According to Smart, it was all due to their inept marketing, complete with a great Smartism:
The bottom line, apart from the whole marketing thing is, they opted not to release it on the service (when they changed focus?) due it not (according to marketing) appealing to their more casual subscriber base. To be honest, on one hand, I can understand it. On the other hand, its crap. They [marketing] just didn’t know how to market it. All they had to do was release it on the service and it wouldn’t have cost them anything more as far as paying me was concerned.
By this point he’d need to be the immortal guy from Life, The Universe and Everything, going through time to deal with everyone who ever existed, in alphabetical order.
So in 3000AD galactic space fighters will have cockpits mounted on giant springs, with pilots crucified to their seats like some sort of space-faring Jesus, and exhaust that shoots out the back like ribbons of orange and blue fruit-by-the-foot. Cool laser light shows will replace actual battles, and at intervals shit will blow up for no apparent reason.
Meh, every business has failed projects. The difference between a well run business and a poorly run business is often that a well run business knows when to cut its losses. I wouldn’t read much into this as far as Gametap is concerned just yet.
They paid him for the game. He “finished” the game. It was buggy as hell, and unstable. GameTap told him to fix it. It was still buggy and unstable. GameTap says sorry, we’re not giving you anymore money, and you can keep your game. Please don’t call us.
I agree. That’s what happened, most likely. Gametap has not really been shifting focus, as far as I can tell. Yes, they dropped a few games, somewhat inexplicably, but that was likely a licensing issue. They aren’t shifting over to casual-only games. They’d lose half their customers.
So, he somehow got GamersGate to publish and release his latest masterpiece.
And, as an added bonus, if you play it and think it’s crap, he’ll personally give you your money back and let you keep the game!
From Bluesnews:
Hump,
The public demo is coming sometime this month. We did a closed tech preview exclusive to IGN’s FilePlanet subsscribers about two weeks ago and we got some very good feedback from that.
If you’re a space sim fan, I think you’ll like this one, but don’t take my word for it. Wait for the demo.
In fact, here’s my pledge to you: If you’re a space sim fan, can’t wait for the demo and you buy the game (Gamers Gate already has it online, Direct2Drive follows later today I think) but think its crap, I’m tits up and talking trash, I’ll personally refund your money. And you still get to keep the game (i.e. I won’t invalidate your DRM license on the server).
Of course, graphics don’t make a game good, but anyone who says those graphics are 1999, needs to upgrade their XT. Yeah, I know, baiting is fun, but what the hell.
Here are some hi-def shots from the game. And thats with everything on. 1999. Yeah, right.
