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Seen that you gived few Steam keys to youtubers/twitch account.

People who loved Anno games Sim City, Cities Skyline ... since 15 years don't have any chance? :'(

I understand you need visibility, but your game look very nice, look interesting and you never disappointed me (I didn't know you) ... note like Ubisoft and their DLC polity. But give 100% of the keys to youtubers and streamers is not the best idea ever I think.

PS: Your workers management look interesting.

Hi Evelyus: nearly every game allows games media, streamers, and YouTubers to review / preview their game before it's released.

This is no different.  We're following the industry standard.  It's always been done this way.

We've given keys to select streamers, YouTubers, and games media to allow them to give people a sneak peek before the public beta on September 7 in order to help publicize the game.  It's not reasonable to expect that those advance copies should go to everybody; they're given to legitimate streamers, YouTubers, and games media for a good reason (several, really).

Evelyus kind of has a point though Paul, and I'm more curious than anything here... Giving keys out to everyone and anyone, YouTube/Twitch account or not is definitely not the answer though as you pointed out in your post, so I do understand that! 

Are you doing your beta through your personal web portal like most other games do or are you going to go through Early Access on Steam? 

How much would it be to buy into beta? Will there be different tiers and can early backers get additions to the game? 

What's your view on DLC?

I know it's a lot of questions, and I should probably open my own thread on these but the forum is still relatively small and it does jump off from your last post. You may want to sticky the answers somewhere though so everyone can see them.

Thanks!

Giving beta keys to streamers and youtubers for "marketing purposes" can be a double edged sword as I generally watch 10-20 hours of their content and don't buy the game afterwards as I've seen all it has to offer. I've done that on a few games over the years especially when they get the game for free and the rest of us have to pay $25-30 for the privilege.

But that's your choice if you think it helps your game succeed. I just have to make my choice on whether I buy your game or not after the fact. I'm still on the fence about that.

I'm not sure why this is odd. Before the advent of 'youtube' publishers would send pre-release builds out to magazines to do previews ahead of release. Giving the press advance copies of a game to showcase is pretty standard. Heck we have announcements trailers for future announcements now (announ-ception!). Ultimately you have to craft marketing in general to peak at a specific point. You can't simply 'throw the game out there and hope people notice it' espeically in this increasingly crowded game space.

>Giving beta keys to streamers and youtubers for "marketing purposes" can be a double edged sword as I generally watch 10-20 hours of their content and don't buy the game afterwards as I've seen all it has to offer

This isn't really that relevant though. Either that happens now or it happens on release. If the footage being shown isn't compelling to you, that isn't going to change 2 weeks from now. Ultimately if the game isn't compelling to you that's obviously your decision to make. But it sounds like you would have watched someone play 10-20 hours no matter when it was released. All this does is timeshift your decision since streamers and other people will make videos of the game available online for you to view whether that's pre-release or post release. Its not really a double edge sword from that perspective. The entire point of marketing is to showcase the game. Its marketings jobs to make that appealing to potential customers.

Posted by: NdWar

Are you doing your beta through your personal web portal like most other games do or are you going to go through Early Access on Steam? 

How much would it be to buy into beta? Will there be different tiers and can early backers get additions to the game? 

What's your view on DLC?

Most of your questions are answered in their FAQ

http://avencolony.com/aven-colony-faq/

The private beta will launch on itch.io. Once the game is released it will be made available on Steam as well.

The cost of the game on itch.io will be $25. The expected price of the game would be $30.

Posted by: NdWar

 

How much would it be to buy into beta? Will there be different tiers and can early backers get additions to the game? 

What's your view on DLC?

It's too early to say anything about DLC as it relates to Aven Colony specifically, and we're not ready to announce anything in this regard just yet.

Posted by: Seafort

 

Giving beta keys to streamers and youtubers for "marketing purposes" can be a double edged sword as I generally watch 10-20 hours of their content and don't buy the game afterwards as I've seen all it has to offer. I've done that on a few games over the years especially when they get the game for free and the rest of us have to pay $25-30 for the privilege.

But that's your choice if you think it helps your game succeed. I just have to make my choice on whether I buy your game or not after the fact. I'm still on the fence about that.

The overwhelming majority of games (practically all of them) suffer far more lost sales from underexposure than from overexposure.

I really don't have any control over how many people stream the game or how much people watch those streams.

Our goal with the beta process is to work with our audience to help make sure that Aven Colony is / becomes the kind of game that people want to play regardless of how much exposure it gets.  And with your help, we can do that.

To be fair the OP has a point but how on earth are these developers or others supposed to work out who to give other keys to? Lets say I'm a big fan of RTS and Sim building games and all that jaz but so is the OP. How are they supposed to know which of us to give a key to. In fact how are they supposed to know we have these interests and far more importantly I don't see any business related reason in doing that in the first place. These keys are for marketing, they're not "I like you" gifts to special people on YouTube.

Posted by: Paul Tozour

 

Posted by: Seafort

 

Giving beta keys to streamers and youtubers for "marketing purposes" can be a double edged sword as I generally watch 10-20 hours of their content and don't buy the game afterwards as I've seen all it has to offer. I've done that on a few games over the years especially when they get the game for free and the rest of us have to pay $25-30 for the privilege.

But that's your choice if you think it helps your game succeed. I just have to make my choice on whether I buy your game or not after the fact. I'm still on the fence about that.

The overwhelming majority of games (practically all of them) suffer far more lost sales from underexposure than from overexposure.

I really don't have any control over how many people stream the game or how much people watch those streams.

Our goal with the beta process is to work with our audience to help make sure that Aven Colony is / becomes the kind of game that people want to play regardless of how much exposure it gets.  And with your help, we can do that.

   

Very much agree with this. There isn't really such a thing as overexposure - especially for a title that was announced literally days ahead of public beta from a somewhat unknow indie delevoper.

Have you guys invited Quill18 to showcase this? This game is right up his alley 🙂