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Do you buy Early Access games?

How likely are you to buy an Early Access game?


  • Total voters
    130
  • Poll closed .

Markman

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I did buy a few EA games.
Blackguards, this one was best EA of em all, 99% complete and was in EA for like 2 months or so, got some feedback and released the game.
Kerbal Space Program, this one is meh,EA for eternity, dont know if its ever gonna be released.
Divinity: OS, this one was released a bit too early at EA release but finished product is really well done.
Age of Decadence, waiting for Thursday, didnt even activate my Steam key yet.
Underrail, awesome but will wait for full release, still got alot content coming to it.

There's some more like Edge of Space and other crap that people are releasing in bundles that I dont bother playing or activating. One thing I had on my radar is Wasteland 2 but after a meh reception on Codex I'll wait for the full release instead.
 

Telengard

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Other. I've unintentionally ended up with a couple of EA titles due to bundles that I wasn't getting for the EA games. But as a rule, no EA for me. I've played enough never-finished EA from the likes of Atari, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts to last me a lifetime.

And now that Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft are all looking at joining in the EA party, well, blech. Inevitable, though, with all that free money for unfinished product floating around. Not supporting that downhill road ever.
 

BLOBERT

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BROS MOST OF THE STUFF IS FROMSF BUNDFLES

I THINK I HAVE GOTTN TOO OTHERFS MOSTLY STUFF I PLAYED THE SHIT OUT OF THE DEMO
 
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Ulminati

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I get a few early access games (actually, I mostly get them from kickstarters). If it's a sandbox game like Kerbal Space Program or a game that's meant to be played multiple times without caring too much about story (like Faster Than Light), I'll play it before release. Else I won't touch it until it's done.
 

Dr Tomo

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Early Access games now allow studios and developers to get lazy and keep their products almost in a perpetual alpha or beta. It is a neat concept that Valve has once again through idiocy screwed up by not ensuring QA and allowing dev's to sell their game at full price and abandon once they get bored.

In my time, beta testers were paid.

Well times have changed, now you have to pay to have the privilege to test games and real soon help develop them for pennies on the dollar (EQ Landmark & SOE station market).
 

Blaine

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The vast majority of the time, I don't purchase early access to indie/quasi-indie games. It's a worrying trend in some ways, for reasons others have touched on. Most notably, many "early access" games are basically demos. Fuck that. Demos should be free, and that includes Wasteland 2 et al. It's not about the money for me, either. I'm not stingy.

Occasionally I will purchase early access, typically to multiplayer games (like 7 Days to Die, a zombie survival Minecraft-like my brother-in-law had been playing), or a singleplayer game that's almost finished. I'm not buying early access to games in alpha or early beta anymore.

The biggest exception I've ever made was for Grim Dawn, the spiritual successor to Titan's Quest. They had a (belated) Kickstarter, though. Kickstarters are a mite different from Early Access.

I NEVER purchase early access for AAA games, nor do I pre-order them, end of story. The sole exception to this was Might & Magic X, which really wasn't a full-budget AAA game, and also taught me a lesson about not buying early access to AAA games. It was a paid demo of the intro, from a fucking AAA studio. Fuck that.

Demo first, pay for the game after. These days, some studios want to hold the demo hostage and make sure you've essentially pre-ordered from them before you get to play it. That's pure decline.
 
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Case-by-case basis, so first option. They're really nowhere near standardized enough for me to have a general policy (they range from typical feature-complete betas to "well, it certainly is a videogame, alright")
 

Infinitron

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I'm a little confused by how so many people on a forum of extreme genre fans fail to see the basic appeal of Early Access.

It's pretty simple - when people are invested in the outcome of something, they want to see how it's turning out.
 

Blaine

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I'm a little confused by how so many people on a forum of extreme genre fans fail to see the basic appeal of Early Access.

I saw the appeal, and in a perfect world (in which development continues apace and every game turns out swell), Early Access would be great.

AAA games are right out for reasons that should be fairly obvious.

As for indie games, the developers can fuck off at any time, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. Case in point: Chucklefish, developers of Starbound, have accomplished next to nothing of substance since the beta became available in November 2013. They also threw tantrums on social media/their forums (maybe both, forget which) when people wouldn't stop bugging them to finish the game. I bought early access to a game called Starforge that they've barely done fuck-all with.

It's like when some of these people get more than $10 in their pocket, their self-discipline evaporates.

While crowdfunding and early access may help indies to get funding they otherwise wouldn't, I don't actually want them to have any money at all unless 1.) the game gets finished and 2.) it isn't shit.
 

Konjad

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I buy Early Access to support developers only if I am sure I can trust the developers they will try their best to work on their project and the game seems very interesting and the game has a playable demo that is fun.

This is why I only bought one E-A game (don't use EA acronym guys, it's a bit confusing!).
 

Stokowski

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I once bought an Early Access game.

Never again.

Sorry, Aterdux, 'cause you seem like decent folk who have their shit together and look like delivering a good game, but you will only ever get my bucks for the final, finished product.
 

JarlFrank

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Nope, I like to play finished games because I hate being absorbed in the game, playing... and then hitting the point where it won't go on because the content has not been finished yet. Even worse is when the full version is not savegame compatible with the beta so I'll have to start over again from scratch.

I only play when the game has been fully released.
 

Telengard

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I saw the appeal, and in a perfect world (in which development continues apace and every game turns out swell), Early Access would be great.

AAA games are right out for reasons that should be fairly obvious.

As for indie games, the developers can fuck off at any time, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. Case in point: Chucklefish, developers of Starbound, have accomplished next to nothing of substance since the beta became available in November 2013. They also threw tantrums on social media/their forums (maybe both, forget which) when people wouldn't stop bugging them to finish the game. I bought early access to a game called Starforge that they've barely done fuck-all with.

It's like when some of these people get more than $10 in their pocket, their self-discipline evaporates.

While crowdfunding and early access may help indies to get funding they otherwise wouldn't, I don't actually want them to have any money at all unless 1.) the game gets finished and 2.) it isn't shit.
In addition to the above, there's also an incentives issues involved here - on the developers' side. A developer only gets paid by you once, and they can be paid after they finished or they can be paid early before they finished. If they get paid only after they finished, then they have an incentive to finish, because they don't get paid until and unless they do. Pay them early, though, and that incentive vanishes, since they already have your money, and then they will get nothing at the end for any more work they choose to put in to finish. The only incentive then left for them to finish is pride in their work.

Get enough Early Access funds, and the monetary drive to finish evaporates like an early morning mist.

The more traditional loan-style development side-steps this issue by driving developers to pay back the loan. Early Access funds, though, they're straight retail payment in advance of the retail sale.

And here we're not even getting into the other many issues, such as EA buyers being invested in the product by paying for it and getting "exclusive" access to devs, and are thus all poised to give early positive reviews. Or driving EA people to talk about the game on social media, thus having them also become unpaid marketers as they are driven to "Share" about the game, but only in a positive way directed by the game's marketers using the materials given to them by those marketers. And other icky stuff.
 

Infinitron

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And here we're not even getting into the other many issues, such as EA buyers being invested in the product by paying for it and getting "exclusive" access to devs, and are thus all poised to give early positive reviews. Or driving EA people to talk about the game on social media, thus having them also become unpaid marketers as they are driven to "Share" about the game, but only in a positive way directed by the game's marketers using the materials given to them by those marketers. And other icky stuff.

You do realize this is also how Kickstarter games market themselves, and is the reason why D:OS sold so well.

Besides, if somebody bought a game on Early Access, they were already a fan to begin with. Fanboys exist, it's just part of the territory.
 

tuluse

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In addition to the above, there's also an incentives issues involved here - on the developers' side. A developer only gets paid by you once, and they can be paid after they finished or they can be paid early before they finished. If they get paid only after they finished, then they have an incentive to finish, because they don't get paid until and unless they do. Pay them early, though, and that incentive vanishes, since they already have your money, and then they will get nothing at the end for any more work they choose to put in to finish. The only incentive then left for them to finish is pride in their work.

Get enough Early Access funds, and the monetary drive to finish evaporates like an early morning mist.

The more traditional loan-style development side-steps this issue by driving developers to pay back the loan. Early Access funds, though, they're straight retail payment in advance of the retail sale.

And here we're not even getting into the other many issues, such as EA buyers being invested in the product by paying for it and getting "exclusive" access to devs, and are thus all poised to give early positive reviews. Or driving EA people to talk about the game on social media, thus having them also become unpaid marketers as they are driven to "Share" about the game, but only in a positive way directed by the game's marketers using the materials given to them by those marketers. And other icky stuff.
The financial incentive is making a better game so more people want to buy it.

Ask Larian how that went.
 

Telengard

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Yes, I do realize that's how Kickstarter works. Complete with marketing packages sent to backers during the campaign, including but not limited to share pages, quotables, and gift incentives. It's all so lovely, how they get people to do free work for them.

And one may earn more by completing the game, and with an established dev such as Larian, that is definitely the case. With an indie, there is no such guarantee. And as time and troubles mount, the unknown-maybe-sales of the future can end up seeming less and less real and important than doing something, anything else right now.
 

Dr Tomo

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I'm a little confused by how so many people on a forum of extreme genre fans fail to see the basic appeal of Early Access.

It's pretty simple - when people are invested in the outcome of something, they want to see how it's turning out.

Nah, I am nowhere near the extreme as I play both incline/decline games of all genres and only hang out here since going to Neogaf would be a instant ban, there is no tolerance for pc elitism. As for you second point, when they rage and feeling betrayed with the hate flowing through them after a dev runs with their money, I get a hard on as it happens often with EA and KS games and I love the people's lamentation on the betrayal. But Telengrad has a point, there is not much incentive and Valve is incompetent and basically collects the money, so we are seeing many dev's basically end development or allow incompetence. Already seen many Early Access games either halt development, change entire game design decisions half way through that angered many backers (Nether), and thanks to incompetence from all the money they keep redoing code or reworks until it become unprofitable and which they just halt development or claim it is released.

Also the fanboys are becoming fewer and fewer as people are becoming jaded quite fast with all the news of studios abusing the system. So in the end we will eventually end up back to what it was, studios actually pushing a game out in a timely manner just like it was before to make most of their money. So unless Valve decides to actually monitor EA type games eventually a small number will participate unless there is a recognizable name attached to the project (Fargo, Larian, and etc.).
 

DramaticPopcorn

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Knowing full well that in indie world there's almost never such thing as a polished full release, I wait until the game has, at the very least, all of its most promising features implemented.
 

Zed

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I picked two options.

I buy the ones I like but I don't play them until release
and
I wait until release and beyond until the game is polished

EA works like a pre-order in most (all?) cases, so if the price is right and the game looks good, I might buy a game on EA.
But I don't play EA games. Not after Wasteland 2 and D:OS. I will not pay to beta-test.
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I've bought some Early Access games.

Grim Dawn
I bought this because I like Titan Quest.

Mercenary Kings
I regret this one. I enjoyed Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Played it in 4 player co-op and had a blast. Mercenary Kings is a huge disappointment.

Stealth Inc.
It's cool to see how this game develops. Bought this because I liked Shank and Mark of the Ninja.

Wasteland 2
I'm a Kickstarter backer but thought I'd buy the EA version to support the devs and give my KS backer codes to friends.

All other EA games I can think of I have gotten through backing games on Kickstarter.
 

Blaine

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Here's an example of what can happen:

778089ea22.png
 
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Never. No early access, no betas. There are so many actually finished games I still want to play that bothering with that stuff would be downright idiotic in my opinion. Further reinforced by the fact that I did let curiosity take the upper hand and torrented early access version of new Carmageddon only to immediately regret it. Looks like crap, runs like crap, even pedestrian ragdolls are worse than in Carma 2. Has a long way to go and still might end up being a good game, so why spoil it with such a subpar version? Despite whatever benefit poor devs might get from people participating in early access I just can't be arsed to be a part of it personally.
 

Zewp

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I buy them from time to time, mostly after I've seen several proper updates get pushed out. I don't want to buy shit that gets a small bugfix or maybe a UI change every 3 months.

There are many examples of Early Access games being done right, but the overwhelming majority of them are not.
 

sea

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Only through Kickstarter, and Underrail because that game is shaping up to be awesome (just wanted to kick some money their way, I'll wait for final).
 

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