Early Access video games

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

It's no secret that game publishing among the AAA affiliated publishers has shifted to a publish now and finish later mentality. While there are still a few steadfast AAA publishers (mostly) sticking to finished products, the prevalence of "games as a service" models of release has pushed some pretty prominent gaming franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield in the direction of releasing a game and tightening up the screws after the money is made.

Some gaming marketplaces like Steam, Epic, and Good Old Games have added official tags for developers to indicate that a game is still in ongoing development even as the consumer opens their wallet. While some games have utilized this tool well (Baldur's Gate 3 is set to release on August 3rd of 2023 after spending three years in early access), other games use it as a way to generate income without a real "finished" product.

How do you feel about early access titles and the shift in the market towards buy-now-finish-later games? Do you purchase early access games, and if so which ones burned you and which were a pleasant surprise later down the line?

 

[thePlinko]

No I don’t. At best I might put them on my wishlist, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to directly support unfinished games, especially if you have to pay for them.

 

[A Link In Time]

Hell no. I like to buy games that are finished. I don't want to be used as a guinea pig.

 

[Ganondorf]

I don't. I want a game to be finished upon purchase, & I already hate the common trend of games getting major updates weeks after release or paid DLC that clearly should have just been in the base game (varies, but some are very yucky like UI fixes which should have been there from launch or accessibility features later added after tremendous fan feedback that should have been obvious & there from the start, like SUBTITLES...). The only early access game I ever got that ended up being worth it & not abandoned was Slime Rancher, but sadly I hear the sequel had a lot of unfinished feelings from players or puzzling cut content from the first game, so I think it was probably just a lucky break that the first game ended up OK.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

I like the idea of bugtesting and giving feedback on a product before it releases, but having to pay to do that is dumb
and I fear that this might become a trojan horse for developers to release an unfinished game and gauge community feedback to whether they actually need to finish it or not
so overall I would say it depends on the game (it could be free for example)

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

never ever crossed my mind, and still wouldn't

 

[Ragnarokio]

I feel like the phrase early access has become pretty meaningless. For quite a long time now the typical economic model for a game, especially pc games, has been to release a product, and then gradually push updates to the product and either sell those updates or sell some form of microtransactions and use the updates to keep that purchase flow going. Within this model, Its hard to really say a game is ever "finished", since development is typically indefinitely ongoing.

Now, there's a point in game development where you can say a game feels like a complete experience, although thats a pretty broad target. If a game feels pretty barebones but the gameplay loop is technically there and the story is finished does that constitute a complete experience, or does it need to be fleshed out more before it should be referred to like that? If i went back and played the original isaac game after getting used to playing it with over a decade of content updates I'd probably find that it felt more like a demo than a proper game, but at the time I imagine people felt that it was a complete experience.

And with regards to what publishers/developers decide to label early access, beta, or whatever other word, there's very little standardization there. Some games release in early access as a buggy unfinished mess and other games remain in early access for years in more or less the same finished-feeling state and then are officially "released" with little fanfare. Likewise, a lot of games exit early access as a buggy unfinished mess, or they exit early access and they feel technically finished but they don't really shine as a game until they've had a year or two of extra polish and content put into them.

Whether or not a game is in early access alone doesn't really seem to communicate how finished it is or how it feels to play, to me. To that end, I'd much rather look at the reviews and figure out exactly where the game is at, whether or not its in early access, before deciding to purchase it.

 

[GrooseIsLoose]

Only if it's a free game or app