Why Do You Charge For An Incomplete Game?

[DrPayne]

My mouth was drooling at the sheer awesomeness of it all. But then I found out about the monthly fee.. FOR AN INCOMPLETE, ALPHA BUILD! Why should we pay for something that's not finished? That is like buying a board game, but with the manual half-finished and the board having missing spaces and pieces.

I refuse to pay for an incomplete product. I don't even care that the price is minimal, its the principle.

Don't get me wrong, so far the game looks great. But I should not have to pay to get into an alpha server.

[johnmatthais]

See my other post about this.

[Moleculor]

Well that didn't take long. I was wondering how long it would be before people started thinking it was necessary to create more than one thread about a single topic.

[johnmatthais]

Originally Posted by Moleculor

Well that didn't take long. I was wondering how long it would be before people started thinking it was necessary to create more than one thread about a single topic.

*facepalm* We're all newbies here dude, be a little more respectful. :/

[GamerAndy]

Originally Posted by DrPayne

My mouth was drooling at the sheer awesomeness of it all. But then I found out about the monthly fee.. FOR AN INCOMPLETE, ALPHA BUILD! Why should we pay for something that's not finished? That is like buying a board game, but with the manual half-finished and the board having missing spaces and pieces.

I refuse to pay for an incomplete product. I don't even care that the price is minimal, its the principle.

Don't get me wrong, so far the game looks great. But I should not have to pay to get into an alpha server.

And actually on the subject of boardgames, there are indepdent boardgame companies that won't publish a game until its recieved enough pre-orders. Why? Because there are costs associated with the process of producing a fniished product that these smaller houses simply do not have the liquid capital to put in without those pre-orders.

Same. Exact. Thing.

So let me leave you with this.

Stop Whining.
If you don't want to pay, you don't have to play - Nobody is forcing anything on you.

[johnmatthais]

Originally Posted by GamerAndy

Everybody talks about wanting to support independent devs and complains when the 19th yearly madden game is the most popular thing in the industry, but in the end it all comes down to money.

Musta missed this part. Here's the deal. Independent developers tend to do something new. Madden is a football game. Madden also is a tried and true system slowly being improved on so that people want to buy it every year and being updated with current players that have plenty of fans.

The average, undecided buyer will generally go with what he knows he will enjoy and what he knows he will play his moneys-worth of.

The economy's down. Money is tight and part of real life. Why pay monthly for something you may not play often when you can pay a single $60 down payment for something you will play until the next one comes out a year from now?

This is why people are complaining.

[Uberknot]

Heres the deal , 5 dollars.

Thats not much at all right? That's maybe 2 bags of chips.

You'd probably eat all those chips in a few days.

Yet you get the alpha for a month.


If you can't afford to buy food , Why are you worried about mmos?

Or better yet why do you even have internet.

[johnmatthais]

Originally Posted by Uberknot

Heres the deal , 5 dollars.

Thats not much at all right? That's maybe 2 bags of chips.

You'd probably eat all those chips in a few days.

Yet you get the alpha for a month.


If you can't afford to buy food , Why are you worried about mmos?

Or better yet why do you even have internet.

Read my last post.

Added to it, people obviously want to play. They're whining because they want to play but can't afford it. Geeze. You know the feeling probably. Like when you want the Ferrari, Mercedes, Maserati, etc, but don't have the money and you whine about how much it costs. Same principle. You could always get a cheaper car, but you'll still whine about it some.

[GamerAndy]

I challenge you to find a cheaper unique outside-the-box MMO

Oh wait, you can't - There arn't any.


As far as Madden goes, thats well and good if you're gonna play football every day, but what if you get bored of it after the first month? I know I do... I play through a season or two, mess around with online and then I'm done with it until the next featureset hits.

Do I get 55 dollars back because I only played it for a month? Nope.

On the flipside, if I play this and pay 5$ for a month, decide I don't like it - Well hello there, thats 55 dollars I saved because I used this system.

[Soldats]

Originally Posted by GamerAndy

And actually on the subject of boardgames, there are indepdent boardgame companies that won't publish a game until its recieved enough pre-orders. Why? Because there are costs associated with the process of producing a fniished product that these smaller houses simply do not have the liquid capital to put in without those pre-orders.

Same. Exact. Thing.

So let me leave you with this.

Stop Whining. [Posters Note=Extra Large type removed for practical purposes]

If you don't want to pay, you don't have to play - Nobody is forcing anything on you.

Oh come on now, I think that this is a legitimate complaint and there is nothing wrong with complaining about it. I mean if people do not complain about something they are dissatisfied about there is exactly zero chance of it ever being changed.

[johnmatthais]

Originally Posted by Soldats

Oh come on now, I think that this is a legitimate complaint and there is nothing wrong with complaining about it. I mean if people do not complain about something they are dissatisfied about there is exactly zero chance of it ever being changed.

And if people are dissatisfied, they leave and tell their friends to avoid it.

[Uberknot]

Originally Posted by johnmatthais

Added to it, people obviously want to play. They're whining because they want to play but can't afford it. Geeze. You know the feeling probably. Like when you want the Ferrari, Mercedes, Maserati, etc, but don't have the money and you whine about how much it costs.

Obviously since this 5 dollar Ferrari costs so much you'd rather buy a 15 dollar cookie cutter mmo?

To put your comment in perceptive , A Ferrari costs around lets say 350 thousand euros. A decent used car is around 8 thousand dollars.

So how you put it , All other mmos should cost LESS then 5 dollars. Which I totaly agree with that


Which goes back to my point. If you can't afford to put 5 dollars into the game do you even have a job.

If you are under 18 go do some chores for mommy , Maybe she'll let you use her credit card.

[johnmatthais]

Originally Posted by Uberknot

Obviously since this 5 dollar Ferrari costs so much you'd rather buy a 15 dollar cookie cutter mmo?

To put your comment in perceptive , A Ferrari costs around lets say 350 thousand euros. A decent used car is around 8 thousand dollars.

So , How you put it , All other mmos should cost LESS then 5 dollars. Which I totaly agree with that


Which goes back to my point. If you can't afford to put 5 dollars into the game do you even have a job.

If you are under 18 go do some chores for mommy , Maybe she'll let you use her credit card.

Heh, I wasn't comparing prices, I was just getting at the whole debate about whining about not being able to pay for what you want.

Once again, the economy's down, people are paying for less and less and cutting out all superfluous costs they can't pay for regularly.

I wasn't trying to compare prices, just make the debate relatable to those that don't think they can pay for it.

Just try and have some sympathy. It helps.

[Elihu]

Originally Posted by DrPayne

Why should we pay for something that's not finished?

Who says the game is unfinished? Eskil has been saying that the game has all the features it needs at launch for some time now, and it sounds as if he's already done some significant amount of testing. From Eskil's twitter account, it looks like he's still fixing a lot of little bugs, but high budget MMOs always have lots of little bugs for years after launch.

I think this is really just about Eskil's choice of words. If he didn't call it an alpha, or a beta, but an official release, we would all be thrilled that the first month is only 3 euros instead of 10.

It's not as though there's a magical line between beta and the official release, and across that line, everything works perfectly and is finished. Love looks like the sort of game that is never really "finished" because there's always some feature that could be added. That doesn't mean that the game is broken.

I may be disappointed if I pay for an alpha key and the game crashes every ten minutes or something, but I don't think Eskil would be charging to play the alpha if he didn't think the game was worth it.

Remember: software isn't "released", it's allowed to escape.

[Uberknot]

Originally Posted by johnmatthais

Just try and have some sympathy. It helps.

It's hard to have sympathy for people if they can't spare 5 dollars.

If you have that tiny of a budget where 5 dollars means life or death , There are some problems.


Most people complaining either don't have a bank account and a paying job , Or they are under 18 and can't use mommy's credit card