Spy Party

Tesla

I first heard about this game a little while before PAX East (in fact I was talking to Rym and Scott about it there a little bit), but it resurfaced again lately as it was playable at PAX Prime this past weekend. To put it simply, there are two players, one of which is a spy, in a party, who has to try to accomplish various tasks such as stealing a certain book, or moving a statue, etc before a timer runs out. The other player is a sniper, who can look at the party from various angles, and has a single bullet. The sniper has to try and figure out who the spy is among the various NPCs in the party, before the spy accomplishes his objectives.

I'm really interested in how this game is going to cause the players to act - there have been a couple of pretty interesting writeups of it on Kotaku, and it sounds like it was a hit at PAX. Has anyone else heard of/seen this game?

Official site: http://spyparty.com/
Kotaku writeup from before PAX East: http://kotaku.com/5500968/the-next-smart-video-game-only-lets-you-kill-once

Apreche

Sign up for the beta!

http://www.spyparty.com/beta-sign-up/

Andrew

$15 eh? Not sure if want...

Axel

Not sure if $15 is worth it for the Beta...

Sail

The $15 also gets you a copy of the finished game. Totally worth it.

Axel

Yeah. We'll see.

Tesla

I'm intrigued at this plan - I think I like this Minecraft-ian method of using a paid beta program (that results in you getting the full game at no extra cost), it seems like it's mutually beneficial. The developers get more money, as potentially tens of thousands (if not more) people are pouring capital into their pocket, and the consumers get a bargain-priced game (Plus, lower cost = more impulse buys by people who wouldn't buy it if it were full price). In the end, I think this could really result in some "triple-A" quality (or at least close) games coming from indie publishers, if they can get enough beta testers.

That said, I am somewhat surprised at $15. How much will the full game cost? As awesome as Spy Party seems, it's no $50 game. I mean, I was probably going to get this game regardless, I just wonder if the price isn't set slightly too high for the level of build we're getting.

That said, I just signed up. Woo!

Mosquitoboy

Isn't this what the creators of steam talked about? Asking the fans to finance games by paying for them before they come out...

I agree it's mutually beneficial (at the moment), and well... It's damn fun to play games and have them evolve as the community reacts, but it is kind of weird. You are paying for a product that isn't really made yet. I am so scared this practice will catch on and people will be paying for games that never reach the final step because they were overly relying on the revenue they would, but failed to obtain during development.

I just remember thinking the same thing when developers began sending patches through the internet to fix their games. Now it almost feels like they use the first few weeks of the games release to test knowing they will eventually patch it. Hell we even got an unplayable game released and stayed that way until patched (See Fallout 3 New Vegas) .