Well, as much as I hate to say it, even if developers didn't give dates, eventually, if it was longer than some people felt it should be, there would be the same complaints.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of jack scrimshaw Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 4:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: audyssey: montezuma, pre-ordering, etc Hi mike when u put it like that i see where your comeing from. Sadly your right the accessible games industry is not capcom or nampko or the other sighty divelopers. I won't say it never will be because let's face it windows games aren't that old the launch of grizzly gulch six short years a go for example. Hard though it is frustrating though it damn well can be at times we have to be patient with these guys. However what we'd also like in return is news yes just no dates. No dates until the product is out of the oven and ready to play. Cheers jack. you ai'nt heard nothing til ya heard it from the mad man www.livejournal.com/users/afro_thunder nothing but pure truth. ----- Original Message ----- From: michael_feir To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 9:15 PM Subject: audyssey: montezuma, pre-ordering, etc Hello, everyone. I would have jumpped in earlier were it not for the bouncing problem I've been having. Something called sorbs seems to have gotten it into its electronic head that yahoogroups messages are spam. Anyhow, enough of my current E-mail sorrows. What we have here are two wrongs not making a right. We have a game that has been unfortunately delayed for an extended period of time due to unique personal circumstances that its developer had to contend with. I've been right with all of you in terms of being frustrated and disappointed with the delays. I've dreamed of playing this particular game in accessible format since I was a kid. Experiencing the realisation of such a long-held wish will be a truly remarkable experience. I'll also have the distinct pleasure of showing my father how I can play Monty after having him play a remake of the original game for sighted people. It'll be the first time he can truly step into my gaming world and fully grasp what's happening. I hope this leaves people no doubts as to how much I've wanted the game to come out since I first learned of it last year. However, despite this impatience, I've done my best to be supportive of James and protect the community from its unfortunately short- sighted self. It makes perfect sense for James to have offered those customers who have demonstrated their faith in him the reward of a lower price. This happens all the time in the sighted game market and there have been cases of even longer delays. This is despite the fact that there's only one James North and hundreds of employees working on some of these mainstream games. This argument that a business is a business just doesn't hold up. When you're dealing with single individuals working on projects, you have to understand that personal life can and will get in the way. Failure to do this will result in game developers being burned out and turned away from serving our community. I don't think James is perfect. However, he has done his best for us given his circumstances and the emotional draning onslot of acusations this community has subjected him to. Perhaps, people would like it better if developers never told us anything until the games were fully made and ready. There would then certainly not be a situation like what we've experienced in Monty's case. However, stop and think a moment. There would be no news at all for months and months at a time. Developers wouldn't give out any information at all for fear of paying through the nose for it later. People wouldn't have any opportunity at all to offer feedback or ideas which could make games better than they otherwise would have been. Is that the kind of atmosphere you people want? If so, I'm glad I got out of editing Audyssey because that job would be absolutely impossible given those conditions. There just wouldn't be enough to talk about every three or even six months to warrant publishing an issue. Getting people to submit material was like pulling teeth even with things like they are now. Those of us who have stuck it out with James will ultimately get a far superior game to what they would have gotten before. I only know about some of the improvements he's introduced and can't wait to experience them all first hand. We'll get our money and time's worth. This is especially clear to me after reading the manual. If anybody still has doubts that we'll ultimately get the game, I don't know what planet they're on. You don't create a manual as detailed as that or a trailer for a game which doesn't exist. We just have to be patient and let James do things right. He knows the score. There are two oposites when it comes to community relations and game developers. There are people like James who let the community know what's coming up and aren't averse to sharing some information. It's thanks to these brave souls that I was able to build Audyssey into the magazine and community it became. The advantage is the suggestions and positive feedback you get while you're working on projects as well as the trust in your work that people will have when you're ready to sell. The down side is what happens when things don't go as planned as we saw in James's case. A whole barrage of things held Monty up for a lot longer than James wanted and people were repetedly disappointed with missed release dates. The obvious lesson here is not to offer release dates at all. I don't think there's any arguing with that given what's happened. On the other hand, you have developers like Bavisoft who just suddenly appear with new game in hand. Grizzly Gulch just suddenly appeared one day out of the blue. I'm more than convinced that had there been more community consultation, it would have been a far better game. I also suspect that they wouldn't have been as badly clobbered by pirates as they ultimately were. Communities like ours thrive on information that only game developers can provide. How long would people hang around if we never heard about any new games until they were released? Things would get incredibly boring as people lost interest in older games. Fortunately, there's a middle ground available. Actually, there are probably several middle grounds. Bavisoft and other developers have their own separate lists which let them communicate with a more select group of interested people. They also have access to their own web sites and could choose to proffer new information only there. There's also the question of what information to release. I've chosen to update people on my progress or lack of it every three months in Audyssey Magazine. That way, people can have an idea what I'm going through while it's happening. If somebody asks "Why did it take so long to make Fearless Flin?" I can point them to my developer diaries. I'll never give any sort of dates at all and I'll always be certain to make it clear that plans could change on me. This is a hobby for me until I actually have something ready to sell assuming I'm ultimately able to create my game. Working at home is quite different from working at a company even with just Rebecca and I. It must be tougher by far when you have kids to raise as many developers do. Things just have a way of coming between you and progress. We as a community consuming people's creative energies and efforts have to allow for that. 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