Indie Game Developer James Green's thoughts on the Titans backlash

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I know, it makes me sad too. That said, I expect the hate to calm down (it's already happening a little) quickly and be replaced with people talking about the actual content of Titans, which is quite frankly amazing. So much more depth, so many different ways to do things.

The sad part was abandonning the original PA and making PA:T for free for kickstarters backers and not the steam backers (same time and more pricey). (No I am not trolling, I am just... sad )

Imho making an addon for a RTS is the highest form of support it can get.
I wished for this since many month.

Add-on not a standalone :/

There is no difference, especially if you look at the pricing of titans.

I'm still not entirely on Uber's side, but arguing over it being a DLC or a standalone is a mute point. I doesn't make a difference either way. And trying to dodge the bad reviews is completely resonable considering most of them are irrelevant.

I never spend more than a certain amount of money in a game, now it's my fault, I shouldn't have Early Backed a game not knowing the results (I backed Starforge and still regret it... Couldn't get it refund because I "played" 2.1 hours (the max is 2 hours)).
Lesson learned will wait the price drops significantly before paying or wait until full release.

A DLC you need the base game, a standalone, you can play without the original game.

So a game with DLC, people will still buy the original game and be on the original game: that's what I do, I buy the original game to play and experience and when I know there can be DLCs I just wait the price drops until I afford the "DLC pack".
A standalone make the new players buy the standalone and not interact (or less! because yes they have more content than the original and first) with the original game, so the original game is being drained little by little of it's players and it's not fun anymore to play :/ so you forget the game and when you resume everybody is high skilled or you don't feel the same joy of sharing not having built your little community with friends online . Furthermore, companies could make DLCs for the standalone and then you wait and when you buy the DLCs there is nobody online anymore o_o gosh!

Lots of other reasons but as I said, I give up and will either wait to see when there will be more DLCs and if there are still players online or if they all went to the next game.

Excuse me but wouldn't this happen with DLC too? You wouldn't be able to play with people that are playing the DLC the same way. It only effectively split the steam community with the steam forums, guides and such while ensuring that any future buyers will be part of the bigger community and making it unified again in the long run.

And leaving it as DLC would still be plagued by the irrelevant negative reviews. It's not fair on the game to judge it based on what it used to be.

@Eagle722 As was said above (and in other places in this forum) the result would have been the same in both cases.

Case 1: A game with a DLC add-on where older content is still available for people who obtained the add-on (e.g., World of Warcraft with expansions; Borderlands 2 with level increases).
Case 2: A replacement, standalone game which has all of the original content plus a way to play games with the old version (e.g., PA:Titans).

In both cases, you have some people who refuse to obtain the add-on while others move on, so from a user's perspective, there's very little practical difference while in-game.

Hi, agreeing with the OP. However, some of the backlash is caused by other developers messing around with the customers, preorders not being met, early backing ending up in disappointment... causing nerves to be a bit tender in regard to these things.

For example, personally I'm a bit annoyed I cannot buy the (small) expansion to Elite dangerous without buying the whole game again (which comes included) for the full price. You can't get it separate if you already own the full game. I think you guys are doing it how it should be done.
Another example is Batman- arkham knight, where the PC version has been seriously neglected and taken off the market again to get it working- thus seriously messing with any preorders or seasonal passes. Yes they screwed up, but are not being very forward with information.

I speak from a lot of gaming experience (think dos-prompt) when I say this- you guys are doing it how it should be. Ignore all the hate. 95% of the complaining is coming from 5% of the players, as is usual for these things.


I can see all the subtle changes you've made (no pause banner, yay!) and I can honestly say it's brilliant.

@thedean Well, Orionrelude sucked and people left bad reviews. Orionrelude changed and people changed their reviews. I changed my review of PA when it was playable and offline was available. It's just communication and marketing.

Gamers can be a vitriolic community (particularly given the psudononymity of the Internet) but it's the developers that have themselves to blame. They've chosen to work in this industry. Kickstarter/early access has generally not been a particularly honest and open system. Developers are not affording the people funding them the same information they would be expected to give investors and publishers. Uber has not executed this project without misteps. Software development is harder than most people think but it's still so often such an unnecessary screwup and the developers fail to take responsibility for that. Games are not some majestic form of art that should be appreciated, it's an entertainment product you should be able to turn on like a car and have a positive experience.

Disagree, games certainly are art.

And some of the people working at Uber are working on making games since pre 2000. Back then shitstorms in the internet were a thing nobody had heard about. Who knows if some people had been born 20 years later than they have been then maybe we would not have TA, FA or PA because some important minds behind these games would've went: "Making games seems fun, but all those shitstorms that happen all the time. People don't seem to value that work. No thanks".

And yes I also think kickstarter in general hasn't worked out to replace the old publisher model. Mainly it has shown that it is near impossible to make a project that looks good to the outside all the times to the eyes of tons of people who have never had to do anything with game development more than buying ready made games that pop out of dark corners funded by big publishers.

You don't simply change 12425 mixed (66% positive) reviews. 5467 of which are negative (I did the simple math), into positive reviews with an update, when most of those are about features missing/broken that were fixed months ago, if not even a year ago. These people don't pay attention to this and only make bad reviews. They won't change their reviews after the fixes are in place since they only care to have their game working, not about the game's well-being. If this was not the case, then we wouldn't have this discussion.

Games are art. Just like music, paintings or books. It can be majestic, it can be beautiful, it can be complete and utter shite.

In fact it combines quite a few artforms. Sculpting. Writing. Painting. Storytelling. Think about it. There's quite a bit going on there that involves someone somewhere creating something out of nothing.

Who the hell is James Green?

Did you try?

And it's not "small".

Let's be real here. There are more unfair things in the world than who gets $15 worth of product and who doesnt. Everyone should have to pay for an expansion standalone. If you didn't 'win the lottery' and get a free copy, tough luck, thats not your privilege to begin with.

Also pretty sure steam purchases were no where near the same time as kickstarter backers.

Reminds me of this.