Steam Trading Cards

First off, I want to say that I'm not someone who really cares about the whole trading cards thing that Steam has going, but there are a few reasons why Xenonauts should do them anyways.

1) Steam trading cards seem easy to implement. From what I can gather, it's mostly just artwork and some fluff description. A lot games including those with small development teams seem to have been able to do it (e.g. Prison Architect).

2) It will help sell the game. Practically all of us here bought Xenonauts because we are fans of the tactical turn based shooter genre, so it doesn't apply to us. It will apply, however, to the people who do care about Steam trading cards. A little extra money and attention from those people probably won't hurt.

3) It doesn't have to be implemented now. The trading cards can probably be added later when the game is well polished. Although I think implementing the trading cards sooner rather than later will help more since there's a relatively small number of games that have them. Implementing the cards later will mean less of a spotlight for Xenonauts.

Tl;dr

Implement steam trading cards because it seems to be a cheap way to get extra attention and money.

We are currently a pre-release game, bringing it up after release would be more reasonable.

Kerbal Space Program notwithstanding.

Well, the issue is that we are already facing a great deal of pre-release drama as is.

Where other games, like KSP, are trawling along much more smoothly then this game, we have some very serious issues that we, as a community, need to hammer out.

While new blood is good for a community, new blood at a bad time is bad for a community, people hopping in, and raging out only puts money into the developers pocket, without really adding much back into the pool of the gaming experience.

When we are proud of the games direction, publicity is good.

When we are struggling with it, we need to consolidate, and work things out before going back onto track 1.

Oh, I agree with you! Hence "notwithstanding". Because seeing as KSP is currently emblazoned on the front of the store page with a getaway card of all things (for an early access game?), I imagine it would be brought up.

It's all about the timing. Releasing cards now might be too early and get the game bad press. Releasing them at release might lose out on potential publicity once the novelty loses out. My hunch is that the majority of people are smart enough to recognize the early access status of a game although people have been known to be really stupid at times.

From what I understand they're not too hard to do, but they're not that high on our list of priorities as there's more important game-related stuff to do. They may well come in time tho.