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Decline Kickstarter & Steam Early Access: A beginning of the true decline?

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Perhaps that I'm being paranoid but it feels to me that via keywords such as "community input", "early beta access", "episodic delivery" there is a generalization of a model by "old-school" PC kickstarted projects where you in fact buy the rights to a work in progress, at the risk of being totally burned-out on a game when it finally reaches its final state (if it reaches it). I fear that soon only huge console-catering companies such as Bethesda or Bioware will deliver a final PC product (even if bugged) on a given date. For now, be it Grimoire, MMX, Paper Sorcerer, AOD, Eisenwald, as good as they can be, it's always super demo 1.3 of 2/3 of the game, not feature-complete, and I fear that it becomes the norm (not even talking about the WTF model of Deathfire).

I hope that at least Inxile and Obsidian will stick to their plan: an early beta and then the final product, no patch 3.1 for the beta 2.1 nonsense.
 

Crooked Bee

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So, preorder except with also being able to play the alpha/beta if you wish to do so (which you can choose not to do) = a beginning of the true decline?
 

Roguey

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Getting suckers to pay you to playtest your game is win-win for the developer. Normally they'd have to pay people an hourly wage to do that.

I don't know why you're mentioning inXile. Their beta is a chunk of the game, they're going to keep updating it, and I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually make it an early-access title once the backers have had sufficient time to get their extra money's worth.
 

sser

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Early access stuff is more like 'preorder to get into beta!' The worth of such a thing is in the eye of the beholder, though I think Haba made a good point on this topic when he said you only get to truly experience a game for the 'first time' once.

The incomplete games irks me and has irked me for years. Really, there's no way around it or the DLC trojan horse it rode in on. Even console games are jumping on the ship with the growing number of gamers being 'online'. I used to avoid any game that had DLC, but I can't even do that since they all have DLC these days. Now I just try and avoid games that withhold features in their DLC. For example, Space Hulk has basic gameplay mechanics saved in their DLC instead of being in the base game. That's obviously all kinds of fuckery and the developers can frankly suck on a lemon.
 

Metro

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Early access stuff on Steam tends to get discounted up to 50% off (sometimes more) before actual 'release.' Allows me to leech off of you 100% price KS backers.:smug:
 

SophosTheWise

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I don't have a problem with Backer Betas. A Backer Beta is, while of course still a playtest-in-disguise, at least something exclusive that not everybody gets. I understand that the Project Eternity Backer Beta, for instance, is probably going to be a small demo version that is not taken out of the unfinished game, but just a beta module or something similar. That I can live with.

The early access version, the alpha version however is bullshit. It's simply selling an unfinished product to everyone. It's especially vile because those games also get advertised on Steam on the front page even though they're not finished products. Some of those games are even downright unplayable or so incomplete that it's hard to believe that anyone lets those products be advertised and sold in their store.

While I love Eisenwald, it really doesn't have much content, there are loads of bugs, creepy translation errors and no sound. Same for Snow that, according to a friend of mine, has a 50% chance of not working upon every new start. I mean come on. Community feedback can be great but don't advertise it and don't demand money for it. Also, we know what can happen to a game, at any stage. Take Project Zomboid or Overgrowth for instance. They have been in development for ages and still, there's no guarantee that those games will ever be finished. Or, for a more AAA example - Duke Nukem Forever. Imagine if they'd put it on Early Access 10 years ago.

Early Access is just a way to generate money without having to take any responsibility for quality because "it's not a finished product". Saying "Yes, this is my finished game" takes a lot of guts and you'll be judged by this statement relative to the state of your game. I have not played a single Early Access title in which I have 100% trust.
 
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Metro

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Hah, Overgrowth devs made millions with Humble Bundle so they have zero incentive to actually finish the game. Wow, just checked Overgrowth forums... they started taking preorders October 2008. Over FIVE YEARS AGO! And it's still in Alpha. lololololololol.
 
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Invictus

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I don't mind; if you are a big fan of such game the early beta or superdemo is great for getting a hang of the game, trying out party combinations or character builds and seeing how diferent story C&C might work. Nobody is forcing you to do it and it is not only a way of helping the game you have already set your money down for with bug checking and balancing issues but also a very good way of getting a working product out there for everybody to try and possibly get a few more sales.
I have given Grimoire Superdemo links to a good chunk of my Goldbox playing highschool friend and everybody is looking foward to it because of the retro style of the demo.

What I really feel will be the defining deal with Kickstarter is that a few of its early projects like FTL and Shadowrun have been mostly ok but with the caveat of beign sort of budget titles...but in 2014 we are looking at least at the release of it "mainstream" projects like Wasteland 2. I don't think Saint Fargo will get0the benefit of the doubt and his game better provide at least a 50 hour experience with a very throughly tested game with balanced mechanics.
If Wasteland doesn't deliver I think the speculating bubble of kickstarter will finally be revelealed for whta ot will ultimetly become; an indie game style breeding ground with good ideas, limited marketability and limited budgets.
I sincerly hope the the bigger studios like InXile and Obsdian prove me wrong but I don't see how they can fullfill the expectations of their fanbases; just look at smudboy and his ilk they feel entitled because of their meassly $20 (which they probably earned working out of the trucker's glory hole) to make such fuzz.
It was the whole "it is your game and you decide" vibe that the devs have tacked on to their kickstarter campaigns that will come back and bite them in the ass
 
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DeepOcean

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Perhaps that I'm being paranoid but it feels to me that via keywords such as "community input", "early beta access", "episodic delivery" there is a generalization of a model by "old-school" PC kickstarted projects where you in fact buy the rights to a work in progress, at the risk of being totally burned-out on a game when it finally reaches its final state (if it reaches it). I fear that soon only huge console-catering companies such as Bethesda or Bioware will deliver a final PC product (even if bugged) on a given date. For now, be it Grimoire, MMX, Paper Sorcerer, AOD, Eisenwald, as good as they can be, it's always super demo 1.3 of 2/3 of the game, not feature-complete, and I fear that it becomes the norm (not even talking about the WTF model of Deathfire).

I hope that at least Inxile and Obsidian will stick to their plan: an early beta and then the final product, no patch 3.1 for the beta 2.1 nonsense.
Man, I didn't understood the point you are trying to make. The only thing I'm seeing is developers releasing betas, nothing out of ordinary. Earlier access is a big no, no to alot of steam users, if you keep your game forever in there, you risk losing alot potential sales and kickstarter funded games get alot more pressure to release the game complete at some point than Terraria or Zomboid or AoD and get alot more criticism about potential bugs. Many small companies are doing betas to off load the Q&A costs to some users that are willing to participate. If you aren't mislead and you know you are entering a beta, what is the problem?
 

Johannes

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As long as I eventually get to check the reviews of a finished product, and try/play that once it is out, I don't care if losers give the developers betatesting work while paying for it.
 
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The main problem with this kind of model is that the game is never quite finished and that the game itself becomes the interaction between developer and consumer. And then fuck people who just want to experience a game which is supposed to be a final product: you'll have to wait three years until we resolve with our community the issue of the leather armour being brown or green in beta 4.6.
 

Haba

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"Early access" can be extremely destructive to game development, in many different ways. The idea of selling something incomplete doesn't sit with me too well, mainly because of two reasons:

a.) Listening to early feedback is not always a good idea. See that one supposedly tactical cRPG as a good case example. Most gamers are dumbfuck idiots. If you listen to the crying pleas of your early customers (i.e. the people who lack the common sense and self control enough that they blindly purchase a game they are not the target group of...), chances are that the end result will be worthless.

b.) If you succeed early (i.e. you get a lot of steam achievement peons to buy the game blindly), chances are that the game will never be really finished. See Cortex Command and Overgrowth. Imagine if they didn't have the near infinite pool of pre-orders and early access to draw from?

For something relatively simple gameplay wise, early access can be a valid way to get things rolling. But for a complex product that is really the sum of it's parts rather than something that revolves around one gimmick (or gameplay functionality), "early access" can do more harm than good.
 

Lady_Error

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And that's why Guido Henkel is right about refusing to do Early Access and doing episodes instead. Still brings in the monetary flow much sooner (with the release of the first episode) and you can use that money to complete the rest of the game.
 
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It's like the Hollywood panels for blockbusters: would you prefer:
A) that Zoltron kicks the shit out of Mechadinosaur
B ) that Zoltron bows to his robot-dinosaur overlords and marry a sea-whale

Except that in Hollywood people get paid to utter their moronic opinion and that the movie, as retarded as it is, is already finished (in general the two endings have already been filmed).

But the way it's headed now video game designers are much more clever. Like William Burroughs said: "Heroin is the greatest drug to sell: you don't sell the drug to the consumer, you instead sell the consumer to the drug".
 

DalekFlay

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Just be like me and ignore every early access thing that exists until the game is done or damn near done. Not like we don't have enough old shit to keep us entertained until these suckers come out.
 
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The way I see it, PC gaming is heading down fast the Android or IOs market way: forever work in progress products being regularly updated until the hypothetical final product doesn't interest anyone anymore (aka the Minecraft model). Console gaming will remain the last bastion of 1.0 products before it goes completely online and falls into the same pits (it has already begun with the Xbox One totally uninteresting racing demo, don't remember the name and don't give a fuck).
At the same time, there'll be a lot of traffic on the developer's forums: "YOU DONT BUY A GAME YO, YOU BUY YOUR WAY INTO A TRUE GAME COMMUNITY YO".
 
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Self-Ejected

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Just be like me and ignore every early access thing that exists until the game is done or damn near done.

Exactly, this should be no problem for most veteran gamers. I can see however that most today's gamers are very impatient. So impatient that they rather play an unfinished game than wait for a final release. I mean look at all them buying on release day and preordering months before... no patience anymore. Faster, harder, scooter. Games are bought, digested and excreted. These people are responsible for the decline in the game industry. But they don't know. They never question their own behaviour.
 

Invictus

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Yeah they all want to be the cool kid to have the new iphone 5 but sorry I have the iphone 5s or whatever.
When I was working in advertising I found somehting out one day when we where at a volkswagen event; no matter how nice the TV add or how chummy the ladies who twirled arround the cars or the clever advertising campaign, nothing could compete with the experience itself. This was 10 years ago and now it is more true than ever; you can read all the previews and watch the gameplay videos but until you experience it you won't really know if you will like it...only the kickstarters enterprenours turned inton its head by giving the preview as a stopgap for an actual show of progress; since there are no publishers with deadlines that force them to actualy show the game exists this turned into a show to their investors of "yeah there it is now let me work on it for a little while longer boss"
 

made

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Just be like me and ignore every early access thing that exists until the game is done or damn near done.
Thing is, with games these days you never know when they are "done". Every single new release you're better off waiting until "a few patches fix the worst of it", "mods fix it", "the whole pack of planned DLCs that should have been in from the start have been released", "the inevitable enhanced edition". Pay 2 betatest is just the logical continuation.
 

shihonage

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Early access works well for a very specific kind of games, based on procedural levels and emergent gameplay. These things can be fun from the start, and then they just "grow".
 

Zetor

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You can't call yourself a tr00 roguelike player unless you played ADOM v0.9.9 gamma 13-15.

The decline must've started in 1999, or something.
 
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Yes, it works for roguelikes. But for full-fledged single-player RPGs with even the slightest kind of narration or C&Cs? Allow me to be much more cautious.
 

Hobo Elf

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So, preorder except with also being able to play the alpha/beta if you wish to do so (which you can choose not to do) = a beginning of the true decline?

Devs can do a bait & switch and you won't get refunded because you got something for what you paid for, even if it's a very broken and shitty something. I'm pretty sure Steam's policy allows you a refund on preorders if the game isn't delievered, so that will give you some security.
 

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