An Early Access Rebuttal

In the past I’ve spoken about how great crowd-funding and early access are to the changing landscape of game development and developer freedom. But for today, I feel like playing Devil’s advocate on the topic and why I’m sitting here with three games I’m incredibly excited to play… but I can’t.

Ruining Your Appetite:

As we’ve talked about, digital distribution has irreversibly changed both the selling and development of video games. Before, when a video game was available for purchase, you knew that you were getting a completed title all ready for your enjoyment.

The idea of playing a beta or much less an alpha version of a game was resigned to only the developers and their testers, meaning that the only experience you as the consumer would have with a game was its best state. But today the Game Industry is a place where consumers can get access to game betas through pre-orders and alphas thanks to early-access and crowd-funding.

Both allow you to see video games at their earliest state — with graphics, UI and even game design far from being finished. In my post on the early-access debate, I talked about how this is a huge difference from other consumer based industries and is currently exclusive to the Game Industry.

This early access means that the waiting period or anticipation for a game is different than other industries. A new product may be hinted at or teased, but normally you can’t even order it until close to the actual release. With video games before early access, Beta access would simply allow you to play an almost complete build of the game anywhere from a few weeks early, to at most one or two months before anyone else.

Today however, we have access to games that could still have years in development. Granted with kickstarter, you have to pay more than the regular amount but that isn’t the case with Early Access on Steam or from the developer’s site.

And that leaves me in an awkward position. Currently three of my most anticipated games are on early access: Planetary Annihilation, Spacebase DF-9 and Prison Architect.

Each one is available for me to play, with only Planetary Annihilation at the time of this post considered in beta form. With the latter two, while I enjoyed playing them, neither of them could be considered anywhere near a state of being done.

While Prison Architect is playable at the moment, the game still has a long ways to go before being finished and no release date announced.

And that leaves me in a position where I pretty much have to pretend that they’re not there.

The reason is that it would be incredibly easy for me to play them now and get burnt out on them in their current states. I know that sounds crazy but it has happened before.

When I got into the Drox Operative beta from Soldak last year, I was playing it every day while getting a new version pretty often. By the time the game was considered done I was so tired of playing the game that I didn’t bother playing it again until the expansion was announced.

While my problem probably sounds insignificant in the scheme of things, let’s talk about everyone else. One thing that we are seeing now is a perception issue when it comes to early access. Many consumers see an early access game on Steam and consider it just another game purchase.

But as we know, that’s not the case as early access games are put on in different states of completion. Something like Godus was put up in Alpha with only 40% of the game done, while Spacebase  DF-9 went up almost immediately after Double Fine got their first Alpha build up.

This is leading to a problem where consumers are judging early access games in the same vein as completed titles available. Even reviewers are taking notice, with Eurogamer going to “review” early access games.

The problem goes back to perception, when you buy something from a store, you expect a certain level of quality. This is why in other industries only the absolute best version of a product ever makes it to the store shelf.  While early access games do tell you up front of their status, people just see a product and expect a level of quality.

Now I know that for the people who are reading this, we are more informed than the general public and know to do research on any game. But the majority of people who buy early access are just the general consumers. And when they run into any major issues that come from early access, they treat the game the same way as if a fully released product had a problem with it. And in return, sour their views on the game as well as their friends when they report that a game is not working.

Don’t Starve was another game I played heavily during the beta and was burnt out by the time it was released.

Another criticism against early access is that you’re basically buying into an alpha/beta with no additional benefits.

However, like I said in my post on early access, you’re not being forced to buy these games now. And only in a few circumstances like with Kerbal Space Program would you be rewarded for buying in early.

I know that supporters will say that the reward for buying into the alpha is the ability to influence the game and get ideas to developers when they can actually do something about them. But again, that’s for the enthusiasts and hardcore fans. For the consumers, chances are they will not contribute in this fashion or even visit the developer’s forum.

Early access, like crowd funding is still a relatively new concept for the Game industry. And despite the doomsayers, early access is another way for developers to both secure funding for their games and get a good idea of what the market thinks of their game.

We are currently experiencing a shift in how games are being developed and marketed and time will tell where we’ll land when everything is said and done.