http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/18/double-fine-early-access-spacebase-df9/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rockpapershotgun%2Fsteam+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%3A+Steam+RSS%29

Of course let's wait for an answer from Double Fine themselve to the article

For now what i can only say personally it's that i sadly feel burnt; I know it is a risk to buy games before they are fully released but i had lot of confidence in Double Fine. To release a game after months of only minor an sparce updates without making good on the initial promises it's not what i expect from them.

After this and the Iron Brigade release with the game breaking multyplayer leaking memory bug i can only say i learned my lesson about them; I'll by the next Double Fine games only after a while that they are released

From the original page of supposed features to be added to the game:

Nothing on this list is carved in stone, and we can’t promise any date for when it might go into the game. We may decide something isn’t worth it, or an idea may mutate into another thing entirely. We’re sharing this with you because we want to give an idea of where the game is headed!

This is the risk you take when you buy games at Early Access. It's why I decided pretty early on that I was never going to buy an Early Access game.

@milkman: Of course everything is not carved in stone, but when you make a list of hundreds of things you want to implement and instead you get the game released like that with the source code so the gamers themselves can introduce these things it leaves me very sour.

You made the smart decision by not going to buy anything on early access. I bought two game: this and Mercenary Kings. I'll join you in your decision from now on

Man Mercenary Kings looked so cool, I still think it looks cool...how is it so close...

That would be a bummer, I really enjoyed what I played of Spacebase DF-9 but it clearly felt unfinished. I think going forward this might make me question purchasing games early access in the future.

@i_stay_puft: That's how I feel too, I figured I could trust a Double Fine game with early access, but with something like this I feel pretty hesitant about ever buying early again.
Double Fine seems stretched pretty thin right now, maybe it was inevitable one of their projects was going to end unpleasantly, but damn, why did it have to be the Space Simulation game?

I came real close to pulling the trigger on purchasing this, glad I held off now.This is a shame. but I kinda cant help but seeing this as the growing pains of a new style of development. Hopefully they will be more cautious when choosing the projects they go forward with, so they don't use up all their goodwill. On the flipside, Massive Chalice seems like its coming along nicely.

Hey game is gotta come out some time. I think this is reading a bit too much into stuff that happens all the time in development. Would it be awesome if they got everything that they wanted? Totally but at some point you have to make the painful slice and I its only "disappointing" in this way because players have access to it in a way it would be obscured otherwise. Now if you come to the game, play it, and find it lacking so be it but you could put "what could have been" at the feet of any game.

This post was made just a month ago by the developer on the Double Fine forums. Reading the first sentence now is just...i don't even know

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/14641/#353671

It looked pretty interesting when I saw it last in that Amnesia fortnight a few years back. Excited to finally try it out.

And now i discovered that just a few days ago they even put it on sale 50% on steam, before doing this. I have to stop reading for a while about this because i'm going from sad to angry

I am fairly curious to see if GB says anything about this in any future Bombcasts or other media. They've given some free publicity to a couple of DF EA games (Though not this one, to my knowledge) and it'll feel a bit weird if they don't mention this now.

I'm guessing the business reality was that the revenue DF-9 was bringing in over the past year or whatever wasn't justifying the development costs, especially when it's one of those everything-and-the-kitchen-sink projects that you could potentially just keep on bolting stuff onto and developing forever.

Anyway, I think this further shows that Early Access is just bound to harbour mistrust among gamers, because some projects just need to be cutoff. Often that's done behind closed doors by publishers who are used to cutting off development and either canning it or pushing out a half finished game. But when you directly involve gamers, they get emotionally attached to a game, and the project gets shuttered, it's going to affect a lot of people. I continue to think Early Access is basically a terrible idea.

@bisonhero said:

I don't think emotional investment explains it as much as a combination of investment and mismanaged expectations. Someone can be emotionally invested, and by extension disappointed, but they can do so empathetic to the devs or knowing what can happen in development in general. Like Kickstarter and really any game, shit could have all totally exploded and resources ran out and the game has to come out one way or another if not to eat a proper cancellation. No one, especially at DF's size and smaller, is immune to that. But back to the previous point, clearly for many games and for many players, the dynamic of Early Access works. It's been pretty demonstrated though, whether upon release or during development, that not everyone can handle the realities of game development and how games look before release regardless of how good the team is or their reputation. As I see it we're still in the early stages where people make the leap into early access without really knowing if its for them. We're starting to get there with expectations and Kickstarters, only starting to, and that's definitely ahead of where we're at with Early Access.

It's certainly a unique category of how this all came to be but otherwise the "outrage" seems pretty typical of people who are mad about their video games. At least there are so many examples of people being pissed that a game is "incomplete" regardless of how crazy they are going back decades.

I kind of wonder what Double Fine's stance on doing future Kickstarters and Early Access will be, it feels like they've suffered a lot of backlash as a result from decisions they've had to make. I can't really fault people for being upset over this game, it feels like the victim of compromise to get it released but they couldn't work on it forever, especially not with as many other things they have going on. I just wonder if their studio will prefer to drop openness if the community feedback is too negative. They're still one of my favorite studios personally and I've been happy with Broken Age so I guess I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt to some extent.

The game itself just feels shallow, the foundation is fun but it doesn't have the kind of lasting appeal that can make these kind of games be the ones you sink crazy hours into. I guess to some extent the goals system they're mentioning could help with some of that at least but I can't imagine it being a venue for new content.

This is why I don't engage in Early Access. I'm not saying it doesn't have the potential to do great things for a game but the act of purchasing an early access game sends developers the message that I'm happy to play their game in the state that it's in at that moment. These stories are only going to get more and more common if we don't start being more careful about throwing down for something that isn't finished. I know Patrick and the Idle Thumbs crew like to say it's opening up the development process so that people know how games are made, but I really think some parts of that process are kept out of the public eye for a reason. There's little value in showing me something broken and telling me it's going to be swell in a year's time.

Not all Early Access games are bad, however the mantra that "you get to see the game evolve over time with the community" just doesn't ring true for me. Finish your games and put them out. Otherwise it feels like the indie developers (who should be on our side) are playing us for suckers with hollow promises just as much as the AAA hype-machine does.

Looks like they responded to the criticism about the game, sounds like what everyone was more of less thinking, the game wasn't making enough money for them to justify continued development. It's nice seeing them address it in a more upfront fashion but it doesn't help alleviate some of the disappointment over the game. It's put me off wanting to trust them with another Early Access product, even though I still like their studio plenty. I hope Massive Chalice works out better, I liked what I played at PAX but I doubt I'll buy it until there's enough of a final product there to feel comfortable about it.

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/14974/

Man I miss the days when companies just made games and people just bought them. Are games really made better by the fact the developers have already got most of their sales before the game? Where games can slum by on hopes, dreams and developer reputations; rather than stand on their own merits. I can see how a developer, perhaps not DF particularly, could slide from the viewpoint of "let's make the best game we can to compete in the market", to "lets just build something good and quick enough to satisfy the customers, we have already got most of the money for it, and get to the next game".

I understand the majority of points, but i'm absolutely dissatisfied by Tim's answer about sales. He basically said "yeah sales are on a lot of times". That doesn't excuse at all putting the game on sale 50% just a week prior to it moving to the final state. If a person decided to buy the game a week prior, by seeing it on sale, he/she would have seen "alpha 6", not "beta", not "version 0.9.3". Tim says they are development terms but this is just technically right and a lot disingenious, if you put it on the game page it becomes a marketing term. So this person is gonna buy the game, thinking it's still a long way in development, and instead he gets basically the same version with hotfixes. It's simply not accetable, they knew a week prior they would not continue developement, so it's not an attempt to create audience to keep working on it. Furthermore if said person was worried by looking at the sparce updates, he would have ended up on DF forum looking for answers, and would have read that post (i see now that with the merging of threads on their forum it no longer link properly) by the main developer that only a month ago declared to not worry, since Double Fine it's not a "fly-by-night indie developer".

I've already made peace with the fact that i cannot trust them on future early-access/crowdfunding ("fool me once...") and that's ok, i'll buy their games only after a while they are out and only if they have positive reviews (and to think i own every single one of their games...it won't be the case any longer); but the whole attitude with the latest steam sale it's not fine at all to me.

I don't know, "those days" were sort of an illusion for us because they actually had to go and get the money elsewhere, usually under contract. I mean, they have joked about how they couldn't get anyone to fund Brazen. This is a failed crowdfunding project, but at least the game still exists in some form.

I don't even understand why it didn't continue to sell well. Prison Architect seems to be making gangbusters, and it's a pretty similar game in a more niche genre.

I wish there were more awesome Early Access stories like the Abyss Odyssey one instead of this sort of shit, but oh well.

Cynical person could say that some developers are just using Early Access sales to payoff their investors and that relieves them of any financial responsibility in-case the things go bad. Only losers are the customers and they can't demand their money back because they're not investors.

It’s a little harder to be transparent with financial issues, because various concerns of contracts and tact often prevent it. But we have been very lucky to develop Spacebase with the financial assistance of Indie Fund and a bevy of other partners, and they are also committed to transparency.

Together, the funding partners invested around $400,000 into Spacebase, and Indie Fund today announced that the game recouped that investment in its first two weeks of early access!

Source: http://spacebasedf9.com/post/67399779582/spacebase-df-9-recoups-investment

@Levius: It's a real shame that game development doesn't work like that. Tim reveals here that it costs around 10k a month to employ one person at Double Fine. I don't know how many people worked on Spacebase, but I'd hazard a guess it is more than the 4 that work on Prison Architect, a similar game people keep bringing up.

Breaking even in the first few weeks of a game is always great if you've finished that game. Breaking even in the first few weeks of early access means nothing, because they still have to, you know, actually make the game. A year later, and at least half a million dollars later in employee wages (that's assuming only four people worked on the game, which I sincerely doubt), the game just doesn't cover it anymore.

There's no grand conspiracy here. They're just trying to make a game that people apparently don't want. It sucks, but there's nothing they can do about it.

@deegee: You're right that games development is pretty tough. The main problem I have with crowd funding is that it pushes the risk onto customers,who don't who don't have the information to come to an informed decision and don't get the rights/accountability that conventional investors have, rather than the developers or investors. People are gambling that developers they have never met, with development methods they don't know, will be a good investment. We demonise the "money men" who won't fund games, but maybe they aren't all horrible people who hate point and click games, maybe some of the time they are just people who know their shit and can tell when a game just won't fly.

At the end of the day people can spend their money how they want, this is just my view on the matter.

It seems pretty shitty, even if I understand DF to a certain extent. Early access, kickstarter and pre-orders are all a gamble, so I mostly wait til the games are out these days. Glad I chose not to buy this one.

@deegee: The team was 4 people, led by Jp Le Breton. Development was one-year and half. That's 720k only on employees, to that you must add every other voice of expense (like licensing fees). Tim Schafer said they used every every cent from the early access program to develop the game, plus a little from their own accounts. The 400k in investment they got was recouped in just two weeks, that means the game stopped selling quite early. But you have to think that a decent amount of money would come only when the game is fully released because many people, and we have some testimonies in this very thread, buy games only when they are in their final form. Now i doubt that money will be the same as before this debacle, and they damaged at least slightly their future projects with crowdfunding. Many very loyal fans like me will not go through a similar experience with them (at least it appear so by reading their forum and the game's one on steam). On this game they'll probably go even or with a minor gain, but who knows to how much the future damage amounts.

I guess I wished they stated clearly from the start: this game will be developed only with continuos payment by customers all throughout development, we're not gonna take any prominent financial risk of our own on it (they are not a 2 people indie studio that don't have any alternative), so be mindful of this additional risk.

DF-9 came out on Early Access way too early with very little gameplay value in it, naturally you'd see a initial spike because sandbox games are currently selling just because people want more but word travels fast and you should expect sales to drop if your game is hollow. Releasing a game in this state only works for hit-and-run indie devs who are not even looking for longevity, they should have just waited and kept working on it because people are expecting more and if you want your Early Access game to survive, it needs to have enough gameplay to keep people talking about it. One good example of successful Early Access launch is Kerbal Space Program. It offers tons of gameplay and because they initially did a smaller alpha just from their own website, by the time it got on Steam EA the community was already large enough to support it and there was lots of mods available on "launchday" to provide additional content and functionality.

During the Bombin' in the AM a point was made about how "Spacebase DF-9's peak player count was only 900 people! That's nothing!", with comparisons to the ridiculous numbers that stuff like Day Z gets.

I don't think that's a valid comparison, and proceeded to look up the peak player counts of some indie darlings, and in that context, I don't think 900 people is all that few anymore, especially when you consider that the game isn't even actually out. Also, bear in mind that peak players isn't actually representative at all of the total amount of players:

Abyss Odyssey: All time peak: 905http://steamcharts.com/app/255070

Spelunky: 2854http://steamcharts.com/app/239350

VVVVVV: 2174http://steamcharts.com/app/70300

Broforce: 1607http://steamcharts.com/app/274190

Expendabros (it's free!): 2927http://steamcharts.com/app/312990

Velvet Sundown (which was apparently overloaded due to it's popularity at times): 363http://steamcharts.com/app/307290

Zeno Clash (it got a sequel!): 169http://steamcharts.com/app/22200

Zeno Clash II: 448http://steamcharts.com/app/215690

TL;DR: People must stop drawing comparisons to and striving for Day Z's, Minecraft's, World of Warcraft's and Call of Duty's numbers, and try to make reasonable comparisons instead.

Think the problem for me with the development of the Spacebase game was that Double Fine assumed that they would be able to finance most of the development of the game from early access sales.

In essence they wanted the game to be successful even with half of its intended features missing from the game. Also as others have said Double Fine kinda seems to have wanted to remove the financial risk of making the game from themselves and transfer it to people who buy the game during the early access.

I also disagree with Patrick Klepek when he said during the latest Morning cast that early access is like a kickstarter. Kickstarter is meant to kickstart a project so that a game can be made. Early access on the other hand is a chance to participiate in the development of a game which is already in process. It certainly isnt meant to finance the entire development of a game (which certainly is possible if the game proves to be popular).

@fisk0: I agree 100% with you. Patrick even compared it to Hack 'n' Slash, saying the latter had more interest around it, but that's not true: it peaked at 226 players, just before release and after release. That's less than 1/4 of Spacebase. It can be fairly compared only with other Amnesia Fortnights products, and it comes on top even with the game only on early access! Iron Brigade peak was at 702, Costume Quest 742, Stacking 660, and they were all games fully released.

The more i reason about this whole mess, the less i understand why, if they wanted the game to be only funded by the early-access program and so they needed to be able to sell it easily, they priced it in a extremely high tier of prices for smaller games. 25$ (or the equivalence of 30$ if you are european) is a lot to ask for an early acces game of this size, it only reinforces the stance to wait for it to be finished and to see if it is good

I am a little bummed by this but there is always Dwarf Fortress to play.

It's funny that so far the only Early Access games I've been disappointed with (this one and Planetary Annihilation (which Uber may still fix)) are from mid-sized companies and not small first-time developers. I've bought somewhere around 10-15 Early Access games and been very happy with most of them. Prison Architect has been particularly good, but Door Kickers, Dungeon of the Endless, and Gnomoria have also been good experiences.

I think Double Fine just fundamentally failed to provide customers with enough information. It was never clear that the game was entirely funded by Early Access money and that development would only continue working on it if it kept selling. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that if Double Fine committed to making a game and started taking money for it that they would finish that game. It makes me think they are either terrible with financials and radically underestimated how much their planned features would cost, or they weren't confident in the project in the first place. Did they really expect a whole bunch of people to pay $25 for a game that barely worked? If not, then why didn't they secure funding before selling it? Early Access is not a crowdfunding platform.

On a related point, they were also terribly slow with updates. Some projects get updated every week, others every month, but Double Fine was doing well to put a small update out every two months. That hardly inspires confidence in prospective buyers.

I understand that games get cancelled all the time and not every feature planned always makes it into the final product, but they aren't even close to what they set out to make and they already have the customers' money. Again, Double Fine isn't a small indie studio. They have been making games for many years and they should have been more transparent about the costs and where their money was coming from. They know how much employees cost and they should have provided a breakdown of their expected costs on the Steam page if everything was riding on Early Access. If they expect customers to replace investors, then they need to be upfront about the risks and be much more transparent with their financials.

Well good for you I guess, but there are plenty of games that do it really well.

Prison architect is probably the best done early access I have come across, this one has been easily one of the worst.

I'm pretty wary and careful as far as deciding to purchase anything early access. As far as this one went i thought double fine were pretty trustworthy to deliver.

After playing the game like 6 months after they launched the alpha and realising there didn't seem to be a huge amount added it seemed like this one probably wasn't going anywhere.

After this and Planetary Annihilation, i'm wondering if the developer gets to a point statistically where they have sold most of the copies they were ever going to in early access already and then just say fuck it. Disappointing.

You get what you pay for. Oh wait hahahahah maybe don't hand over your money for promises and bullet point wish lists.

It was expensive and every person I talked to or read a comment from said the same thing, "Cool, but unfinished to the point of broken". To be honest interest seemed high in light of most impressions.

I've been a Schafer/DF fan for a long time but this stinks. The people with no stakes took all the risk and suffered the loss while Double Fine shifts their resources to whichever Greenlight or EA is hotter now? I almost clicked that buy button so many times, so glad I didn't - and I'll be even more hesitant in the future.

I'd love for someone to explain to me what I'm missing or how wrong I am because it's kinda boggling my mind as to how it could be defended beyond "buyer beware".

So they finally (quietly) released it now in its "final" state; to do some sort of damage control they re-priced it lower to 20$ and gifted hack&slash to whoever bought it during the time it was on the EA program (and vice-versa)