I felt this way about Back 4 Blood. The game came out, it was genuinely fun and had a good amount of content, and they added DLC that expanded the game while also not ruining things for anyone who hasn’t installed it.
But there was an unending cry from gamers that it was getting “abandoned”. You can still gather 4 players, or fewer with bots, and have a good time. It’s a different appeal from Left 4 Dead with the card system, and that was fine to me.
I don't want the devs to kill themselves for a game, obviously. I don't think anyone does. People just want content updates for a property they love. In an industry that lays off people after they ship a game or starts work immediately on the franchise yearly $70 sequel, I just want a game developer that does better than that. That's why the whole world waited patiently for the follow up to the GOTY of 2022 with Shadow of the Erdtree. Elden Ring didn't get a ton of free content updates in that time, they didn't make it a live service or offer mtx, and they didn't pump out their massive expansion in an unreasonable time frame. They built an incredible game and incredible world, and then they continued development on the game they had poured their hearts into for years and spent the time they needed to create the expansion the game deserved, and at a reasonable price.
The other day I saw a Developer that was sad people don't like the new Fable commercial. I was interested so I watched it and it's some Mulan/Captain Marvel cookie cutter plot where the entire commercial is some dude singing the praises for a random woman (presumably the playable character), and then an evil smoky hand holding an evil wizard staff appears on screen for like 2 seconds. For all we know that female MC could be literally Hitler, we were told absolutely nothing about the game, setting, or characters except that the narrator is a retired hero. They have no depth or motivations.
Hopefully it was just a damn awful trailer and not the death of the series.
The dude was talking about the antagonist and not the playable character. That’s why the playable character says “She’s back” at the end. Also it was just a teaser trailer to remind us that the game still exist and to show some gameplay. It was definitely not a commercial to sell the game to us. The development is probably no where near finished.
I'm kind of confused about the whole early access thing and why devs do it. Is it to get support and funding to finish the project?
Adding to the other reply to this: You can get natural growth of fans and wishlists, you can get free media attention so your brand/gamename grows in popularity, you can receive enthusiasm from randoms about work you have been keeping to yourself for a while, which can help motivate. I mean I'm super hyped about my own videogame project, but having other people be hyped about it is very rewarding :-). I used to shun early access until they became 1.0, because I got burnt a couple times. But If the dev(s) are transparent and communication is ok, I don't really care anymore for the same reason as this dev is pointing out: "It's done when it's done" is good enough in 95% of the cases for me.
I'm dabbling in game development myself, and that's part of why I asked the question originally- I'd be terrified to put something out there for the public if I wasn't already confident it was ready. Early access seems like a double-edged sword. But you list some good points about the benefits of doing so.
By the way, I am interested to hear about your game project if you would like to share some details.
Weird post. I thought we were all aware of the enshitification in gaming, they had a head start on the rest of the tech industry.
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