Any given game that does the early access thing, is it possible that doing this actually hurts the long term potential the game would have had, had it put it's best foot forward? I feel like hype for many of these games peaks during the paid alpha/early access stages and the games never get a chance to put a best foot forward to the masses.
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Does reading the end of a book spoil what precedes it?
Does knowing how a trick is done lessen it's awe?
Does playing a game for months before it's actual release make it better?
If you have to be the first on your block to own it, play it, you will be the first on your block to discard it, leave it.
I did too but during those days we didn't use to pay full box price for that and it was actually testing and not just some PR stunt.
No PR stunt, big label saying pay x amount of money, play our alpha or beta. Money, play beta. Willing to pay means dont cry when the game is in a stat that every MMO has been in at Alpha and Beta stages of development. Thats why I think they need back the NDA, help people see what they are entering. If you do post and cry about it, your account should be closed and your money lost forever.
Once you start charging people full amount to play or test the game you become open to criticism. call it 'crying ' if you will but players have all the right to cry after forking out the cash. Now if they were testing a free product that would be adifferent matter.
My wife is baking a new cake she has never made before and asks me to come taste the batter for flavor. If I start yelling at her because the cake is not light and fluffy, Im a nut bar. Even if she charged me money to come taste it I would still be a nutter as its not a cake yet just batter. This is the same with paying for beta testing. Its beta. How can you expect anything more then what every Aplha and Beta project has been for 16 years of MMOs? If you do, your a nutter.
I did too but during those days we didn't use to pay full box price for that and it was actually testing and not just some PR stunt.
No PR stunt, big label saying pay x amount of money, play our alpha or beta. Money, play beta. Willing to pay means dont cry when the game is in a stat that every MMO has been in at Alpha and Beta stages of development. Thats why I think they neeg back the NDA, help people see what they are entering. If you do post and cry about it, your account should be closed and your money lost forever.
Once you start charging people full amount to play or test the game you become open to criticism. call it 'crying ' if you will but players have all the right to cry after forking out the cash. Now if they were testing a free product that would be adifferent matter.
My wife is baking a new cake she has never made before and asks me to come taste the batter for flavor. If I start yelling at her because the cake is not light and fluffy, Im a nut bar. Even if she charged me money to come taste it I would still be a nutter as its not a cake yet just batter. This is the same with paying for beta testing. Its beta. How can you expect anything more then what every Aplha and Beta project has been for 16 years of MMOs? If you do, your a nutter.
I gotta say, founder packs are scams.
Many of them will never actually release.
Many of them make false promises of being like "X" old school MMO.
Almost none of them are able to create hype over their game without labeling another older popular game on top of theirs.
What good MMO do we have that came from paid beta/founder packs? Firefall? The steam integration completely gutted any potential that game had with rubber banding AI & lag.
Path of Exile had paid access, but they gave out many keys to non buyers as well, unlike these other games, plus it has a lot of other issues like cheating, GGG openly letting people RMT, desync, unbalanced builds, ect ect. Plus, it's really not even an MMO.
As soon as a company knows they can start a project up and raise millions of $ for a game that only has concept art to show for and will probably never ever release anyways -- that's not good news for gamers, and we're seeing it happen already.
MMOs are not in a good place right now, the triple A MMOs failed hard, and now nobody wants to support big companies. So it makes sense that this indie fad is happening, it will make some people rich, some gamers mad, many will & are getting scammed, and who knows what happens from there. Probably back to triple A MMOs, or a new game design imo.
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So to end my rant, it's a great time to be an indie developer and get into the MMO world, you can have others pay you to make the game, and then you get paid when it's released anyways, and if it doesn't work out, what did you lose, some time? Definitely not any money.
Failed triple A MMOs, lack of trust in companies, no real good MMOs to play currently, and you have a lottery ticket for indie devs & companies. Woo hoo.
If thats how you act, judge as full release, log off and never try the game again. Your part of the problem, not the game company. Your hurting the gaming industry and its a sad state when gamers dont know how to judge a product for what it is even when they know they are playing an Alpha or Beta product. Own up to your own faults dont blame the developer..
To the OP's question, I think the long-term is less affected by early access than the short-term.
The content locusts will enter, consume and leave in a 60-day cycle (for example). If they enter earlier, they will leave earlier. The damage they do is mostly to the hype train, which can greatly affect sales leading up to launch.
For the long-term, I'm presuming the devs will have labeled the client beta or alpha, so the folks buying early access should have a sense of what they are getting into. With any kind of early access, I expect bugs and bug reporting. I look for systems and expect what I see to be complete if it's a beta, and incomplete if it's an alpha.
I've been kind of "burned" lately by absolutely loving alpha systems that were tossed by the time the game entered beta. For the long term, I probably won't play those games. But they got my money and I have no regrets. In this example, the loss of one player is nothing compared to all the other players they attracted because of the changes.
How nice to see someone level minded on this subject, what a breath of fresh air.
But that is the thing. World doesn't revolve around how you think and people are free to judge a game once they pay full price for it. Can't handle the criticism? don't charge for your alphas. problem solved.
No. If I was paying to try out the source code I might understand your example. But the MMO is not a cake. There is no cake.
I did too but during those days we didn't use to pay full box price for that and it was actually testing and not just some PR stunt.
No PR stunt, big label saying pay x amount of money, play our alpha or beta. Money, play beta. Willing to pay means dont cry when the game is in a stat that every MMO has been in at Alpha and Beta stages of development. Thats why I think they neeg back the NDA, help people see what they are entering. If you do post and cry about it, your account should be closed and your money lost forever.
Once you start charging people full amount to play or test the game you become open to criticism. call it 'crying ' if you will but players have all the right to cry after forking out the cash. Now if they were testing a free product that would be adifferent matter.
My wife is baking a new cake she has never made before and asks me to come taste the batter for flavor. If I start yelling at her because the cake is not light and fluffy, Im a nut bar. Even if she charged me money to come taste it I would still be a nutter as its not a cake yet just batter. This is the same with paying for beta testing. Its beta. How can you expect anything more then what every Aplha and Beta project has been for 16 years of MMOs? If you do, your a nutter.
If thats how you act, judge as full release, log off and never try the game again. Your part of the problem, not the game company. Your hurting the gaming industry and its a sad state when gamers dont know how to judge a product for what it is even when they know they are playing an Alpha or Beta product. Own up to your own faults dont blame the developer..
So what your saying is game companies need to stop selling alpha and beta packages because consumers are to dumb? So they better dumb it down for us so we dont act like nutters and get upset the beta we paid for is not a fully flushed out game? Sorry Im to smart to eat that. If you cant take the heat get out of the kitchen. If playing Alpha and Beta products makes you not want to play the game when its launched and a full product rdy to play. Then dont buy into the beta. Be a grown up.
You know the saying, "I'm on the fence"? I'm starting to slip off the fence to the "I really don't like this" side. The only thing keeping me on the fence is the concept, "If people want to support it with their money, why not let them", because really, people can do what they want with their money. It's become an obnoxious trend, though.
I have just one question. What is going on with, or what is wrong with, these devs that they can't make a decent proposal to existing game companies/studios/investment firms, whomever, and get that backing from professionals? That's the bottom line to me. If their idea is so great many people should spend money on it, why can't they get solid support instead of nickle and diming the populace?
You know alot of these startups with paid alpha and founder packs, if they even make it past vaporware, are going to amount to precisely dick and close in under 2 years. Who's going to pay for server upgrades and maintenance? Who's going to pay for network security? Who's going to pay for customer service? How the hell do you know your personal information isn't going to be left abandoned in the basement of an office building somewhere? We're looking at a dozen little pyramid schemes going on here and the lights are gonna get turned off soon after the instant the honeymoon wears off.
So much junk. So frustrated.
This is an intelligent post raising good questions. I don't have answers, but they are good questions.
This is an interesting question.
My guess is that most of the early access and paid beta people are enthusiasts or content locusts. They want in on it at the beginning, before everybody else. And these types of people tend to move on quickly to the next new thing. I bet this is a small piece of the market. Of course, and indie developer may depend on this early cash, but that is another issue.
Probably more important is the buzz generated. If the devs can get positive buzz going, it helps sales. But if it becomes negative, it hurts. Very hard to predict how that is going to go. It's a two edged sword. Kind of like a big Broadway play production; do you charge admission to watch the rehearsals? Do you allow critics in at the rehearsals? It's risky, because if people like it, positive buzz is generated. But what if the critics don't like it? Or find flaws because it really isn't the production version yet?
So all of this early access/paid beta is really just marketing. (Perhaps except for the small indie studio that requires early funding.) They're really just trying to get viral marketing going ahead of release. The studios are convinced this is the best way to go, so this new model of paying for beta access isn't going away.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Early sales have not shown to have any detrimental effects on sales at a later date. In fact, the evidence is that any sales you make before the game is publically available, tend to increase overall revenue. There is a big advantage in selling hype, vs the actual product (no matter if in early release, or final release).
The problem is early access. As soon as people can see the game, they start judging it based on their experience, rather than the marketing hype. This normally cuts the value of the game (even if final release) as the game is not as good as the hype (if marketing has any say). This means that you should immediately monetize a game, regardless of its actual state.
This goes back to the original industry problem with trials. If someone can get a free trial, they will often find themselves satisfied with the 'itch' to try the game that was caused by marketing. They generally then do not feel the need to buy the game. This is why free trials (initially) actually lower sales, rather than raise them. It is only after the game has been on the market for a while (usually 6m to 1yr) that the marketing value drops off, and the benefit of a free trial now outweighs the cons. This is also why you typically see games go F2P after a year.... because they have tapped out the existing customer pool (from marketing) and now want to access the much larger (and cheaper) pool of customers available via F2P.
Dumb? more like they have become more aware and demand for better quality for what they are paying for. Not everyone in this world just bend over so easily.
Ya but the point is, you didnt buy the game because you didnt like it. You didnt flip out and say Im not buying this game because it has bugs. Thats really the point of this thread and why you seem to be smarter then the average gamer according to some in this thread.
Here is why the paying for beta is a better system if people would smarten up. You get to pick what beta projects you want to be part of. I cant count how many times I wanted to get into a beta project and was never sent an invite. Now when that really awesome game you have been waiting 2-4 years for. You get to step up and say, I want to help develop that game. Drop some money, get in beta and start giving real feedback to the devs. Landmark has been a dream come true for gamers. So many things have been changed about EQN because of feedback we have given in game.
Better quality games? You one of them people who cant get you paid to get into a Alpha or Beta program and want a finished product. People crying like that may take away a tool that can really make the gaming industry better. Buying a voice in a game you care about. How can it get better then that? Shape the game you want to play. This mob internet mentality needs to stop. Gamers need to be better then this as we should be a community supporting the thing we love, games.