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Early Access, how early is too early?
Canemuto
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Today is the one year anniversary of Baldur's Gate 3 being released to early access. I love the franchise and have played the hell out of it. I still have my original CD's from the first release of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. When Beamdog created the Enhanced Editions, I got to experience the nostalgia of fighting alongside Minsc and Boo (the Giant Space Hamster). Baldur's Gate 3 by comparison has been a constant frustration. I want to love it, but every time I hit a wall with a story line or lore, because the game isn't complete, I get really annoyed. My real issue with Baldur's Gate 3 and other early access games is the amount of content released upon early access.
TBH I guess my expectations of an "Early Access" game are a little high. My expectations being that a game is 1-3 months from completion and the developers just need a little more financial runway to make the game happen the way they envisioned it. The launch of Baldur's Gate 3 has been like an over hyped kickstarter that started to put a bad taste in my mouth with their "Panel from Hell 1 & 2" the ultimate goal of which is to convince players that "everything is fine and we are hitting all of the goals on our roadmap in a timely manner".
So a year later, the game still isn't complete (but is some how on version 4 now). This is in spite of the fact that Larian Studios CLEARLY used assets and resources from Divinity: Original Sin 2 in the creation process of Baldur's Gate 3. This is an important factor because having existing resources for the creation of a game cuts down on production time and costs.
We can talk about the effects of the virus on the development of games in 2020, but let's just keep in mind, Baldur's Gate 3 early access didn't drop until after the vaccine was being rolled out. These guys have a had an additional year of funding and time from players and have yet to produce a final product.
I chose Baldur's Gate 3 for the subject of this debate because Larian Studios is NOT an indie game company. I have recently experienced similar "early access" problems from other games like Hammerting and Valheim. But even smaller developers like Warpzone and Iron Gate don't really have a leg to stand on when compared to a game like Chronicon who has been releasing major content updates for the past year with a sole developer (that's right, the ENTIRE game is produced by a single guy).
TBH I guess my expectations of an "Early Access" game are a little high. My expectations being that a game is 1-3 months from completion and the developers just need a little more financial runway to make the game happen the way they envisioned it. The launch of Baldur's Gate 3 has been like an over hyped kickstarter that started to put a bad taste in my mouth with their "Panel from Hell 1 & 2" the ultimate goal of which is to convince players that "everything is fine and we are hitting all of the goals on our roadmap in a timely manner".
So a year later, the game still isn't complete (but is some how on version 4 now). This is in spite of the fact that Larian Studios CLEARLY used assets and resources from Divinity: Original Sin 2 in the creation process of Baldur's Gate 3. This is an important factor because having existing resources for the creation of a game cuts down on production time and costs.
We can talk about the effects of the virus on the development of games in 2020, but let's just keep in mind, Baldur's Gate 3 early access didn't drop until after the vaccine was being rolled out. These guys have a had an additional year of funding and time from players and have yet to produce a final product.
I chose Baldur's Gate 3 for the subject of this debate because Larian Studios is NOT an indie game company. I have recently experienced similar "early access" problems from other games like Hammerting and Valheim. But even smaller developers like Warpzone and Iron Gate don't really have a leg to stand on when compared to a game like Chronicon who has been releasing major content updates for the past year with a sole developer (that's right, the ENTIRE game is produced by a single guy).
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Warframe/Steam: NFyt
In short, early access is now used as a marketing tool and/or fundraising.
Having said that, I have bought some early access games in my time, the wildest one being Kenji, wich has been in develpment for like a decade now, and ARK wich was pretty much obsolete by the time it was finished.
Also, Baldurs Gate is dead, BG 1 and 2 were great, but that is the end of the franchise, Id rather throw my money at something new.
PUBG
Valheim
Oxygen Not Included
World of Tanks
Kerbal Space Program
Sunless Sea
Tarkov is OK
Starbound was Bad
With BG3, Larian was upfront with their plans for early access. It was to test, balance, and take in player feedback. Their own timeline for completing the game was over a year which they based on the last game they developed.
This is all to say there isn't a set answer. Putting a "Finished" label on a game isn't going to be what makes it enjoyable for anyone.
Still, much love for Coffee Stain.
If the core gameplay loop and around 5 hours of gameplay are in then it seems reasonable to buy early.
One other thing is clear and concrete development goals that they talk about. If there is a plan for where the game will move forward.
Some experimental stuff that'll never get finished has being fine to pick up for me at times.
But also on the opposite end the idea of buying a CRPG that won't be finished for over a year or two is hilarious to me.
Just read up what's currently in the game and buy it based on that. Unless the studio has a super solid rep there's no point theorizing on the end position.
In fact for some games this model might even work better than the traditional release model (assuming the initial release was in a good state)
Mostly because once you have a solid base game and gameplay loop, further updates are adding mechanics and revisiting old mechanics that don't work.
But even that's not 100%, it mostly comes down to trying them and getting burned before finding the devs that you can trust.
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I think it depends on price too. I'm willing to spend $20 on an early access that tickles my interests, especially if it's going to see a price increase at full release. Also there needs to be a game there. It might not be done, but it needs to be playable with loops.
Even now though, I've tried Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Project and a few others. I played enough to know I liked the game and now I'll set it aside and let them finish it before picking it up again.
When I back a game on kickstarter these days (few and far between) I go for the cheapest tier that gets me the game. I have no desire to get early access to those anymore. I don't want to interact with the devs or the community.
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Seemed as good as Terraria.
Only so many people enjoy being beta readers.
Early Access has definitely become an "I ran out of money partway through development" marketing tool.
Games2Gether doesn't fuck around and Humankind will be great eventually. But still, I'm burned.
One game I've enjoyed playing in early access is Hardspace Shipbreaker. The problem is every time they patch in more content/story, they reset your progress and you have to start the game over from scratch.
Which is ironically apt, given the game's theme of you trying to slowly claw yourself out of inescapable debt and the company you work for trying to drag you back down into it.
Much in the vein of a few other space games, it got whacked by self-imposed cycles of feature bloat while having an unclear roadmap
It's kind of the opposite of a Terraria or No Man's Sky in terms of how much post-release content it got, too
It also definitely has the procedural content issue of 99% of the randomly generated weapons are utter trash, and there's no novelty to exploring planets past the first one so it just becomes a scour the surface to check if it has the right dungeon/town spawns for whatever you're currently hunting.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
The vast, vast majority of what I've been playing for the last few years are titles that were developed via Early Access. Whether or not they could have been without is an argument I'm not particularly interested in, because it doesn't matter. Sometimes Early Access is abused, but that doesn't lessen the impact of the ones that made their mark via Early Access. A lot of startup studios are getting their games done without needing to front load investment via venture capital in order to afford their team. It means innovation and expertise are truly king. Well, sort of. Obviously marketing is still the lever by which this whole thing works, but anyway.
There are some games that I know wouldn't exist without Early Access, and they have had measurable impact. Kerbal Space Progam is probably the most significant one, but Factorio's influence is showing up in lots of games these days that have a strong automation bent. And I think Oxygen Not Included is the best colony/village/town management sim ever made. I'm not sure any of those titles would exist (maybe ONI, because Klei was established already) without that buy in.
Irony,maybe: When story progression started rolling out, I liked it a lot. I liked it more than the current state of the game.
However: unless it’s from Zachtronics or my friends are playing it and talk me into it (Valheim, for example), I don’t play the EA games I buy. They sit there in my library until they’re officially released, because I know myself and if I play through an incomplete game the odds I’ll go back and play it again once it’s complete are very close to zero. If it never actually gets a release then it’s like the kickstarters that’s never deliver. Sucks, but I factored that possibility into the initial expense. If I couldn’t afford to get nothing I shouldn’t have paid.
I think early access and Kickstarter are fairly different. Early access will have something playable, often with some polish already. I don't kickstart video games anymore. Almost universally bad experiences.
Indies are probably the best argument for Early Access. Slay the spire is a notable example which really befitted just from the raw data players can produce. Vault of the Void (disclaimer: I'm on the internal test team) it's another one where being in early access is making it a way better game than it'd be without.
But also it's a tool like @Nova_C says. Some devs use it really well! Others....
Not so much.
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One of best picks for Early Access was Subnautica. Started with a functional, if rough, experience, but there was clearly a game in mind as progress went on. Hugely rewarding overall. The Long Dark also started out with an interesting, visually-appealing survival mode at its core and then expanded way out from there into a fairly robust survival game with a unique singleplayer experience. Both solidly featured the core gameplay loops and design directions of the final game, then simply grew from there.
One of my worst has been Ostranauts, which gave a good pitch and then the Early Access "game" ended up being a few barely-functional systems badly kludged together into a non-experience because it was too unstable to run for more than twenty minutes. And then the next several months has been "what do you want in the game" shit, so their original concept was basically some fractionally-finished ideas and then they just turned to the players to "pick" the rest. Stability has improved, but what the game is supposed to be is still a total mystery even after nearly a year.
My most played EA is Rogue Legacy 2 which updates fairly consistently and generally with a significant amount of content. It's already twice the size of the original.
(Check it out if you enjoyed the first one!)
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I don't mind buying full expansions, but I don't like being chiseled for each extra outfit or map or whatever.
I am also an old and play games so slowly that I'm usually a generation behind.
The big exception and mistake I made with all the above was springing for the full Borderlands 3 version that was supposed to include all DLc. Turns out not only did that game disappoint me almost completely, but there was a second season of DLC that was not included. Learned my lesson.
I'll occasionally buy early access games that are around 30$ or less, depending on the genre. Games that are meant to be played over and over again (like roguelikes) are the best candidates. But I will never buy a game in early access if it's structured as a long storyline to go through.
Why would I buy Baldur's Gate 3 and deal with all the bugs and missing content right away only to have to start the whole storyline from the start again when the game goes live? Especially at such a steep price.
It's the worst kind of game to release in early access and I can't believe how much people bought it.
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While I'm right there with you, I am glad for all those people doing it if it means the finished product has a greater chance of coming out in a more fleshed out and bug-free state than it would have without that Early Access feedback and funding.
So, this led me to think of a question.
Is Early Access just replacing what would have been traditional q&a at a larger developer? Like, smaller developers use it for one, to proofread their games and two raise some money into development and third keep the buzz going?
That's more or less exactly what developers like Larian use it for. The ones actively involved with what are essentially free game testers seem to get a lot of value from the process.
Yeah I was a beta tester on the Lakeview Cabin collection after the first one got made for Ludum Dare, and that guy was all about "you give me $20, and I give you fun game to play for the next year until it's ready to hit youtube reviewers"
Like that's just a personal take so it's not worth more than that, but it was a pleasant experience overall.
Having said that if EA wanted me to pay to be a beta tester, otherwise a game would ship broken, I'd tell EA to go fuck itself. I feel like the medium of "early access" only works for indie dev groups.