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While Baldur's Gate 3 is being widely celebrated by fans and developers alike, some are panicking that this could set new expectations from fans. Good.

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[-] stagen@feddit.dk 37 points 1 year ago

Honestly I hope this does indeed set a new gold standard. Probably not with the whole early access thing, though. It’s a thing that needs to go away.

[-] pixel@beehaw.org 40 points 1 year ago

EA is an immensely useful tool for game devs, the issue is EA as an excuse to ship unpolished games or to leave games unfinished forever. Neither of which are problems intrinsic to early access, they're just bad business practice that should be shunned like any other

[-] soulsource@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 year ago

As a gamedev: Early Access was useful for devs, back when it was real Early Access. Think: Kerbal Space Program (the first, not the second).

Nowadays it's mostly a marketing tool, that allows to generate the hype for launch twice... Publishers and players expect "Early Access" games to be feature complete and polished before the "Early Access" launch...

[-] Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 1 year ago

And again, Larian Studios used EA as intended, which allowed them to publish a good, polished game.

[-] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

As did Supergiant, with Hades. When Early Access is used properly, it can help make a great game.

[-] Maultasche@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

I liked what Daemon X Machina did, where they released a demo, sent out questionnaires to everyone who downloaded it, published a video about the results save how they were planning to act on it, and a few months later released a new demo with a new questionnaire.

[-] soulsource@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago

Yep, that's probably the most helpful thing for devs. This sadly often conflicts with publishers' announcement schedules. There are, however, companies that do NDA-protected play-tests, where you get the same kind of information, without publicly announcing the game.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

Ubisoft did (does?) it to a degree with their Rainbow 6 TTS (beta) servers to test the sandbox and did so for a few technical alpha/beta releases acting as selected pewviews to see how the game is received and where bugs are.

[-] TauriWarrior@aussie.zone 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Early access worked well for them, part of the start of the game was able to be play tested, the community got to give feedback, and they actually listened, its how it should be done

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah but not how the remaining whole industry treats it.
I saw literally no outcry regarding BG3 and early game bugs. Comparing it to CP2077 it was a stellar release in terms of PR.

[-] Lojcs@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago

CP2077 didn't have early access tho? How is this an argument against early access

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think Early Access should go away as it's not inherently bad in and of itself.

What's bad about it is when it's used to sell a totally unfinished piece of shit that stays an unfinished piece of shit indefinitely.

this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
411 points (100.0% liked)

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