My problems with "Early Access" games like DayZ, Rust etc...

[Red Storm]

That doesn't change that I, as an "Early Accessor" am taking 100% of the risk. My only return is access to alpha and beta builds with the hopes the game will be released and sold at a higher price than I paid.

Well with "AAA" games, you take 100% of the risk in hoping that the "finished" game you're paying for is actually finished instead of a bug-ridden, DRM suffocating, poor performing mess of a port.

I would say there are more than a handful of popular games that should have been called Early Access judging by their release state i.e. X Rebirth.

I do think there's a big difference between most of these Early Access games and some of the games on Kickstarter. These Early Access games are already pledged to be completed, which is why I don't like that they're allowed to sell it in such an incomplete state. With Kickstarter games you're pledging money so that the game can actually have a chance to be made, a big difference.

 

[Lonyo]

That doesn't change that I, as an "Early Accessor" am taking 100% of the risk. My only return is access to alpha and beta builds with the hopes the game will be released and sold at a higher price than I paid.

No, it doesn't change that you are taking a risk. But it does change the amount of risk you are taking, because the price is lower.
Taking 100% of risk and paying $50 is a different proposition to taking 100% of the risk and paying only $30.

The risk gets transferred, and you get a price reduction in exchange. That was my point... it's not like they are making you take the risk AND pay the same amount of money. It's a two way deal.

 

[videogames101]

if you don't like EA don't pay for it

why does this thread exist

 

[Doppel]

There is still motivation.

However, I think this crowd-sourcing stuff for games has gone overboard. Once enough people are burned by paying for abject garbage, it will get toned down a bit. At least with something like kickstarter you're in theory paying for a finished product.

Having dealt with enough buggy software in my life I cannot imagine why anybody is PAYING to test a game. Pay for alpha? Really? You guys are half insane, seriously. Have some patience and wait until the game is more than a buggy piece of crap.

I get purbeast's point about paying $30 now and you get access to the full thing that may later be $60, but it is a significant risk. I'd rather let that $60 game get released, reviewed, and then drop down to $30 and then buy it. You don't get the finished game at release, but you don't pay $30 for some alpha that turns to crap.

 

[Father Torque]

I will laugh if they charge $50 for DayZ

I hope you're wearing a diaper when it hits retail.Its most likely going to be $59.99.

 

[futurefields]

Thats dumb, the game is honestly only worth 20 bucks...

 

[NickelPlate]

I guess it all boils down to whether or not you like something well enough to take a risk into funding its development. Personally I don't. I'd rather risk my money on something with real return and ownership stake. And playing an early access title to me is like buying a novel before it's finished and telling the author what content you want and how you want it to end.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Agreed I'd be all over Day Z for $15 maybe $20. I liked the mod however it never really ran right and never got fixed. This is fine for a mod but not for a game purchase. Currently I fear Day Z stand alone will have the same fate.

 

[greenhawk]

The problem I have with this kind of funding (and crowd funding in general) is that the consumers are taking near 100% of the risk.

My issue with the funding is not how it works, it is how it is portrayed to people who, by definition, are investers, not customers. If people where not miss lead into thinking they are customers or such then there would not be as many issues.

The people looking for crowd funding are also partly to blame as they present the project in "buy now" terms instead of the correct approach of "helping us improve".

With offers of "buying now for early access" and still paying the same amount as if someone comes along in a year does not give the invester any true incentive to join the project. Most investers expect a return or an advantage for investing in something risky. The offers that currently offered (going by the last few I have seen) are things like having your name in the credits ect.

Personally a invester should be more along the lines of "invest $20 and a free copy of the game on release (expected RRP $50)" sort of thing. not this pre-order version.

I last one I looked at and turned away from (even though I had gotten to the point of investing) was "Planetary Annihilation". But on seeing that I had to pay extra for the game than what would be the expected RRP was insulting.

I might give a few dollars if interested. I might enjoy playing the alpha demo, buy I am sure as hell not going to pay over RRP for the option to be a alpha/beta tester and report bugs to the developers.

From the few I have bought into as beta games, I can only say that it definitly took anyway any interest in playing the game once it was released properly.

 

[sandorski]

Thanks to the huge success with Minecraft doing this, it is a thing now. Just as long as it is clearly denoted as such I have no problem with it. However, I am sure that at some point some are going to be really disappointed in some of these Early Access games. I am also sure that at some point some Early Access developer is going to hype/release an Alpha, make a pile of Sales, then disappear with the $.

 

[greenhawk]

I agree with OP, getting all that money early decreases a dev's desire/need to push through and finish remaining content.

If you were offered $1000 to do a job, but you only get the money once the job is done, you would work a lot harder than if it was the same job, but you got $400 of the $1000 at the start.

I agree, but the reason the crowd funding is looked at is that the project would not have gone ahead without it. so it is a bit of a loose / loose situation. All the more that people should be told they are investing in something that might not pay back. In fact, it might be better if the project only offered discount vouchures for the end product and not actual copies. There will be less people "buying in", but each will have a better understanding of what is going on.

As to the second part, true, but if that job takes too long or the person gets a better offer to go and do something else, why keep working for wishful thinking. In real life terms, getting told you will get a pay rise if you work hard, then two years later still having not seen that pay rise, you feel cheated and go out of yourway to find something else if not only stick around and work half has hard as you use to.

With the idea of keeping the money from the person doing the job, it raises other issues like what to do with the money as the backers and the project can not have the money. It has to be somewhere (collected, ready to pay) but you have to trust where that money is placed. Banks can go belly up, and individuals could steal it (ie: the ones looking after the money). it does happen. Then eveyone looses.

The project needs the money otherwise they would not be asking for it, so holding it all back is pointless. Not like they can go and get funding using the raised money as a bond. It just shifts the risk to a third party.

Another option is like the banks and building a house (at least in my country) where milestones need to be met before the money for the next stage can be released. It might work but it needs definied milestones and who is going to be able to say the project has reached them? And if they do not , what happens to the remaining money? finding all the backers to pay them back $5 is unlikly given someone will charge administration charges onto finding the person to give it back, so the invester is still out of money.

 

[greenhawk]

If I were a gaming company, I would crowdfund.

so would I, but any individual that bought into this would be worse than an idioit. all they are doing is pre-buying the game at best.

If crowd funding wanted to go down this path, they should be doing like a true invester approach and offering a % of earnings, not a free copy of the game/end product while pocketing zero risk.

Of course, a true investor also has a say in how things go. Early Access people do not.

 

[greenhawk]

You are looking at it as paying $30 for early access to a very buggy $30 game that may never get released.
You are paying $30 for a $50 game, with that reduction reflecting the risk you are taking on.

I perfer the third option. Wait for a sale and pay $25-30 for a $50 game that is out and working.

Putting in money on a risk for me means paying less than what I expect a future sale would get the game to me for.

Like other people I like getting into the hype and experencing things first hand before others tell me all about it, but real life has to taken into account.

$30 for a beta game I like the blurb for, or a game on sale I have not played yet buy have heard good things about. Limited time / funding means the later is more likly going to get my money. Now if the beta had good reviews and was $15, I might give it ago anyway.

 

[imaheadcase]

Most of the early access games are very playable, so its not a risk to you really, you can still play the game. I see it no different than buying a released game and hating it to death because of the bugs. Which many are.

Not a single early access game out of 5 I've got have been disappointing, in fact i've prob already got my money worth out of 3 of them.

As for develop cycle, that goes without saying that when you got a huge influence of money you have to shift gears on how you do things.

 

[BrightCandle]

The consumers are taking on even more risk because game review sites aren't reviewing the pre release state of the game. They are so used to having to wait for retail availability that they have missed this shift in funding. I am seeing a few reviews popping up here and there but without detailed reviews (treating them as fully released games which is what they basically are) then we are buying blind.

What the reviewers need is a structure to look at a game as it progresses, updating the score(s) as the updates are done.

 

[Lonyo]

Except that it's 2014. We have blogs, forums, Youtube, Twitch etc.
"Game review sites" don't matter anywhere near as much anymore for this sort of thing.
Want to know what DayZ beta is like? Go on the forums, watch people playing it on Twitch, watch some Youtube VODs, start a thread where you say what your concerns are.

You can still find out information, but now you can find out more information, more relevant information, and from a wider variety of people who don't have the same incentives as some game review sites can.

The risk has shifted, but so has the entire industry. It's not like nothing else has changed.

 

[dust]

^ Yeah but I don't like where this is heading. What's next, some developer gets an idea and asks you 20% upfront, maybe in another year you'll have access to a shitty beta?

Just vote with your wallet guys, I was really tempted by Dayz myself, I'm glad I didn't bite. Great concept, lazy execution. I don't mind paying 50 bucks for it when it will be a well rounded game.

 

[imaheadcase]

Dayz is worthless imo, not only is it being milked for money when it is free with arma2, they completely put off porting it to Arma 3 engine. Which by there own words could of been done already since its easier to work with.

 

[lilrayray69]

Yeah DayZ I think is the poster child for early access and it's flaws. It went from a mod for ARMA II, with the mod being free...to taking over a year to develop the standalone which in almost every aspect has less content than the original mod, yet costs money.

I'm pretty disappointed that I paid for the DayZ standalone. I feel like I paid for a game that is very incomplete and will never be compete. It's paying to be an alpha tester whereas that used to be free or people even got paid to test the game.

ARMA 3 coming out in the process was just another kick in the face, as they obviously could have ported the mod over to the new engine but instead are running the standalone on a sort of ARMA 2.5 engine (which runs worse than 2 or 3). Hell, a guy who I don't think even had anything to do with the development of DayZ ported it over to ARMA 3 himself.

There was also not sufficient information given upfront about the DayZ standalone - I just assumed it at least had pretty much everything the *free* mod version had with some more...but no. After playing and realizing there was no wildlife, no vehicles, significantly fewer weapons, no crafting such as gathering wood, making fires, skinning animals, cooking food, etc. I just quit playing and won't play again until at least all of those things are back.

 

[ImpulsE69]

With "kickstarting" being all the rage right now, you can expect people to take advantage of it and put out crappy things. It's the natural evoution. It's getting over saturated as it is. I don't mind the early access on Steam, I just wish they'd separate it from the rest of the stuff rather than plaster it all over the front page.

It's gotten to the point it feels like the "greenlighting" is pointless because there doesn't seem to be any quality control anymore.

 

[Genx87]

My only complaint about DayZ. I have been running around for 3 days now and all I have managed to find was a bikers helmet, backpack, some coat, a couple of sprites, and a wrench.

 

[cmdrdredd]

If the game is crowdfunded but fails, the consumers lose out on $5-$50 (normally).

If the game is paid for by the company and it fails, the company can lose millions.

If I were a gaming company, I would crowdfund.

What happens if a company gets $1,000,000 to make a game people want through kickstarter and then all the sudden says "hey we just can't do it. Sorry."?

They took your money and ran. Are there any safeguards in place for that?

 

[JumBie]

The problem I have with this kind of funding (and crowd funding in general) is that the consumers are taking near 100% of the risk. Normally, a publisher takes the risk financially and provides the upfront costs to the developers to make the game and the consumers "pay back" the publisher with sales. If the game is truly awful or doesn't end up getting release, the consumers aren't affected.

In the crowd source model, if the game is truly awful or the game enters development hell, the consumers are out money they paid for a product.

This is exactly what it is. Its a model in which the consumer takes 100% of the risk and leaves the developer to profit off of this testing. The developer throws a product onto the market in an incomplete form. The consumer purchases the product, at full retail, or near retail price. The developer promises updates until the product is "finished". This is as vile as it gets. A developer can amass millions of dollars in profit, and leave the product unfinished and have 0 repercussions in doing so.

 

[slightlyhuman]

Dayz is the best idea for a video game ever IMO. But absolutely horrible fucking execution. I've been playing dayz on and off for over a year. I love it but the bugs and hackers is enough for me to not even hesitate about buying the standalone. As fat as I'm concerned the developers are thieves.

 

[JumBie]

Dayz is the best idea for a video game ever IMO. But absolutely horrible fucking execution. I've been playing dayz on and off for over a year. I love it but the bugs and hackers is enough for me to not even hesitate about buying the standalone. As fat as I'm concerned the developers are thieves.

Game is an amazing concept, the look at feel of the maps is generally what made me like the game. The animation are clunky and choppy. The inventory system even in the standalone is horrible. And the sheer amount of bugs are killer. I could see this game being developed on another engine and doing quite well, but as far as Arma 2.5 goes, and even Arma 3 engine, its not really cutting it.