Fallen Earth: Alpha Recruitment Ad

Fallen Earth fans spotted an ad recruiting Alpha testers on GameSpot's homepage, sporting a new logo with a subscription date of Aug 6, 08.

Fallen Earth lead designer, Lee Hammock, confirmed the ad and clarified the purpose behind it. Here's the original post from the official forums:

New Logo

Hey guys,

It is legit.

We're going through Gamespot because they can pull from a wide enough pool of alpha applicants that we can get exactly what we need in terms of system reqs, available play time, etc. We have very specific needs in these categories.

The game is not at a state where we really want to bring in people who are emotionally invested in the game (like y'all) because the game is still in a state that we're not ready to show it to you. It's not ready to be judged against the expectations we've set. It's more of a large scale tech test at this point. We want it to have maximum awesomeness when we start bringing in fans to test the game, but showing it to complete strangers is better for now since they don't have anything invested in it or much in the way of expectations.

What we're primarily testing stuff like network stability, servers, etc. Not fun stuff...

...There will be signups run through Gamespot beginning next week. If you meet the requirements you'll be in the pool of possible testers.

We're not trying to exclude anyone; it's just right now we have specific testing requirements and we'll need to draw from a lot of people to get those met. Should I have posted something this morning saying "Go to Gamespot next week to sign up?" Probably, and for that I apologize.

Hammock also posted the following, further explaining the confusion surrounding the ad release and their target audience:

Hey guys,

So let's give a quick run through of my day today.

I get in, check email, get my first huge cup of water for the day (trying to cut out all caffeine), and sit down to work. I check the FE forums...and see this thing about a GameSpot ad. And see we didn't plan to have a post up announcing it. Wow, that's unfortunate, I think.

So I shift into damage control, make my first post, talk to Moonshadow, and get back to work. Work work work...restating some firearms, handling some bugs...work work work. Sadly things on the forums don't calm down, and my first post didn't seem to help and instead made people feel not wanted. Huh...sad...not the intent. So I try apologizing. That sort of works.

Then as more people trickle into the office (it's Monday and I'm a morning person so I tend to get in pretty early) we start talking amongst ourselves and realized we've had an internal communication snafu. The left hand thought the right hand was still dealing cards when the right hand already had a full house. So what do we do about it now?

Well, that's not all that much we can do besides apologize again. Mea culpa. We had every intention of posting on here before the ads went live, but had confusion amongst our own people and things got lost in the shuffle. We want y'all to learn about this sort of stuff first, and we try to do that whenever possible. We'll do our best not to have this happen again.

On a personal note I did not mean to disrespect our fans or say we didn't want you in the test. We definitely want to include our fans, but right now we need people who can meet certain criteria (logging lots of hours at specific times, fast connections, good machines, etc) as a first priority. If our fans can meet those criteria, rock on. If not, we'll hopefully get you in a less stringent testing period in the coming months.

Really the point of all this is we screwed up. We're sorry. We'll try not to do it again. Don't feed us to the Captain. We do appreciate y'alls support and effort, and we definitely don't want y'all to feel that we don't. We want this game to be a success as much as anyone if not moreso, and to that we need folks to play it. Folks like y'all.

Wow, I guess my Southern US upbringing really came out in this post. I think that's a record for most y'alls in one post.

Lee Hammock

So there you have it folks, Fallen Earth wants your applications for the Alpha, whether you are a fan or a casual player. Mark your calendars for next week's Wednesday August 6th.

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