We're not even a week into Early Access and it's already pretty clear that going with EA is one of the best decisions we could've made
I see some people are still irked about why games like Wicked, Hades 2, Larian's new game, etc. launch into Early Access even if the studio 'should have the funds to finish the game and release it then'.
But that's looking at a complex problem through a way too simple lens:
I think as games become more and more complex and sophisticated, we'll see some form of Early Access happening more and more often. Speaking from our own experience, there is just no way we could have ever shipped Wicked 1.0 without being able to see all the data we're seeing now and getting all the feedback from users. And I mean actual users, not a Focus Testing Group.
Even if we'd have 2-3 times the staff, it would have been quite simply impossible, the product is just way too complex of a beast to reasonably expect that. 9 women can't make a baby in a month and all that.
And even historically speaking, I think some games would've benefited from Early Access even before EA was a thing. Imagine Dark Souls 1 would've been in Early Access - Instead of From rushing to ship a boxed product in a somewhat unfinished state, they probably would've been able to look at the second half of that game and still fully form and polish the less polished areas like Lost Izalith, etc.
"You could just do that through updates and DLC!" I hear you say - No, often times you couldn't.
Shipping games is always incredibly difficult and stressful and most of the time it means making quite drastic compromises, especially if your product is trying to accomplish something new. And if you don't know that it's okay to bring in certain features and scope after the fact, you'll just end up cutting before you hit the market.
So, even if you dislike the idea of Early Access: It's one way to allow developers to truly perfect a product over time, so please try to understand that there's value in that.
I'm confident that we will see games being created through Early Access programs that would've never been made without EA .
And to that effect, we will need to see
@PlayStation
and
@NintendoAmerica
also embrace Early Access.
The industry is just changing at a rapid pace and holding on to things that were the norm 5-10 years ago is too restrictive.
Ultimately people just want to play great games. It shouldn't matter how the game was developed, just that it was and if players can't play some great experience on your platform, you're doing your audience a disservice.