Today, I'm gonna be talking about the pros and cons of early access games, and the reputation they've earned.
Many games nowadays aren't "finished" on release. The trend started years ago, and seems to have been largely initiated by Minecraft. Essentially, people will bring their game to a somewhat playable state, with some content missing, and sometimes with placeholder graphics, then start selling it. This allows the company to earn money while still developing the game, rather than having to push through and finish it first. This can be very good for the company, as it allows them to spend more time and money developing, and allows the game to generate some publicity before it's even released.
There are a lot of drawbacks, however. Firstly, early access games have become so popular that it seems almost all releases these days are early access. Steam has filled up with them, and it can be hard to find games that aren't still in development on there. Another issue is that a lot of these games are never finished- I don't know if it's the companies taking the money and deciding it's good enough, or if things come up to distract them, or something else along those lines- but it means not only is Steam full of early access games, it's full of games that will never leave early access.
It is reasonable to say that a company should release an early access version through their personal website, rather than steam, then release the full version when it's done, but this actually has problems too. If the company charges for it, it can be a hassle- Steam is a trusted site with lots of payment options, and these benefits are lost when using a private site. There's also the issue of transferring the game to one's Steam once it's released- I'm not sure how possible this is, but as far as I know it's not the easiest thing to do. Alternately, a free download can be put on the site- but this stops the company earning money for it, which is the biggest benefit to early access games.
There is one other issue that I haven't yet addressed. If a game is released before all of the content is added, and it becomes popular, people will tire themselves out of it before it's finished. I've personally had this with a few games- Planet Explorers is a good example. I got pretty far into the singleplayer campaign a couple years ago, and spent a bunch of time playing around with vehicle creation and weapon creation and such. I then lost my save progress, and haven't had the motivation to get back into it, despite all the content that's since been added. That said, I'd still like to play it again some time- but whenever I sit down and look for something to play, I always find something newer and more exciting, and Planet Explorers doesn't even come to mind.
Early access games have gotten a really bad reputation for these reasons, but I would argue that they're not always a bad thing. Specifically, multiplayer games have every reason to be early access. A game like Halo 3 only had a set amount of stuff in the game (which, to be fair, isn't a small amount). If the developers want more content, the only option for them is to make DLC, which usually ends up costing money. The alternative is something like Overwatch. While it costs a fair bit of money, it's still constantly being updated- things like balance patches, which are to be expected, but also new heroes and cosmetics. All the arguments people make against games that don't have all the content when you buy them could be made here- but the issue is, if you wait for Overwatch to stop getting updates, you're essentially waiting for the player base to be too small to be considered worthwhile, at which point it's not really worth playing.
