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General discussionIntroducing Games in Development(760 posts)(760 posts)
(760 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 28, 2016
Excellent hand-picked games, 14-day refund policy, always DRM-free.

We want GOG.com to be the home of games that are both excellent and really worth your time.
In today's gaming world, we're seeing more and more titles that become hits before development dwindles down. We want to give you a way to enjoy what these games have to offer, a way that's comfortable and fair to you — the GOG.com way: that means evaluating each and every game, a 14-day no-questions-asked refund policy, and more.




That's why today, we're introducing the first five games in development:
Starbound (-33%)
Ashes of the Singularity (-25%)
Project Zomboid (-40%)
TerraTech (-30%)
The Curious Expedition (-15%)







The GOG.com way.
First and foremost: we're hand-picking only the games we can truly stand behind. Offering a selection of the most promising titles, and those most highly requested on the Community Wishlist, is our way of avoiding bloat and ensuring that every game will be worth your time.

It takes some confidence to discover games that are still being shaped — and to build that trust, every game in development comes with a simple refund policy: 14 days, no questions asked. It doesn't matter if you're having technical issues, if you don't think the game is sufficiently fleshed out, or if it simply doesn't click with you — all games in development can be returned for any reason within 14 days of purchase.

The GOG Galaxy client should also come in handy for games in development. It lets you control updates manually if you want, while the rollback feature allows you to easily restore any earlier version of your game if an update breaks something or makes unwanted changes. For games in development, rollback will also track and create historical snapshots throughout a game's development. That means you can always revisit any point in a game's history — for fun, or for science.






It's your call.
For those of you who prefer to wait for the final release, nothing will change. Once a game leaves active development, we will be making the announcement and giving the newest release proper exposure. Basically, business as usual.






More info.
Surely you have questions. You'll find many of the answers in the <span class="bold">games in development FAQ, including more details on the new refund policy. Our User Agreement has also been expanded to accommodate games in development — check out sections 6.12, 6.13, and 6.14 to find all the new information.




Enjoy your time with games in development!
Post edited January 28, 2016 by Konrad
Posted February 02, 2016
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Pheace: If development has ended so has the early access, so I doubt you'd still have money back guarantee at that point.
No, but then I trust GOG's judgement and next time might dare take part in the adventure. It's always a risk backing something in early access. Actually, also the prices they ask for are a bit high. 40€ for a game in development? Is this a realistic price level?
Post edited February 02, 2016 by Trilarion
Posted February 02, 2016
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StickOfPlywood: I don't particularly like the concept of Early Access as it stands, and I think it has largely been a very sneaky way to save money by having the public do what would normally be a QA department's job. The way that Early Access is managed today is not the same way Alpha and Beta Tests are managed.

That said, since GOG is restraining themselves and offering a no questions asked refund period, I will accept a select few Early Access titles being brought onto the service. This cannot be allowed to get out of hand, like it has on Steam, though. Please be receptive to community input as we try this new experiment in DRM-free Early Access.

And I must say, there is one really good thing about Early Access: it has made me and many others realize just how much we have utterly failed to fully appreciate excellently coded and crafted games.
Sidenote - I wonder how many indie developer (with 1-5 man teams) have a QA department....
Posted February 02, 2016
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Napean: Coming to this thread late. Specific question about Starbound:
Has GOG secured any assurances or clarifications that the game will one day be completed?
No. No no. No no no.
The primary difference between InDev and EA in particular, and GOG and Steam in general, is that GOG stakes their PR on the games they sell. They pinky-swear they'd vetted the devs, so if a screw-up happens, GOG will be taking a PR hit. But they aren't giving any extra assurances.

InDev / EA is for games you want to play now. Some games may be episodic. That's okay. People have always been reading unfinished book series and watching TV without having explicit warranties that the series will be satisfactorily completed. Some games might be in need of more content overall but already up to the market standard in their current state. If you want a good zombie survival game right now, you might as well play Project Zomboid even though it's "unfinished". If you're sick of specifically Terraria but want more of the same, you can play Starbound. But don't buy a game if it's not yet playable / entertaining for you.
Posted February 02, 2016
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amok: Sidenote - I wonder how many indie developer (with 1-5 man teams) have a QA department....
Indies call them friends and family. ;-p
Posted February 02, 2016
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amok: Sidenote - I wonder how many indie developer (with 1-5 man teams) have a QA department....
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Petrell: Indies call them friends and family. ;-p
I have a feeling many of them call their legal department the same....
Posted February 02, 2016
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Starmaker: No. No no. No no no.
The primary difference between InDev and EA in particular, and GOG and Steam in general, is that GOG stakes their PR on the games they sell. They pinky-swear they'd vetted the devs, so if a screw-up happens, GOG will be taking a PR hit. But they aren't giving any extra assurances.
This sounds like a really low PR risk imo.

For one, even if their vetting fails, that's not going to come back to hit them for at least a year to several years, as games simply take long to develop and you can't just say it's abandoned with 1-2 months of no (visible) development progress.

And then, even if long term something does fail (and with games development, at some point it guaranteed will), there's still more failures on Steam to point out, simply by virtue of there being more EA games on Steam and a longer history of EA failures/successes which defenders will use to mitigate the 'few' failures GOG has had till then, for a GID system which, again by then, will be have been accepted as commonplace on GOG.

Vetting would be most reliable if they waited with GID till the game was more established than when they usually enter Early Access, but I'm somewhat doubtful GOG is going to stick to games like that since the big benefit of having GID is to not lose sales to Steam's Early Access period. So I'm skeptical they're going to wait with releasing games in GID if those games are also releasing in EA. Though that'll be interesting to see. Maybe initially, but longterm I'm expecting them to release the games at the same time, at which point 'vetting', can at best amount to handpicking the studio's you have a little more faith in to finish their projects.
Post edited February 02, 2016 by Pheace
Posted February 02, 2016
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amok: Sidenote - I wonder how many indie developer (with 1-5 man teams) have a QA department....
Therein lies the crux: if the project gets out of hand, and their small team (or single person) is unable to do all testing themselves, then they get the public to do it. To handle it in this way, though, is a bit disingenuous.
Posted February 02, 2016
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amok: Sidenote - I wonder how many indie developer (with 1-5 man teams) have a QA department....
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StickOfPlywood: Therein lies the crux: if the project gets out of hand, and their small team (or single person) is unable to do all testing themselves, then they get the public to do it. To handle it in this way, though, is a bit disingenuous.
um..... that did not make much sense, to be honest... why does it have to get "out of hand"? using the public to test can be very well controlled. Which is actually what most alphas / EAs / InDevs are doing

(why the bloody heck does everyone feel the need to make their own labels on these thingies....)
Posted February 02, 2016
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amok: Sidenote - I wonder how many indie developer (with 1-5 man teams) have a QA department....
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StickOfPlywood: Therein lies the crux: if the project gets out of hand, and their small team (or single person) is unable to do all testing themselves, then they get the public to do it. To handle it in this way, though, is a bit disingenuous.
It's not just about testing (or at least I hope it's not for most projects): it's about funding something that wouldn't exist without the customer's financial support. In exchange for their purchase, they get (what should be) a playable, if incomplete, game and the ability to be part of the development process.
Posted February 03, 2016
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I imagine that if somebody would produce my perfect, dream game and it would be someone with not much money I would totally volunteer to be part of the development process, absolutely for free, and even donate some cash.

But in all other circumstances I really cannot imagine myself wanting to be part of the development process and even paying for that.

It's a nice feature, it doesn't hurt anyone, but I don't believe it will ever become really popular, neither here with the fantastic refund policy nor on Steam.

Basically, I guess GOG customers will reject it because it is too niche. :)
Post edited February 03, 2016 by Trilarion
Posted February 03, 2016
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wvpr: ... The biggest risk for GOG is having too many customers ignore all the warnings, spend their money based on the most optimistic hopes for the game's future, see the game fall short, and then start an internet riot until GOG refunds everything. It's not an impossible scenario.
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Trilarion: I guess this risk is rather small currently. Judging from the reactions here, people are rather suspicious of pre-ordering and early access by now. So if anything, they will rather avoid the topic instead of jumping on it. I guess it is much more likely that only a few (not enough) people back these games in development than hordes of customers throwing money at these games here and then becoming angry in case of a failure.

We should wait and see how these games in general fare after the end of the development. Then if they are good, maybe even better than average and if one feels like wanting to support certain games (in development) - why not. With the money back guarantee this is a safe thing. The only question is if it is also a fun thing? Probably only if the games are good. We will see.
But see, there's never a guarantee the game will ever officially end development or include all its intended features. Lots of these developers have been small teams working without deep reserves. Life happens and sometimes that can derail the best of intentions. It's like reading a webcomic or series of novels where there are years of work left before the story can wrap up. If you start reading or playing expecting them all to reach conclusion, you're guaranteed to get burned.

Look at these games more like an MMO. Most of them have open-ended gameplay rather than a clear start and finish. Most of them can be played as-is with room for additional gameplay and other features to be dropped in. MMOs work the same way, letting you play the game in one state for a while, then dropping in more content as it is created. There's never a point where the MMO is truly finished, until it enters the shutdown phase.

There's just no way for GOG to truly guarantee a finished product that meets everyone's expectations, unless they took out insurance on every GID project and could put their own programmers to work on projects in need of help. The curation process can promise you a game that is playable and deep enough to enjoy as-is, that's all. If the game falls far short of that standard, the curation process isn't delivering what it should be. I suppose you could also take GOG to task for developers who disappear without a trace the 15th day after the game appears here. Beyond that, the future of each GID project will always be a gamble. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
Post edited February 03, 2016 by wvpr
Posted February 03, 2016
Got to wonder how many of the games under "Upcoming" will actually be released as In Development or final since GOG has started to do this in development thing....
Posted February 03, 2016
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Niggles: Got to wonder how many of the games under "Upcoming" will actually be released as In Development or final since GOG has started to do this in development thing....
I guess it depends on how much confidence GOG has in those devs. I'm not sure Crawl will be released until a final product is pushed out since it's been in the Upcoming tab for quite some time. However, I may be wrong.
Posted February 03, 2016
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wvpr: ...
Look at these games more like an MMO. Most of them have open-ended gameplay rather than a clear start and finish. Most of them can be played as-is with room for additional gameplay and other features to be dropped in. MMOs work the same way, letting you play the game in one state for a while, then dropping in more content as it is created. There's never a point where the MMO is truly finished, until it enters the shutdown phase.

There's just no way for GOG to truly guarantee a finished product that meets everyone's expectations, unless they took out insurance on every GID project and could put their own programmers to work on projects in need of help. The curation process can promise you a game that is playable and deep enough to enjoy as-is, that's all. If the game falls far short of that standard, the curation process isn't delivering what it should be. I suppose you could also take GOG to task for developers who disappear without a trace the 15th day after the game appears here. Beyond that, the future of each GID project will always be a gamble. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
You're right but you make one mistake. The conclusion is not that every project is equally risky or equally worth playing just because a game is never truly finished. There are always different states of playability and different amounts of content and different levels of risk of failure.

For example GOG can do the check more or less thoroughly, the games in development can be close or far from completion and the remaining budget ban be tight or comfortable. Finally the price asked can high or low.

There are enough variables to estimate if the games in development are worth to be played or not. I don't fear to get some wet feet but still I prefer to watch this for awhile before jumping into it. For me it matters if the games GOG brought now here will be released successfully or not. If they will I will trust GOG more and be more likely to actually buy such a game in development next time. If not, I will be less likely.

In the end I rather wait for a "kind of finished" game where most of the content is implemented, the bugs are mostly fixed, the gameplay smoothed. Or to say it differently - I'm seldom the first one to buy a game. Usually, it doesn't pay off, neither in price, nor in experience.

It would have to be an extraordinary game idea but I don't see that here (for me). Also 40€ is still quite a high price for an adventure where I don't know how it will end. Basically there are enough finished games that I can buy instead - which do not have this uncertainty and are cheaper.

In summary: I will do it only seldomly and I will wait and see how the first batch of games in development fare here on GOG.
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Niggles: Got to wonder how many of the games under "Upcoming" will actually be released as In Development or final since GOG has started to do this in development thing....
In a way "Upcoming" and "In development" are kind of synonyms. The actualy difference for GOG is that you can already buy the latter.
Post edited February 03, 2016 by Trilarion
Posted February 04, 2016
low rated
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wvpr: ...
Look at these games more like an MMO. Most of them have open-ended gameplay rather than a clear start and finish. Most of them can be played as-is with room for additional gameplay and other features to be dropped in. MMOs work the same way, letting you play the game in one state for a while, then dropping in more content as it is created. There's never a point where the MMO is truly finished, until it enters the shutdown phase.

There's just no way for GOG to truly guarantee a finished product that meets everyone's expectations, unless they took out insurance on every GID project and could put their own programmers to work on projects in need of help. The curation process can promise you a game that is playable and deep enough to enjoy as-is, that's all. If the game falls far short of that standard, the curation process isn't delivering what it should be. I suppose you could also take GOG to task for developers who disappear without a trace the 15th day after the game appears here. Beyond that, the future of each GID project will always be a gamble. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
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Trilarion: You're right but you make one mistake. The conclusion is not that every project is equally risky or equally worth playing just because a game is never truly finished. There are always different states of playability and different amounts of content and different levels of risk of failure.

For example GOG can do the check more or less thoroughly, the games in development can be close or far from completion and the remaining budget ban be tight or comfortable. Finally the price asked can high or low.

There are enough variables to estimate if the games in development are worth to be played or not. I don't fear to get some wet feet but still I prefer to watch this for awhile before jumping into it. For me it matters if the games GOG brought now here will be released successfully or not. If they will I will trust GOG more and be more likely to actually buy such a game in development next time. If not, I will be less likely.

In the end I rather wait for a "kind of finished" game where most of the content is implemented, the bugs are mostly fixed, the gameplay smoothed. Or to say it differently - I'm seldom the first one to buy a game. Usually, it doesn't pay off, neither in price, nor in experience.

It would have to be an extraordinary game idea but I don't see that here (for me). Also 40€ is still quite a high price for an adventure where I don't know how it will end. Basically there are enough finished games that I can buy instead - which do not have this uncertainty and are cheaper.

In summary: I will do it only seldomly and I will wait and see how the first batch of games in development fare here on GOG.
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Niggles: Got to wonder how many of the games under "Upcoming" will actually be released as In Development or final since GOG has started to do this in development thing....
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Trilarion: In a way "Upcoming" and "In development" are kind of synonyms. The actualy difference for GOG is that you can already buy the latter.
you are such a dick sucking kiss-ass.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionIntroducing Games in Development(760 posts)(760 posts)
(760 posts)