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Next week, a tech preview of the single-player game will be hosted exclusively on IGN for 10K of their File Planet subscribers. This promo will run for a period of seven days.
Public Demo
The public demo is scheduled to be released within two weeks after the game goes Gold (week of March 10th). That being week of March 17th or 24th depending on how much post-Gold stuff I have to deal with.
Multiplayer Servers
There will be three official dedicated multiplayer servers which will be hosted by us for twelve months. Each server will be running 2x16 player instances of the game. One deathmatch and one co-op (with NPCs).
Fan Base Preview
Most of you have been year since when Regan was president I think.
But some mostly lurk now. Gone are the days of intense rabbling around here. I guess we've all grown up; and since I've moved on from the kind of games we were all passionate about, some of you may be disappointed, disillusioned even. But thats OK, I get it, but there's nothing that I can do about that. Funny thing is that Gore was just this week at the D.I.C.E. summit echoing exactly the notion I've held for years. That being: …Everybody has an opinion, but when it’s your game, yours is the only opinion that counts.. The mantra that has always seen me going my own way and quite possibly the primary reason that I've survived this long in such a volatile and unforgiving industry...that is IMO royally screwed up as far as PC games, not to mention innovation, is concerned.The industry has gone sideways and in case you folks hadn't noticed, most all the mainstream indie game devs are either gone or bought out and barely a shell. And if you ask any of the indie devs who are still catering to a niche market (e.g. sims, war games etc), they'll tell you the same thing: that being their install base is either stagnant or dwindling.
Trying something new is not necessarily a bad thing and after UCCE, I just wanted to try something new. So, thats where I'm at. And for the next four or five years, thats not going to change.
Back to the point of this section....
By next week, some of you will receive a PM invitation with instructions on how to download the tech preview and activate it. If you don't get a PM from me, that means one of the following. In which case, you'd have to wait for the demo or the game's retail release.
- You haven't been active around here.
- You're new and don't stand a single chance of getting an invite.
- You've shown little or no interest in the new games; which I don't blame you for though because as I've said, the GALCOM series of games are different, but I think that ES will suprise a lot of people as much as it has surprised even myself. And I'm the one who designed it from scratch and did 90% of the development work and 100% of the funding.
...and if anyone sends me a PM asking why they weren't invited, I'll just ignore it because I simply don't have time for that.
So, there you have it.
