Brad Wardell on Early Access games

[Martok]

He's posted some opinions & experiences on the subject.  Whether one agrees with him or not, you'll probably find it an interesting read. 


http://forums.elementalgame.com/454031/page/1/

[Boggit]

I'm not a fan of paying to be on the beta team.

It's even more annoying to be conned into thinking that a game is not only ready to go but is an improvement over previous iterations. Yep, you guessed it, Rome 2 Total War - and I was fool enough to part with my money full price on pre-order. Yes fool, because I trusted the brand, as a TW fanboi will. And - after a year since release, it's just had it's twelth patch, whilst CA still knocks out more DLC. CA should perhaps take a leaf out of Snowbird's games name, Eador Masters of the Broken World (actually quite good, save for a few bugs), and apply it to their own company. CA - Masters of the Broken Game.

I hope that the 12th! patch will make the Rome 2 much better, but I don't know. There were some serious flaws in it, not just technically, but as a game to start with. Well you never know. CA eventually patched Empire into a playable game, but I just don't understand why they moved so far from a winning formula that you see in Medieval Total War 2, or Shogun 2 Total War, for which CA earnt a lot of praise - quite rightly too IMHO.

I just don't get what happened with Rome 2. Was it never playtested by anyone with the slightest interest in an Ancients game with any semblance of reality? Did the management of the company learn NOTHING from creating the rest of the franchise? I just don't get why they took a brilliant concept and turned it into a buggy Age of Empires version of Rome Total War. Most of this rant is entirely due to the high expectations I had of CA after their earlier games, and a deep sadness as a Total War fan that they threw their QA into the bin.

I am also bloody annoyed at Metacritic, and PC Gamer for their glowing reviews of the pre-release game, when it turned out to be a bug ridden mess. How could they write such glowing reviews with the game released in the state it was? Did they even play it, before writing it up, or did they just get caught up with the media hype, and blindly write something in a style that would make Josef Goebbels proud.... I don't know, but I do know I felt at the time I was conned by the glowing reviews too, and I still feel bitter about it.

The whole thing has been very disappointing. I can only hope that EVENTUALLY - CA will finally patch the game to the point it approaches some of the hype it came out with. Frankly, I think they would have been better off thinking about what they were trying to achieve, and then writing the code to do just that, testing it thoroughly, then releasing it.

OK, rant over. I do think CA has realised they dropped the ball with the efforts made in producing 12 patches so far (even if they do tend to f*ck up the mods installed with each iteration), so they must get some credit for that. It was a badly managed project though leading to a poor release product. If that was a "release" quality product, from what was to me a quality developer, then you can see why I am suspicious about early access....

[skeptical.platypus]

Edited for maybe the stupidest question ever.

[RooksBailey]

Most people I know who make games do so because they enjoy making things to share with other people. No one becomes a game developer for the money. If it weren't for fan interaction, I wouldn't be making games at all. It's my primary motivation. I'm a creature of the Internet. I'm notorious for lurking and participating on forums outside our own because talking about our games or other games is very enjoyable.

I am glad to hear him say this because this has always been my attitude, too. I've always said gaming isn't about the games, but about the communities that form around the games. That is why I have trouble playing games with "dead" communities. Even if the game is really good, knowing that I am one of very few people still playing it definitely puts a damper on it for me.

EDIT:

I do think CA has realised they dropped the ball with the efforts made in producing 12 patches so far (even if they do tend to f*ck up the mods installed with each iteration), so they must get some credit for that. It was a badly managed project though leading to a poor release product. If that was a "release" quality product, from what was to me a quality developer, then you can see why I am suspicious about early access....

It pains me to say this, but based on the last two years, gaming, as an industry, has become disreputable to me.  Sure, not ALL devs are disreputable, but it seems like more and more are doing the "smash and grab" thing where they promise the sky, deliver a hole in the ground, and then expect the gamer to wait months, if not longer, for the game to be where it should have been at launch.  This is very unsavory behavior, one that is coming from both mega studios and indies as well.   There is now an almost antagonist relationship between the devs and the consumer.   >:(

[Herman Hum]

It pains me to say this, but based on the last two years, gaming, as an industry, has become disreputable to me.  Sure, not ALL devs are disreputable, but it seems like more and more are doing the "smash and grab" thing where they promise the sky, deliver a hole in the ground, and then expect the gamer to wait months, if not longer, for the game to be where it should have been at launch.  This is very unsavory behavior, one that is coming from both mega studios and indies as well.   There is now an almost antagonist relationship between the devs and the consumer.   >:(

So long as developers and publishers are rewarded for their behaviour, they will continue to act in a disreputable manner.  Games come out with hundreds of bugs that need to be furiously patched just to get them out of their Alpha release state and some people still buy them.  Both parties are getting exactly what they deserve.

[RooksBailey]

So long as developers and publishers are rewarded for their behaviour, they will continue to act in a disreputable manner.  Games come out with hundreds of bugs that need to be furiously patched just to get them out of their Alpha release state and some people still buy them.  Both parties are getting exactly what they deserve.

There certainly is that.  When I see people still lining up to pre-order games, when we had more than a few notable examples explode on launch lately, really makes me shake my head in disbelief.  While I do expect a lot of those pre-orders are from kids easily manipulated by a good PR campaign, I do also know that more than a few experienced gamers still are throwing their money at their monitor with little more than best wishes and jazzed up pre-launch vids being their only guarantee for getting something worthwhile in return.

I will give devs one possible out, though.  I wonder: has gaming hit a wall of possibility?  What I mean by that is now that we have these powerful machines sitting on our desktops, I wonder if gamers are demanding too much, and devs feel forced to deliver too much?  Games have always been fantastically complex apps to make, but back in the early days, devs could fudge a lot more because gamers understood the horsepower wasn't there for a truly realistic experience.  Now, though, gamers are demanding every game deliver an experience that involves not only photo-realistic graphics, but also open-ended sandbox experiences governed by real world physics and believable interactivity.   In short, we all want our own holodeck for our favorite gaming genre.   :)  I think a lot of devs want the same thing, too, so they are more than happy to say "yes, we can do that!", but once they start the actual development, they soon realize that no amount of budget, no amount of staff, can possibly make good on that promise.   But they keep digging until they are in a hole from which there is no escape (Rome 2 seems to fit this bill, along with X: Rebirth).  Hence, we ultimately get a game that is only a shadow of what we were promised; an incomplete project that can never, truly, be made complete (at least, not without driving the dev into bankruptcy).

Just a thought.

[Jarhead0331]

I'm not a fan of paying to be on the beta team.

It's even more annoying to be conned into thinking that a game is not only ready to go but is an improvement over previous iterations. Yep, you guessed it, Rome 2 Total War - and I was fool enough to part with my money full price on pre-order. Yes fool, because I trusted the brand, as a TW fanboi will. And - after a year since release, it's just had it's twelth patch, whilst CA still knocks out more DLC. CA should perhaps take a leaf out of Snowbird's games name, Eador Masters of the Broken World (actually quite good, save for a few bugs), and apply it to their own company. CA - Masters of the Broken Game.

I hope that the 12th! patch will make the Rome 2 much better, but I don't know. There were some serious flaws in it, not just technically, but as a game to start with. Well you never know. CA eventually patched Empire into a playable game, but I just don't understand why they moved so far from a winning formula that you see in Medieval Total War 2, or Shogun 2 Total War, for which CA earnt a lot of praise - quite rightly too IMHO.

I just don't get what happened with Rome 2. Was it never playtested by anyone with the slightest interest in an Ancients game with any semblance of reality? Did the management of the company learn NOTHING from creating the rest of the franchise? I just don't get why they took a brilliant concept and turned it into a buggy Age of Empires version of Rome Total War. Most of this rant is entirely due to the high expectations I had of CA after their earlier games, and a deep sadness as a Total War fan that they threw their QA into the bin.

I am also bloody annoyed at Metacritic, and PC Gamer for their glowing reviews of the pre-release game, when it turned out to be a bug ridden mess. How could they write such glowing reviews with the game released in the state it was? Did they even play it, before writing it up, or did they just get caught up with the media hype, and blindly write something in a style that would make Josef Goebbels proud.... I don't know, but I do know I felt at the time I was conned by the glowing reviews too, and I still feel bitter about it.

The whole thing has been very disappointing. I can only hope that EVENTUALLY - CA will finally patch the game to the point it approaches some of the hype it came out with. Frankly, I think they would have been better off thinking about what they were trying to achieve, and then writing the code to do just that, testing it thoroughly, then releasing it.

OK, rant over. I do think CA has realised they dropped the ball with the efforts made in producing 12 patches so far (even if they do tend to f*ck up the mods installed with each iteration), so they must get some credit for that. It was a badly managed project though leading to a poor release product. If that was a "release" quality product, from what was to me a quality developer, then you can see why I am suspicious about early access....

I'm not sure why you chose this thread to rant on Rome II. I think your comments here are out of place Boggit. Wardell is talking about early access. A retail method that openly sells customers a game before it is considered complete and which allows players to participate in the development process. You're complaining about a game released as complete that you just didn't like.

Your opinion is clearly subjective. We have a 200 page thread here filled with thousands of posts from a lot of the old grogs around here who have enjoyed Rome II immensely since release.

Try giving it another shot. Although I liked it from release, it has no doubt been improved.

[jomni]

ARMA 3 early access is a gem.Even in alpha, the quality is good. I think the editor helped a lot. Despite the lack of official content (missions and campaigns) , users can already craft their own scenarios.  And since it did not deviate much from Arma 2 (except for graphics and controls ), A lot of old stuff can be re-tooled and ported over.

[FlickJax]

I'm not a fan of paying to be on the beta team.

It's even more annoying to be conned into thinking that a game is not only ready to go but is an improvement over previous iterations. Yep, you guessed it, Rome 2 Total War - and I was fool enough to part with my money full price on pre-order. Yes fool, because I trusted the brand, as a TW fanboi will. And - after a year since release, it's just had it's twelth patch, whilst CA still knocks out more DLC. CA should perhaps take a leaf out of Snowbird's games name, Eador Masters of the Broken World (actually quite good, save for a few bugs), and apply it to their own company. CA - Masters of the Broken Game.

I hope that the 12th! patch will make the Rome 2 much better, but I don't know. There were some serious flaws in it, not just technically, but as a game to start with. Well you never know. CA eventually patched Empire into a playable game, but I just don't understand why they moved so far from a winning formula that you see in Medieval Total War 2, or Shogun 2 Total War, for which CA earnt a lot of praise - quite rightly too IMHO.

I just don't get what happened with Rome 2. Was it never playtested by anyone with the slightest interest in an Ancients game with any semblance of reality? Did the management of the company learn NOTHING from creating the rest of the franchise? I just don't get why they took a brilliant concept and turned it into a buggy Age of Empires version of Rome Total War. Most of this rant is entirely due to the high expectations I had of CA after their earlier games, and a deep sadness as a Total War fan that they threw their QA into the bin.

I am also bloody annoyed at Metacritic, and PC Gamer for their glowing reviews of the pre-release game, when it turned out to be a bug ridden mess. How could they write such glowing reviews with the game released in the state it was? Did they even play it, before writing it up, or did they just get caught up with the media hype, and blindly write something in a style that would make Josef Goebbels proud.... I don't know, but I do know I felt at the time I was conned by the glowing reviews too, and I still feel bitter about it.

The whole thing has been very disappointing. I can only hope that EVENTUALLY - CA will finally patch the game to the point it approaches some of the hype it came out with. Frankly, I think they would have been better off thinking about what they were trying to achieve, and then writing the code to do just that, testing it thoroughly, then releasing it.

OK, rant over. I do think CA has realised they dropped the ball with the efforts made in producing 12 patches so far (even if they do tend to f*ck up the mods installed with each iteration), so they must get some credit for that. It was a badly managed project though leading to a poor release product. If that was a "release" quality product, from what was to me a quality developer, then you can see why I am suspicious about early access....

I'm not sure why you chose this thread to rant on Rome II. I think your comments here are out of place Boggit. Wardell is talking about early access. A retail method that openly sells customers a game before it is considered complete and which allows players to participate in the development process. You're complaining about a game released as complete that you just didn't like.

Your opinion is clearly subjective. We have a 200 page thread here filled with thousands of posts from a lot of the old grogs around here who have enjoyed Rome II immensely since release.

Try giving it another shot. A though I liked it from release, it has no doubt been improved.

Nothing wrong with Rome 2

[Greybriar]

Nothing wrong with Rome 2

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  ;)

[Boggit]

I'm not a fan of paying to be on the beta team.

It's even more annoying to be conned into thinking that a game is not only ready to go but is an improvement over previous iterations. Yep, you guessed it, Rome 2 Total War - and I was fool enough to part with my money full price on pre-order. Yes fool, because I trusted the brand, as a TW fanboi will. And - after a year since release, it's just had it's twelth patch, whilst CA still knocks out more DLC. CA should perhaps take a leaf out of Snowbird's games name, Eador Masters of the Broken World (actually quite good, save for a few bugs), and apply it to their own company. CA - Masters of the Broken Game.

I hope that the 12th! patch will make the Rome 2 much better, but I don't know. There were some serious flaws in it, not just technically, but as a game to start with. Well you never know. CA eventually patched Empire into a playable game, but I just don't understand why they moved so far from a winning formula that you see in Medieval Total War 2, or Shogun 2 Total War, for which CA earnt a lot of praise - quite rightly too IMHO.

I just don't get what happened with Rome 2. Was it never playtested by anyone with the slightest interest in an Ancients game with any semblance of reality? Did the management of the company learn NOTHING from creating the rest of the franchise? I just don't get why they took a brilliant concept and turned it into a buggy Age of Empires version of Rome Total War. Most of this rant is entirely due to the high expectations I had of CA after their earlier games, and a deep sadness as a Total War fan that they threw their QA into the bin.

I am also bloody annoyed at Metacritic, and PC Gamer for their glowing reviews of the pre-release game, when it turned out to be a bug ridden mess. How could they write such glowing reviews with the game released in the state it was? Did they even play it, before writing it up, or did they just get caught up with the media hype, and blindly write something in a style that would make Josef Goebbels proud.... I don't know, but I do know I felt at the time I was conned by the glowing reviews too, and I still feel bitter about it.

The whole thing has been very disappointing. I can only hope that EVENTUALLY - CA will finally patch the game to the point it approaches some of the hype it came out with. Frankly, I think they would have been better off thinking about what they were trying to achieve, and then writing the code to do just that, testing it thoroughly, then releasing it.

OK, rant over. I do think CA has realised they dropped the ball with the efforts made in producing 12 patches so far (even if they do tend to f*ck up the mods installed with each iteration), so they must get some credit for that. It was a badly managed project though leading to a poor release product. If that was a "release" quality product, from what was to me a quality developer, then you can see why I am suspicious about early access....

I'm not sure why you chose this thread to rant on Rome II. I think your comments here are out of place Boggit. Wardell is talking about early access. A retail method that openly sells customers a game before it is considered complete and which allows players to participate in the development process. You're complaining about a game released as complete that you just didn't like.

Your opinion is clearly subjective. We have a 200 page thread here filled with thousands of posts from a lot of the old grogs around here who have enjoyed Rome II immensely since release.

Try giving it another shot. Although I liked it from release, it has no doubt been improved.

I see your point, and apologise if I got too off topic.

To answer your question, I made the comment since I think it does add to the debate regarding unfinished products hitting the marketplace, and the level of QA that goes into them - and in my opinion - the release of Rome 2 was a good example of that. I think paying for unfinished games does relate to alpha access games - and in relation to Rome 2, 12 patches since release suggest to me an unfinished game released to a paying market - the label "finished" I think was misleading when the reality was that the game was still in a beta state. In that sense, I think my post does at least relate on the paying for alpha access debate because of the ongoing need to work on a game to bring it to an "acceptable", "finished" state - and I use those words guardedly! ;) Is that not also part of what alpha access is all about too?

I readily accept as you say that there is very much more to the alpha access debate that I didn't touch on, but I don't think my comments were totally irrelevant to the point in question, even though they are open to argument as potentially peripheral. You say I am "complaining about a game released as complete that you (I) just didn't like." I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that. I didn't like it because it was full of bugs, and I submit that 12 patches after "release" (some of them being very large patches) is solid evidence, and CA's implied admission that the game was bug ridden, and unfinished - Res ipso loquitur. That's my opinion, and is also held by other people too. I may not be in the majority view on this forum, but that's fine with me. You may choose to think differently on the point, and I fully respect that.

I'm not seeking to offend, and that was not the purpose of my post. If I have done so inadvertantly, then I apologise. That my opinion is subjective I agree, but I do observe that all opinions - by definition - are subjective.

Your suggestion that I give Rome 2 another shot is fair enough, since I haven't bothered to look at it since the 10th patch, although seeing 2 more patches after that seemed a warning and didn't encourage me...  :-\

[Jarhead0331]

I see your point, and apologise if I got too off topic.

No need for an apology, Boggs. Just wanted to make the distinction clear.

To answer your question, I made the comment since I think it does add to the debate regarding unfinished products hitting the marketplace, and the level of QA that goes into them - and in my opinion - the release of Rome 2 was a good example of that. I think paying for unfinished games does relate to alpha access games - and in relation to Rome 2, 12 patches since release suggest to me an unfinished game released to a paying market - the label "finished" I think was misleading when the reality was that the game was still in a beta state. In that sense, I think my post does at least relate on the paying for alpha access debate because of the ongoing need to work on a game to bring it to an "acceptable", "finished" state - and I use those words guardedly! ;) Is that not also part of what alpha access is all about too?

I readily accept as you say that there is very much more to the alpha access debate that I didn't touch on, but I don't think my comments were totally irrelevant to the point in question, even though they are open to argument as potentially peripheral. You say I am "complaining about a game released as complete that you (I) just didn't like." I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that. I didn't like it because it was full of bugs, and I submit that 12 patches after "release" (some of them being very large patches) is solid evidence, and CA's implied admission that the game was bug ridden, and unfinished - Res ipso loquitur. That's my opinion, and is also held by other people too. I may not be in the majority view on this forum, but that's fine with me. You may choose to think differently on the point, and I fully respect that.

I don't see any reason to debate the issue of Rome II in this thread. Like I said, we have a 200 page thread discussing that particular game. The issue of developers releasing a bugged product is definitely one that concerns us all, but there is a tremendous difference in releasing a game under the guise of "early access" with bugs and releasing a game as complete that has bugs.  As for your belief that Rome II was so bad that it was unfinished and more like an alpha release, I just don't see any real basis for this opinion. For me, it was playable and fun and certainly felt complete.  Moreover, the fact there have been 12 patches shouldn't be grounds to attack a developer, it should be a reason to applaud them. Under your approach, the developer will be damned if they support their product, and damnd if they do not.  Hardly a dilemma we want to make them face.

I'm not seeking to offend, and that was not the purpose of my post. If I have done so inadvertantly, then I apologise. That my opinion is subjective I agree, but I do observe that all opinions - by definition - are subjective.

No offense taken whatsoever. Sorry if my post came off that way. I've been known to have that problem.

Your suggestion that I give Rome 2 another shot is fair enough, since I haven't bothered to look at it since the 10th patch, although seeing 2 more patches after that seemed a warning and didn't encourage me...  :-\

It sounds to me that you just do not like the game. No matter how much they improve it, you will most likely still not care for it.  That is certainly fair enough.

[mikeck]

I really don't understand how anyone an oppose early access. If one doesn't want to be a paying beta tester, than don't. I love the freedom digital distributors like STEAM offer to these developers to offer alpha and beta access. For some games, I want the alpha now; for others, I want to wait for the finished product. It's an individual decision. Also, the more people involved in the alpha and beta process, the better.

[Rayfer]

I really don't understand how anyone an oppose early access. If one doesn't want to be a paying beta tester, than don't. I love the freedom digital distributors like STEAM offer to these developers to offer alpha and beta access. For some games, I want the alpha now; for others, I want to wait for the finished product. It's an individual decision. Also, the more people involved in the alpha and beta process, the better.

Well stated mikeck. I have friends who own guns and hunt.  I don't. It's my choice. But I would never judge them or try in any way to deny them their enjoyment of the sport. Same with early access. I dont'. But if you enjoy it then go for it and have fun.

[Boggit]

I see your point, and apologise if I got too off topic.

No need for an apology, Boggs. Just wanted to make the distinction clear.

I'm not seeking to offend, and that was not the purpose of my post. If I have done so inadvertantly, then I apologise. That my opinion is subjective I agree, but I do observe that all opinions - by definition - are subjective.

No offense taken whatsoever. Sorry if my post came off that way. I've been known to have that problem.

Your suggestion that I give Rome 2 another shot is fair enough, since I haven't bothered to look at it since the 10th patch, although seeing 2 more patches after that seemed a warning and didn't encourage me...  :-\

It sounds to me that you just do not like the game. No matter how much they improve it, you will most likely still not care for it.  That is certainly fair enough.

Actually no. I really, really, really wanted to like it - I have the entire TW franchise for Pete's sake! I just found this iteration painfully artificial, and buggy. Now maybe you're right, that I haven't given it enough of a chance after the 12 patches. So in fairness, I'll do just that. I will give it another chance. If I still don't like what I find, well I'll put it down to experience, and personal taste. But if you're right then I'm back to being a Total War fanboy again! ;D

I've taken no offense either. We're friends anyway, and you're just doing your job as moderator. I respect that. No worries, we're good! :)