I feel many put AMS2 on some imaginary pedestal thinking players were gonna drop everything and flock to it.
AMS was an excellent game and I have no doubt AMS2 will eventually get there too.
The fact is, the current content is not gonna excite many except Brazilians and those that played AMS....which had the lowest player counts of all the sims even tho many claimed it as one the greatest sims.
I found this statement from Renato on the Reiza forms and thought I'd leave it hear.
Renato:
Before digging into some of the feedback about AMS2 release, a little flashback that seems relevant now as not everyone will recall or have been around then, but the release of AMS1 actually attracted a similar number of complaints and lukewarm reception from a segment of the sim racing community - including similar concerns about sales, player count and other figures, and how the sim may have been "dead on arrival".. Contrary to these early doom and gloom predictions, the game kept growing and evolving much as we planned, before becoming the simracing cult classic which most of those who stuck with it or revisited later seems to look back fondly now, and that reached its peak players a massive 4 years after its initial release. You should not be surprised then if history repeats itself with AMS2.
While the fact that history may be repeating itself to some degree is not surprising to us or to those who are familiar with our modus operandi, it probably also indicates we need to improve the way we communicate about what type of game we are doing and how we are going about its development, so that people have more accurate expectations going in - this is something we are already working on improving, with more relevant info concentrated in the soon-to-be launched official website, including more documentation on the contents of the game, its long term plans and instructions on how to get the best out of it.
People who are familiar with my presence in this and other forums and through our monthly dev updates will be aware that I try to be as communicative as I´m able - I ´ve been on the other side of the counter for about as long as I have been a developer, so I´m well aware of expectations before the release of a new sim and the frustrations when something doesn´t quite work as expected, so I try not to BS users when I feel we may have dropped the ball. I´m also very aware of the challenges in putting together these products as independent developers, so I feel its important users have that under perspective too if we are to achieve the common goal of having the sim be as good as it can possibly be.
On that first aspect, we would be the first to aknowledge V1 had a number of QA issues that should really not have slipped into release, and it may well be that in hindsight we will conclude that planning for a longer Early Access period would have been the best all around approach. As it was, we had commited to a schedule which for a variety of reasons we had to keep to, and that lead to a release that due to another set of circunstances had some shortcomings it really should not have - those we are commited to and confortable we can fix in short order, and aware we will receive some deserved criticism until we do - ultimately, the game is still going to get better, faster by having followed this schedule, and that I believe is also part of that shared common goal.
Then there is this different subset of criticism which claim for a number of improvements, additions and fixes that different users will attribute varying level of importance to, which most (including ourselves) would eventually like to see but that were never going to make it, nor were suggested for this release. That is the nature of a long term project, which we have tried to emphasize is what AMS2 is since its original announcement. We are concious of the product we are putting out now, confortable with the fact that it will not appeal to everyone, and that it will require more development to be more competitive for other types of users.
As an user you have the option to buy it and enjoy it for what it offers at this or any other given point in its development cycle, return it if you feel it doesn’t quite offer what you want, buy again when you feel it may have evolved to the point you consider it satisfactory - there is plenty of recourse here for those who feel really strongly about where they spend their hard earned money, but they also bare some of the responsibility to learn what it is they are buying into.
Ultimately I´d invite every fellow sim racer to try gather a little perspective and recognize the games they are looking to see realized are very big, complex projects being put together by small studios, who are competing in a fairly crowded marketplace for what is a very small niche of the gaming world. No one is going to fund these products because there is no big ROI to be had here, if you want to see small independent studios like ourselves continue to strive for it then a certain amount of patience to play the long game with us is in order.
If you can give us that, I´ll assure you we´ll continue to push hard and try our best not to stretch that patience beyond its reasonable threshold, and eventually pay it back with a sim most people are fully satisfied with
The fact that AMS1 was a small game is pretty much implied. Fact remains it was a sim that kept growing and had its peak player number (however small you consider it to be) well into its release, and its user base generally pretty satisfied with the game they got, both realities we are confident projecting for AMS2. The fact we could develop AMS1 for so long with a relatively small player base should only add credence to that.
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