It only takes one successful game to employ this marketing strategy, because that adds trust to the concept, which can then be abused by future companies.

Dumb as people might be, i still believe they should be protected (they actually need it). Otherwise if you say "oh they should just learn from their mistakes", you just encourage potentially bad behaviour from companies. Because dumb people don't learn from their mistakes. How many people keep buying COD every year.

*edit*
Or, you may have missed what i meant in that early access editions have an extra component of risk to consider. It's not just about what the developer thinks the finished game is going to be, but what it actually is going to be.

Also, doing research on early access games is still really iffy. You can't take reviews or gameplay vids as any guideline - just look at how drastically PA has changed in the last several months.

Can't agree on that comparison. You have to buy food all the time. You can't get around that. You don't have to buy video games and when you do, you do for fun. That's just sooo different from having to buy food.

It's just business..... if you run a company dealing in the gaming industry and multi million dollar projects and can shed light on what the business strategy was for this then please. Everyone else pretty much can't see this from ubers side.

No ofcourse we can't see it from uber perspective. And that's because they don't explain jackshit so people would actually understand. No one can understand a company that makes wierd choices and keeps silent about them.

You can make just as many or more problems explaining a business decision, as you can not commenting. It may be simply put, they are trying to market their game. If that is their excuse, and totalbiscuit and others find it offensive that they would market a game and find so many problems with doing so, then "just marketing a game" because an insulting excuse to give. Best not to say anything if you can't be sure. And Uber isn't EA, they don't have double and triple checked PR Control. Even if they were EA, their choice is usually to wait assaults on their policy out with silence until the rage burns itself out. Worse thing that happens, is a few sales are impacted, but silence will usually make most people forget as their life just moves on. Look at the group planning on boycotting MW2, the day after release, 80% the group is online on MW2.

All this reaction and we don't even know what's written on the back of the box.

This logic makes absolutely no sense.

Goods that are defined as 'not necessary' for the continuation of life, are exempt from disclosure. But goods which are 'necessary', require disclosure? Why this arbitrary rule, and what constitutes necessity?

When you go and buy shares in a public company, that company in turn is obligated to provide to you audited financial statements in order to inform your decision.

Anyone who buys the game solely on what Amazon says about it deserves the surprises coming to them. Those people are either new to the internet or in a really, really tiny box. Amazon is one of the worst sites at getting descriptions and features of every product correct, to the point of completely misunderstanding fundamental points about the object in question (in this case, DRM requirements).

Necessity is defined in the dictionary, elodea. I'm pretty sure that that's a pretty accurate definition.
necessity (nɪˈsɛsɪtɪ)
— n , pl -ties
1.( sometimes plural ) something needed for a desired result; prerequisite: necessities of life
2.a condition or set of circumstances, such as physical laws or social rules, that inevitably requires acertain result: it is a matter of necessity to wear formal clothes when meeting the Queen
3.the state or quality of being obligatory or unavoidable
4.urgent requirement, as in an emergency or misfortune: in time of necessity we must all work together
5.poverty or want
6.rare compulsion through laws of nature; fate
--------------

Cola-Colin has it almost dead on. If you care about what you spend your money on, you'll research what you are buying before hand. No company should be obligated to give you that information - they should be obligated to NOT HIDE IT from you should you ask.

This applies to any good, no matter how necessary.