The focus has always been around experimental and not around marketing. We are going to experimental because it is ready now and we are doing a publicity event to lead into it. We are not doing a publicity event and then tagging on the experimental release.
You said I shot down your arguments in the other thread and yet you never responded to what I said in response nor did you address my points in this thread-- and yet you admit that what I said was compelling enough to be considered hits that brought down your argument. I'll quote what I said and if you'd like to refute it or at least address it alongside your own comments that would be great.
I originally didn't respond because...
1) I'd just woken up so wanted coffee. Wanted to kickstart the brain rather than give you a half-baked, possibly rambling reply.
2) I'm pretty dumb and forgot.
Really should've replied after acknowledging it in this thread, but see point 2 regarding being dumb. So, regarding your reply...
1) If the purpose is some stress testing, then you absolutely need to bear in mind that releasing the same week as an AAA game in a similar genre (regardless of what Gazz said regarding 7DTD and FO76 not being the same, the CONSUMER isn't going to see it that way) is not going to help achieve this goal. As it stands, I doubt most people will be playing it much longer than a week based off feedback from various friends... but pretty much all of them have said they don't care about A17-E right now and will be going hard on FO76 instead. That is absolutely going to eat into the potential tester base by quite a substantial amount.
2) This part I will admit was partially an assumption on my end. I say partially because I do remember WAY back in the single-digit alphas, they often took holidays off, even if just a day or two... and honestly? I think it would be well deserved AND expected this year since they've all been working their collective nuts off to get A17 out as quickly as possible. So, my apologies on that assumption in this regard.
I'm going to address the top half of your comment as point 3.
3) If this is true, then what's the stream team for? I don't mean to be sarcastic asking this, but I've only been given two explanations for streamers getting early access.
The first is that they're going to be streaming it early to get the hype going. Lately, hype is exactly how publishers and game devs have been marketing their games (looking at you, Todd Howard) so it's not an unreasonable leap of logic to assume that. I've also had some of the streamers in the program outright TELL me that's what it's for (and been exceptionally rude and elitist when doing so) so I don't think it's unreasonable of me to have that point of view regarding the early access.
As for the second explanation, I have seen folks tell me it's TFP's way of saying "thank you" to the streamers who have promoted the game for god knows how long. I have to say, this is the one I actually prefer over the "hype machine" one I've been fed. But if that is the case, then why don't modders ALSO get access so they can start playing/tinkering with the game? A lot of folks I've chatted to agree that 7DTD likely wouldn't be as popular as it is if it weren't for TFP embracing the modding community and us bunch of crazy sods applying our own spin to their product.
So yeah... I think I covered everything. The reason I mention it being a marketing thing is because that's literally what I've been told... and if that's not the case, then I don't see the point in streamers getting it early.
