Early Access
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You are currently reading a thread in /v/ - Video Games
You are currently reading a thread in /v/ - Video Games
So: What's the shittiest thing about Early Access games?
Additionally, when do you think an Early Access release is appropriate, or ethical, or level-headed? Ever?
Has your opinion changed from the time when preorder-alphas first started going viral (like Minecraft or Overgrowth)?
>>336130717
Everything about Early Access is frustrating because it's SUCH a good concept in theory. The problem is that it's abused so heavily by both developers and players that it falls apart completely.
Developers realized they could just make a lot of promises and get an easy payday without ever really doing anything. Players realized that hey, a lot of the time beta-testing isn't actually all that fun, and start getting pissed off that they paid for something that wasn't a real game yet.
>>336130717
Reading the same bullshit every developer ever on there spouts every time a new game gets shat out.
You're not gonna do great things with it. You'll do some hotfixes and that's it.
The shittiest thing is when the devs abandon the game. DayZ is basically abandoned and there's plenty of other examples of games never getting out of it.
>>336130717
> shittiest thing
Nothing? Doesn't bother me in any way, if I like what's offered then I'll buy it, if not, then not.
> when release is appropriate
Whenever the dev wants to? Doesn't bother me. Some games I'll wait for release to experience the full game in one go, for other games that isn't important. Subjective.
> opinion changed
No. Unreleased game is still an unreleased game, nothing has changed.
>complains about Early Access games
>posts a picture of basically the best one that shows HOW a game should be early access without fucking up
>>336132001
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to complain about Early Access - I'm looking to get a read on what kinds of complaints other people have because I can tell that it's not a perfect environment.
Spoiler: I'm about to release an Early Access game (not here to promote, but I probably will eventually) and I wanted to do a little sanity check about our approach to it.
>>336131171
I agree.
>>336131281
This makes me vaguely nervous because I don't know whether or not those developers actually believed that they were going to do great things with their game. What if they did, but were being over-optimistic? I don't really know how this could be effectively avoided other than "think before you speak," but that's practically non-advice, so yeah.
>>336131353
This makes me extremely nervous and I think it's the biggest danger. Might make a dev feel like they're "already done" since they're already getting paid (which, for indie devs, has been trained as the thing that happens when you're done with a project)
>>336131838
Good to see that this a stranger with this opinion is real and not just something I'm hoping for
>>336131353
this
>>336132427
Alright since you're looking for advice specifically, here's the most important point
Don't treat early access as this massive period for you to release whatever you want.
Go into EA with a definite plan of what your game needs to have to be "finished". Inform your audience of it so they know what to expect.
Don't just spend your EA time fucking around adding whatever new thing comes to your mind, it's the downfall of too many EA games
Not every early access game is doomed to fail. See Prison Architect like in your picture, it's released now and still getting updated, either getting more features/bugfixes or better performance. Before I couldn't even get close to 1000 inmates due to 0.2 FPS, but now it runs at 15-20. That difference is huge considering there are so many entities going around, not just inmates but also my staff.
Minecraft is a pretty good example of good "early access". Completely playable game with tons of features. A real game that has that "feels like it could still have some content" which would actually get eventually added.
It's shit when abused my money hungry devs after a quick buck. Steam is fulled with those survival crafting games that will never ever get finished, and sometimes the devs just stop developing and release the game even though it's clearly unfinished so that they can wash their hands from the shit they started.
Picture related is from Interstellar Marines. It's been about 3 years now and the game is still nothing but a tech demo.
>>336132690
I think this problem is actually general to game dev, and not just Early Access - unfortunately with Early Access, the penalty doesn't only apply to the dev. Fuckin new devs don't seem to know how to pick a central theme and stick to it
>>336132765
Prison Architect is dope and I love Introversion. Still wish they could have finished Subversion because it seemed fascinating...but I'm glad it was just a cancelled game, and not a cancelled game that was already paid for.
>>336132815
Haha, Interstallar Marines! Everybody was so stoked that a Unity game's graphics didn't look like total fucking pants.
> Uh oh, our game has no identifiable personality because it exists purely as a clone of existing AAA games - uhh how bout a little space shark to sweeten the deal?
You are paying full price for what could be literally fucking nothing.
EA is like communism, it works on paper and thats it.
Have any games actually left early access?
>>336131353
Lie. DayZ has updates all the time and there are twice as much people working on DayZ than there were at the time of the release on Early Access.
>>336132815
>3 years
Nigga, it's older than that. I remember signing up in, fuck, 2011?
It's in the trinity of indie games stuck in eternal development hell, along with Overgrowth and Cortex Command
>>336130717
The shittiest thing about Early Access are the customers who read that the game will be unfinished, will have bugs and they shouldn't buy it and then complain that the game is unfinished and has bugs.
>>336134205
Prison Architect has once they went 1.0. They've also continued to update, albeit slightly smaller updates now
>mfw I bought Interstellar Marines: Spearhead Edition
I also bought Duke Nukem Forever: Balls of Steel edition, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Hitman: Absolution. I just keep falling for this shit over and over again.
