Fury said:
You market the game a certain way, and tell anyone who might not be too keen on those things that the game "might not be for you". But in the same breath complain because so many people are passing on the game because it released early, buggy, unstable, and with high computer requirements. You knew you had problems back in beta 2 (when I got invited) when you sent out that questionairre asking why people weren"t logging in and playing.
Spinning it now to look like VG is getting shafted by bad press and word of mouth seems a bit like sour grapes.
I agree with this pretty much. What was being released and spoon-fed to the public was totally different from the reality in Beta. People got pissed when it was realized that Sigil was trying to obfuscate the issue, and the cry of "Just wait until the NDA is lifted" was passed around like a balloon at a Dead show. Then the NDA was lifted and a new round of complaints started up, with the response of "Wait until release, it"s still Beta after all!". Then release hit amidst a lot of nay saying, and then people were told to just give VG some
moretime.
Now, I"m not jumping those people that are playing VG happily, more power to you. But for those of you that do play, and cannot grasp why people refuse to purchase VG, let me try to say this as objectively as possible:
The last year of VG has been drama on top of drama on top of drama. Even with all the beta bs, people were willing to give VG some leeway at release, but VG was, predictably, not as ready as was claimed. Still, people bought VG and braced themselves for a few months of bugs and other issues. Yet, the drama hasn"t ceased, now you even have the station pass change and people wishing they hadn"t bought VG in the first place. Sigil is planning on a large ad campaign, but seriously, how much of VG"s history will that be able to counter? I also predict that something else will pop up within the next 6 months that will re-ignite the debates and drama, it is almost a given. The advertising won"t make up for all the problems, it can"t, but I still hope it helps out VG...because, imo, it needs all the help it can get (from a sales and reputation standpoint).
IMO the only chance VG had to be a "huge" success was an awesome release, or to be so awe inspiring that people would leave other games wholesale. Neither happened, and I seriously doubt VG will hit 500k. For Sigils sake, and the sake of those playing VG, I hope I am wrong. But as it stands now, it doesn"t seem to have garnered the image of being a "Must play" game as was hoped, and there are simply other games out there that people would rather play. I"m sure I could pay for it, play it, and have at least a modicum of enjoyment over the next year, but there are many other games I can do that in, and they appeal to me more than VG. And that is
WITHOUTfactoring in the drama, rumors, bugs, vitriol and angst.
"Tanin no fukou wa mitsu no aji" , because I"m getting tired of seeing, and using myself, the term schadenfreude. I"d be lying if I said that didn"t factor into this, but unfortunately it does. A lot of people made dire predictions and were flamed for it (especially on the VG forums), but many were correct in a broader sense, if not on actual individual issues as well.
It almost seems like some people expect others to simply give VG a free pass, and to just forget all that has happened and go into VG blindly. Human nature being what it is, I seriously doubt that is going to happen on any large scale, especially when it involves forking money over to a game that has generated the divisions in the gaming community that VG has.
