Jimquisition: Early Access

[UsefulPlayer 1]

Is the point of this episode not to buy early access games that are bad?
Pretty basic point to me.

Isn't early access much better than Kickstarter? Atleast you get some product along with the promises. People seem to throw money at that.

I feel like I do pay for Jimquisition. I sit through the god awful commercials that seem to plague this site more and more. And I think other people pay to have the commercials removed.

 

[Amir Kondori]

If an indie studio is working on a game I find interesting I will 100% considering buying it early access. I would put my money down with the hope that the game gets made into something I really like but with the knowledge that it may not.

As long as a developer is up front about it I don't mind one bit. Now a AAA game, where there is a large development team and a large publisher backing it, hell no, they have the money to cover development themselves.

EDIT: The only early access game I have bought so far, Starbound, is already enough game for me to me feel like I MORE than got my money's worth. Nobody complained when Notch did it, of course he didn't call it early access, he just did early access.

 

[Elberik]

Sorry Mr. Clever, The Jimquisition is not Pub Club exclusive. It's free content.

If it's free, then what are the ads for? Anything carrying advertising technically isn't free. So it's not just Pub Club members who are paying.

If you think you are deserving of infinite entertainment at no personal cost to you then just use adblocker like everyone else & stop acting like you're somehow entitled to free content. Honestly your argument has no moral ground.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

I feel like I do pay for Jimquisition. I sit through the god awful commercials that seem to plague this site more and more. And I think other people pay to have the commercials removed.

I also feel that "I'm immune from criticism because it's free" is a terrible argument, and one that Jim wouldn't put up with in other contexts. In fact, hasn't Jim done episodes bemoaning "free to play" games?

"Oh sure, our games are crippled to try to get you to buy in-game DLC - but you don't have to pay, so how can you criticise our game?"

 

[Elberik]

It didn't start with Minecraft, it started with Windows.

Except not.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

If you think you are deserving of infinite entertainment at no personal cost to you then just use adblocker like everyone else & stop acting like you're somehow entitled to free content. Honestly your argument has no moral ground.

Wait, when did I ever say that? I said I do pay for The Escapist content via a Pub Club subscription, and others pay via ads. In fact, I wish more sites would offer subscription instead of advertising. I claimed no entitlement to free anything.

You were the one claiming that it was "free content" - I was pointing out that there is a cost, and calling it free is misleading. You seem to have totally changed your argument.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I can more or less forgive indies for subscribing to the Early Access philosophy, because it allows them to turn their first round of players into playtesters. All they need to do is set the client to send reports automatically or otherwise ask the players if they can data-mine the game's files in case of a crash or instability issue. That's not all that bad, considering how I doubt everyone rolls in Mojang-sized bank and has the means to furnish a decent QA department. Sacrifices have to be made if you're part of a small team.

What I can't forgive, however, is stuff like Planetary Annihilation, on Steam. An indie game, one with no prior track record on its devs and nothing but its own super-ambitious design tenets to hold it together, marketed as an Early Access game - for ninety freaking bucks.

Ninety dollars. You can fuck right off, if that's what you're going to try and pass off as an Early Access product: something that feels like a cross between a light RTS and Spore and that objectively shouldn't warrant this kind of obscene price tag.

I also can't forgive things like Day One, DayZ's current state, or 100 Ways to Die. There's Early Access, and then there's expecting players to slog through a gimped version of your product because you haven't bothered to work on a Crouching feature before packing your late Beta off and onto Greenlight.

There's also a point where Early Access really feels like you're being given free keys to the candy store, while being vaguely aware that the game pushing out its final build would mean you'd lose your Cash Shop privileges. Mechwarrior Online felt rather egregious in this aspect, to the point where I just can't bring myself to play it again. It's a business model that, I feel, goes swimmingly well with Freemium à la Candy Crush.

 

[Elberik]

If you think you are deserving of infinite entertainment at no personal cost to you then just use adblocker like everyone else & stop acting like you're somehow entitled to free content. Honestly your argument has no moral ground.

Wait, when did I ever say that? I said I do pay for The Escapist content via a Pub Club subscription, and others pay via ads. In fact, I wish more sites would offer subscription instead of advertising. I claimed no entitlement to free anything.

You were the one claiming that it was "free content" - I was pointing out that there is a cost, and calling it free is misleading. You seem to have totally changed your argument.

No. I took your language to mean that you disagreed with the Escapist's use of adspace & subscriptions. If I assumed too much then I apologize. But the fact remains that I can navigate through most of the Escapist's website without paying a dime (with or without adblocker). I believe that classifies it as "free".

Now, if your argument is that every second of your life has monetary value and that watching a 30sec ad or clicking past a popup counts as "paying" then that's a different discussion altogether.

 

[Sotanaht]

I'm a bit conflicted about steam early access myself. On the one hand I like that indies are getting some actual funding to make the games with this way and hopefully can turn out some somewhat decent niche titles. The main drawback that I see isn't so much about putting out or paying for an unfinished game, but that many of these games will NEVER finish. They are going to linger in early access alpha with new and often half baked ideas constantly thrown in and then left half done forever, and I think that because of this we are going to see a lot less titles that actually feel complete and well designed. The ones that do "officially" leave the alpha/beta stage do so with practically no change in the development model and almost completely under the radar to the point that you probably won't even know the beta has ended even if you own the game already.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

No. I took your language to mean that you disagreed with the Escapist's use of adspace & subscriptions. If I assumed too much then I apologize. But the fact remains that I can navigate through most of the Escapist's website without paying a dime (with or without adblocker). I believe that classifies it as "free".

I think that this misperception has been highly damaging to online media. Just look at the mobile app and gaming space, for example. So many App Store reviews will crap all over very decent, honest games if they aren't free, or cost more than a dollar. Such is the culture that has developed that so many consider anything online should be free.

(And the irony is that many of these same people will happily spend $5 on a coffee, or a crappy fast food meal, which doesn't require skilled programmers and a high development budget to create.)

And games aren't cheap to develop. Somebody has to pay those programmers. And of course, the big fad is "free to play" with micro transactions in games - and publishers have worked out the psychology behind that, so that the "free" games end up costing more if you want to get any sort of enjoyment or longevity out of them.

So, people end up paying $20 to hundreds of dollars in DLC and micro transactions for the "free" game, while they could have bought a decent, honest game with no ads and no micro transactions for between $5 and $20. Yet the honest developer is harmed, because apparently charging up-front for something is a crime against humanity.

Yeah, so calling things "free" and "monetising" them by other revenue models is a real problem when it comes to a healthy content industry. Which is why I wish more people saw the costs, rather than the smoke and mirrors that are put there.

Now, if your argument is that every second of your life has monetary value that that watching a 30sec ad or clicking past a popup counts as "paying" then that's a different discussion altogether.

It's not just time, it's quality of life and attention. It's not so much that every second I would be earning money, but I already have enough distractions. And we only have a certain number of hours a day to pay attention to things. So, I'd rather not spend my time looking at ads.

But really, when it comes down to it, is that advertisers pay for those ads to be placed. So the advertisers obviously think it's worth their money to pay for your attention. And the content makers use the advertising money to fund content creation. None of that would work if there wasn't a viewer to look at the ads. So, ultimately, it's not what you or I consider our time and attention to be worth - it's what the site is able to sell our time and attention to advertisers for.

So, no, I wouldn't consider advertising-driven content to be "free" because the market is clearly putting a value on our attention, and that attention is being sold to advertisers.

 

[Elberik]

*snip*

I wouldn't consider advertising-driven content to be "free" because the market is clearly putting a value on our attention, and that attention is being sold to advertisers.

So when you initially chastised Jim for calling his video "free" you were saying that it (the video) had a monetary value even though you (the viewer) could see it without having to pay* for it?

*I know you pay the Pub Club subscription but you did not have to directly pay $0.99 to watch the video.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

So when you initially chastised Jim for calling his video "free" you were saying that it (the video) had a monetary value even though you (the viewer) could see it without having to pay* for it?

Well, yes.

*I know you pay the Pub Club subscription but you did not have to directly pay $0.99 to watch the video.

But The Escapist doesn't sell individual shows and articles separately. It's a package deal, much like Cable TV, where you pay for a bunch of channels, some you may watch all the time, and some you may never watch.

I have a hunch that Zero Punctuation, Loading Ready Run and The Jimquisition are fairly "high value" assets to The Escapist, given that they likely drive most of the traffic to the site (I obviously don't have web traffic data, though). For me, Zero Punctuation and Extra Credits were the main reasons I took out a subscription. I would guess that Yahtzee drives a ton of revenue, both directly from here, and via the YouTube channel.

If anything, the advertising model does work on a "per episode" basis. But subscriptions help maintain a baseline for keeping the site running.

 

[Elberik]

So when you initially chastised Jim for calling his video "free" you were saying that it (the video) had a monetary value even though you (the viewer) could see it without having to pay* for it?

Well, yes.

*I know you pay the Pub Club subscription but you did not have to directly pay $0.99 to watch the video.

But The Escapist doesn't sell individual shows and articles separately. It's a package deal, much like Cable TV, where you pay for a bunch of channels, some you may watch all the time, and some you may never watch.

I have a hunch that Zero Punctuation, Loading Ready Run and The Jimquisition are fairly "high value" assets to The Escapist, given that they likely drive most of the traffic to the site (I obviously don't have web traffic data, though). For me, Zero Punctuation and Extra Credits were the main reasons I took out a subscription. I would guess that Yahtzee drives a ton of revenue, both directly from here, and via the YouTube channel.

If anything, the advertising model does work on a "per episode" basis. But subscriptions help maintain a baseline for keeping the site running.

Wow, that went well. Nice talking to you.

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

On the One hand- i can see Early access as a means of a Small Company Getting a Product out there and allowing the people that would buy the game to help Shape it and get the cash to finish the game in full, on the other hand you still have to be careful Where you put your faith in how a Project is actually doing- in the case of Steam there are places on it to ask Questions and get answers to how a Dev is actualy coming along in the project.

 

[el_kabong]

What?! A Jimquisition ended without the one catch-phrase I tune in to see? I demand the none moneys I spent on this be refunded.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

Am I bad for paying for Early Access of "Dungeon of the Endless" or is that considered one of the "Good" Early Access games?
Either way, Jim made some great points and I'll be sure to look around for more information before paying for early access.

 

[Voulan]

Call me completely out of the loop, but I wasn't aware of this sort of practice until I went to take a look at Day Z, and was greeted with an early access fee of $30. I was always under the impression that these kinds of builds and access were like demos, in that they were free but severely limited. I'll just have to wait patiently until it comes out in full, and then wait even further for it to go on a Steam sale.

 

[Eve Charm]

Early access is a bit of an joke on steam. Giving top billing and top pricing for unfinished games. Saying that it helps fund the game is complete BS... You shouldn't be selling a game you don't even have the money to finish! What if early access is a flop and buyers aren't as high as they hoped, are they stuck forever having paid full price for a unfinished game? Are they even guaranteed a game will ever come out of full access?

Anyway first impressions are something you'll live or die for in this business. If you first impression is a shotty hardly playable game you deserved to be judged on it for asking for full asking price for it. If you can't even get an working early build of your game people shouldn't put hope in you'd ever be able to deliver a full game.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

It's nice that these developers are honest unlike the triple A publishers who keep selling us unfinished drek like Aliens Colonial Marines, GTA V, and Battlefield 4 just to name a few of the worst offenders from last year-

I'm going to stop you there, say what you will about the Online, but GTA V is no where near those levels of in-completion.
You still got all the features and gameplay of a $60 GTA game, Massive Map with lots of things to do, A good sized single player story with a lot of missions, on top of all the driving and shooting the series is known for.

With Online, yes, it sucked to start out with, but considering the size, scale and quality of the single player experience, never-mind the multiplayer, I'm willing to give them a pass, especially seeing how Rockstar owned up to it and made several efforts to make it up to players.
On top of that: Even if you took all out Online, it has zero effect on the base game.

Contrast with Aliens:CM: Undeveloped, buggy, rubbish game-play and a general lack of care on the part of the Devs.
The Multiplayer was there day 1, but that too was horrible.

Battlefield 4: A extremely short 4 hour single player campaign with a heavy focus on multiplayer which was rushed and riddled with bugs and Netcode Issues.

I understand I'm coming off as a rabid fanboy and all, GTA 5 being un-finished is not something I believe is true.
Could GTA:O be better? Totally, but that doesn't mean that GTA 5 is on par with freaking Aliens Colonial Marines!.

 

[Camaranth]

Isn't Early access basically paying the developer so that you can work for them? People get paid to do quality control work. Not that I'm disregarding community feedback, it can be invaluable to improving your work.

Not sure why I'm fussed really. It'll hardly affect me seeing as I tend to wait for GOTY or complete editions of games I want anyway.

Bloody brilliant episode though Jim.