8 Reasons Why You Should Love Steam Early Access

[DrStrangelove]

8 Reasons Why You Should Love Steam Early Access

For all the recent complaining about Steam Early Access, there are some damn good games out there. Here's why you should join the crowds who love it.

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[snekadid]

You may have 8 reasons to love it, but there are over a hundred reasons to stay away. Even if there are gems on there, there is WAY more crap you'd have to shift through to find them, not to mention used hypodermic needles hidden in there.

 

[Cerebrawl]

I have one good reason to love it: The early adopter lemmings will either playtest and reveal the bugs so that they're hopefully fixed by the time I get the full release, or they'll let us know what a giant turd it is so I can avoid it.

Mind you there's a few early access games I've gotten, mainly while they had deep discounts, such as being part of a bundle. (But these 8 are not among them, the only one I'm even interested in is Project Zomboid, but I'll wait).

 

[Alterego-X]

You may have 8 reasons to love it, but there are over a hundred reasons to stay away. Even if there are gems on there, there is WAY more crap you'd have to shift through to find them, not to mention used hypodermic needles hidden in there.

Why the hell would you want to shift through all that crap, when you can just play the eight above-recommended ones?

The vast majority of everything is crap. That's why you are not supposed to shift through everything at random, but pay attention to community consensus, reviews, ratings, personal interests, and personal recommendations.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Not good enough, will have to do better. None of these are worth buying into Early Access for. And I still maintain that Early Access can go die in a fire.

 

[Zontar]

Sorry, but 5 games (DayZ would have worked without Early Access, Rust is just out, and don't even get me started on 7 days) is not enough to justify a broken system which has flooded hundreds of unfinished games onto the market. Even if it was 10% of games coming out being worth mentioning it would still be an unjustified system, the fact you can't even mention 10 at all just shows this system needs to be purged, just like Valve is doing to the just as broken Greenlight. We want quality control and finished games, and Early Access goes against everything the both those terms stands for.

 

[Zontar]

You may have 8 reasons to love it, but there are over a hundred reasons to stay away. Even if there are gems on there, there is WAY more crap you'd have to shift through to find them, not to mention used hypodermic needles hidden in there.

Why the hell would you want to shift through all that crap, when you can just play the eight above-recommended ones?

The vast majority of everything is crap. That's why you are not supposed to shift through everything at random, but pay attention to community consensus, reviews, ratings, personal interests, and personal recommendations.

See, here's the thing, as a veteran Steam user I hate the fact that PC gaming seems to be the only business that you have to do research for to not end up with shit, especially since that wasn't always the case. Not that long ago you could go through Steam at random and find plenty of good games you'd never heard of. Today? With the lowering of the entry standards for Steam, and the implementation of (the soon to be removed) Greenlight and (hopefully soon to be removed) Early Access, not it's impossible to just go out at random and try and find something, you need to do research on all the products. Now I might only have taken 2 classes on starting a business, but that's a setup which would have earned my new business a failure mark.

 

[ritchards]

Next up, 8 reasons to love Steam tags? Nanomachines, son!

 

[Alterego-X]

See, here's the thing, as a veteran Steam user I hate the fact that PC gaming seems to be the only business that you have to do research for to not end up with shit, especially since that wasn't always the case.

Really? Name a year when the majority of PC games where of high quality.

It's called Sturgeon's law, 90% of everything is shit.

Go to a Newest Releases [http://www.goodreads.com/genres/new_releases/fiction] page of Goodreads.com, annd start reading those books. Most of them are shit, and they have already been filtered by people's willingness to upload them.

Go to the In Theatres page of IMDB. Most of them are shit EVEN IF you are looking at the box office hits only, but especially in general release lineup.

Most things are shit, and the people who randomly dive into it without any precaution are either naive idiots, or masochistic hardcore fans who know what they are getting into and woud rather choose to shift through all that shit than miss out a "hidden gem".

 

[Zontar]

See, here's the thing, as a veteran Steam user I hate the fact that PC gaming seems to be the only business that you have to do research for to not end up with shit, especially since that wasn't always the case.

Really? Name a year when the majority of PC games where of high quality.

It's called Sturgeon's law, 90% of everything is shit.

Go to a Newest Releases [http://www.goodreads.com/genres/new_releases/fiction] page of Goodreads.com, annd start reading those books. Most of them are shit, and they have already been filtered by people's willingness to upload them.

Go to the In Theatres page of IMDB. Most of them are shit EVEN IF you are looking at the box office hits only, but especially in general release lineup.

Most things are shit, and the people who randomly dive into it without any precaution are either naive idiots, or masochistic hardcore fans who know what they are getting into and woud rather choose to shift through all that shit than miss out a "hidden gem".

I'm aware of the fact that Sturgeon's law exists, but I'm also aware of the fact that Steam used to have some god dame quality control before it started letting anything with a publisher, 100 likes or an almost working Alpha just need to show up to be put on in the store at all, let alone the front page.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Isn't early access just being open faced about having to fix the game down the line? I mean we complain that companies never push a game back to fix issues that need a day one patch, yet here this article says this very practice should be a good thing. Granted I know games will never be bug free (if you think people should strive for that then your a mad man), but releasing a game at (what I assume) is full price with X% of content missing is not cool. Bought Star Bound on early access and it's mostly fine, yet my interest died down when three wipes with in a month in updates came around.

 

[Alterego-X]

I'm aware of the fact that Sturgeon's law exists, but I'm also aware of the fact that Steam used to have some god dame quality control before it started letting anything with a publisher, 100 likes or an almost working Alpha just need to show up to be put on in the store at all, let alone the front page.

You were talking about "PC gaming" as a business that's quality control dropped, and that it's the only one that "you have to do research for to not end up with shit".

It didn't. Steam used to be a tiny fragment of the PC gaming market, covering a fraction of the higher qulity games, and a few shit ones, and that was it. If you wanted a wide coverage of potentially good games, you still had to filter, except that much of it happened outside Steam, and noticing that small fragment of Steam-published games as quality ones, was part of the filtering process itself. Now Steam *is* PC gaming, so it is taken for granted as a platform.

So I don't really understand your problem. You are either interested shifting through tons of shit to find a few high quality games "you'd never heard of", or you want a walled garden of only a few of the safest options.

And you can want a middle ground of course, but in that case you don't get to complain about either of these extreme ideals being unfulfilled.

 

[Zontar]

I'm aware of the fact that Sturgeon's law exists, but I'm also aware of the fact that Steam used to have some god dame quality control before it started letting anything with a publisher, 100 likes or an almost working Alpha just need to show up to be put on in the store at all, let alone the front page.

You were talking about "PC gaming" as a business that's quality control dropped, and that it's the only one that "you have to do research for to not end up with shit".

It didn't. Steam used to be a tiny fragment of the PC gaming market, covering a fraction of the higher qulity games, and a few shit ones, and that was it. If you wanted a wide coverage of potentially good games, you still had to filter, except that much of it happened outside Steam, and noticing that small fragment of Steam-published games as quality ones, was part of the filtering process itself. Now Steam *is* PC gaming, so it is taken for granted as a platform.

So I don't really understand your problem. You are either interested shifting through tons of shit to find a few high quality games "you'd never heard of", or you want a walled garden of only a few of the safest options.

And you can want a middle ground of course, but in that case you don't get to complain about either of these extreme ideals being unfulfilled.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but even after Steam had the supermajority of digital distribution sales and the physical games market all but disappeared there was still quality control. It's only in the past 2 years that the floodgates seem to have been opened, and given that Greenlight is being taken down, I think Valve is more then aware there is a problem.

 

[Alterego-X]

I'm not sure if you noticed, but even after Steam had the supermajority of digital distribution sales and the physical games market all but disappeared there was still quality control. It's only in the past 2 years that the floodgates seem to have been opened, and given that Greenlight is being taken down, I think Valve is more then aware there is a problem.

More PC games are being made than ever. Minecraft was also made before Early Access, but using the same model. If Valve didn't swallow the new market, someone else would have. PC gaming would still have Rust and DayZ, and Kebal, and Zomboid, and the hundreds of shitty ones as well, only without Valve's finger in the pie.

The most common criticism against Greenlight is not that it publishes too many games, that it doessn't publish enough, and too many potentially intereseting ones still struggle to pass it's demands.

 

[Zontar]

More PC games are being made than ever. Minecraft was also made before Early Access, but using the same model. If Valve didn't swallow the new market, someone else would have. PC gaming would still have Rust and DayZ, and Kebal, and Zomboid, and the hundreds of shitty ones as well, only without Valve's finger in the pie.

The most common criticism against Greenlight is not that it publishes too many games, that it doessn't publish enough, and too many potentially intereseting ones still struggle to pass it's demands.

Minecraft also had something almost none of the Early Access games had: the core gameplay was in from the start. Stop development of Minecraft at any point and the game was good enough to be considered done, do the same with almost any Early Access games and you'd have practically the whole user base demanding it either be finished or for a refund. Minecraft isn't an example of Early Access done right, it's an example of why some forms of games should not use the conventional "release when done" system that most Early Access games only prove should be the mainstream approach for a reason.

And that part about Greenlight, that's a joke right? Because of all the complaints I've seen of the project, never has "it doessn't publish enough" and "too many potentially intereseting ones still struggle to pass it's demands" ever been on the list. That it publishes to much at a time, that next to none of it is good, that far to much of it is just concept art that isn't even in pre-Alpha stage, and that the system is to easy to rig, yes, but their of those you claim? Never until now.

 

[Paul Cavanna]

I got Space Engineers pretty much the week it was on early access and it was perfectly playable abet slightly limited at the time simply because it was early access. and since then it has grown considerably. i was able to create things in game that were considered by many to be impossible simply by using the engineering aspect and making things work.

its a good game even in its present state and the developers are really working to squish any bugs as soon as they are informed

there are times where early release is simply releasing a poor edition to grab some early cash. and star-point gemini 2 i look at you for that but there are others which use early access for feedback and the mass bug testing that is required.

 

[Alarien]

Like some of the others mentioned, when Kerbal Space Program made it to Early Access, it was in a fairly advanced state of development. For quite a while it was available for free online for players to test and work with a lot of the core mechanics. I can remember a lot of the EVE Online community dinking around with it in our free time.

It is not representative of the overwhelming amount of absolute crap that is Early Access.

I make it a point not to buy anything marked Early Access at all from Steam, regardless of reviews, comments, or anything else. It's an automatic "no," until it is released. I just wish there was a way to set a store preference that filters ALL of them out.

If someone knows of one, please let me know.

So yeah, Early Access can go eat a bag.

 

[Ryan Minns]

Pretty much all my Early Access games are wasting away in my steam list, unplayed for many many months and most if not all have barely changed in that time.

I've since decided against all Early access games since completing games you've already sold don't seem to be peoples priorities

 

[Kaymish]

KSP is the shit buy it i have had more fun with KSP for $25 than some $100+ AAA titles
but otherwise stay clear of early access i only buy something if i have seen some really compelling reviews and good words about a game and its on special because 99% of it is crap and i have managed to only get bitten once and that was by planetary annihilation because they don't tell you that its always online and you have to connect to the server even for SP which is stupid lucky because of my rule i bought it on special so didn't get bitten too much

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

There's only two Early Access games that I'm actually playing right now because they feel they are in a state of being finished and have actual playability, those are Planetary annihilation and Starbound, the other's I have that are next to nowhere playable for me are Day Z and castle story.

All in all I can say I'm not a massive fan of early access (all 4 of these were gifted to me by the way) since it just seems like loads and loads of games get thrown onto the pile first and maybe worked on later or at best really slow development (Castle Story being the big offender of slow and confusing development).

Still Valve are going to kill greenlight and hopefully they can buckle down on Earl Access because there does need to be some form of quality control so we don't end up with thousands copying the one idea that makes gold and then shipping out half if playable at all games that take 5+ years to finish.

Meanwhile I remember fondly of my console collection being near perfect of what I'd bought, save for Terminator Salvation.