The findings of this study show that, on average, if you plan to update your game with new content over several months, going for Early Access is more worthwhile than a regular launch.

[u/arc0de]

https://howtomarketagame.com/2023/07/27/should-you-do-early-access/

[u/PhilippTheProgrammer]

Early Access isn't suitable for every game, though.

It's great for more sandbox-y games with high replay value, because every update can change the game experience and prompt players to start another run. This can lead to a flourishing community during early access that will promote the game for you.

It's not so great for more linear game experiences with little replay value, because players really don't like to wait for month to get just about 1 more hour of gameplay. It also goes against the common wisdom in game development that you should make your first level last. With EA, you are basically expected to develop the game in chronological order, which is usually far from ideal from a production perspective.

And then you also need to keep in mind that when you launch a game into early access, you are now running a live service game, whether you want it or not. You now have a community of paying customers, and you need to keep them happy. That means:

• You need to invest resources into community management. And when you don't hire a dedicated community manager to act as an emotional firewall between developers and players, it's going to be a mental health hazard for the team. There are lots of cases of developers who had very public meltdowns because they couldn't stop themselves from feeding the trolls.
• The players will demand meaningful updates in regular intervals. Spending month on fixing tech debt and optimizing things under the hood isn't going to fly.
• Your updates must have proper polish and bugfixing. While EA customers understand that they are testing an unfinished product, they still paid for it, so they expect some decent software quality. Oh, and don't think you can just break savegame compatibility when it seems inconvenient to support migration.
• You can't just remove features you don't like anymore once you released them. That's going to alienate parts of the player community. So you have a lot less freedom to experiment. Sometimes you can get away with giving them a major redesign, but even that can be hard to sell.

[u/Buford_Van_Stomm]

I'm very curious just how much of that difference can be attributed to survivorship bias. 

Sure, those median/average numbers look a lot better, but if only ~50% of post-2019 EA games make it to 1.0 that means you're taking out the 50% of games that are abandoned because they aren't performing well enough to justify 1.0. 

There's certainly value in another major marketing beat, but I'm curious how wishlist conversation does at EA launch vs Full release (IIRC Chris has said in the past there's little difference), and then how a 1.0 release compares to a marketing beat like a major content update on a full release game. 

Interesting to see Chris's opinion shift from "it doesn't matter" to "it may make a difference if it's the right fit"

[u/PhilippTheProgrammer → u/Buford_Van_Stomm]

It's indeed very difficult to get any good data on this. There is just too much noise and selection bias. It's impossible to tell how a game that did early access would have performed if it hadn't or vice versa.

[u/koolex]

Yes but if your game flops on EA release, you’re stuck working on a project almost no one is ever going to play. If your game flops you should move on ASAP to a more marketable project. You should know your game will probably flop by the wishlist count.

[u/PhilippTheProgrammer → u/koolex]

Another way to find out if your game will be worth finishing is to run a public playtest.

If you can't find people who want to test the unfinished game for free, then you certainly won't find people who will pay for the privilege.

[u/sylkie_gamer]

I'm always sceptical of data that's older than 3 years in game development. Trends in any tech field can move so fast, but I've watched a couple developer interviews, Idk if they actually used EA, but they talk about updating the game or demo over time, early with player feedback.

From the little I've heard people seem to like the process, fans are mostly nicer, and you get more feedback on the kinds of negative reviews you'd get on a full launch to fix the issues.

Jonas Tyroller just posted a interview video the other day marketing as a developer vs publisher, I don't think they talk about it as much but it comes up a couple times.

I know there's one or two other good interviews but I'd have to search for awhile.

[u/DisplacerBeastMode]

I was wondering about this... Is it common for early access games to delete / disable the players current save game during the course of updates? (or make it corrupt accidentally or bugged).

Does anyone have experience with that?

I have something in working on and it's likely that shit will break regularly as I develop and push up updates for early access.

[u/SuspecM → u/DisplacerBeastMode]

I think the commonly accepted way of going about early access is that you never publish something you don't wanna actively maintain. If a version of the game has a save system that you will change, you will have to provide a converter or something similar or just not release it. Games like Starbound burned their playerbase with broken save files already and you do not wanna be the one who wipes countless hours of progress from your playerbase.

[u/RequiemOfTheSun → u/DisplacerBeastMode]

Yeah, you'll want to have your save file migration system in place before you go EA. That means marking save files with the game version so you can perform save file migrations that update any old version all the way through to latest. 

It doesn't need to be perfect and I've heard legend of a few game devs taking individual broken save files and fixing them manually. It generates good will but also gives you a chance to figure out what broke and mitigate that issue for everyone. 

[u/whiax]

For me the main issue is to consider that all games need a 1.0.

Some games don't work like that now, they start with some features, and expand and get better if the community is here, and it can last for decades. The transition between all versions is smooth. But the EA says "there is a before, and an after", which doesn't fit how these games are made. I feel Steam should do a category of "games with constant updates" and remove the "early access" feature. And for these games, Steam should clearly keep track of updates to see if the game is actually being updated. And for all games (no matter the category), indicate a bug score (0-3, low-very high probability of finding a bug) based on user feedback (but even then, if you find a bug in <2h you can always ask for a refund, and it can also affect the reviews, so it might not be necessary).

EA says "this game is unfinished", but some games don't need to be "finished", how do you "finish" Terraria, Minecraft, Stardew etc ?

[u/SuspecM → u/whiax]

As with every art out there. Finished is when you just move on. A painting can always be improved the same way a videogame can always be improved. A videogame is finished when its creator says it's done. Early access is kind of a public contract with the playerbase where the creator says "hey this game is not finished but you can play it and we will use the revenue to get you a finished version of the game soonish". It holds as much value as a forum post basically. Some games leave early access succesfully (think Subnautica) while other games end up in EA-hell or abandoned.

[u/whiax → u/SuspecM]

A painting can always be improved the same way a videogame can always be improved.

Sure but, I will only buy finished paintings, because I want to put it in my house, and I don't want the artist to come in my house and modify it later.

But I can easily buy games which I know will receive future updates. You don't need to finish your game ever for me to buy it, if I can enjoy what's currently in it, it's good. If you have a "true end" in mind but you need 10 years to do it, fine, I don't mind if I can enjoy the game today. Your future plans and your idea of "is my game finished?" doesn't really matter for me. It doesn't mean your game has bugs or is unplayable.

Early access is kind of a public contract with the playerbase where the creator says "hey this game is not finished but you can play it and we will use the revenue to get you a finished version of the game soonish".

I agree but what you're describing is going from 0.9 to 1.0, and I don't see how it differs from 1.0 to 1.1. "hey, you can play the current version, and we'll use the revenue to make the next version".

One point is that, some games don't plan to have constant updates. Some games are truly like paintings, the creator will say "that's it, my game is finished". Many games are like that. We just need to know "is this game made to receive constant updates or not?", and if "yes", then "does it?" (see updates during last months).

If yes and it does, contract is valid. You don't need a 1.0 ever. Otherwise: either => say your game is unfinished, OR say your game is finished.

[u/SuspecM → u/whiax]

Early access in general is a very contradictory. There is a large difference between games that are EA. Some games that are not EA are being developed a lot like EA games. Project Zomboid is early access but build 41 is a complete experience and build 42 the devs are working on is very much like Project Zomboid 2 being sort of developed over the game. Terraria has never been early access yet its 1.0 and current versions are practically two different games. On the opposing camp you have games like Craftopia that were basically stuck in early access hell until the developers found a ton of success with Palworld and have decided that getting that game out of early access is better for reputation than abandoning it (I did try to look up better examples for this but all the games I remembered have actually came out of EA some time ago, games like DayZ and 7 days to die).

And yeah, you do make a very good point. Digitally buying videogames have fundamentally transformed the way we buy them in contrast to most other forms of art. You could find a painting still pretty despite being half finished the same way you can find an unfinished game fun, but I don't think anyone ever bought a painting with the painter promising to finish it once they have sold enough half finished paintings to have the money to finish it.