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Early Access - The philosophy of and knee-jerk reactions to it.
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
So there's a lot of chatter going on over the last month or two about Early Access. I think we can do with a thread to discuss it. For many reasons.
For those who aren't entirely sure, Early Access refers to games on Steam that are sold when still in (typically late phase) development. And usually the disclaimers note this and that all sorts of things can happen. Essentially it's like buying a game and getting in on its beta testing, even though there may not be a formal beta testing process. Admittedly, that's just my view on it.
I also have to admit that I'm not sure what the criticism or misconception is. I've seen some comments that imply it's wrong or bad to sell a game on Early Access, but there's no way for me to agree when the label is right there. It's not snake oil, and Early Access has more insurance to it than paying into crowd-source funding (in that you can see the product's shape way more clearly rather than pay for a sales pitch).
I'll try to update this OP with any more info or important things to consider from insiders of the industry, be it in favor of or against Early Access. But I wanted to get this ball rolling.
It should go without saying that not ever wanting to buy Early Access games is a completely fine sentiment to have. I just want to discuss peoples' reasons.
For those who aren't entirely sure, Early Access refers to games on Steam that are sold when still in (typically late phase) development. And usually the disclaimers note this and that all sorts of things can happen. Essentially it's like buying a game and getting in on its beta testing, even though there may not be a formal beta testing process. Admittedly, that's just my view on it.
I also have to admit that I'm not sure what the criticism or misconception is. I've seen some comments that imply it's wrong or bad to sell a game on Early Access, but there's no way for me to agree when the label is right there. It's not snake oil, and Early Access has more insurance to it than paying into crowd-source funding (in that you can see the product's shape way more clearly rather than pay for a sales pitch).
I'll try to update this OP with any more info or important things to consider from insiders of the industry, be it in favor of or against Early Access. But I wanted to get this ball rolling.
It should go without saying that not ever wanting to buy Early Access games is a completely fine sentiment to have. I just want to discuss peoples' reasons.
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*at least, not since Steam introduced that branding -- I bought the Minecraft beta and certainly some other games that had extended paid betas
On the flip side, I've bought a few Early Access games that are fucking amazing and I've had a ton of fun with them (Minecraft and Starbound leap to mind) even in their early stages.
Early Access and Kickstarter should basically have "caveat emptor" as their slogans, because you plain just don't get to get mad at the industry for buying an incomplete version of something appealing if it falls through. People lose shitloads of money every day on bigtime products and projects, and that money never comes back. It's a great system for people who don't mind risk and devs who can get decent alphas/betas going, and a system other people shouldn't go anywhere near if they think buying an Early Access game is a guarantee they'll get anything resembling a complete game at any point.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Because I'm not sure why someone would spend money on only an unfinished product. I feel like I'm missing something here.
Aside from that, I've had Starbound on Early Access through the original pre-order / pre-purchase on the official site. Anyone paying for even the lowest level gets into Early Access, and the price is the same as when pre-orders were first opened. The only downside to the game right now is people on their forums bitching constantly. 178 hours on record, but I'm sure ~40-50 of those are due to the process not closing and Steam continuing to count. I haven't played in at least a week, but I'll be addicted again the moment the final character wipe hits.
What I'm not thrilled about is the Wasteland 2 model. It's quadruple the price ($60) of the lowest kickstarter buy-in ($15). Sure, it's the digital deluxe version ($30 on kickstarter), but it's the only option you have for Early Access. Considering the intended release was October 2013 and people still say it's several months away from being ready, I don't think it's worth it. Hell, I'll probably wait until it's 50% off or more on a Steam sale out of principle.
Edit:
You'll receive the finished game. I'm not sure if the beta game will always be patched up to the finished product or if you'll need to re-download most/all of the assets, but you'll have the full game.
It's like a pre-order yes.
So I like early access.
On the subject of Wasteland 2: it is most definitely not worth the price atm. It has oodles of potential, but it's still a ways away from a product I'd actually sit down and invest time in. It's a $15 product in early beta, it is not even close to a $60 game (in any state).
Early access titles which have pleased me:
Starbound (it's complete enough as is to sell as retail, truth be told)
Mercenary Kings (again, really solid game with a unique take on the genre)
State of Decay (first early access version was pretty rough, but patches came regularly and it turned into a great product before it went retail)
Might & Magic X: Legacy (very rough state of affairs, absolutely no optimisation, shitty graphics...but they had the balls to stick with turn based in a world gone action mad. It's going to be tasty, but they need to sort out the performance issues)
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
I actually do find it interesting to follow what happens during a games development, that part of it is actual value for me. I am somewhat skeptical how much player input influences a game beyond bugfinding and maybe a bit of balance feedback though. Game development is harder and more expensive than people think, and some debacles with Kickstarter (Turnbased vs Realtime pause on Torment) should make devs think about any kind of promises in this area, especially since you are going to find opposing expectations, desires and priorities in any community.
I also think Early Access is at the highest risk with small teams/unknown studios. These have the most to gain because initial financing is hard to get, but it is also a lot more variable what is going to be the final output. A big name has a reputation to uphold, which makes it far easier to judge.
Storydriven game should also really consider the Telltale model where you publish a polished product with a smaller amount of content and then sell additional content over time / a season up front. I think your average 'epic' rpg would do pretty well with such a setup, and you avoid a couple of the pitfalls that Early Access suffers from. Content production is probably the most expensive part of game development and the conscious decision to have that be the part to spread out, and design your game around it, could be beneficial.
Luckily we live in a time with a very good feedback loop on the quality of games. I bought Starbound because overnight I saw 15 people on my flist owning it, and the Adventure Chat being obsessed with it. Before release I had many reservations.
I tend to binge on a game until I complete it or it loses my interest and I usually don't come back to it due to wanting to play my backlog or something new. I binged Starbound and now probably won't play it when it's final. (And probably won't know it's final until after the fact) I'm doing the same thing with Rust now.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
But you're going to have the full retail game in exchange for those "full retail monies." So what's the problem?
Except that the cheapest Kickstarter tier that had beta access was $55, so if they offered early access for $15 they'd be screwing over everyone who bought into that tier specifically based on beta access.
Gotta say I agree with him.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
1. Full disclosure/Advertise in big bold letters that it is an alpha/beta/wip so people can't be mad and go "I didn't know what I was buying"
2. Keep your fan base in the loop about version updates and explain what's coming down the pipeline. Show the people what their money is doing.
Early access is a really great model when it works though, and wouldn't really be possible with the growing acceptance of digital downloads. A good portion of games that are in the early access section on steam are self-published, and we've all heard horror stories about the developer publisher relationship and indie studios struggling to find a publisher that will support their game without gutting it. When your pseudo-publisher is a collective fanbase of people who really like your game you probably get way more creative control over the project and get to make the game you want. There are probably a ton of negatives to crowd funding though.
I've bought into a few early access games so far and the only one I regretted was the War Z. It makes me feel good to contribute some $$ to a work in progress that could turn into something really awesome.
1) Now that a few games on steam and otherwise (Minecraft) have succeeded with early access, we're getting flooded with early access games (DayZ, Goddus, Starbound, etc).
2) I'm literally paying someone so that I can beta test their game for them.
3) If you don't buy early access, you're late to the party when the game actually releases.
4) It can make player retention at release more problematic. Look at Path of Exile, where alot of PA folks played in closed beta, had fun, and no longer play. Then the same thing happened with a different group in open beta. Now that the game is released, we're not able to do as much end-game content as we would have been able to do if all of those folks were around.
What happens when some major game developer jumps on the early access model? Can you imagine early access to the next Call of Duty title?
The first issue doesn't seem like an issue. I don't understand why you would have a problem with lots of games being on early access.
The second issue doesn't seem like an issue either. If you don't want to pay to beta test, then don't pay to beta test.
The third issue is not unique to early access - you're always late to a game if you start playing it after other people. I'm not even sure why "late to the party" is much of a problem except in the case of insular communities that grow up around games, which brings us to:
The fourth issue, which I think is a real one. If you want to sustain any sort of server or multiplayer community around a game, having a long beta, especially a beta people have to buy into, can be pretty detrimental to your game. This isn't a problem for all early access games but for something where people can get burned out on it, I think it really sucks for the community's early adopters to burn out just at the time the community's "I only buy games when they come out" people show up for the game.
There's no good answer to this, though, and I think we're just going to have to get used to the idea that there's not one community for some games here on the PA forums and so on: there are at least two, the people who play during beta and the people who play during release, and although there's an overlap between the two, sometimes it's not complete.
This sucks in one sense because it can make the community smaller, but as far as I'm concerned it's not any worse than saying "well this community would be bigger if more people played this game." Some people don't like playing (for instance), Path of Exile, so we don't get sad when our community is smaller without them. Some people (for instance) like playing PoE during beta but get burnt out, so we shouldn't get sad that our community is smaller without them. They just have different tastes than other people. If people had different tastes and wanted to play the game more, we'd have a larger community, whether that means non-players playing or beta players returning. You can't change what people want to play.
Then those people have already been screwed over. Backers were allowed to purchase beta access from inXile's store prior to beta launch. I don't have a record of the price it was offered at, but by the end of the month it'll be up again for $10 (Update #41). So, plenty of people will be able to get in for $25.
You're paying money for something that hasn't been vetted yet.
It's a gamble. You plonk down the cash and you don't really know what you're going to get.
In my experience, its been pretty bad.
Mechwarrior Online is not early access but it is a F2P 'Beta' (or at least it was). During closed beta and open beta, they offered things for money (micro-transactions) but also promised a lot of new features. They didn't. Many of us invested in the game and aren't happy with the current state of the game or where it is going. Also, the developer/publisher seemed to prioritize features that can be monetized rather than ones that were promised or would increase game play.
This happens with both PC and console games. Without citing a specific example, many games will promise features X, Y, and Z. You get excited and pre order. When the game releases, it's had Z cut to try and meet time requirements. Lame.
I'm okay with how Kerbal Space Program and Minecraft funded themselves. Their communication with their communities and improvements have been good. I'm also okay with the Wasteland2 release because they clearly stated what you'd get with your Kickstart donation. I chose to only pay the $15 (or $30) because I didn't want to play an early release of a quest game (doesn't that ruin the quest?).
I think DayZ gets a bad rap and there is some merrit behind it. What is different in their case, is they clearly stated the game is in Alpha state which means a lot. The problem is that everyone is very trigger happy when it comes to buying games that they didn't realize that Alpha clearly means, "lack of many features and with lots of bugs" where as Beta means "most features, some bugs". Big difference. Also, it seems that Bohemia Interactive is following suit with what they did with ArmA3. They basically used the Early Access as a honey pot to catch cheaters and exploiters so they could shore up their code before releasing. Sure you paid for it, but it's greatly advanced the security of the game.
I now have a new mantra. I won't pay for F2P games and I won't pre-order games. I strongly believe that we as consumers hold the same amount of blame as the game producers/designers. Since we vote with our money, we are allowing them to continue this behavior.
They entice us with "features" and we pay up and we do this often. We've proven that the consumer base is gullible enough to fall for their "carrot on a stick" tactics for them to continue their behaviors. BECAUSE IT WORKS. They make millions on us while we haven't received our full promised value.
This is also making some developers/producers lazy and money hungry. They know that their game is just a "flash in the pan" and some are milking us for all we have and don't really care.
Right now, it's somewhat hard to judge how early access will be in the future. We've only had a limited amount of releases, and those releases have been well received and very playable upon the early access release.
I 100% agree that early release is a godsend for companies like Grinding Gears Games (Path of Exile), who wouldn't have been able to bring an incredible game to full release without the early release model.
On the flip side, however, how many games have been released as finished games that were incomplete? And I don't mean games that would have been garbage no matter what, I mean games like Fallout 2 or KOTOR 2. These are great games that had devestating bugs that didn't get fixed for years until the fans effectively finished the games.
Corporations are good at seeing what's popular and making money and emulating this. My previous question about Early Access could have been applied to any popular franchise. And given how corporations tend to be, I see it only hurting the gaming industry in the long run as quality suffers.
Then I have to ask how many games will not be released as early access that will never be finished? Or will be called finished before they really should? And any poor quality issues that may rise and become prevelant will only be multiplies as early access becomes more popular. This will result in disenfranchisement of the consumer.
Sure, and the NSA using metadata obtained from cell phone GPS is ok because you can just turn your phone off.
Seriously though, why should a corporation like Electronic Arts have a quality department when they can just get you to pay them to be their tester? I mean, they don't even have to outsource that work to India now, they can just crowdsource it instead.
And if you don't think they will, go look up the PA supported comic "Trenches" and read the stories posted there by video game quality testers.
I concur that the third and fourth point are the same.
For the little game dev, Early Access can have huge benifits. For a corporation, it's going to lead to a slew of shitty, poorly supported games.
Well this is what consumerism is about. One-time purchases come with the risk of "is this actually going to be good?" vs. those purchases you make frequently (like food / consumables). The problem isn't with video games, the problem is with uncertainty in buying... well, anything.
Yes and no.
With general consumer goods, you have the option of touching and feeling them as they are tangible items. You could be shopping for apples and you'd be able to tell which were fresh and which were not (for the most part). Also, all consumer goods are finished (again, for the most part).
The future of your newly purchased apple is set. It's an apple. It's not like you got the stem, seeds, and half the flesh. You got the whole thing. All features included.
If you could buy a half an apple for half the cost and be promised that you'd get the other half in due time, would you do it? Probably. But what if the apple grower would instead keep giving you more seeds and stems and not make due on their promise to give you the other half.
No one is holding these game publishers/producers accountable. They just keep accounting for their revenue.
But video games have demos. Not always, but it's possible. Just like a stereo (car or in-home) being setup in a retail store so you can listen. Not all stereos are going to be on display like that.
That said, there have been both really good and really bad early access stories. To me early access is very, very, VERY much a buyer beware situation. The GiantBomb guys discussed this at length during their "worst trends" award for this last year, and the basic consensus (that I agree with): Early access in and of itself is interesting, useful and I don't think it should go away. That said, the systems around early access need to get much better:
Obviously early access is working, because people keep doing it, and people keep buying the games, but there needs to be more risk mitigation tools for the consumer beyond simple "buyer beware" warnings.
I think games should be removed if they have enough problems. There should be some kind of accountability. A publisher does this in order to protect their investors money. What protection is there for a buyers money for Early Access? It's not a rhetorical question. I don't know.
I think the games sale page itself is not marked clearly enough. It's a new thing and its understandable that someone may not have heard about it and may simply trust Steam. Not marking it clearly enough is a breach of that trust.
The actual splash itself on the sale reads like its a net positive. You are getting in early! There's no downside here! Where's the "This game is incomplete and may even be nigh unplayable" in that big blue splash screen? The closest is "as it develops" and a link to click Learn more. That's the kind of wording you expect on dodgy advertisements. I think it should be explicit.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
I don't think I've purchased anything early access, but I have kickstarted a few projects, which is honestly a much bigger gamble than early access. So I'm not really opposed to the idea. But I'm also not a fan of it.
I think the biggest issue for me is that it splits the community. Early adopters are likely going to move on from the game long before an official release. People who want to play it safe are probably not going to have the same kind of eager, burgeoning community that exists right after EA launch.
That's what bums me out as I usually trust what GB has to say about a game. They do however talk about certain games they've tried on the podcast and I can usually get a good feel from there.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
I'm not sure how early access has anything to do with "games as services". It's much closer to something like Kickstarter since they are both ways of trying to turn your customers into your publisher.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Put the apple in a box labelled apple and your analogy would fit better. As well as it being an expensive sixty dollar apple with accompanying higher involvement in purchasing.
Want to play co-op games? Feel free to hit me up!
Which is why I think a site the specialized in "continuous reviews" could work as a niche offering. Here's our first review, six weeks later, here's a run down of the patches and our new review, six weeks later, etc. The Giant Bomb guys hinted at something like this working as well, but said in no uncertain terms it's not their bag and not something they are going to do.
I can't agree with this hard enough. At least Early Access means the developer has enough skin in the game to have something out there, and it's something they think is interesting enough that they feel others should invest in it as well.
But my main concern isn't with the little dev that kickstarts or early accesses through steam. Mine is when corporations try to monotize on this. Really in a way they already are with season passes for DLC. But with season passes, both they and the consumer both have skin in the game.
Basically, I don't trust corporations not to touch something and not screw it up.
Edit: the continuous review site would be a start but I look for critical and audience consensus/trends and that requires multiple sites and people actually remembering what patch they played, and the latter especially is tricky.
I would say for things like Seasons Passes there is some level of implied and built trust there. I may not like EA, but I know if I buy the Seasons Pass for an EA game that on some level they are going to deliver that content. I may not like all of the content, but it's going to be delivered.
There is much less implied trust in the early access relationship (unless it happens to be early access offered by a reputable developer). Kickstarter even less so (with the same caveat). When I Kickstarted Zeboyd's Cosmic Star Heroine, I did so with an incredibl amount of implied trust that CSH would get delivered, since they had already delivered four successful games to me. On the flip side, when I Early Accessed (and got burned by) WarZ, there was no implied trust and I ate 50 bucks for it.