Pitfalls of Early Access

[NeonSamurai]

I'm really starting to dislike Early Access (EAc), or I'm getting burnt out with it.

In a way I really like EAc (Early Access). Its a way of helping games that I want get made, and it really helps get a lot of indi titles get made. But its also getting abused, and can be a problem as a gamer too.

Some big problems are scam games, garbage games (early access is swamped with terrible games right now, it is very hard to find the few gems amongst all the filth), games that suddenly go in a direction you don't want at all, and games that suddenly drop development and get put out or abandoned.

But then there is the toll it takes on players. I find myself quite frequently getting totally burnt out on early access games. To the point where I have little interest playing the final polished version due to having spent so much time in alpha and beta. Right now for example I am burnt out on Subnautica, The Long Dark, Prison Architect, ARK Survival Evolved, Don't Starve, and Nom Nom Galaxy (I'm very dissapointed with that one). It kind of sucks as the experience I end up with is the buggy mostly unfinished version.

For me it is kind of getting to the point where I don't want to do early access anymore. It is getting too risky, and often I can't even enjoy the final version due to burnout.

[Betonov]

I only bought one game on early access, The long dark.
It's now plagued by the still-not-ready story mode, which was promised to be delivered this april for freee to anyone that bought early access.
The date was pushed back to indefinetly and is angering some people.

But

I love the sandbox, it's always upgraded, things added, gameplay augmented and I already put almost 90 hours into it for a €35 price tag. Which is roughly calculated one third per hour than I pay for my coffee.

But yeah, Steam is flooded by EAc crap that's either a money grab or stopped development due to developer laziness.

[Skybird]

It can work for good, it can work for bad, it depends on what the developer makes of it. In any case there must be a reasonable timetable, which gets announced and is transparent - and developer needs to stick to it. That timetable must be covbering all plans and time until full release of v1.0

Examples for Early Access projects who went extremely well, are Assetto Corsa, or Dirt Rally. Extremely pleasant examples for Early Access doing positive wonders. They announced the plan, and they stuck to it, to every single paragraph.

An example where it has run lousy and for far too long time now, is Wreckfest. I mean it now is in a state where you can get fun form playing it - but it took them over two years, and replacing the whole game engine once, which tells me they were ill-prepared.

In general, too much bad examples for EA have spilled on and drowned the market.

EA also needs to be limited in timeframe, else you get fed up with a half-baken game and then, when it is done, have no more interest left.

For the same reason I do no longer look to get into Beta-tests again, which I participated in twice, but will not do again.

[BarracudaUAK]

I'm coming into this a bit late, but...

I have 2 "Early Access" games via Steam, one I had seen many "Let's Play" videos on youtube, one my brother had....

They are:
Besiege and Space Engineers.

Besiege works fine, but Space Engineers dropped the DX9 32bit version, so I'm waiting on the WINE developers (I run Linux) to get the DX11 redirects coded for the 64bit version to work.

Both are limited in what "options" they have, levels etc...

My brother wanted me to get Minecraft so we could play something co-op since I switched over to linux, but the never ending adding, tweaking and "we don't like this, so we're changing it so you can't do: <what ever it is you were doing that we don't like>", in a way, prepared me for the "Alpha/Beta" stage of the Early Access games.

Although I can understand why you would not like if a company changed direction with a game that up till 'version X' you liked...
Sometimes it seems like developers can be "Bipolar" in their directions with a game.

What I have to do is remember the following: I changed a mod I was working on twice, tweaked various things multiple times. And I was simply adjusting a few things, not designing from scratch...
So I try to keep that in mind.

However, I also don't like it when they ruin a good game...

Barracuda

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by BarracudaUAK

My brother wanted me to get Minecraft so we could play something co-op since I switched over to linux, but the never ending adding, tweaking and "we don't like this, so we're changing it so you can't do: <what ever it is you were doing that we don't like>", in a way, prepared me for the "Alpha/Beta" stage of the Early Access games.

Minecraft was the best purchase I ever made in my life if I take the purchase price/hours used system. Over 300 hours for €20 and it doesn't look I'll be sick of it anytime soon.
Once you look at the mods available for free, the price for the game becomes even more affordable.

If you can see trough the blocky graphics that is. Some are turned off from the start.

[BarracudaUAK]

My minecraft install is modded...

Played for about a week to get the hang of it, then modded it.

1.8.7 when I started playing, rolled back to 1.7.10 for a mod, and Minecraft is at version 1.9.X or 1.10 now... (I'm still running my modded world at 1.7.10)
Been a while since I played it... Been re-installing/updating the PC lately, so I have to re-do Java, Forge for Minecraft, etc.

As for graphics, both Early Access games, and Minecraft....

My first computer was a Tandy 1000RL, no hard drive, 1, 3.5inch Double Density Floppy drive (720KB disk, not the 1.44MB disk.),
16 color Tandy Graphics Adapter (TGA), which, for most games "Simulated CGA".
That's 4 colors, count 'em, 1. 2. 3. 4. @ 320x200 resolution on a 14 inch CRT. DOS 3.3, and Deskmate GUI on the ROM... (which by the way, both still work,
even the Keyboard and Mouse. When I had a mouse or keyboard stop working on a new PC,
and either no $ or means of getting to the store to purchase a new one, I would pull out the Tandy's and be able to continue using my newer PC,
until I could get a new one.)

So lower graphics aren't an issue, my only concern with lower graphics is if it runs at a lower frame rate than a game with "better" graphics...
I.e. game is basic 3d (maybe even 'sprites' for the entities) @ 1024x768 resolution running at 30fps, but something like Crysis running at 70FPS @ 1920x1080.
(This assumes that the games are the same level of complexity "behind the scenes".)

Barracuda

[Gray Lensman]

Originally Posted by BarracudaUAK

My first computer (1977) was a Tandy 1000RL, no hard drive, 1, 3.5inch Double Density Floppy drive (720KB disk, not the 1.44MB disk.),
16 color Tandy Graphics Adapter (TGA), which, for most games "Simulated CGA".
That's 4 colors, count 'em, 1. 2. 3. 4. @ 320x200 resolution on a 14 inch CRT. DOS 3.3, and Deskmate GUI on the ROM... (which by the way, both still work,
even the Keyboard and Mouse. When I had a mouse or keyboard stop working on a new PC,
and either no $ or means of getting to the store to purchase a new one, I would pull out the Tandy's and be able to continue using my newer PC,
until I could get a new one.)

Barracuda

Eh, what's that you say there Sonny?

My first computer (1977) was a Tandy TRS-80, no Floppy drive (just a cassette tape for program storage)
That's 2 colors count em, 1 and 2, Black and White... Block Graphics and all CAP text screen (real bummer on the eyes)
Peripherals what's that? (unless you count the keyboard and cassette player)
No mouse or any sort of pointing device on the market at that time.


Had to modify the sucker with an after market upper/lower case graphics chip and then when I went to put it in, had to modify the motherboard too, because the morons had tied the 7th and 8th bits together going into the graphics processor. Some brilliant designer decided that lower case was never going to be popular, so they didn't need more than 128 alphabetic characters. LOL

Fortunately, back then that computer (The TRS-80) came with ALL the wiring schematics and the motherboard circuit tracing was easy enough to alter.

Really GRAY (haired) Lensman

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by Gray Lensman

...
That's 2 colors count em, 1 and 2, Black and White... Block Graphics and all CAP text screen (real bummer on the eyes)
...

Really GRAY (haired) Lensman

While I never owned one, I have used/played on a PC with Monochrome graphics...
and played some games on my 1000RL that were monochrome.

The one thing I've really noticed in my many (many) years of using PCs, is that the limited number of characters for naming in dos (8), and the limited colors and resolution, meant that programers (I won't call them "game devolopers") had to be very inventive to make it believable.

I think that may be the main problem with newer games. They have so much RAM, and so many CPU cycles to work with, that they either don't know what to do with it all, or they try to fill it all up with unnecessary "fluff".
Which takes time and effort to code/model, and in the end, they haven't focused on the core of the program, streamlining as they go... so when they get to the "finished" product, their "debugging" skills, both in code, and in 3d modeling, sound, etc. leaves much to be desired.

More than a bit of a ramble there, but it's much easier to think/say than to type. And if I "reword" it for writing, what I'm trying to say will get lost in the mix...

Barracuda