So a friend of mine got to talking about this last night, when I was showing him a trailer of Medieval Engineer as tempting game to try at some point. While both of us agree that it may be fun, neither of us are willing to purchase the Alpha version of the game.
A big part of this comes from the utter flop that we've seen Early Access becoming on Steam and Alpha releases in general. Some background, both of us play Space Engineers on and off every couple months it seems. We'll generally play for a week or two before we complete everything we want and get bored again. Neither of us make mods, or use mods in our games.
One of his big comments was that the company has been working on Space Engineers for about a year and a half (with Early Access, around two year in total) and the game still shows no signs of being done in early access. To this I countered that a game like Minecraft, which we also have invested countless hours into was in Alpha for an extremely long time.
Anyways, what it ended up boiling down to was a lack in confidence for development studios to finish their games. With stunts like Double Fine's Spacebase DF9 and 22cans' Godus, there have been many studios now either giving up on their games before they are done, or simply under delivering on expected features. I should point out that the development team behind Space Engineers still works on it, and have a new update for it every couple weeks it seems, which is great.
Anyways, so as the subject asks, what are people opinions on Early Access for any games? Will you chance it, have you given up hope and will always wait for full release?
Personally it comes down to the developers for me, there are some I trust to make a game still, (Bethesda, Firaxis, etc) and some that have lost that trust (Creative Assembly, Maxis, etc). Those I trust I'll still do an early access, or a pre-order with (which is more often the case for the AAA companies) those I don't I find myself waiting for the reviews, or heck for the Steam specials before I even look at the games.
A big part of this comes from the utter flop that we've seen Early Access becoming on Steam and Alpha releases in general. Some background, both of us play Space Engineers on and off every couple months it seems. We'll generally play for a week or two before we complete everything we want and get bored again. Neither of us make mods, or use mods in our games.
One of his big comments was that the company has been working on Space Engineers for about a year and a half (with Early Access, around two year in total) and the game still shows no signs of being done in early access. To this I countered that a game like Minecraft, which we also have invested countless hours into was in Alpha for an extremely long time.
Anyways, what it ended up boiling down to was a lack in confidence for development studios to finish their games. With stunts like Double Fine's Spacebase DF9 and 22cans' Godus, there have been many studios now either giving up on their games before they are done, or simply under delivering on expected features. I should point out that the development team behind Space Engineers still works on it, and have a new update for it every couple weeks it seems, which is great.
Anyways, so as the subject asks, what are people opinions on Early Access for any games? Will you chance it, have you given up hope and will always wait for full release?
Personally it comes down to the developers for me, there are some I trust to make a game still, (Bethesda, Firaxis, etc) and some that have lost that trust (Creative Assembly, Maxis, etc). Those I trust I'll still do an early access, or a pre-order with (which is more often the case for the AAA companies) those I don't I find myself waiting for the reviews, or heck for the Steam specials before I even look at the games.
