Hi, Shaun wrote: OUT of ALL THAT THOUGH WE HAVE LEARNED NOT TO PREORDER TILL WE HAVE A > RELEASE DATE SET AND NOT TO SET THAT DATE TILL WE ARE JUST ABOUT TO > FINNISH THE PROJECT.
My reply: Well, I certainly agree the way James North handled the preorders was definitely not the way to go about it, but I also believe that doesn't completely rule out having some sort of preorder option available for small time developers. Che Martin, for example, had a great preorder system going for Rail Racer. What he did that made it work is he had an early alpha or beta version ready to go so even if people preordered early they got the full game such as it was every few days untl the final release of the project. Plus they got up to date news of what was happening and ai fairly good idea when a next update would appear. All of it was to the good, and showed he could be trusted with their money. One major reason why James North got burned for his preordering is he was too closed mouth about everything, and made a lot of promises he couldn't keep. For example, I placed an order for Montezuma's Revenge in December 2004 with the understanding the game was to ship around Christmas. Next thing we knew it was delayed, because of something about a problem with the registration system, and he was holding it back to fix that. Months later he was pressured into releasing a demo of Montezuma's Revenge. To Everyones amazement the game was far from complete, and had a number of notable bugs like the ladder bug. The very bug I ended up fixing personally when I got the source code. To make a long story short he did a lot of things wrong. He should have put out a demo early on before he took any preorders. Instead of saying the game was going to be done for Christmas he should have been more open and honest about what was left to be done with the game such as he had two levels and a bonus level complete, and had a third level that was never released to the general public but I found on the cd of materials he sent me. There was no registration system at all in the game which could mean two things. If he had one he yanked it out before giving me the source code, or the more likely explanation there never was one to begin with. whatever the case he did intentionally mislead everyone about the development progress until he was pressured into releasing the demo that was far from complete. Not being completely honest with the public was definitely his first mistake, and the source of most of his problems with the community. Basically, i feel if a developer chooses to take preorders they can do so with the understanding they release demos, trailers, news letters, etc to keep everyone informed of the development process of the game. No one expects a game to be created in a month, maybe not even six months, but they do expect to be kept honestly informed of changes and how much progress is being made. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.