Someone please explain how that works
Neotokyo Production Report
- Thread starter Evo
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Evo
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*breathes*
It was just my opinion, i don't profess to know anything about how to release mods or games.
Good luck finding a job though mate, hope you can get somewhere good and make a game we will all be proud of
FriedchikenCamo
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Well, you could say that releasing a beta is much like distributing a rough draft of the essay, that there are two approaches: release early or release well-finished.
If you share a draft early, before it is completely solid, you can get feedback related to where you can go with the project, and comments about the general focus of the work (much like a brain-storm session). Now to simplify the explanation, just imagine how your crabby writing teacher back in school reacted to a draft that had potential, but was not near being finished (sorry, use your imagination). This is kinda like Hidden mod and Dystopia mod releasing their prototypes early, with both good and rough parts.
Now, another way of release is to "finish" you draft such that everything's in place, and it already resembles a finished project. The feedback you will get will not so much be about the direction/goal of your project, but mostly to tie up loose ends and problems that you, the writer/developer did not notice due to excessive time staring at the project (the fresh mind proofread). Imagine that you wrote up what is definitely a B+ or A- paper, and you send it to your crabby teacher so she can help you make some minor changes to make it into an A+ paper. This is like any long term project, like NTS, Black Mesa Source, and other unreleased mods.
And of course, there are two ways to mess up:
One, you send a very rough draft to crabby, and she tells you that your paper is shit and you hardly spent enough time on it. (crappy mini-mod)
Second, you send your much worked on draft to crabby, and she tells you that your draft is an incoherent rant of shit. She tells you that the only way to not fail is toss all your work, and start over again, as your toilet paper is beyond saving. (long term cluster-f**k)
I don't know about you guys, but I find the second scenario more horrifiying. ;p
If you share a draft early, before it is completely solid, you can get feedback related to where you can go with the project, and comments about the general focus of the work (much like a brain-storm session). Now to simplify the explanation, just imagine how your crabby writing teacher back in school reacted to a draft that had potential, but was not near being finished (sorry, use your imagination). This is kinda like Hidden mod and Dystopia mod releasing their prototypes early, with both good and rough parts.
Now, another way of release is to "finish" you draft such that everything's in place, and it already resembles a finished project. The feedback you will get will not so much be about the direction/goal of your project, but mostly to tie up loose ends and problems that you, the writer/developer did not notice due to excessive time staring at the project (the fresh mind proofread). Imagine that you wrote up what is definitely a B+ or A- paper, and you send it to your crabby teacher so she can help you make some minor changes to make it into an A+ paper. This is like any long term project, like NTS, Black Mesa Source, and other unreleased mods.
And of course, there are two ways to mess up:
One, you send a very rough draft to crabby, and she tells you that your paper is shit and you hardly spent enough time on it. (crappy mini-mod)
Second, you send your much worked on draft to crabby, and she tells you that your draft is an incoherent rant of shit. She tells you that the only way to not fail is toss all your work, and start over again, as your toilet paper is beyond saving. (long term cluster-f**k)
I don't know about you guys, but I find the second scenario more horrifiying. ;p
Except your metaphor doesn't fly. In the case of your example, you can submit a work for validation to someone who is more qualified than you to judge it quality, i.e. the teacher. In the case of mod development, you get feedback from the end user, i.e. the reader, which is very subjective. A mod in my opinion is for a large part a work of art. Even if your metaphor would fly, I don't always agree a work of art should be validated by someone with more experience.
However, I get your point, you can indeed identify fundamental flaws in your gamedesign by releasing early, and that is a risk we are (deliberately) taking. But I haven't seen any of the early released mods modify their design drastically based on player feedback, and yet they don't have a horde of regular players. So in neither of the cases, someone has been proven 'right' so far ( and noone will either, I think. The gaming & modding landscape is no longer what it has been, nor will it become that way again. It has evolved from hobbyism into a full industry. Mods nowadays have a lot more use as experience-builders, showcases and portfolio material than as better or more popular equivalents of the original game. Not to mention modding has been made too accessible, thus drowning the small market it has and saturating the gamers that might have been interested, even killing their potential interest since it takes too much effort for the modern day youth to separate the high quality mods from the crappy ones. But I'm gonna leave it at this cause I detect I'm off on a long speech again, and it can never be justified to have that many text between a single pair of brackets. Then again, this post has become so long that 95% of its readers wont reach it here. Free beer for the punks!).
@ gusdor: it's a personality thing Serious answer (in this order): visibility, skill, the talent to sell yourself & luck.
However, I get your point, you can indeed identify fundamental flaws in your gamedesign by releasing early, and that is a risk we are (deliberately) taking. But I haven't seen any of the early released mods modify their design drastically based on player feedback, and yet they don't have a horde of regular players. So in neither of the cases, someone has been proven 'right' so far ( and noone will either, I think. The gaming & modding landscape is no longer what it has been, nor will it become that way again. It has evolved from hobbyism into a full industry. Mods nowadays have a lot more use as experience-builders, showcases and portfolio material than as better or more popular equivalents of the original game. Not to mention modding has been made too accessible, thus drowning the small market it has and saturating the gamers that might have been interested, even killing their potential interest since it takes too much effort for the modern day youth to separate the high quality mods from the crappy ones. But I'm gonna leave it at this cause I detect I'm off on a long speech again, and it can never be justified to have that many text between a single pair of brackets. Then again, this post has become so long that 95% of its readers wont reach it here. Free beer for the punks!).
@ gusdor: it's a personality thing
Serious answer (in this order): visibility, skill, the talent to sell yourself & luck.
G
Ging
Guest
I deeply suspect that no new mod is going to ever get a horde of regular players unless they do as something as different as GMod - CS just has too much of a dominating grasp over the player base now.
FriedchikenCamo
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Another thing with Gmod is that it doesn't need a large fanbase for people to have regular fun with it. And unlike most single player mods, its gameplay is not restricted by the amount of content the developers has to create for it, but rather by the imagination and persistance of the player.
The comparison with gmod is a stretch. Gmod is not a game, it's a mod in the purest sense of the word; while many other mods want to create a different game. Gmod is a sandbox that allows you to tinker with the physics in source. If I'm not mistaken I've seen belittling posts from garry somewhere where he agrees with Erik Johnson's point of view. I'd like to see him try a total conversion and do the same though. 95% of the work on a TC is content creation and gameplay balancing.
