treeHamster

Oh ok so Rocket works for Bohemia Interactive? I thought he was just some guy that made a mod for ArmA 2 called DayZ. If he's part of BI, then that's something different. If he's using BI's ArmA engine, and doesn't expressly work for BI, then he would have to pay for the license (unless BI is letting him have the engine for the SA in the understanding that he still does work on the mod which is to be free and requires the purchase of ArmA 2 or 3). I could understand the second situation because he pays for the SA engine license through his work for the mod (which would increase ArmA sales).

Oh ok. Well then the price should be lower because the lifespan of the game would depend entirely on the devs. If they're having to pay for the licenses, then it should be factored into the game price (of course). I am just not sure what the cost of the engine license is (they are usually some percentage of sales).

Actually I'm pricing the game based on the fact that they are likely to have NO marketing outside of social media (which is free), they have no sales team, little to no legal, basically their overhead will be zero unless they setup the game as an MMO. Even in that case, if they're the ones renting servers out, then they should pay for their server overhead through rental fees. The only server overhead they will have to pay for is for the website, the handful of servers during development, and game distribution (if they don't do it through Steam or some other online game disto platform). You guys are pricing the game in line with AAA titles which have costs that FAR exceed the development and move into areas that Dean and the rest of the team don't have to pay for. So in other words, you're overpricing the product (something that is becoming notorious in the Indy game industry). Go back 5 years and PC games sold direct to consumer outside of the major headline titles, would sell for $5-$15 for final version from indy studios with major development reps. You guys shouldn't start throwing prices out there without knowing the dev's cost. My problem with the game industry has always been people trying to make cash cows by pricing hype rather than the quality of the game and trying to get the highest distribution possible. I think this game could be good, but the devs shouldn't price the early versions based on hype because the people that are likely to pay insane sums want it for wanting it rather than wanting it because they want to help with the game development. You can see this in Rust already. The Garry did a Dutch auction to sell it and it took a month for the price to go from $60's to $20's. Even still, the game is full of little kids and jackasses that just run around KoS instead of running around looking for bugs (which is the JOB of the alpha tester). Higher pricing on final games is because of the risk in producing games without a payout (until distribution). By selling into alpha, the devs are taking some of that risk off the table up front, which means the final product should cost less (an in turn, the early access should cost less as well). ASP will end up going down but risk per unit goes way down as well. Marketing gets taken care of through rep building as the game gets developed (publicly).

It depends on a few things. Would the SA allow for modding and mapping? Is the SA built on it's own engine or did they get a license of another engine? If they did get a licensed engine, did it cost them anything? These are important because if they're using someone else's engine for free, then it should cost less. If they're using their own engine, then it should cost more because engine building takes a LOT of work. However, because it's come around soo fast, I don't think they're making their own engine. All the same I think $15-$20 US for the final product would be fair. For the Alpha, $5-10. The Beta should be $10-$15. I give these prices because you never know HOW long it'll take to complete the game, and more importantly, if it ever WILL be "complete". If there will be modding and mapping tools available, then I think each stage could cost another $5-10 each, because tools extended the lifetime of the game (still lots of people playing CoD:MW1 mods and that game is almost 6 years old).

Well they are making as much of the game server side as they can. This is good for you as a player because it means hacking will be much harder to pull off. Also it means lag handling will be much more uniform across EVERYONE in the server, which is a very good thing.

The developers in PS2 are lazy, biased, and not very bright (they are in the middle of overhauling the ENTIRE game structure half a year into the public release because "they guess" they were wrong when they were told back in Alpha and Beta that their game conquest wasn't going to work and would fail...it did...so they're spending 6 months right now overhauling it instead of doing good stuff like new continents, infantry content, and game performance improvement). The SA will probably run individual servers which are controlled by the owners of the servers. It's the real PC mutliplayer model and the most successful one (because admins from corporations end up never being on and are never helpful anyway).

even betterer "Take off your clothes, lie down, and roll the beans over here"

Wouldn't work because of mic input volume manipulation.

Something you don't seem to understand about doing an SA over a mod is that with SA, the developers end up owning their IP straight up. You can't really sell a CoD:BO mod to EA even if it was the most popular mod ever made. This is because it would be useless for EA to be reliant on it's competitor. Creating SA means if the game works out well enough, they could get investors in which means more help in development which in turn means a shorter development cycle as well as a better game (though at a higher price). The other thing you need to realize is that building SA, rather than migrating the mod to ArmA 3 means they're not a slave to the problems of the host game (just the basic engine which they can fix). Might I also point out that for almost 10 years Counter Strike was the top FPS in the world. Were there newer, prettier, more realistic games? Sure but that doesn't mean it translates into fun. Who cares about a game with more textures and polygons? If you want eye candy there are a TON of games out there. If you want a game that's complex, immersible, and won't get you burned out in a month or two, then you're probably better off sacrificing pretty for gameplay. I haven't played DayZ yet but I watch this everyday because I'm tired of these shooters out there that have a ton of weapons and that look pretty, but are dumbed down to where my dog could play them. I don't just want some extra movement mechanics like sliding, rolling, or fence jumping, but rather the ability to build stuff (buildings, weapons, vehicles), fix stuff, and interact in an almost RPG/FPS sandbox.

I've been watching this forum daily for almost three weeks waiting for an SA Alpha announcement and just want to make sure I'm watching the correct place for when it goes public. I can't wait, by the way.

I almost wish SA would have some elements from Die2Nite. It would be fun to build a base and have people have to stay on watch at all hours (would get teamwork from people all around the world and work schedules). You have a zombie population that grows exponentially as time goes on and it's your job to keep the map clean as best as possible, while working together as a group. Maybe this might only be for tournaments or something where you get teams (30-40 people) and a server run a couple of areas where people build up forts. Almost like different factions from something like The Walking Dead, where you get different groups of survivors that clash. It could also give new people a way to get into the game by simply helping on the upkeep of the base as well as scavenging.

Edit: Deleted

What? I can't get a full 180° of peeing my pants? ='(

=/ I have 4x24".

I already read Aporis' thread. Wasn't that big of a deal, just took some reading. I am really excited and want to play the SA Alpha, mainly because I have no game to play anymore leaving my three hours of free time after work (before dinner) completely void. I really can't wait to get to play this Alpha. May I inquire (for anyone with the closed Alpha), about multi-screen support (resolutions over 1920x1080).