GameSpot Review Posted Online

[Suicide Junkie]

Atrocities said:

That would have been the ideal thing to have done. That way the total fan boys could report the bugs so that the official retail version was shipped in a far better state than the it was. Hindsight.... is always 20/20.

Hindsight? I was saying that years ago.

[Atrocities]

Yes, yes you have been. My mistake. I wish they would have listened to you SJ. God only knows that it could have been a great new pioneering method of game development and publication. Great inovative ideas are often viewed with distane and slow to take root.

There is hopefully always an SE VI to think about.

[Yimboli]

Suicide Junkie said:
I totally think they should have let the fanatics buy it early online, and do the full retail push once it had been patched up.

That would be a nice compromise between a premature release and a public beta - the premature release is very buggy, but a public beta would be difficult to manage by such a small company. The fanatics would easily work together (as they've done for years on the forum) to avoid repeats and submit more intelligent bug reports, allowing Aaron to scrutinize a larger portion of them. SJ has an excellent point here - the fanatics can be used not only as modders and beta testers, but also as an elite squad of beta testers to focus Aaron's attention just prior to the full release. The only drawback I see here is that you're putting a lot of power into fewer hands, which carries its own concerns (not that any of the fanatics on this forum would intentionally abuse such a power, but speaking from the age old argument that absolute power corrupts absolutely).

Hopefully Aaron will tap into this unrealized potential for SEVI.

*lightbulb* I better get my post count up!!!!

[Suicide Junkie]

It would actually be the opposite...
Going from the "power" in a small number of beta testers, to spreading that influence over the wider community.

There are far more people who would buy SE5 early than were chosen as beta testers.

[shinigami]

Hmm, give anyone that pre-orders a game the option to help work out bugs before the official release. Let's see, that would make the beta testers actually alpha testers and early buyers actually beta testers who paid for the privledge.

That development model would be all kinds of cool!

[Ed Kolis]

Didn't GalCiv2 use that model? Looks like it worked out pretty well for them...

[Atrocities]

Ed Kolis said:
Didn't GalCiv2 use that model? Looks like it worked out pretty well for them...

They no longer are in business.

[Phoenix-D]

Zuh? Stardock is alive and well.