How do you guys feel about Early Access games?

[Lethn]

As you may have gathered from my thread earlier guys I'm working on a 2D platformer and I'm now I'm getting the most annoying bits out of the way I'm making steady progress, after getting the mechanics done it will be just a matter of making everything look really nice with Artwork and adding quite a few levels.

How do you feel about Early Access games especially if it's a 2D platformer? I don't know about uploading the game to steam yet as I don't even have Unity professional but say if I were to upload the game to my website for sale and then provide free content updates what would you think? I of course wouldn't do paid DLC or anything, you guys should know how I feel about that but I just wanted to check the general mood. Because it's such a simple platformer I could even put up a HTML5 demo considering this is Unity and there are so many platforms supported by it.

Left a poll as well so you guys can let me know whether it's an idea or not

[nihilnegativum]

Don't do it. Platformers don't need as much community feedback, to warrant early access.

[Lethn]

Now I think about it more I guess I'm inclined to agree, just wondering about the boundaries really, considering how easy it is to make 2D Platformers I think I'm just going to work my arse off, this is a real project that I've been thinking about awhile now and I'm not going to procrastinate on it anymore.

[Vod]

An early-access game might be very buggy, leading to negative reviews you cannot recover from. 

You could release a polished bug-free game with little content, then add content as times goes on.

I have participated in alpha and beta games before.  I find that by the time they are released and bug free, I've grown bored of them already.

[Lethn]

Well I was thinking of doing that really and adding a really stable game, then rewarding customers for sticking around with free content updates, lots of levels, new game modes perhaps and so on.

[juanthree]

i like early access games because i think its cool to be a pioneer

[DarkHyudrA]

Depends if the developer is already known.
We all know many cases where we all dumped our precious money goes to the developers and the game never gets good.
(bugs, not the 100% of the promised content)
One example of Early Access that i'm not satisfied is Starbound, which I personally prefer to call Starbutt, since the devs went from new content every month to new content every year. That's really disapointing support a project to see it going to nowhere, the game will never be finished this way.

On the other side, I supported a indie game, that is about a sci-fi FPS that I don't recall it's name, that although far from the end, the devs are doing a good job and I loved the game even it's far from finished.

EDIT: Found it the name, Interstellar Marines.

[legendster]

Now I think about it more I guess I'm inclined to agree, just wondering about the boundaries really, considering how easy it is to make 2D Platformers I think I'm just going to work my arse off, this is a real project that I've been thinking about awhile now and I'm not going to procrastinate on it anymore.

How many team members do you have ? Are you actively expanding your team ? Do you work out of an office or from your home(s) ?
Is this a full time pursuit ?

Do excuse me if I repeated anything.

[Lethn]

I should stress this is just purely me but I have the skills now to get everything done, it's just a question of putting the time and effort into it now, I'm using the game engine Unity which has totally won me over partly because it's so damn easy to publish games on it, I'm not surprised tons of indie developers have picked it up.

I think at the very least I will make sure my platformer has no bugs and the like in it the code is pretty basic it's just if I spend forever making lots and lots of levels which I have no with but if I spend forever on it I won't make any money which is why I thought I'd want to do content updates so that I have time to polish everything, we'll see how much progress I make though.

[DarkHyudrA]

I should stress this is just purely me but I have the skills now to get everything done, it's just a question of putting the time and effort into it now, I'm using the game engine Unity which has totally won me over partly because it's so damn easy to publish games on it, I'm not surprised tons of indie developers have picked it up.

I think at the very least I will make sure my platformer has no bugs and the like in it the code is pretty basic it's just if I spend forever making lots and lots of levels which I have no with but if I spend forever on it I won't make any money which is why I thought I'd want to do content updates so that I have time to polish everything, we'll see how much progress I make though.

Well, you can send the concept of the game to GreenLight if your account has any game that isn't free, so players can make some avail to you, and other small devs aswell.
To send a complete game you will need to pay the 100$ Fee, but you can save it until ou complete your game.
Sending a concept will make a bit depressive, since most players only because they don't want the game they vote NO, but that doesn't really means that the art/concept of gameplay is bad.

Anyway, good luck, since I'm also trying to finish my very first 2D game made with AS3 and Adobe AIR and instead of selling the game on FGL, I'll try it the DIY way and put it on GreenLight.

[Lethn]

Problem is your paying that submission fee for a 'chance' to upload your game to steam with cryptocurrencies I can just upload it to my own website I've got it all set up also I've looked at the Greenlight system and of course there are devs who try submitting their games and they get rejected without reason.

Too centralised for me, would be nice to get onto steam sure buy for now I think that I'll stick with just upload it and use the coinpayments plugin to accept payment

[legendster]

Problem is your paying that submission fee for a 'chance' to upload your game to steam with cryptocurrencies I can just upload it to my own website I've got it all set up also I've looked at the Greenlight system and of course there are devs who try submitting their games and they get rejected without reason.

Too centralised for me, would be nice to get onto steam sure buy for now I think that I'll stick with just upload it and use the coinpayments plugin to accept payment

If you're not on steam, you're not in the limelight, and for an indie developer being in the limelight is equivalent to 'making it' to the big leagues.
There are no games that are rejected without any reason I've seen my fair share of shit on steam for all the years that I ve used it, and remember it wasnt too long ago when people were crying their whales out because they thought the PC gaming industry is dead.

I have friends who never bought a game legally which included me as well but all that changed with steam. I still dont buy games that arent multiplayer and that is the prevailing mindset from where I come from.

[legendster]

With that said, if you want a helping hand I'd love to work with you on your platformer's levels, basic graphics / animation / UI portion - basically everything other than programming.
I recently got involved with my first game dev work - Army Men 3 and would love another indie game project under my belt.

[Blackmet]

I can only tell the following: do it, if you're sure you can provide an adequate level of absence of bugs and other stuff. If you're rolling it out just in order to test the game by means of players - warn them, and warn well. It pisses off when you're getting an early access to the game and getting a lagging heap of crap instead.

[Lethn]

I can only tell the following: do it, if you're sure you can provide an adequate level of absence of bugs and other stuff. If you're rolling it out just in order to test the game by means of players - warn them, and warn well. It pisses off when you're getting an early access to the game and getting a lagging heap of crap instead.

Well things are going a lot better than I thought because I thought it would be absolute hell getting lots of levels in and so on but it's all fine, so you may well be getting a much more complete game than I expected. Of course if I were to ever do an Early Acccess game I'd post warnings all over the place so that people would understand and say it's essentially in Alpha, but it's look more like a beta to me now already and I haven't even really gotten started.

The main bit to do now is just polishing up and make sure I make the art look nice and put in some animations, Unity is a pretty impressive piece of software, best part is I put my platformer on an old laptop I had and it ran absolutely fine. Oh and to add to the good news, I bought steam greenlight, so when I have reached my goal of about 20 levels I will be putting it up on steam as well as my own website, I read through the process more carefully now and I know what's going on.

I will be patching in more levels once I see if people like it or not, of course, any extra game content will be free if you buy the game, no paid DLC bullshit here

[Sakarias-Corporation]

release it with a huge text saying ''BETA'' then even if its buggy, it will be forgiven, cuz you know, its BETA

[ObscureBean]

That's awesome I love 2D platformers, it's a shame good ones are rare these days. I'd say don't do early access, it's a better experience to buy a polished, bug-free game because you can immerse yourself better immediately after you buy it, just make sure you have a decent amount of content at launch. You can always add content via updates later on, maybe even charge for them if they are big enough and the game is a success. Are you gonna have Mac and Linux versions as well or just Windows? Also I do hope you'll make the game available for purchase directly from your site and accept Bitcoin  

EDIT - Sorry hadn't visited your site yet, I see you're already accepting Bitcoin and altcoins, awesome! 

[Lethn]

it should be pretty easy to make Mac/Linux versions as I'm using Unity, but I'll need testers as I don't use either myself but yeah, that's the plan, I mean I could spend forever making 100 levels or something ridiculous like that, but it would take such a long time I wouldn't make any money, my plan is just to make a completely functional game and get 20 levels in, then patch more levels over time for free, I just wanted to see how people would react to such a move.

Also, yes, I'm going to be using coinpayments for my website so you can pretty much use nearly all the altcoins listed on there to buy it if you want.

[yummyransom]

i like early access games because i think its cool to be a pioneer

Me too. I'M JUST CURIOUS ABOUT IT