Why I haven't backed Sui Generis (yet)

[Parco]

• Why do people on lower tiers get access to videos when people on the £40 don't

this has been discussed multiple times already and every time the same answer is given: the 30£ tier was a bonus tier added later for those wanting the videos but didnt want the alpha/beta or cant afford the 60£ tier to get the videos.

and as backers were not getting enough updates? as it already has been mentioned (multiple times) its still in pre-alpha stage, alot of the stuff they have made so far is still too "raw" aka unfinished or test ideas. alot of what they have finished / decided what to be in game is already shown in the content they have released in form of public/private videos and posts with and without screenshots, showing content they are far from finished with would be unwise as it might be completely changed into something different or scrapped later on. and since its still pre-alpha its not much visual stuff to show anyway since alot of the work they have to do is on the game core, aka alot of coding and placeholder models/textures.

and the last thing i want to mention is that even though i backed 60£ i still dont feel i obligated the devs to give me alot of content else from what was stated in tier rewards. actually they dont have to show us any content at all, they could if they wanted to choose to completely ignore us up until alpha release, release a dev video now and then and then just go back to their work. but instead they are choosing to release updates now and then to keep us in the loop and are listening to what we have to say.

 

[Empire²]

Agreed, I'm being a dick.

Water under the bridge. We both said some things that weren't exactly adding to the issue at hand.

Now, let's talk camel physics!

 

[KevinP_ZA]

Can I point out that we are NOT investors. We are customers pre-ordering a game.

 

[Scarecrow]

Just going to post something for the OP Jtw. You are not entirely sure wether you want to back now or not, and that is 100% reasonable. I definatly understand the fear of not getting what you hoped, or the game not being able to deliver everything it tried to. The thing is, BM has been very realistic and straight forward with what they're trying to achieve. Yes, they're talking about some pretty revolutionary buisness here, but they have always stated that they will give it their all because they want this to be a truly exceptional game. Of course no one can promise that everything will turn out as great as they hope them too, because no game is perfect.

Think of it this way: the more people that contribute to them, the more resources they have available to make the game even better. I dont know about you, but the instant i saw their KS video i understood the enormous potential of this game. The fighting system already at that point looked great to me, and it has been further improved upon as we with dev video access has seen. The great AI and the dynamic world they're trying to create also just seems fantastic, and even I have my doubts sometimes wether they will be able to deliver fully at all fronts.

However, i backed them with 60 pounds because i really believe in this game, and in the Bare Mettle team. The game is to me something i have always wanted, and the dev team seems to me like a nice bunch who are being realistic and smart about what they do.

If you don't fully believe in this game and its team, i wouldn't contribute yet. You should be quite sure about something before you give it your money, in return of promises. Also, the new video really does seem to be on its way, and you can always wait until you have checked that out or any other updates.

 

[Rob]

Can I point out that we are NOT investors. We are customers pre-ordering a game.

No, you are completely wrong.

You are not a customer pre-ordering a game. You're not even an investor.

You're a donator. And in response for your pledge, BM thank you by agreeing to reward you in accordance with your contribution level, subject to the project's success.

That's it. You should consider your pledge to be more similar to donating to a charity than purchasing a game. Don't confuse crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, investing, banking and purchasing. These different concepts correspond to very different business models, and are legally subject to very different regulatory requirements.

 

[mcmanusaur]

Sui Generis is near the top of my list of games that I would back if I didn't have zero income currently, and while the recent lack of videos has somewhat limited my incentive to back even if I did have the money, I do remain confident that BareMettle is doing their best within what is an extremely tight budget. Sure, you could argue that if people like me backed then maybe they could afford more regular correspondence, but at the end of the day this crowdfunding model is optimized toward getting the most people to donate in the beginning (in other words, BareMettle has made a cost-benefit decision to maximize initial funding and then focus on development). That is to say, games like Star Citizen that raise funds continually over a long period of time (and thus can afford such dedicated PR) are the exception in crowdfunding, and basically this situation is a result of a cost-benefit analysis. The only question is what the "costs" constitute, and with Sui Generis in this regard I am positive that they are prioritizing the quality of the game above all else.

I am interested however, to hear what Madoc means by the "public"; I'd assume people like myself who haven't backed yet? If the fear is that something posted casually might lower their interest, I would question the notion that these people's commitment to the game is significantly more fragile than that of the insiders. In the status quo it's unlikely that many new people are finding the project, and thus a majority of people (insiders or otherwise) active on the forums have likely been following the game for a long time despite the lack of news. Furthermore, people who have already invested would have more reason to feel disappointed by something if you think about it. Just some food for thought; though I understand its purpose I have often felt that segregating people into tiers and withholding information to certain tiers is one of the less ideal aspects of the Kickstarter model. I know that some people might get pissy if some of their exclusive rewards got de-exclusive-ized, but for me that's even more immature than people being generally a bit impatient for more information.

Lastly, if the kind of negativity expressed in this thread represents your overall attitude, crowdfunding may not be for you; it's not for everyone.

 

[ThatWeirdGuy]

Hello everyone, I first of all would like to say that I signed up just now to post this and probably won't be active in the forums however I think it's important I express my feelings about the subject. I have been following the project since I saw the Kickstarter and I have been regularly checking the forums and the site ever since. however every time I check it I am met with disappointment. I completely fell in love with the game the moment I saw the first combat video. I had been looking for a game like this my entire life. Physics driven combat, emergent AI behavior and an immersive world... But I tend not to back or pre-order games I usually come across despite how amazingly awesome they may be. I may be skeptical or cynical but this is just one of my habits. If I can I will completely support the devs after release but I most of the time do not buy a game unless it's already in alpha/beta stage and may be accessed early. So, needless to say I am not a backer and I do not believe that I am 'entitled' to anything, but I am going to talk about what the relationship between the devs and the backers projects to the people who are not backers but are interested in the game. Personally I find your lack of updates disturbing. I think it's not a matter of not having any substantial content even in the early parts of development. Even if you are working with the internal workings of the engine making a few blog entries every once in a while about it is enough to excite the people interested in the game. 9 months down the road since the official beginning of the development, if you still don't have anything to present to the public apart from two kickstarter updates (which were very interesting and exciting to read nonetheless) it just gives the idea that the project is vaporware. I know it's not and that you guys are working hard on it but the average person checking the project out won't know that. I don't think running on a tight budget and having a small dev team is an excuse for it. Many other devs do it and if you guys did it as well I think it would improve your image a lot.

An example is Prison Architect the dev team is just one person (Chris Delay) but they still manage to release monthly alpha updates to the public through their youtube channel and it's always exciting to watch even if they haven't made substantial amount of changes. I realize that they are already in alpha and they are already have previously published which in your case is not the scenario, but there's another kickstarted game that's exemplary in this regard.

The one man behind Limit Theory (Josh Parnell) not only releases monthly video updates but also writes dev logs about what he did "daily" even though it's still in pre-alpha stage. Even if it's internal engine work he explains what's exciting about what he's doing and that makes it interesting for backers and other people interested in the game alike. If that's not what interests people he can always show the relatively shinier stuff in a monthly update.

In conclusion I think that you shouldn't be this conservative about releasing content about your game to the public even if it's unpolished. If you state it clearly and emphasize it people do in fact realize it's an unfinished work and treat it keeping it in mind that it's still pre-alpha. I personally don't think that this is a problem about the allocation of resources but about business model. If you want your potential customers to be excited about the game as much as you are give them something to be excited for. If a single person was able to release daily development logs for 9 months you can easily release a public video once every few months with enough content to keep people interested.

 

[Komuflage]

In conclusion I think that you shouldn't be this conservative about releasing content about your game to the public even if it's unpolished. If you state it clearly and emphasize it people do in fact realize it's an unfinished work and treat it keeping it in mind that it's still pre-alpha.

I really don't want to write any negative reply to this otherwise, well written posts. But I've to comment on this part.

The fact is that even if they put a big text saying "Pre-Alpha" on the whole screen, people still wont understand it.
I'll take the kickstarter video as the first example. It was obviously in a early state, but a lot of people still complained about the bad animations.

Another example is the 30/40£ tier. It was clearly stated that the 30£ was a extra tier, Not included in higher tiers. (Written in caps in the beginning and end of the "Tier Text") Still we have quite a lot of people wondering why they don't have videos even though they payed 40£.

So with that in mind, I fully understand why BM don't really want to show the public to much at this stage.

There is still 6 month left of development (and they can ofc delay the release, if they fell they need more time) so there is plenty of time to get the hype up. The public video on it's way, as well as some "Epic moments" from Alpha and Beta will most likely catch a lot of peoples eyes.

 

[Scarecrow]

Hello everyone, I first of all would like to say that I signed up just now to post this and probably won't be active in the forums however I think it's important I express my feelings about the subject. I have been following the project since I saw the Kickstarter and I have been regularly checking the forums and the site ever since. however every time I check it I am met with disappointment. I completely fell in love with the game the moment I saw the first combat video. I had been looking for a game like this my entire life. Physics driven combat, emergent AI behavior and an immersive world... But I tend not to back or pre-order games I usually come across despite how amazingly awesome they may be. I may be skeptical or cynical but this is just one of my habits. If I can I will completely support the devs after release but I most of the time do not buy a game unless it's already in alpha/beta stage and may be accessed early. So, needless to say I am not a backer and I do not believe that I am 'entitled' to anything, but I am going to talk about what the relationship between the devs and the backers projects to the people who are not backers but are interested in the game. Personally I find your lack of updates disturbing. I think it's not a matter of not having any substantial content even in the early parts of development. Even if you are working with the internal workings of the engine making a few blog entries every once in a while about it is enough to excite the people interested in the game. 9 months down the road since the official beginning of the development, if you still don't have anything to present to the public apart from two kickstarter updates (which were very interesting and exciting to read nonetheless) it just gives the idea that the project is vaporware. I know it's not and that you guys are working hard on it but the average person checking the project out won't know that. I don't think running on a tight budget and having a small dev team is an excuse for it. Many other devs do it and if you guys did it as well I think it would improve your image a lot.

An example is Prison Architect the dev team is just one person (Chris Delay) but they still manage to release monthly alpha updates to the public through their youtube channel and it's always exciting to watch even if they haven't made substantial amount of changes. I realize that they are already in alpha and they are already have previously published which in your case is not the scenario, but there's another kickstarted game that's exemplary in this regard.

The one man behind Limit Theory (Josh Parnell) not only releases monthly video updates but also writes dev logs about what he did "daily" even though it's still in pre-alpha stage. Even if it's internal engine work he explains what's exciting about what he's doing and that makes it interesting for backers and other people interested in the game alike. If that's not what interests people he can always show the relatively shinier stuff in a monthly update.

In conclusion I think that you shouldn't be this conservative about releasing content about your game to the public even if it's unpolished. If you state it clearly and emphasize it people do in fact realize it's an unfinished work and treat it keeping it in mind that it's still pre-alpha. I personally don't think that this is a problem about the allocation of resources but about business model. If you want your potential customers to be excited about the game as much as you are give them something to be excited for. If a single person was able to release daily development logs for 9 months you can easily release a public video once every few months with enough content to keep people interested.

First of all let me say welcome to the forums (I know you said you've been around for a while, but this is your first post nonetheless).
Despite what you and others may think, making a video is time consuming. You may say that it doesnt have to be all that great as long as one states that this is pre-alpha. Sadly, this is not the case. A lot of people when seeing something that is unfinished, or not properly done, will immediatly start pointing out the flaws they see. This is regardless of the statement "This is an unfinished product". Im not saying all people do that, but there are a lot of people who do so, who just rushes into conclusions. Thusly, public videos can result both negativly and positivly. Bare Mettle do not want to make videos unless they really feel like there is something great to show (thats how i percieve it), and i don't have anything against that. Using time on videos that really doesn't show anything special can be time consuming, and they're already working on a thight schedual to get the game out in time, and not to mention their low budget. Time spent on making videos, is less time spent on developing the game. I too wished there could be more frequent updates, but you really have to try and put yourselves in their places, and see it from their perspective.

Also, you can't just compare this game to any other game. Prison Architect for instance, is a completely different game, with most likely a very different development process. You also have to look at budget and time as factors when you compare (Which i still think you shouldn't do. Comparing games like these towrds each others just doesn't make sense).

Sometimes its like people don't even want to see it from the devs perspective. Its not that they don't want to give us more updates, and communicate more with us. Its just that the ultimate goal here is to make the game as great as possible. These guys are working a lot to complete their dream game, and a lot of us see it as our dream game as well. They want to deliver this dream game, for themselves and their backers.

Again, not saying that this is the perfect solution, but what is? The devs are just doing what they think is the best to do. I thought this whole matter already had been discussed plenty of times, and you would find the reasoning behind this if you had just searched a little.

 

[fluffydino2000]

I think that the main problem here is just the organisation of information. If you had all the dev posts on here and the kick starter along with all the relevant information (i.e. what the discussion that post was about is) you'd probably have enough weekly or bi-weekly development updates which would maybe be found on a blog. However, the fact that it is so hard to keep track of unless if your on the forum every day makes it seem like there's absolutely nothing.

Of course, instead of posting on here, they could take that time and post on a dev blog, but then they'd be losing the discussion they have with the user's on here.

I realise that it seems a little selfish to sit here and say, they should talk to us, but putting a dev blog out there probably wouldn't achieve that much. Sure, more people may see it, but what's the point if they have a dead forum to move on to? (By the way, I reject the earlier accusation that these forums are dead... they may be irregular sure, but not dead.) The fact of the matter is with the quality of updates BM do, the next video will likely achieve more than a dev blog could ever have done. Especially if people who see it can come and discuss it with the devs.

The ideal solution I think would be a more up to date and official version of @The Hedge Knight's FAQ type thingy.

EDIT: I forgot to say welcome...

 

[JtW]

Thank you everyone for your contributions to the thread. After reading it all, I guess the message to the devs is: it would really make us feel better if you gave us some kind of regular updates on where you are standing. For all I know, make a thread in the public forum and take 15 minutes weekly to update us. "This week we've been working on Obscure Technical Feature XYZ which is awesome because it will enable us to add camel physics to the game."

I cannot see any reason why you shouldn't be able to do that or why you wouldn't want to.

 

[Tom]

Thank you everyone for your contributions to the thread. After reading it all, I guess the message to the devs is: it would really make us feel better if you gave us some kind of regular updates on where you are standing. For all I know, make a thread in the public forum and take 15 minutes weekly to update us. "This week we've been working on Obscure Technical Feature XYZ which is awesome because it will enable us to add camel physics to the game."

I cannot see any reason why you shouldn't be able to do that or why you wouldn't want to.

This I can stand behind - some quick paragraph saying "this is our week's goal/progress". We have no idea what's functional right now, or how much is left of game development. Combat seems to be on its way. What about the game world? Quests? Music?

A very simple paragraph would do wonders. The upcoming video will be great, I'm sure, but I'd rather have occasional screenies and some mini update.

 

[Fresh]

It's a risk backing any game. I've backed around thirty projects on Kickstarter and most of them haven't given me what they promised me in return. When I saw the pitching video for Sui Generis I just knew that I had to back the project, this is a game that have to be made. I haven't really seen other games with the same physics this game has - and what really sold it to me was that they had a playable presentation of the game to show from the begining. And from my experience that is a huge factor to wether the project finishes or not. I have no doubt the game will finish with amazing results, and the trust I put into the project really showed on my wallet.

As far as the "dead forum" comment, I don't really see it that way. I feel like there's good communication between the developers and the community, especially in the insider forums. And it's a good thing they aren't overdoing it with updates (like Double Fine). It's better they are using the time on the game and reach somewhat the estimated releasing date than puting out updates each week. And the updates they do show really shows the amount of work they have put into the game during the developing time and it basiclly feels like christmas each time I see a Sui Generis update in my mailbox.

I really hope you back the project as well, because I can tell you love the idea of it. I have no doubt you will be pleased with the final results.

 

[Max11]

Haha seems as some people have a more enlightened opinion of the game than some of us do which is fine but some of the posts come across as I know what's going on and you don't well I fall into the uninformed group and we the unenlightened just feel like we would like to be I am sure.
And I understand there hopefully using our hard earned money to the best of there ability and not having pizza and beer parties with it.
But to say that is is in early stages of development and barley functioning most the time is a scary thing to hear when there 6 months from release date tells me they didn't come close on estimating the amount of work involved in this project or they just plan on moving the release date towards the end of the year or further out. Please do not post any responses where you know what there doing and want to tell me in detail how it will all be ok. I contributed my money if it works great if not well have a beer on me.

 

[the0thMonkey]

Haha seems as some people have a more enlightened opinion of the game than some of us do which is fine but some of the posts come across as I know what's going on and you don't well I fall into the uninformed group and we the unenlightened just feel like we would like to be I am sure.
And I understand there hopefully using our hard earned money to the best of there ability and not having pizza and beer parties with it.
But to say that is is in early stages of development and barley functioning most the time is a scary thing to hear when there 6 months from release date tells me they didn't come close on estimating the amount of work involved in this project or they just plan on moving the release date towards the end of the year or further out. Please do not post any responses where you know what there doing and want to tell me in detail how it will all be ok. I contributed my money if it works great if not well have a beer on me.

Just to update, the delay for the public video was caused by fixing the bugs they came across while recording. They now say that the working version is quite stable, which is great news!

 

[fajaballa]

I completely agree with what's said in the OP. I've been following Sui Generis since the beginning and I haven't backed it because there hasn't been any real communication. To be frank, the contributions scheme is stupid. Why shouldn't somebody be able to choose one copy of the game + videos? I'd like to see content, play an alpha and give feedback without paying a hundred dollars. The scheme just doesn't make sense to me. At times I have completely forgotten about this project because it goes for months without updates to the general public. It looks promising but, from a consumer's standpoint, I can't give my money. I hope Bare Mettle realizes they need a better connection with the general public regardless of if they have enough money or not.

 

[Komuflage]

Why shouldn't somebody be able to choose one copy of the game + videos? I'd like to see content, play an alpha and give feedback without paying a hundred dollars.

Maybe the 30£ tier fits you?

You get 1 copy of the game at release, And you get access to all the development videos. + you get the soundtrack on release, and you get insider access as well

 

[fajaballa]

None of them really fit me. I'd love to pay the 60 dollars for one copy of the game, early access and some videos.

 

[Oona]

I completely agree with what's said in the OP. I've been following Sui Generis since the beginning and I haven't backed it because there hasn't been any real communication. To be frank, the contributions scheme is stupid. Why shouldn't somebody be able to choose one copy of the game + videos? I'd like to see content, play an alpha and give feedback without paying a hundred dollars. The scheme just doesn't make sense to me. At times I have completely forgotten about this project because it goes for months without updates to the general public. It looks promising but, from a consumer's standpoint, I can't give my money. I hope Bare Mettle realizes they need a better connection with the general public regardless of if they have enough money or not.

That's bullshit. Bare Mettle have communicated and provided more information and material about the game (excluding the insider videos and forum) than your average game company, and SG isn't even in Alpha state yet. Just because they aren't wasting their time and tweeting a bunch of insignificant information like some other Kickstarter-funded companies, doesn't mean they aren't connecting.

The 60 pound tier is perfectly reasonable for what you will get in return, but if you're looking to buy useless updates and a cheap game then you should look for something else.

 

[fajaballa]

Don't rationalize. It's perfectly legitimate criticism and not only are you being biased but you're being rude. In fact, what you're saying conveys exactly the type of response I was thinking I'd probably get. The choices are stupid and you shouldn't fool yourself by thinking that this game is some sort of refined experience for only the truest of RPG players.Granted, it's a great looking game, but just because it's good doesn't mean I should turn head over heels and buy it. It's a video game and while the ideas are good, I'm going to be careful about it like I am with every purchase.

There's been what, six updates with actual content shown? Probably more, but that's what it seems like. Maybe you're mistaking me for a guy who goes around crying about alphas, but that's not the case.