I know that to a lot of people, the service (provided by Steam) is little more than a red flag, something to rally against in the name of consumer rights, but to me, it's where I find most of my games these days. That probably has to do with the fact that most Early Access games are indie titles, and the ones that aren't tend to be large, sprawling sandboxes. In other words, it's all right up my alley.
Still, the service has a reputation of being sort of a rip-off, a reputation I feel is undeserved. The truth is that considering how wide open the field is for exploitation, I'm amazed by how rare the outright scams are. The most notable, and therefore also the ones most often brought up, examples of epic fails within Early Access are Spacebase DF-9 and Earth: Year 2066. Those are the titles people will point to as an example of how few fucks are given within the service. But to be honest, only one of them was an outright scam, and while we're being honest, are we really pretending that Earth: Year 2066 ever looked and felt like a real game? That spotting it's status as a shovelware in the making was a difficult task?
Using Impact and the Canvas filter effect from photoshop in your promotional material:
the true mark of a quality product.
As for DF-9, it might have been a shitty move by Double Fine to just release it as is once the money ran out, and the whole thing was clearly a failure in regards to production terms. But I wouldn't call it a scam, and I wouldn't call it unplayable. It's clear to me that Double Fine had some actual ambitions with the game, and while it is sort of a broken mess, it's still perfectly playable in its current state. In fact, I have bought, played and enjoyed AAA titles (that were not part of Early Access) that were released in as shitty a state as DF-9, if not worse.
Now, my point here is not that Double Fine handled things perfectly (they didn't), or that Earth: Year 2066 wasn't a scam (it was), but rather that none of those things were tied to Early Access as a business model. Shitty releases and lack of after-release support was not invented with Early Access, nor was the core concept of shovelware. Both those things have been around as long as there have been computer games to shittily release or trick schnapps-drunken grandmothers into buying as a birthday present for a soon-to-be crying child. The vast majority of Early Access games, however, truly benefit from the business model in a way that makes it clear that they would never even had gotten off the ground without it. They may not all turn out to be the next Kerbal Space Program (we should be so lucky), but they're still good products, produced by a team that cares about the end result, that would not have been possible without Early Access.
Another thing that bugs me with the constant trash talk surrounding Early Access is how "long production times" is used as a (false) argument against it, time and time again. I don't know if it's the result of gamers in general being spoiled as all hell, or if the words 'early' and 'access' in such close proximity simply produces some sort of lovecraftian incantation that turns the concept of math into gibberish, but most of the time that argument is pure bullshit. Even the aforementioned KSP was constantly subjected to this critique, and that's a solid release if there ever was one. The development time for that game was four years, which was suddenly and for reasons I can only assume were tied to severe head injuries, called out as "excessive". The truth is, and everyone who has even the slightest knowledge about game development will know this, that the only thing that makes four years look like a long time for a game is if those four years all happen to be placed under a spotlight for all to see. For most games, at least three of those four years will happen behind the scenes, and marketing might not kick into full gear until the game is near completion. This is one of the drawbacks with Early Access, but it's a drawback for the developers, not the customers.
Perfection has no time limit, dammit!
No matter how you cut it, Early Access is good for you, the customer. And I'm not just talking about the Steam version of the business model, but the similar practises by other studios as well. It makes the development process more transparent, it makes it possible for games that would otherwise not have been made to find funding and most importantly, it allows us to influence the end result. All the customer related drawbacks are just as present in every other form of game development, but the upsides are unique to Early Access. And if you still hate it, then you don't have to support it. But don't try to ruin it for the rest of us by having it dismantled, because as long as you're able to read, there's absolutely no reason for you to feel ripped off here. Early Access games are clearly marked as such, and all you have to do to avoid them is to, you know... not buy them.
So leave your take on it in the comments, and keep an eye out for Early Access game previews in the future, because I have a lot of them in my head.
Until then, this is Johnny Panzer, signing out.
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