Has Early Access Made It OK to Publish Buggy Games?

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.

Triple A, Triple Trash?

I hate to start the year with such a negative post, but what in the world is wrong with publishers these days? It was Activision, then EA and now Ubisoft. For EA though, who has been trying to get their act together and failing, having Ubisoft take over gamer ire is a good thing.

It is no longer news that Ubisoft publishes buggy, and unfortunately, outright broken games. I had stopped boycotting them for their always-online DRM. But before they could publish anything worth my time, they start with their nonsense yet again. Granted, other companies like Blizzard has also been punishing gamers with always-online DRM, and also games that don't work on launch (yes, if your game requires an online connection and the problem is not with the game but the server, it is still NOT working) but at least they keep their products up to date with constant patches and fixes. Ubisoft, however, takes too long to patch their games, instead, focusing their efforts on the next game in the series. With them constantly eroding their customer's trust, I wonder how long it will be before we totally lose faith in them?

I have talked about this before, and I feel that I'm beating on a dead horse, but publishers are taking the internet for granted. Instead of it being a tool to help keep their games updated and providing quality content post launch, they are using it as an excuse to publish games without proper testing, the assumption being that they'll get around to fixing it. Gamers, expecting them to actually take pride in their work, purchase these games on day 1, often times ending up downloading a patch nearly as large as the game itself on installation, only to find game breaking bugs preventing progress. And what makes it worse is that the fixes either take too long or don't happen at all. Have we been too naive to think that the devs will patch their games? After all, they did not actually promise they'll do so, and nowhere on the box does it state that they will. Recently, there are cases where developers have come out and outright say they will no longer patch their games. So, the internet is only for DRM as well as for us to buy DLC, right? And if the sequel is coming right up, do you seriously think that fixes are coming? Which is going to make them money, a fix to a published game, or developing a new title? There have been talks on whether reviews should be updated as games are patched. Granted, this probably applies more to MMOs and free to play, where games can change a lot over time, but it seems more important now that bugs be mentioned in reviews and updates are really necessary since patches aren't necessary.

Perhaps I'm a bit too harsh because I'm not really interested in most Ubisoft games. They tend to follow the same style, borrow mechanics from each of their games and more or less play the same. These days, I tend to wait for game of the year or complete editions since they have all the DLCs and bug fixes, but recently, even complete editions don't have all DLCs (cough, Gearbox, Borderlands 2, cough) and even come with bugs the developers never got around to fixing. Its disappointing, but I do think if games aren't working, they are not complete and do not deserve full price. It sucks that we can't support developers for the games they make, but if this goes on, perhaps more people will stop buying games at full price and wait for discounts. Perhaps more people will choose to wait for fixes and, at that time, pick up used copies that would have inevitably be available by then, denying the publishers and developers the money for those sales. A shame for sure, but I can't really bring myself to say they don't deserve the lost in sales.

The lesson to learn here is the same as the lesson from every other post I've made. Don't but games on day-one, wait for reviews. And if it is a sequel of a sequel of a sequel of a sequel that comes out every year, why in the world are you still paying for the same game!? (OK not really the same game, I'm exaggerating. Go ahead and buy the sequel if you really like the series but don't keep complaining that it's the same thing year after year if you're willing to pay for the same thing year after year.)

Pay to Beta Test?

Once upon a time, the purpose of beta tests was to detect and iron out bugs before games were released. Betas were free and sometimes, testers were even paid specially to search for bugs that normally wouldn't be detected in a casual play through.

Now, a 'beta' is more like a demo for the masses to try out a game. Sometimes, they were an incentive to pre-order a title. But mostly, they are hype builders and advertisements, and as such, betas are open only if the developers know the game is any good, or is it?

Betas can get away with a lot of issues; after all, a game that is still a work in progress can be excused right? Well, currently, people can purchase games that are still incomplete in the form of early access games. Some of these games are like this because of kickstarter backer rewards in the form of alpha and beta access. However, there are games that have been in 'beta' for a long time, raking in sales while being excused of their brokenness. And what is the incentive of coming out of beta? Will people still be interested in a game that has been on the market for so long? Can a game get away with bugs and incompleteness by being perpetually in beta or alpha?

Free to play games have gotten in the 'beta' fever as well. In closed the alphas and betas of many games, we are given the option of buying into the game. These 'founder packs' are a way to make impatient people pay for an otherwise free title. Should the game be officially 'released' and open to everyone, will these people actually pay any amount of money? It's hard to tell, but certainly there will be some who won't. Is there an issue to this? Probably not, but it's important to note that for most of these games, you can buy stuff with real money even in alpha or beta, and there are cases where the game gets shut down, never to be 'released'.  What happens to the money spent on buying in and on items in the cash shop?

I have a few games on early access because I helped kickstart the games, and in the initial phases, they were pretty unplayable, which, funnily enough, meant it was a real beta. However, I realized this would spoil the game for me on official release if I spent too much time, not story-wise, but in the sense that the game might start to bore me. Probably this won't be an issue for most people and most games, but for multi player games, losing people before official release is not a good thing.

Yes, I know you feel like a beta tester playing Battlefield 3, but at least they were brave enough to put it out for critique, so that might be another post. I am not too keen on paying to beta test, but if playing broken games is your thing, feel free. But beware of games that never get released, or you might just end up like a kickstarter backer who gave money for a game that ends up in the void, never to see the light of day.