General Discussions

Personally I've bought a couple of early access games, and before you buy they tell you more than once that this is early ALPHA (not even beta) and that you shouldn't buy if you are not ready for lots of bugs.

Knowing that, I have to say that some early access games have more going for them than Triple A titles released by major publishers.
I cant even state how many times I've bought "finished" games, only to see them with 0 day patches that fix critical issues. In many cases these issues continue for weeks before they are fixed.

Or this insane concept of 0 day DLC. Not items that you download, but items included on the actual DVD of the game (meaning that the while the team was in the middle of developing the game, they managed to find the time to produce "extra content" and ask for more money for it). This typically on a 60$ title.

I can honestly say that over 80% of the games I have bought would have been non-purchases if I managed to play the demo in them. Which is why a majority of the big publishers have stopped all demos.

Early access at the very least is honest about the product they are sharing.
Is it ok for someone to not deliver, ofc not. However, games are not just pieces of art. They are business projects (realistically speaking).
Businesses go bankrupt every day. You don't find people saying "we need to stop investing all together".

I think early access is a step in the right direction, since it removes the pressure of those publishers (ala EA), who only care about the money and not the quality of the game they are releasing.

The system needs to be further tweaked to allow some kind of refund in the event the project goes under (similar to how bankruptcy works; even though its not a perfect system its better than nothing).

Also, a bit of early reviews never hurt any game (unless they were publicizing wrong info about the game).

PS: that was a mouthful.

Early access games are like buying a car without wheels,sure it starts and makes all the right noises but its not going anywhere.

Far to many early access games, i never play them when the game is released in full then it gets my attention and not before,i do like to see new trailors for games, my favorite studio is Bethesda.

I have purchased 5 or 6 early access games, but after the first the only reason I have done so is because they were on a crazy sale on steam. I then waited for the full release before I put in more than an hour of my time on each. Still a gamble, but any pre-order is.

I personally do not like paying money to be someone's beta tester. But I do understand that others willing to do so, may well improve gaming for the rest of us.

Tricky one.

I myself have purchased four (4) early access games from steam
Of these, the two best are Kerbal Space Program and Planetary Annihilation
Some early access titles are not really up to snuff
I will admit, the earliest releases of Planetary Annihilation were not great
But more recent updates made the game better
Early access doesn't really ruin the games industry
Every games company (even Ubisoft and Rockstar) started out being unknown entities
Early access gives games designers a chance to get their product out there before it is finished and in some cases ask the players what they can improve
Some titles may be poor attempts to break into the games industry
But it is unfair to tar all attempts with the same brush
Final judgement depends on individual players
What i might call poor, someone else might think is awesome, and vice versa

Depends on the developer, I would never ever pre-order a game from Ubisoft.

As harsh as that may sound, i have to say i agree completely With you on that! THIS is afterall a growing industry, loads of Money and time invested init! Companies should have to work hard for the Money, as most others. I have bought early Access Products that wont ever be finished because the devs just don't care - or having dev's that are completely out of line when it comes to marketing, immature on that stage i suppose.

Earning should never be easy, it should be hard and worthwhile!

this is 100% truth. I find that early access is what you use if your a known developer like Bohemia Interactive and Techland. I say techland because they will soon be sending hellraid up on early access and its been in development since 4 months after the first Dead island came out.

One company who i feel should of been using Early Access is Egosoft, the developers of the X series space games. We all know how bugged out and terrible rebirth was at release, but they have been continuing to fix it and update it and it will be a year this november since it was released.

If egosoft had instead followed the Lead of Bohemia Interactive, i feel that the current 2.51 version of the game would of instead been 1.0 release candiate