What is the appeal of Early Access?

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Early Access has been for a while and I still can't for the life of me to understand the appeal. At most I can get the charm of seeing the game develop as time goes on, maybe even interacting with the developer (though personally I think it can only ruin games). But besides it, the main issue for me is that you are playing a lesser version of the final product and ruin the experience for yourself. This also assumes the final product ever comes out and is actually good, you can invest time playing EA that will never come out, or just as likely, get every good idea squandered due to the dev listening to discord trannies.

 

[Smug Cat]

I want to play bideo game now.

Also, quality of early access games varies WILDLY. I have like 400 hours in a game that's technically still "early access," but if you sold it to me as a complete game I'd be totally happy with the purchase.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

the main issue for me is that you are playing a lesser version of the final product and ruin the experience for yourself. This also assumes the final product ever comes out and is actually good,

In other words, you're essentially a beta-tester, doing it for free.

To be fair, that's with any new game and console these days considering how god-awful they are programmed/designed, but with Early-Access, it's more blatant because it's actually telling you "this product is shit on purpose".

 

[You're MDNWU]

You're paying to be a beta tester and if you're streaming or have a half-assed gaming channel, you get videos out sooner, trying to beat that rush.

Granted, companies used to just allow free/open betas or even closed betas, but that doesn't appear to be a thing anymore now that people just can't wait.

Also guarantees funding for the company.

 

[Wild at Heart]

Devs have seen other devs release a half finished game early and make millions of dollars.

Basically you don't have to finish your job and you get paid in advance. You can choose to finish the game out of honor or quietly abandon it. There is rarely a large backlash for abandoning your game because you can release small patches for decades. Why finish your game when you've looked at the research and realized everyone who was going to buy your game already has? Are you going to use years worth of time and money to secure 10% more profits? It's an inherently broken system and I kind of hate it.

My favorite game Project Zomboid is in this state right now. Luckily the build of the game that's existed for years is very fun and enough for me.

 

[BPD Gunt Rider]

If it's a game you know you're going to invest lots of time in, why not pay for all the bells and whistles? Those 3 early days can be 20+ hours which you can spin into being worth it, even if you know you're a guinea pig beta tester trudging through issues.

There does come a line where you're finally "fuck this", which I came to with EA years ago.

 

[A Very Big Fish]

I think the only Early Access game I own is Palworld, and I didn't mind because it had enough stuff to do that I felt like it was worth the purchase. I view everything else added as a free update. And honestly, I mostly bought it for the novelty of it being Pokemon: With Guns.

Why people buy games that are way closer to the unfinished end of the scale is beyond me.

 

[ratnoid]

Watching the game develop, really. Some people are interested in that kind of thing, especially those who want to get into game development. It's honestly pretty niche, as it's essentially a system for beta versions on Steam. I had a more involved Early Access experience only when it was first introduced on Steam, with two of the best examples being Grim Dawn and Divinity Original Sin 2. Both had particularly interesting Early Access stages. Grim Dawn featured dev blogs where the developers discussed their decisions in detail. DOS2 had its entire story rewritten, systems changed, designs changed. It was fun watching it happen.

But that's how it used to be. Now it is just a prepurchase bonus and I don't think most of devs even put much thought into it.

 

[Flopper]

You're paying to be a beta tester and if you're streaming or have a half-assed gaming channel, you get videos out sooner, trying to beat that rush.

Granted, companies used to just allow free/open betas or even closed betas, but that doesn't appear to be a thing anymore now that people just can't wait.

Also guarantees funding for the company.

Pretty much this; companies can use the feedback as they develop the game so they release their 1.0 in a better state. A lot of games that absolute ages to leave EA, some have remained in EA for absolutely ages. It could be interpreted as a psychological tactic by releasing essentially a finished game in EA and just keep updating it, players are more inclined to forgive bugs and missing features if they see the EA label.

 

[StacticShock]

not a single one of you niggers mentioned steam greenlight, which was the one that was killed to be replaced by early access...
shame on you.

quality of early access games varies WILDLY. I have like 400 hours in a game that's technically still "early access," but if you sold it to me as a complete game I'd be totally happy with the purchase.

100% because of the bunch of fucking niggers that keep trying to dictate what direction devs should go, i had this game in my sights that was a bit of early access but instantly dipped once i saw there was already a cadre of faggots dictating shit, not only that but they were also part of the mod cabal for a game that had no workshop support and wasn't planning on having any, possibly because of these fucking faggots.

 

[August Levasseur]

From a gamer perspective, you don't have to wait for a game to fully release before playing it, and you usually don't have to pay as much as if you bought it once it fully releases.
From a dev perspective, you get to make money while the game is still in development, build a community before completing the game (this includes a lot of free marketing), and get community feedback on what features/mechanics gamers actually like/want vs ones they hate.

 

[Jace on ice]

Early access games tend to be in the 20 dollar range so if you support it from the beginning you get a 60 or 70 dollar game for $20.

This of course only applies of the game is actually eventually finished and not abandoned or a straight up scam. This probably applies to only about a fourth of EA games.

 

[David Brown]

I consider most AAA titles early access since they all have day one patches to fix bugs and shit, and games like Cyberpunk 2077 were almost unplayable piles of shit that required months of work to fix up into a respectable state. They might be "content complete" but they sure as hell aren't finished.

 

[Cat tit bingo]

The appeal is Minecraft. The Minecrafts beta was absurdly popular and worked because the core frame work of the game was around 95% complete and extremly stable while updates where just largely adding more shit to a game that felt basically done, to the point many people perfer the older stripped down versions and still play it. This model is one of the only ways for for an early access game to work since without a strong, fun core gameplay base why even play. Plenty of early access game would be better off just releasing and having regular content updates like most games, it's not even that uncommon for full games to completely overhaul there systems years after there official release.
Minecraft drastically helped pushed the content update style games have nowadays that was only used by a relatively small amount of pc games like tf2 and dwarf fortress. Now that it's here early access just feels arbitrary since if it's not put together enough to be fun why let me play it and if it is solid enough for me to play just release it to update it later.

 

[Calandrino]

A lot of gamers like the idea of getting their hands on something before it's fully developed, so they can groom it into whatever form they want

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

Early Access has been for a while and I still can't for the life of me to understand the appeal.

Even though I couldn’t get into V Rising, i still appreciated how much that game improved during Early Access. Might be the best example of a EA game.

I did like how my much info you got on a game like Diablo 4 during development. Really didn’t like it but enjoyed the transparency.

 

[Nitro!]

It's getting in "on the ground floor" for cheap and with no effort. Exclusivity. The game is an afterthought because they're all procgen Souls-like card builder survival horror roguelikes that will totally be worth buying in the next update.

 

[Billy the Adult]

For buying early access, there has been quite a few times where there's a price hike when a game leaves early access.

For playing, its either impatience, wanting to see the process, or being a beta tester. As others said, early access varies wildly, from minor features missing, to the game being super buggy, or half the game missing.

Doesn't help that most games are in perpetual early access, with plenty post-release patches and even content updates. MH:Wilds feels much like early access in all but name right now. At least early access is honest.

 

[Give Them Enough Rope]

The appeal of Early Access is paying for a game before its price hikes up, and then praying it is finished and good.

 

[Fenrir Ratatoskr]

It depends on how picky you are. Half the games I have hundreds of hours on are early access. Dwarf fortress, Project Zomboid, Rimworld, Noita, Satisfactory, Prison Architect, Soviet, Timberborn, Parkitect, Minecraft, Nostalgia, Ostriv, Terraria, Rust, Garry's mod, Squad, etc.
Most of the best games ever made rarely start off perfect, and get better with playtesting.
There is only three games in my entire library that were non-EA, and that I have played hundreds of hours; Total War warhammer 2/3, MGSV, and Hitman 1/2/3.
The difficulty with EA is how committed the dev is to a good idea, and whether the dev is actual honest. I have only been burned bad a few times with early access, and that was with Starbound and spacebase DF9.