STEAM

Can someome please tell me if we're able to convert keys to steam keys already? And if so, how to do it?

No you can not yet.

"-We have wired the client for full Steam authentication support. We do NOT have a key exchange in place yet, but we will soon." Garat

Why should i pay double the price of the finished game for playing a "pre" alpha version of the game. Just for talking with the developers. Thats a expensive talk.

If i pay for the finished game with all its features 40-50 $/€ than why should i pay for an unfinished game in the early stage 83-90 €/$ . If anything than i would expect to pay less than in the finished version, not more.

Alpha is normaly win-win situation.

Developer get usefull bugreports and playerfeedback
Gamers get to play the early game.

But Minecraft is perfect and amazing!11!1!!!

No, Notch was (past tense, everybody improves) a bad programmer and it's well-known his Java code was horrifically inefficient. There's an indie voxel-based game on Desura that's far better optimised at a pre-alpha stage.

Honestly, this whole debacle just shows how immature gamers are, and how Steam as a platform enables those immature gamers to drown out the sensible people with their ranting. As Steam is popular and far-reaching, this is only to be expected, unfortunately.

My respect for neutrino and all the other PA developers for their calm and numerous responses. As a developer myself, I'd be wishing for mental boxing gloves right about now

You shouldn't unless you think you are getting good value.

Pre-release dev interaction is a common marketing tactic now. Its mixed with twitter and facebook general media shaping to provide a potential customer to identify with the company producing it on a more personal level. So actually... lots do.

Link me to a another games forums where you have had a back and forth conversation with the lead programmer.

Really? Who? I would love to find another team doing the same thing so we can talk about it.

Devs are already gettign useful Feedback and Bug Reports, they already have 8k+ potential(only counting the KS numbers and not including ANY pre-orders or upgrades since) Alpha testers, they don't need (or even want) more technically speaking, it's already ridiculously large.

Even as it is now it is still Win-Win, Fans can help Shape the Game, and Uber gets more Money to make a better game.

Mike

Um off the top of my head Cloud Imperium Gaming (the guys making Star Citizen) are very in to this sort of thing. They run a weekly webcast, daily posts on dev/alpha forums and livechat. Squad (the fellows behind KSP) also are very invested in their community, they even recruit heavily from it. Even some Early Access alums like Zero Sum games are not difficult to get a one on one with a dev on their forums.

If you pressed me I could think of a few more, but it would take me a little while to come up with a good list that isn't 'umm.... mojang?'.

I like this model, unique or not. I can't count the number of games that are made with piss poor balance and things that do nothing but piss players off but cater to the playerbase that overuses the one thing. SMGS in any COD game.

I've been streaming every day since the initial release of the alpha. Every single day I have had at least one, at most 4 devs watching the stream and interacting with both me and the others.
We've seen special livestreams from Uber themselves where they talked about the earliest possible moments of the game and answer questions.
We asked for Steam support, they gave us Steam support.

You don't have to be a genius to realize that there aren't a lot of companies that do such a thing.
If I was rich I would buy 2000 Alpha keys and give them to the whining bastards so they stop bashing the glorious future that this game and these devs deserve.

Interesting choice of a citation.

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/

Their pricing model looks very familiar.

Its not win-win its PaytoWin like in those f2p games.

-Do you say that no developer needs an alpha for playtesting and bugreport because they know all +8k people who test the game for them. Where do they get this people playing and testing the game on a regular base if not with releasing some kind of alpha build.Of cause they need the feedback of the fans if they are happy with the way development is takeing or not.This kind of feedback is priceless for them.And im not talkint to pay someone for playtesting. Im talking about the feedback of the fans.Or did i misinterpret you.

Its somewhat misleading to the neophyte but it's a bog standard pre-order system under the hood (as is PA more or less). The difference is that alpha/beta access is given at the low end and the tinsel is at the high end.

Star Citizen has a bunch of funky extra stuff like adding in game ship insurance, adding on extra ships and packages to your existing pre-order.

Does Chris Roberts have 1000+ posts on their forum? Which I can't even find BTW... Feel free to link it if you can find it (i did look).

Arguably, Relic Entertainment have a history of good fan communication. But they're one of my favourite developers (met a few of them), so I'm biased there.

I'm not sure what happened after their acquisition by SEGA anyhow, I was most friendly with the good folks from THQ UK.

You know I paid for the incorporation of Relic right? Probably don't know that but I was involved early on and got the hookup with Sierra for the Homeworld original development deal. I bailed to work on something else before it got going but certainly helped...

Some of the original guys are now working on a new RTS game called Hardware.

Here's the forum for you http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/forum/
Not sure who the Dev's are though, don't follow it.

It's a tough one to find, so I won't fault you for not getting it. I even knew where to look and it took a couple tries to get the right forum.

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/forum/

You may need a CIG account to get in to the ask-a-dev forum however.

As for Roberts? Not really for most intents and purposes he is just the big-media face around there. Everyone else from what I remember does all the talking.

(also this is actually a far more interesting discussion than what the thread is actually supposed to be about)