Another post about buggy games, haha. But I will try to focus this on a different area - Early Access (or, what it really is, Paid Alpha/Beta Access).
Arguably, Early Access is a good way for developers who are facing financial difficulties to receive funding to complete their games. Let's look at it this way, if you've spent years developing your game to a playable state and still need a year or a few months to finish it, then it would be a real shame if your studio closed down just short of completing your hard work. There's where Early Access, and also Kickstarter can help. Also, support for your yet completed game can be a good indicator of how the game will do and possibly attract investors.
Gamers who decide to buy into Early Access, though, must remember that these games are not completed. Well, I'm sure most of us are intelligent enough to figure out as much. Yet, seeing the complains we sometimes get, I do wonder if that is the case. Not to say all feedback is bad though, since it could very much help improve the game. But if you're screaming for the developers to go kill themselves, I really wonder if you like to see the game get completed. (Even zombie games cannot be developed by dead people you know? )
Like it or not, this idea of releasing first, fixing later, has permeated into every facet of the games industry, affecting even those who have the budget and resources to finish development before publishing. (Have you been playing any of Ubisoft's games recently? Ever feel like you're playing some no name indie free to play game?[Oops I lied. Talking about Ubisoft again...]) More indie developers actually take more pride in their work then some of these better known studios these days. A SHAMEFUL DISPLAY!
Do we blame Early Access then? Possibly. The fact is, no matter what new practice of taking advanvtage of thier customers or monetizing format it is, Activision, EA, and Ubisoft will want a slice of it. Free-to-play? Check. "Indie"? Check. Micro-transactions? Check, check, double, triple, quadruple, milliono, billiono-luple check. Ultimately, players decide whether this is "good" practice by our purchases; we pay, they exploit.
Is gaming going to crash again? I hope not and I doubt so. But if publishers continue to find ways to screw gamers over, we might eventually push back, hard. And the increasing reliance on the internet is worrying. If internet providers continue to limit the bandwidth and speed of their customers in exchange for higher subscription prices, always online and huge monstrous patches might really cause a video game crash.
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