BulletPoints - The Problems with Early Access

This is a topic I’m sure many of you have seen elsewhere and discussed a great deal. But since I have yet to weigh in on the topic and I want to keep the blog-posts rolling, why not discuss my take on Early Access games? 

I hate when I have to use the phrase “in theory” to justify my like or dislike of a concept or idea, but the phrase “in theory” is basically my attitude towards Early Access gaming. I like the idea in theory, but rarely has it worked out for the consumer in practice. Recent numbers have shown only 25% of games released on the early access program have been completed and while the numbers aren’t showing the ones that have just outright stopped production entirely, it’s been well documented by various consumers and their anecdotal evidence in regards to the major faults of Early Access gaming.

Before I say too much to make everyone raise the torches and pitchforks and get the mob on down to Valve’s offices to threaten Gabe Newell (seriously, don’t do that), let me make my position clear with the positives I see from Early Access gaming first. Because, like I said, I don’t view the concept as a completely negative idea and see that Early Access has merit to it. Look at how Minecraft and, to a lesser extent, DayZ have fared thus far. Clearly, there’s SOMETHING working here and that’s what we have to look for when figuring out the future of Early Access and how to make it work better.

I like the idea behind Early Access because it allows gamers to see the game built from the ground up. It saves the developers money by not having to hire QA testers for the game. Just have the people who want to buy the game QA test it and use their feedback to improve the product. The funding for these games doesn’t have to come from a big publisher like EA, Activision, or Ubisoft, but from the people who want these particular games (much like kickstarter, but laser focused onto one type of product). It also means that while the game isn’t fully complete, fans of the product or people who are most excited for it can play it right away without having to wait potentially years before the developers have the funds or support needed for a proper game launch.

But the positives are certainly outweighed by a number of catastrophically bad negatives.

First, Steam doesn’t have a system in place to deal with Early Access titles that don’t finish. It really is a “enter at your own risk” scenario when it comes to purchasing these games. And while some gamers are fine with that risk, others aren’t. And certain gamers still would lose their minds to know that the product they paid for will never be completed. Which is why I don’t think we can expect a proper “Early Access” program for consoles anytime soon because, not meaning to offend anyone, but I’ve never really considered console-gamers to be the most patient people when a product doesn’t work or needs more stuff to make it work. Hence why they aren’t PC gamers who spend hours tinkering with their machines to not only work, but work better than the average machine.

Second, games released through the Early Access program (I want to call it the EA program, but that would be misleading and potentially confusing) are put onto Steam if varying degrees of completion. By that, I mean we’ve seen games that are nearly done to games that look like they’re on their very first Alpha-Build or earlier. And while that’s kind of the point, most games aren’t really all too playable until you get into more of a “Beta” level build where most of the mechanics and the most crucial elements to the game are all there so you can do MOST of the things that have been intended for at least the main portion of the game. This causes some players to leave and never come back before the game is finished simply because they run out of interesting things to do. And that just kills the support and possibly the drive of the indie devs to want to finish the project… oh… and this leads me to…

Third, the Early Access Indie Devs themselves. I know I’m over generalizing with my next statement, so, just to be clear, what I say doesn’t apply to 100% of the indie devs on Steam. That being said, there are still plenty of less-than-reputable indie devs on Steam who release crappy broken games, some with assets stolen from other games or products, and no matter how broken it is, they’ll basically refuse to do anything about it. If you criticize it, you get banned from their game’s support page/forum. Again, this isn’t true of all indie devs on Steam, but there’s an alarming number of these crooks out there and those who aren’t as experienced or savvy with what to look out for will get robbed blind by these people before they even know what hit them.

And some of these devs aren’t even doing these bad things to be bad. Some just up and disappear without a word to their fans who support their work. Some just quit because they can’t handle the pressure or workload. And while it’s not good to just up and quit on a project, I can certainly understand the pressure involved in making a game and trying to keep the fans happy while it’s in development and they’re playing it. Markus Persson (Notch) sold Minecraft to Microsoft for that very reason, because he couldn’t handle being the name, face, and answer to all of Minecraft’s problems. Or more like he was just tired of dealing with it and all the negativity that surrounded the role he was in. In a post GamersGate world, I can totally understand that mentality. And while I’m certainly not happy to see it, if one cannot handle the work, they’re well within their right to quit. Though a refund would be nice in the case of certain games (*cough*Stomping Land*cough*).

And it’s this last point I think that needs to be address first and foremost before the other pieces can even begin to start working. Steam needs to start holding these indie devs accountable for the work they say they’re going to do. If hundreds of people pay a person money for a product and promised on several features that never get delivered, a refund is something they deserve if they won’t get the full product. But Steam should, for the most part, just have stricter rules in regards to how far along an Early Access game must be to get released. It should request the game already have a following of a certain number of consumers before release. And it should request weekly (or monthly) dev time to be submitted so they know the devs are doing what they were paid to do.

The problem with all this is all these rules need to be enforced. And that enforcement costs Valve manpower and lots of money to make happen. They’d probably have to hire an entire strike force just to have people monitoring all this information and regulating the Early Access program to avoid any more problems like these. And this isn’t even discussing the broken messes that have come from Steam Greenlight (a great concept as well, but so much garbage has been coming out of there from, again, shitty devs taking advantage of a near-lawless system).

The only other idea I can think of is to have Let’s Players enforce these broken Early Access (and Greenlight) games. They put up the risk and play the game to show if it really is bad or if it’s worth your money. And while they have to spend a little to do so, they make money from their ad revenue and the views they for those videos. As such, it balances out for them where it wouldn’t for the average consumer. And it should be that any Let’s Plays done by notable Let’s Players (Two Best Friends, RoosterTeeth, Jim Sterling, Game Grumps, etc) are immediately visible on the game’s store page. You want to see this game in action without the smoke and mirrors? Click a link over here to see a Squirt Play or a Rage Quit or a TBFP video.

And that wouldn’t even be too difficult for Steam to implement on their end. Just have the game’s store page automatically search for YouTube (or Twitch) videos that are tagged with the game’s name and tagged as a Let’s Play or even as a review. The smart thing to do would to then arrange it so that these Let’s Players are protected by Steam from the developers so the less scrupulous ones don’t start lashing out and try to throw out false copyright claims for their broken pieces of shit as a response for a bad Let’s Play for review.

I think we're a long ways off from having a perfect system in place to figure this out. But it won't change unless we start putting some genuine effort into policing these indie games to sort out the broken, unfiinished messes so that less aware consumers don't get ripped-off blind for wanting to support a product that had promise or had a genuinely good idea behind it. 

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