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Spielt gerade: GT7 | 60fps FTW
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/04/05/dirt-rally-out-today-on-ps4-live-events-detailed/
Shifting from AAA to Early Access
Shifting from AAA to Early Access
"We had this diamond-in-the-rough prototype that I put in front of our executives at Codemasters, and they were not confident," Coleman said. "We've seen the racing genre go into a bit of a decline over recent years, so a racing game is already less of a business proposition than it used to be. Then it's a rally game, which is a sort of niche of racing. And we'd been working on this prototype trying to make the most authentic rally game ever made, and that meant it was much more simulation-based than it had been previously, so it was a challenging proposition. We'd kind of created this niche within a niche of a niche, and the business was reluctant to put all their support behind it and for us to go into a full dev cycle based on this prototype."
...
The big fear was that people who heard about the project without getting all the details might make some erroneous assumptions about the state of the game or Codemasters' plans, which would lead to a hive mind of negative sentiment around the game before it had a chance to win converts. One way Coleman said they got around that was to announce the game on Early Access all of five minutes or so before it was available on Steam.
"People didn't really have time to dwell on it, and that was a tactical decision on our part," Coleman said. "We didn't want to announce and then allow people to dwell on the situation too much, the fact that perhaps the game wasn't going to be available on PS4 and Xbox One right off the bat, the fact that this was a new Dirt game but it might not be what people were expecting it to be. We wanted to catch people off guard."
...
"One of the things we made very clear from the get-go was that this wasn't us asking them to be our quality assurance team and bug find for us," Coleman said. "This was more about giving them a prototype that was well-polished, that met the production values we hold as a studio. It was about asking them to tell us what you think about the experience, what you think about the direction we've taken the franchise in, and we'll continue on that promise if it's what you like."
...
Word of mouth really spread, and the game started to do way beyond the numbers we were expecting it to do as part of this Early Access program."
...
"We'd been making console games prior to this and had very little understanding of how to make great force feedback for the PC sim audience," Coleman said. "They were quite quick to tell us how wrong we got it, and some of that feedback was not necessarily the most constructive, but that's the Internet."
...
"The spend we put on Dirt Rally for PC was the lowest I think we have ever spent on a game at Codemasters as a company, or even as a publisher," Coleman said. "The numbers were incredibly low before we got publishers on board for the console version. I think we'd spent about £20,000 ($28,250) on marketing Dirt Rally as a PC product.
...
"The game didn't necessarily get the full assault that we would put on a title if we were building it from the ground up over an 18-month dev cycle with the ambition of putting it in a box and going through all the usual processes," Coleman said. "So yeah, you could argue our career mode is a little bit basic because we needed something in there from the start, and once we put it out there, there was very little time to iterate on and refine it."
...
"The iterations we took that through... we've never really focused on the gameplay as much as we did with this title," Coleman said. "It's always been about the bigger picture, the high-production value stuff that's great from a package point of view but isn't necessarily integral to what the game feels like in your hands. That was the big shift we took in Dirt Rally."
...
So did the Early Access experiment pay off? While Coleman says Dirt Rally is loved (as of this writing, 91 percent of reviews for it on Steam are positive), he adds that the number of units shipped "do not constitute a financial success" (at least not yet).
"I think there was a bit of a perfect storm with Dirt Rally and Early Access," Coleman said. "I don't think it's a silver bullet. I wouldn't use it again if we were going to try the same thing again, for example. It was just, from my perspective as a developer who'd poured my heart and soul into that prototype over the previous couple of years, it was really important for me to not just let go and consign it to the archives."
...
The big fear was that people who heard about the project without getting all the details might make some erroneous assumptions about the state of the game or Codemasters' plans, which would lead to a hive mind of negative sentiment around the game before it had a chance to win converts. One way Coleman said they got around that was to announce the game on Early Access all of five minutes or so before it was available on Steam.
"People didn't really have time to dwell on it, and that was a tactical decision on our part," Coleman said. "We didn't want to announce and then allow people to dwell on the situation too much, the fact that perhaps the game wasn't going to be available on PS4 and Xbox One right off the bat, the fact that this was a new Dirt game but it might not be what people were expecting it to be. We wanted to catch people off guard."
...
"One of the things we made very clear from the get-go was that this wasn't us asking them to be our quality assurance team and bug find for us," Coleman said. "This was more about giving them a prototype that was well-polished, that met the production values we hold as a studio. It was about asking them to tell us what you think about the experience, what you think about the direction we've taken the franchise in, and we'll continue on that promise if it's what you like."
...
Word of mouth really spread, and the game started to do way beyond the numbers we were expecting it to do as part of this Early Access program."
...
"We'd been making console games prior to this and had very little understanding of how to make great force feedback for the PC sim audience," Coleman said. "They were quite quick to tell us how wrong we got it, and some of that feedback was not necessarily the most constructive, but that's the Internet."
...
"The spend we put on Dirt Rally for PC was the lowest I think we have ever spent on a game at Codemasters as a company, or even as a publisher," Coleman said. "The numbers were incredibly low before we got publishers on board for the console version. I think we'd spent about £20,000 ($28,250) on marketing Dirt Rally as a PC product.
...
"The game didn't necessarily get the full assault that we would put on a title if we were building it from the ground up over an 18-month dev cycle with the ambition of putting it in a box and going through all the usual processes," Coleman said. "So yeah, you could argue our career mode is a little bit basic because we needed something in there from the start, and once we put it out there, there was very little time to iterate on and refine it."
...
"The iterations we took that through... we've never really focused on the gameplay as much as we did with this title," Coleman said. "It's always been about the bigger picture, the high-production value stuff that's great from a package point of view but isn't necessarily integral to what the game feels like in your hands. That was the big shift we took in Dirt Rally."
...
So did the Early Access experiment pay off? While Coleman says Dirt Rally is loved (as of this writing, 91 percent of reviews for it on Steam are positive), he adds that the number of units shipped "do not constitute a financial success" (at least not yet).
"I think there was a bit of a perfect storm with Dirt Rally and Early Access," Coleman said. "I don't think it's a silver bullet. I wouldn't use it again if we were going to try the same thing again, for example. It was just, from my perspective as a developer who'd poured my heart and soul into that prototype over the previous couple of years, it was really important for me to not just let go and consign it to the archives."
Not sure it will answer your questions better, but here's another quote from my interview with Paul: "I don't think it will necessarily work for [other franchises]. I think it was just a really good moment and the fact the community had been without any Dirt game for four years at that point and had been asking for a return for quite a while."
My impression was that he felt Early Access was appropriate and helpful, but only in certain circumstances. In retrospect, perhaps I should have pressed him for more on that.
My impression was that he felt Early Access was appropriate and helpful, but only in certain circumstances. In retrospect, perhaps I should have pressed him for more on that.
Zuletzt editiert:
Zocke mim Pad. 
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Wobei ich die absolute Hardcore-Fraktion immer noch bei den Isle-of-Man-Bike-Racern verorte. Da ist es aber nicht direkt der Abhang, der einen erstarren lässt. 
Man kann nur die Anzahl der Etappen etc. einstellen und welchen Wagen man fahren möchte, aber Strecke und Wetter bleibt komplett random. 
