EARLY ACCESS NEEDS YOU!

Early access needs you!

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 04-05-2020
Online Games Bay

With each month you can notice two things on Steam that look coincidental, but really are not - there are hundreds of new titles popping up on the lists and the prices are going up, especially for early access games. In normal circumstances more supply means lower prices, but not in case of early access.

What is early access? Imagine Kickstarter for the games - some people say they can do something, some other people say "fine, here’s my money, do it" and two or three years later they never hear from each other again. Of course I over-simplify, but come on, how many times have you seen such scenario on Steam? Steam Early Access was suppose to be way for creators to make some money while working on their project - they put up what they have, Steam is advertising it, players who see potential in the project put up money that would pay for the game to be finished. But that was the theory, in practice it rarely works that way.

Why? The reason is exactly the same as on Kickstarter - both Steam and Kickstarter get their cut from money the creators earn from players, so they are not really that keen to stop even the dubious projects from being advertised. After all, just like the creators, they do it for money, so if there is potential to make some money they will try to - I mean the creators must know what they are doing, right? But that was the theory, again, in practice it rarely works that way.

If you browse through the games that are on early access you can spot few things - they usually are ambitious, they are tripple-A quality, open world games, with lots of potential and all they need is money to finish it. Not that they can show much of what they did so far - usually they are just gallery of artwork, some short pieces of gameplay if you are lucky, and lots and lots of plans for the future. Few years back I’ve put my money in few such projects, like Prison Architect, The Long Dark, Train Station Simulator or Hospitilize and the results were a mixed bag.

Prison Architect was finished and was a great game, played it for hundreds of hours. The Long Dark was very good, eventually it was finished. Train Station Simulator and Hospitilize does not seem to progress much in recent months, so pretty much they are dead before arrival (pun intended). But the unusual thing that drew my attention was that I put 5-7 dollars in them and months later, while still in early access, they demanded about 10-15 dollars for their game. Yes, you can argue that those projects have improved with time and now they are worth more, but if you take a look at games on Steam in general the prices went up quickly in recent 2 years. Simple example - Chernobylite in early access is priced at over 20 dollars and that was baffling for me, because the game is far from being finished.

After browsing through similar projects I discovered the reason why the prices pretty much doubled in last two years - it has nothing to do with Steam, it has nothing to do with global economy, it has to do with the suckers. No, not the candy, the suckers, who are willing to pay full price for a nugget of a game, not the whole thing. I checked the comments on Chernobylite, since that project drew my attention and there were some interesting quotes that explained alot. Unlike other games that I listed Chernobylite was not made by just small indie studio, at the early access premiere they had the support of big publisher, it isn’t their first project, so why would company like that join the early access? And the answer is: because if they would look for money elsewhere than crowdfunding they would need a product, not just promise of a product. And yes, they started the project as Kickstarter campaign.

In the comments you could learn why would people put 20 dollars for game that is in early stage of development and, to be honest, is not that impressive at the moment. Usual answer to that question is that "you don’t buy the product, you support the developers", which reminded me of DJ Slope’s videos on YouTube, in which he describes his pledges on Kickstarter as "being part of the creative process". People who invest their money in the game see it as their contribution into the project, which is nice, although a bit naive way to describe it. In reality Steam early access and Kickstarter are exactly the same - you put your money in and hope for the best. In theory in early access you get the product while it is in progress, but to be fair at this stage most of them are worth few dollars, not 20 dollars.

But since games like Chernobylite got away with donations of 20 dollars a piece (to paraphrase the comments) why would others not want to make same amount of money? So games that you could invest your 5 dollars two years back now scoff at such petty money and demand 10-20 dollars, no matter on what level of completion their project is. How does it work for you as the sucker, who puts in the money? Prison Architect was a great game, well, until Paradox bought it, forced people to use their launcher, which caused backlash, especially since their first message after take over was "enjoy the free patch", which highlighted the direction they are heading towards. I guess at that point I’m not "part of the creative process" any more, so I’ve dropped the game from my account.

The Long Dark was good game, spent some time playing it, but then the creators moved into story mode that actually broke some things in the game. Well, at least the game is finished, I don’t really play it any more, but that’s just my fault expecting the game to be what I paid for. Train Station Simulator was just a shell of a game, the creators just abandoned the game after turning the interface into explosion of colours and icons. Hospitilize was doing well, until they reached the "let’s make the progress tree" part of the process and killed their own creation - after that the game made no sense at all. Not that it had much sense before, but still it was a move into weird direction - you know what the diagnosis is, but you can’t check it on patient chart, because you haven’t unlocked that illness yet. Since then the game was abandoned, of course, but still you can buy it on Steam for about 10 dollars, which is about 5 dollars more than the earlier version that was not that bad really.

If you take a look at the Steam early access you will notice that most of those projects are on early access for years and they are still not finished, if they ever will be. Of course you can "support the creators", "be part of the process" or find another way to justify your contribution, but face the facts - if you put money in something that is not worth it, you are part of the problem that gaming industry is facing right now.

The money you have spent on early access game that most likely will never be finished, might have been put into game that was actually finished or is close to be finished. Simple example: Subnautica, a highly regarded and finished open world game, will cost you about 22-25 dollars, Chernobylite that is not really open world and still is far from being finished, will cost you 25-30 dollars and might never leave the early access status. Of course the two games are not very similar when it comes to gameplay, Subnautica also started as early access, but it shows how the price range have changed for unfinished titles between 2014 and now.

With such huge supply of new games the good ones sometimes can’t break through the tons of crap that is early access program today. So next time you think of "supporting the creators" take a hard look on what they did so far and assume they are just like you - normal people, who will get bored with the project once they get the money for it, not the superheroes who will get through hell to produce what they promised.

29-05-2020