(04-06-2021, 02:15 AM)classicdrogn Wrote: How do they expect the nominal target customer to play? All I find on a superficial search are physical game cabinets or VR headset software, but I didn't think the latter was widespread enough yet to be a primary market, and physical tables take up physical space for a single game, that seems like it would be hard to justify except for serious enthusiasts and/or the traditional corner of a pizzeria, cafe, or comics shop. At the same time, the long and narrow form factor of a pinball table is all wrong to work well with a landscape format computer screen, so your setup seemed like it would be the ideal to be shooting for, rather than some kind of bodged-up afterthought to be dropped from support if the deadline is a little tight or the code monkeys' billable hours are adding up.
Simple: the target demographic for Zaccaria Pinball appears to be basically desktop gamers. Not even the sort that do what the Japanese know as Tate Mode, but just someone who sits down in front of their single screen landscape computer or down on the couch in Big Picture Mode on the television. The Campaign Mode has never worked right with a portrait monitor. They clearly don't even test a two monitor configuration at all during an update's QA period, which really gets me because they should have programmers using multiple screens, even when working from home, unless where they're at it's just culturally considered an excessive thing to use more than one monitor. The company's pinball "interests" harken back to earlier smart phones; some of the table content provided is ports of old phone games they did when they were known as A.S.K. Homework. And it's clear they don't understand the part of the market that, if you basically advertise "we have a cabinet mode" that those folks expect that it's a properly supported feature, not just an add-on thrown in as a "bone".
Definitely, I want to be clearly considered to be in the Primary Market moving forward when I reopen my wallet to Commercial Pinball Simulators. Not the Secondary Market. Definitely not the Tertiary Market as Magic Pixel KFT apparently does for Zaccaria Pinball. This is while I'm acknowledging that cabinet folks are a niche part of what is really a niche market when you get down to it.
People complain about Zen Studios not fixing table bugs, but I do know that, at least for them, I am considered to be part of their Primary Market - even though I had to email off for a "Cabinet Code" to enable the cabinet mode in the software, it wasn't a big deal to do so and it's free, and they have never broken multiple monitor support with an update. My big beef on their side is the (understandable) exclusivity deal they signed with Epic as part of switching over to the Unreal Engine over their in-house one, and that I will be expected to rebuy the DLC that's carried for once they're back on Steam a year after the Epic release. I blame that last aspect on them having corporate overlords who probably want to ensure that the changeover isn't basically a "loss" in terms of the conversion efforts, it was probably "they either rebuy, or you don't convert the old content and it goes away." Note that the whole "new engine, exclusive to another store, content there going forward, rebuy required if you want the new physics engine" had already put me on the fence about the last pack for FX3... and the issues with someone else put me over on the "don't buy" side of the fence.
On the VR front, there is very much a growing contingent that, even if they've built a cabinet, that tends to be for friends or when they don't want to strap it on for one quick game. I get that, apparently the VR experience kills the potential of lag, and makes it feel so much more like real pinball. It's telling that I've heard one member in that community refer to playing on their cabinet without using the VR as "Pancake Mode".
I suppose that a big part of why I got so frustrated is because I built my cabinet myself, with the expectation that I'd get to play all this purchased content on it. I'd still have built the cabinet if I'd known that Magic Pixel considered me a "wanting something for free" in their model, I wouldn't have spent the money I did on their content. And I'm now willing to over-correct on that by putting everyone else to a much higher standard with regards to supporting my cabinet going forward.
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor