Early Access Has Killed Release Day Excitement

Darkest Dungeon is a wonderful game. I first heard about it in late 2014 (thanks to Jim Sterling), picked it up as soon as it entered Early Access, and quickly put 30 hours into it before I ran out of content. That by itself was worth the cost of entry, and the game wasn’t even complete yet! Over the next few weeks I hoped for new classes or dungeons to be released, but considering development time they, understandably, never came. My excitement for the game faded and I moved on. Yesterday, a big patch for Darkest Dungeon was released, adding new bosses and new classes. But those are an add-on for a game I’ve already played, and I have many more games competing for my time now (curse you, Witcher 3, for having so many side quests!). I might not ever get back to it and experience the new content now, let alone when it eventually has its final release.

My experience with Darkest Dungeon highlights one of the problems I’ve had with Early Access games ever since its popularization. Receiving a game in small chunks really kills release day hype. With games that are released already complete, like Witcher 3, Splatoon, or Bloodborne, you receive the entire product on the day of release. You may play it as much as you like without holes or gaps in the experience. You don’t get halfway through the story then have to wait for the next patch, so there is an excitement to play it as soon as possible because the entirety of the game lies before you. Early Access games don’t have that potential for release day excitement. If you played it during its Early Access period, you were playing an unfinished gamem and it always felt that way. If you wait for release, the game has been playable for months (or years in some cases), so the vast majority of people that want to play the game already have done so and moved on. The game has already been analyzed and talked about. There is no excitement in playing it.

Another game that suffered from this release day apathy is Planetary Annihilation. During Early Access, Planetary Annihilation was all over gaming news sites. People were enthused about the chance to play another large scale RTS, and the hype was obvious. But as time wore on, the passion died and by the time it hit final release, no one was talking about it anymore. The only reason I knew it was fully released was a note on the Steam page! That lack of coverage would be the death knell for a normal game release, and it wasn’t good for Planetary Annihilation either, since the multiplayer was supposed to be a significant aspect of the game. With players trickling in and out over the course of its Early Access career, it never had the huge influx of players a multiplayer community needs, and lacking that population boost, the community is all but dead.

It would be unfair for me to act like Early Access is entirely bad. Video gaming’s greatest success story, Minecraft, was one of the first major “Early Access” titles, and it worked out wonderfully for them. Other games like Don’t Starve and Kerbal Space Program have gone through Early Access and had relatively good success before and after their official “release,” and the money they gained during their stint in Early Access undoubtedly helped improve the final product. But for every success story, there are dozens of games that either never get released, or do get released and no one really cares.

Although Early Access can help some games be developed that wouldn’t otherwise have the resources, it’s not necessarily all good for the players or the game itself. Spreading the community growth out over a longer time frame makes it more difficult to establish a strong multiplayer community, and distributing the game content in small chunks greatly reduces the chance players will see all of it. Early Access has become a gravely abused system that once helped encourage creativity but now breeds greed and laziness. I hope more Early Access games in the future prove me wrong. Now, time to go back to The Witcher. I wonder how many more hours I can put into it without ever leaving Velen...