AffordaGolf Online LAUNCH ON STEAM!!

[vitinho444]

Sorry for the spam.. but I got some news... yeah it's in the title. xD

I finally released AffordaGolf to compete with Golf with friends (Which takes a 1 year lead, but in terms of features, is at below me )
Hope you enjoy, and thanks for your support guys!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/567040/

[Jackolantern]

Congratulations!! I see you posted that your are having some high load on your room creation server, so people must be buying it!

EDIT: I also find it really telling that one of your game's features is "No Early Access". It really shows where player's opinions about that are heading, but that is a discussion for another thread.

[vitinho444]

Congratulations!! I see you posted that your are having some high load on your room creation server, so people must be buying it!

EDIT: I also find it really telling that one of your game's features is "No Early Access". It really shows where player's opinions about that are heading, but that is a discussion for another thread.

Yeah, I had the brilliant idea of hosting the matchmaking server on a free shared hosting... bad f*cking move!!!

I'm curious on what you think it tells, and what it told you? Is it good not being in early access? Is it too obvious I'm shaming early access and golf with friends? I wanna know what was your first thought!

[Jackolantern]

I think it is showing that players are getting tired of early access. This definitely isn't the first time I have heard that, particularly on Steam. What used to be a feature and something that made players excited has left a bad taste in their mouths as Steam users are getting tired of what they view as buying incomplete games to subsidize further development.

I think you should leave that in. I think more and more players are looking for completed games on Steam as that gets rarer and rarer. And who cares if it seems like a dig on Golf with Friends? They are your competitor. Remember the classic "Genesis does what Nintendon't" campaign.

[vitinho444]

Exactly. The thing that makes me cringe is looking at their page and their early-access justifications. They intend to get out of early access mid 2017, WITH THE SAME FEATURES AS MY LAUNCH RELEASE.
Then, the kicker, they plan to RAISE the price of the game.

I don't know if I should laugh or cry on the current state of gaming.. People keep buying this cr*p... I'm currently waiting on the attacks to me and my game for "copying" golf with friends to throw that on their face

[Jackolantern]

You have a lot to be proud of here! Definitely don't be humble about your game and how it compares to Golf with Friends. If your game starts getting popular, they would not play nice with you, so don't even start off playing nice with them. Take them on and take them down!!

[vitinho444]

It's a long and probably impossible game to get on their level, according to steamspy they have close to 700k "owners". It's gonna be tough to get even 10% of those + some of the new golf players but it's on!
I'll keep updating and improving my game and in the end we'll see

Thanks for the support

[vitinho444]

Update: Got two bad reviews already. Curiously (is this a word? Chrome says yes XD) they all focus on "polish" as the bad part of the game and where Golf with friends wins. I tried to be as cordial as possible and thank them for the review and saying I would try to improve (that's all I can do right? try to improve..) But really what does "polish" means? Is it graphics? Is it gameplay? Is it just to ramble how a 1 year-early-access game at 3 times the cost is more "polished"?

I don't know really..

[Jackolantern]

Hmm...maybe try buying it and checking it out for yourself? Because yes, "polish" is a real thing but it is very hard for your average gamer to define what exactly it means so it will be hard to get more info from reviewers.

[vitinho444]

I think I know what they mean, if you look at the other game they have put a lot of work in those 6 or so maps. What I did was work smart, and I created a procedural way of creating maps (because I'm lazy.. aren't we all?) and it doesn't look as appealing.

But now I'm gonna take a different approach from now on. Still creating those procedural maps, but now I'm also creating some special ones based on real life mini-golf courses (powered by google images). This is (I hope) what they mean by lack of polish. For me as a programmer, all I care is the gameplay and the fields (where the ball rolls), the rest is secondary, but for the average player graphics and pretty stuff is always more appealing than the game core mechanics.

Still, this is a path, project is not dead, and like I said to them I'll keep improving.

PS: They replied saying they are willing to change their review (and they even said they didn't want to give a bad review, just a neutral from where the game stands TODAY). So I'll just work until they change their minds, and make the game better in the process.

Meanwhile I'm also writing a post-mortem that is 7 pages long so far, and still isn't done. This post-mortem is probably the most detailed post-mortem out there (or one of them) since it's basically a tutorial on how to get on steam, and the do's and donts from my point of view (just my opinion).