Here Lies Early Access. RIP

Started by Jarhead0331, September 23, 2018, 04:33:40 AM

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jomni

Jason that defeats the purpose of EA (crowdfunding). Devs need money to survive. If they are held in escrow, might as well not go though EA in the first place.

JasonPratt

#16
What's that shruggy smile ascii set?

If it's a side project, then they have other work (or they're at college and working or whatever), and they have other ways to survive.

If it's a business, then they should treat their endeavors like a legitimate business, and borrow capital to pay back from their success (and/or save up capital from doing other things to work their project with). The most successful EAs have been either relatively simple projects that can be worked on by a few people in their spare time (category one), and so who don't need reward before they finish; or they've done enough work already to provide an entertaining finished-enough project worth buying outright which they can build off of, and so have a product to actually sell already. (I can think of one project which combines both methods: the original Fortresscraft mod of Minecraft.) The first isn't a solid business model but it isn't supposed to be either. It's a hobby that might pay off eventually. The second is a solid business model that uses funds previously acquired by other means and/or by a method that encourages work to pay the initial money back.

The abuse comes from acquiring the prior funds from the end users. Once they've reaped the harvest early, they have no business motivation to grow the crop for the eventual harvest. They may have other motives like ethical honor and/or artistic drive to continue, but they can only have business motivation to continue if they want to move on to another project -- in which case the main motivation will be to move on to the next project as soon as possible to collect the prepaid money on that one. Which leads to a temptation to call it quits on the current project unfinished.

(I suppose business motivation might split the difference and go for developing DLC instead of finishing the current game. ARK has taken some flack for leading the way in doing that... ;) )

Of course, the early prepay on a very unfinished project with promises to finish it, works great in the short run. And after all, caveat emptor: it's a way of getting around the refund system, hoping people are more likely to wait on a promise of initial quality or concept until it's too late to get their money back. Shady capitalism is still capitalism. From a pragmatic standpoint I can't fault the strategy of an early full harvest without necessarily putting in the full work to get the harvest! -- so long as it works! The buyers bear the brunt of the cost-result differential, not the developers. And so long as no promises are legally made, and legal warnings are given that there may be no payoff, then so long as people are willing to risk their cash, then the market functions. Just like buying lottery tickets.

Neither Steam nor the devs can have any motivation to do something different, and I'm not in favor of forcing them to do so legally somehow. But the market is as the market does, and if the market dries up then they'll either have to change practices or quit.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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DennisS

Quote from: mikeck on September 23, 2018, 06:56:12 PM
I like the idea of early access and many titles have done quite well with it. For example, Endless Space 2. I bought early access, the dev took note of bugs and play-issues, incorporated fixes and then released a final finished copy.

BUT, there are too many devs who create games that live in "early access perpetuity". Games like Naval Action and Predestination. They are in early access for years and years while the developers are able to deflect complaints. Players complain that they bought a game 4 years ago and it's atill a mess to which the Devs respond: "it's in early access". So yeah, I don't appreciate being sold an unfinished product that will never be finished under the guise of early access.

I liked the idea overall. Even the best beta testing can't uncover the game play problems that thousands of players can. And hell, who DOESNT like getting a game early? But I would Like to see some type of steam policy whereby a game gets no more than 1 year in early access. Once the game leaves early access and is released, then the Steam return policy kicks in as if you had JUST purchase it. That way, if they release the game from early access but it's still not finished, I can get a refund.

There is NO excuse for Naval Action and Predestination. Games that have barely advanced in years and seem to use "early access" as merely a tool to allow them to collect money while they fail to have to release a finished game

Naval Action remains the game on my 270+ Steam games listing that has the most hours. Several hundred hours. But....I tried firing it up the other day, after a full year or two, and just couldn't understand the game mechanics. I am told that instead of several hundred players on the server at one time, you might find ... 10. Seriously. Why bother?

GaryMc

I've honestly had little interest in Early Access games ever.  Even in the rare games I've Kickstarted, I've not messed with it until the full release. (I think I played 20 minutes of the first Beta Battletech build I had access to, then didn't come back until the real game came out.)

I would rather wait for a complete experience, and then decide if I want to throw my money at it.

mikeck

I don't think it needs to be held in escrow. Give the devs the cash. But start the "return clock" when the game is released and not when I bought early access.
I'm sure there is a concern that- by then- people will be tired of playing and refund it but I don't think so. You give people a quality game and most wont return it even if they are tired of it.

I doubt the cash steam pays back for returns would be higher than the income from all the sold games. If it is, then that dev is done on steam

BUT, like Jason said, it's about $$. I'm not being sarcastic when I say that Capitalism is probably the greatest invention in history. Capitalism has brought more people and more societies out of true poverty than anything else. It's responsible for most of the things we own and rely on. The disadvantage is that companies generally don't do the right thing...they do the thing that lessens $$loss or increases $gain.

So until Steam concludes that they would make more money clamping down on the perpetual early access crap, they won't.
"A government large enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have."--Thomas Jefferson

JasonPratt

Quote from: mikeck on September 23, 2018, 10:30:20 PM
I don't think it needs to be held in escrow. Give the devs the cash. But start the "return clock" when the game is released and not when I bought early access.
I'm sure there is a concern that- by then- people will be tired of playing and refund it but I don't think so. You give people a quality game and most wont return it even if they are tired of it.

The problem is that if the money isn't held in escrow somehow, it won't be around to make refunds with. What's guaranteeing the refund? Steam credit?
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Dammit Carl!

I'm "meh," on the issue: if there is something that piques my interest, then I'll probably go ahead and get onboard with the Early Access game knowing full and well that it may or may not actually become a full release at the end of the day.  I know it can be a crap shoot, but what the hell.

Having said that, I don't blindly buy something without: 1. seeing reviews of it first. 2. seeing if the developers themselves are adding to the game as it supposedly progresses (and listening to customer feedback). and 3. asking myself if I really, really would like the game or am I just following the crowd with the "Oooh! New and Shiny," buzz that generally occurs.

Note: on point #3 above, admittedly, I did kind of jump with the crowd in getting Scum around two to three weeks ago (and it's been a fun game) so I'm not all "Mr. Tight-With-His-Money-And-Not-A-Crowd-Follower," all the time.

Anguille

I am usually not very much into EA games as i prefer to have a complete game (otherwise it's beta testing).

For Master of Orion Conquer the Stars, i think the EA was a big mistake because the opinion of the players was already made during EA. In the first release, the AI was very weak. By the time the game for released as complete, many had already skipped the game.

On the other hand, for Oriental Empires, less people started to play the game and it was already feature complete.

Imho, never go in EA if you're not feature complete. Overall, i think it's better to do a larger beta-testing.

bboyer66

 Really don't feel like I have been burned when it comes to Early Access. My usual policy is to buy now during the discount, and play later. Games like Prison Architect, Subnautica,PUBG, Darkest Dungeon, The Forest, Don't Starve, Kerbal Space Program, are really enjoyable. Have not played the Long Dark since it came out of early access, but looking forward to it.

The only game that I really felt like I got burned on, was The Mandate, which was on Kickstarter. That was the first and last time I backed a PC game on kickstarter.

Boggit

I think I've been lucky in the main with early access - Rimworld, Oriental Empires (before release), and Medieval Kingdoms have all had regular updates and were pretty solid builds anyway.
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ArizonaTank

Quote from: JasonPratt on September 23, 2018, 04:48:20 PM
Some Early Access games fall into yet another category: the finished Alphas.....

7 Days to Die,

Keeping in mind that 7DtD was never meant to have a game-completion state (and their new content updates have slowed down a lot).


+1

I have had a ton of fun on 7DTD...I am ashamed to admit how many hours of my life I have put into it....but what fun!  I never even noticed that the game is in "alpha". I think I paid $15 for it years ago... 
Johannes "Honus" Wagner
"The Flying Dutchman"
Shortstop: Pittsburgh Pirates 1900-1917
Rated as the 2nd most valuable player of all time by Bill James.

ArizonaTank

#26
Having spent several years in the software industry (many moons ago)...I used to fret about the breakdown of the dev cycle (what does "alpha" or "beta" really mean anymore?) and the lack of coding and business discipline in the Steam model.

But these days, to paraphrase of the 2nd title to Dr. Strangelove; "I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Early Access"

"Early Access" is here because of the changes in technology and the neediness of the market. Gamers have no patience and want it now...but they don't want junk either. The combination of Steam for distribution, and easy to use game engines make easy access a no brainer.

Technology definitely drives the dev cycle for consumer software. 30 years ago, a software company didn't have much room for error on first release.  The best way to get patches out was on an omnibus CD-ROM, or maybe if the patch was small enough, you could put it on a public bulletin board for download over a 1200 baud modem. Under those circumstances, a strict dev cycle made a bunch of sense. Getting the initial release wrong meant you were punished by the market severely.

Still, even 30 years ago, there were bad developers and awful games. There were folks producing trash, and taking the money and running...bad actors in game development are not new. 

Now we have early access. The technology allows it, and users are OK with mediocrity as long as it satisfies the "give it to me now" impulse. 

IMHO Early access as we know it will be around until the technology changes.

And...I think that technolgy change is just around the corner.

Machine learning and machine written software is coming in a big way. In 10 years we will start to see big changes in the way games are developed and distributed.

In 40 years, boutique "artists" will be the only humans able to earn a living in "programming". 

The entire concept of software, distribution and the dev cycle will be toast.

AI will be doing the coding, and doing it on the fly.  Players will probably "order" their own custom feature sets and have those custom built on the spot. Think about the Star Trek holodeck. You walk in, and tell it what kind of experience you want.  Gosh knows what kind of platform we will be playing on...but please oh please let it be a holodeck... Only really old guys like me will even remember that "early access" ever existed.




Johannes "Honus" Wagner
"The Flying Dutchman"
Shortstop: Pittsburgh Pirates 1900-1917
Rated as the 2nd most valuable player of all time by Bill James.

mikeck

Quote from: JasonPratt on September 24, 2018, 07:09:42 AM
Quote from: mikeck on September 23, 2018, 10:30:20 PM
I don't think it needs to be held in escrow. Give the devs the cash. But start the "return clock" when the game is released and not when I bought early access.
I'm sure there is a concern that- by then- people will be tired of playing and refund it but I don't think so. You give people a quality game and most wont return it even if they are tired of it.

The problem is that if the money isn't held in escrow somehow, it won't be around to make refunds with. What's guaranteeing the refund? Steam credit?

That's what I mentioned further down. At release, the devs sand steam are making more money off new sales. THAT  money would be used for refunds. Yes, it is possible that so many people will want refunds vs those who purchase on release and do not but that would mean the game is a disaster and Steam takes a loss.

I just don't see how escrow works here. Money in escrow can't be used. Yet the whole purpose for early access is to raise money to continue developing.
If I can't get to that money, why do it?
"A government large enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have."--Thomas Jefferson

RyanE

Frankly, EA is just so open to financial abuse.  In the real world, investors invest on potential.  But the risk they take is balance by the potential returns.  In EA, the risk is low and the return is a functioning game.  But there is no transparency on what the devs are doing with the money.  I think every EA on Steam should have a simple business plan that shows where the money is going, a detailed dev timeline, and simple cashflow analysis.

This would let Steam force some simple discipline on a dev to have a plan before asking for money.  And EA customers could have some a real and validated plan for their own decision.

Philippe

While I sympathize with the idea behind this, I'm not sure that making Steam more powerful than it already is would be such a good idea.
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