Poll on Alpha Price

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How much will you pay for Alpha acces ? ( knowing that the price will probably grown with beta and final release )

0 - 5 £ ( A Burger )
2
3%
5 - 10 £ ( A Pizza )
11
14%
10 - 15 £ ( A Dvd )
13
17%
15 - 20 £ ( A Blueray )
9
12%
20 £ and beyond ( Just take my money )
42
55%
 
Total votes: 77
zangdar86
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Poll on Alpha Price

Postby zangdar86 » Wed Sep 05, 2012 6:10 am

On reddit, Mark was asking how much money will we spend to buy Prison Architect. Let s do an other one where everyone can give an answer and maybe help Introversion to determine the right price.
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Postby Laika » Wed Sep 05, 2012 8:58 am

Not going to pay for alpha.
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Postby Jordy... » Wed Sep 05, 2012 12:08 pm

Laika_rus wrote:Not going to pay for alpha.


GeT OUT OF HER YOU INFIDEL!!!!

Just take my money, I want it now, I've suffered enough I reckon.. I trust you (read Chris) guys will make an awesome game of it.
Cuz fuck logic
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Postby RabidZombie » Wed Sep 05, 2012 1:22 pm

Should be free to everyone who's previously participated in a Introversion beta, because you know we'll give good feedback. Also because I'm cheap.
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Postby Jordy... » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:01 pm

why is it wrong? Those who really care about either IV or the game will pay, those who don't care about feedback but just want to play pay and those who care about giving feedback but not willing to pay can stay.
Cuz fuck logic
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Postby zangdar86 » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:03 pm

Jordy... wrote:why is it wrong? Those who really care about either IV or the game will pay, those who don't care about feedback but just want to play pay and those who care about giving feedback but not willing to pay can stay.


Yeah, totally, those who doesn t want an alpha just have to wait the complete game to pay ! You can even decide not to buy it at all !
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Postby RabidZombie » Wed Sep 05, 2012 5:39 pm

Jordy... wrote:why is it wrong? Those who really care about either IV or the game will pay, those who don't care about feedback but just want to play pay and those who care about giving feedback but not willing to pay can stay.


Honestly, I'd be willing to pay (if I could afford it, but that's another matter); I want to preorder it and I want to give feedback, but they are completely separate wants. Paying for the privilege of giving helpful feedback? HAH. Feedback is valuable, and giving it takes effort. Having to pay to do it could put people off.

In addition to this, there are going to be a lot of people who just want to play it early. A proportion of these people could give really crap feedback. If you go and look at most public betas, you can see it. There is always a huge amount of people giving shoddy feedback, misunderstanding it's an alpha or just complaining at the lack of super speedy progress.

That said, I suspect these problems can easily be solved. Having a second tier of approved testers could help, who have their own private space to report things. Community moderators who can help clean up the alpha forum too.
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Postby bert_the_turtle » Wed Sep 05, 2012 8:13 pm

jelco wrote:"a decent pre-order price".
That. 25% off the full price sounds about right for those plans.

I'll be honest, though.
I bought the Minecraft alpha because even at that state, it already was a compelling experience (to me personally, even more so than later, it's a bit cluttered). And it was evident through the free version and gameplay videos. And I was not a bit interested in giving feedback. Translating that to PA: I'm a more useful tester if I get in for free. Then I feel I owe the developers my feedback. If I have to pay, I'll treat it more like a regular purchase. And if there is an NDA on the alpha, I'd be completely out. I'd want to post funny bugs on YouTube, dammit.

(All that hypothetically speaking, if the Alpha is in the coming three months, I simply won't have time.)
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Postby Jordy... » Wed Sep 05, 2012 8:48 pm

I agree that giving good feedback is valuable and hence it isn't logical to ask people to pay for the right of giving valuable feedback. Which can only mean this is not really about the feedback, but more about cash-flow, and getting there name out there presumably. If anything, they'd like to avoid the total launch disaster of Multiwinia, this model has been proven to work and as seen in the continuing sales of there other games, a big release will do less for them then roughly 1 year of continuing support by purchases and regular press coverage on updates etc.

So I don't think they care much for feedback at all, sure they'll be pleased with people reporting bugs, but first and foremost this is a business decision made by Mark, and he keeps an eye on the financial aspects of things and not so much the gaming aspect.
That being said, valuable feedback would still be valuable to them, but it hardly makes sense to grant some exclusive group on IV free Alpha-access to test the game for them when they can just purchase it for a presumably small amount of money.

Also, with there recent statement that it will be withing 90 days, I'm fairly confident it will launch any day now. Because they sure want to make good on that promise and the ease with which it was said indicates that they will make it well before the end of those 90 days, combined with the fact they promised September earlier and no (hard) contradictions on that front as well as the lack of twitter bugs and feed all suggests to me they are already preparing for launch and I will conclude this analyses by saying that it will launch next week on Tuesday. Thank you.

I'll also be a useless BETA-tester, because I'll find the game too exciting to bother reporting bugs or whatever and then I'll find the game to boring to bother playing it let alone reporting bugs or whatever... So thank god for paid Alpha because I wouldn't get in any other way!
Cuz fuck logic
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Postby Ace Rimmer » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:02 pm

bert_the_turtle wrote:I bought the Minecraft alpha because even at that state, it already was a compelling experience (to me personally, even more so than later, it's a bit cluttered).

Ditto. I enjoyed Minecraft while it was simple.

Jordy... wrote: Because they sure want to make good on that promise and the ease with which it was said indicates that they will make it well before the end of those 90 days, combined with the fact they promised September earlier and no (hard) contradictions on that front as well as the lack of twitter bugs and feed all suggests to me they are already preparing for launch and I will conclude this analyses by saying that it will launch next week on Tuesday.

*sucks in lots of air*

phew

WOW. 83 words (assuming I counted correctly) in one sentence. :shock:

In other news; "Most users ever online was 297 on Sat Feb 06, 2010 4:05 am". Will PA break this record?
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Postby Jordy... » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:14 pm

I'm not very fond of punctuations, but to be fair I used comma's didn't I?
Cuz fuck logic
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Postby Ace Rimmer » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:24 pm

jelco wrote:I know this may be difficult to believe, but there are quite some people solely interested in the testing process and not in playing the final game.

I can confirm this point. I helped test Multiwinia, and enjoyed finding the bugs. I never really liked the game and as far as I recall, never played a single game once it was released.
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Postby Jordy... » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:32 pm

I'd be hard-pressed to pre-order it now if I'd only get early access 2 weeks before final release. Giving access now to pre-orders will generate more pre-orders. Separating testing would be wholly impracticable, first of all, would pre-orders not be allowed to give feedback and report bugs, or would this be yet another division.

And how do you justify handing out free keys to some people yet let other people pay for the privilege to play the game? You would really have be sure that whoever gets a free-key will be his money worth by extensively testing your game and then still, those who did pay might give a lot of valuable feedback as well, how is it fair they were not picked to be granted free access? Just because they were not known to IV beforehand?

Also, even-though there might be some people out there more interested in testing a game then actually playing it, I doubt it will be a lot of them. But most likely those would come from within this community and they should in some way also be the most likely persons to pay if only to support IV and show them gratitude for keeping these forums running and having created this community.

Also, finding bugs in PA, seems like is half the fun, judging from the twitter feed, so in a sense you WILL be playing the game while testing it, which would justify your purchase.
Cuz fuck logic
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Postby Ace Rimmer » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:43 pm

An argument could be made for seperation of privledges.

1. Pre-order and get to play the alpha now and when it's released, plus any enhancements. You do not have access to alpha related subforums.

2. Sign up as a tester and only have access to alpha and beta RC's.

These two groups aren't mutually exclusive as you could pre-order and sign up to test. In practice, there's no way to keep testing pure and free from people who just complain, unless you hire a team.

One other item you might have not considered; pre-ordering 2-weeks prior would most likely give you a decent discount. Some will buy the alpha just for that.
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Postby Jordy... » Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:49 pm

A lot of people would be tempted, including me, to just sign up as a tester and don't bother buying the actual game because they played enough in the alpha/beta.

Also, allowing pre-ordering a few months before launch will most likely generate far more purchasers then if you only start it 2 weeks before launch.
Cuz fuck logic

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