Early Access - The Problem with Unfinished Games - Extra Credits

So, if you've spent any time browsing Steam in recent months, you've probably noticed that it's been somewhat flooded with early access games. At first, there was some novelty to it, but now it seems to be the mode de jour for every other game hitting Steam. So, let's talk about that. On one hand, I think early access is great. It allows small developers to get access to a large pool of testers, and it gives underfunded developers a way to bring in the money they need to finish their games. Make no mistake, those are both very, very big plusses. I just wish they didn't come with so many very big minuses as well. The first obvious problem with this system faces the consumer. Early access games are strictly caveat emptor. There's no guarantee that these games will ever be completed. In fact, with the huge number of them I've seen hitting Steam lately, I'd wager a fair amount of them won't ever get a full release. And there's no system in place to handle this. There's no way they can return your money if the product is never delivered. I mean, most of the time the devs spent that money trying to deliver it. But, it's never a good feeling to get notified that the game you paid for is never actually going to be completed, if you even get

notified at all. There's also no baseline for what state a game has to be in in order to be considered early access. Some of the games I've played in early access could easily be labeled a complete game as is. Others are in such a state that they're barely playable. And while many of you may have long ago embraced digital distribution as a whole, the core game consumer base is just beginning to accept digital distribution en masse. Steam grew and thrived on having its releases be more convenient, easier to install, and more reliable than their retail counterparts. I'm kind of worried what having buggy and potentially unshipable experiences littering the storefront is going to do to new users' confidence in Steam as a platform. Now, those are some fairly troubling consumer-facing problems, but I don't think they're even the worst of it. I think early access actually poses an even larger quandary for developers. First up is the problem of retention. The early adopters who are willing to jump into the game when it's incomplete and unfinished are usually the people who are the most excited about the product. These are the people who are totally pumped by the idea of what this game has to offer, and they'll go around telling everybody how awesome it's going to be. These are your evangelists. These are the people who are going to go convince all their friends to buy the

game, too. But, many of these people don't end up sticking around all the way to launch. I mean, how many times have you played an early access game for a few weeks and then forgotten about it when something new came out to occupy your time? Or how many times have you said, "Man, that was fun. I'm going to come back and play more of this when it's actually released." and then never did? If I asked you right now how many of the games you picked up as early access have been officially released since you bought them, would you even know for sure? I sure don't know. Many of the devs I've talked to have grave concerns about the fact that they end up losing a lot of what would normally be their hardest core community before their game even comes out, which means fewer people who are putting together guilds and creating fan sites and teaching noobs how to play. And if the hardest of the hardcore are fairly likely to drop off in the 6 months between when something goes up for early access and when it actually launches, how much more likely are the rest of the people who picked up the early access version on a lark to completely forget about it well before launch? This segments your community, and if you're trying to do anything with multiplayer, that can be disastrous for a small developer. Normally, on your launch week, your multiplayer servers are slammed with people who want to try it

out. But, with an extended launch, your servers will just be a constant ghost town at all hours as people wander in and wander out looking for a game and then just giving up. All because you haven't been able to focus your community at any point into the critical mass you need to create a vibrant multiplayer experience, which leads to the issue of poor word of mouth. Even though every early access game comes with a clear disclaimer that the game is incomplete and doesn't represent the final product, it's hard for people to really internalize that. James was recently at a dinner with some devs who were lamenting the fact that on forums they already found people making comments like, "Eh, I played that. It was only okay." when they had only seen a bare-bones version of the game with barely any of the features yet implemented. Worse still, a lot of those people aren't going to go back and reassess the game when it hits full release. After all, they feel like they played it already. So, when someone mentions it on a forum or a friend asks them about it, what are they going to say? "Eh, I played it. It was only okay." For smaller titles, this type of word of mouth can be devastating. Not only does it anchor expectations where you don't want them, but it lowers the amount of general hype around the game and therefore the likelihood of it getting more press or publisher attention. In a

time where there are floods of games coming out every month, you can't afford to have people judge your game in some half-finished state. But this mushy release date issue also leads to larger problems with press and hype. By not having a single day that you can focus all your media efforts on, and with members of the press hearing about your game off and on for months, it makes it much harder to get this sort of attention you desperately need when you finally do launch your game. So overall, as much as I love the idea of having a system to help devs get testers and supplemental revenue to finish their games, I'm worried that in the end, unless you have a stellar early access experience to present to people, the early access program will cost developers sales and visibility, and may make consumers dismiss games they might have loved if they'd just waited to experience it as a full release. Approach with caution. Whether you're a dev or a player, for all it's good, early access can backfire on you very easily. See you next week.