September 26th, 2023 Livestream Q&A: How are you & the studio finding making a game in Early Access?

September 26th, 2023 Livestream

Q&A: How are you & the studio finding making a game in Early Access?

https://youtu.be/5VQPyz_RhIM

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how are you in the studio finding making a game in Early Access do you think it's a good choice and is it something you think you'd do again for I think in our case it was very worth it like, I've talked about this a couple times on screen before when it comes to Early Access I've thought about it a lot and I know we thought about a lot when it comes to like you know what it's like making a game in our Lexus I think it's weird because Early Access is a term that's been around for so long and it's still not established fully what it means I think and I think that's the problem with when you're making a game in Early Access and you say like this game in our Lexus because I think a lot of people have, different opinions on on what that entails and like you know both in terms of you know what type of quality games have but also in terms of like development schedules and stuff like that and what you can expect when you buy a game in Early Access it's it's a very tricky subject and it's it ties into the whole thing with like you know software as a service model which is quite common, I feel like there are a lot of games that have the same model as an early access game but they're marketed as like a finished game but their software as a service so like you expect change and stuff like that and, you know early release ongoing development like these are sort of hard questions to answer and releasing your game in Early Access is very scary I'll tell you that much, are you talking OverWatch I was not talking to our wash actually but but like there are definitely games where you know you buy a game and you play it on release and you're like I love this and then two years ago bye and they play it again like this is not what I bought, you know I think it's very important that games are upfront about that stuff and maybe we need like a new tag you know for that kind of thing where if you think about like Destiny or any game that's been software as a service where you know this isn't what I bought when I bought the game at the first time and at least with the Early Access titles you know you are sort of we're upfront with the fact that this is a game that is in developments I think the there's a bunch of pros and cons with going that approach where like you know when you buy a game in our Lexus you're sort of expecting bugs and issues and all that stuff can come with it and it's hard to know like where should the bar for like what the quality of an early access game should be at you know if if we could release the game because because like here's the thing the game that you guys see in Early Access is not the same as if we were developing the game and just releasing bills because we are sort of we are technically software as a service in the sense that like we have to maintain the game and as we're developing it we have to sort of answer you guys issues that you're having and like keep maintaining the bills that are out there, because if it was just like releasing early releases of the development builds that we are having then the game would be so broken to play because that's how it is in game development like 90 of the time when you're working a game it's completely broken up until like the final stretch so to speak and that final stretch takes forever, so, It's Tricky and I think we've gone back and forth a little bit like as to like you know how well I don't feel like we've gone back and forth too much how we approach Early Access because we always had the like what we wanted to make the game because I know there's a lot of people that said like oh this is a this game is is a high quality than in Early Access than a lot of release games and like maybe that says something about the state of games in general in the market but we always felt that it should be fair for everyone involved like it should be fair to you guys if you buy an early access game you are getting you know access to something that isn't finished we are implementing more things and it's not like the vision that we have for the game to be done so you guys are playing that at the same time we need to make something that is released you know because you only get one release really you get you we technically think we do get two releases but like the Early Access release is the main release really or the initial release, so, yeah it's important to to, to, think about that stuff and we were quite scared of doing Early Access because we were like we've never done early access before and it has the thing with expectation you know like I think at this point you know if people want to buy the game now as it is in Early Access they have like the history of like all the updates we've done all the videos we've made with with us us documenting working in the game answering questions having the streams you know all this stuff we have like a backlog of things that you as a consumer can look at and be like making a make a decision on like oh this is worth buying like because they've seem to have a track record or whatever I hope we we have a Tracker record like that but at the time we didn't have that so when we were launching it we're like well maybe people don't buy it we also didn't know if people actually wanted to play this game at all because it's like Factory games are quite Niche, but it works out so I think like I think we would do it like if I were looking back at like satisfactory we would definitely do it again because satisfactory there's a ton of stuff that we initially didn't think we were going to have time to implement but because we were in Early Access we we get like a little buffer of investment where we can actually spend more money going back into the game again because usually the way it is is like we make a game we make money from that game we use the money to make the next game, make up the money or like use up the money while working in the game release it you know make it back up and then that's how the cycle sort of goes where with this is like we actually got a little bit of extra buffer to keep working on the game and I think we could work on this game forever like satisfactory could be a a game similar to like I don't know no man's sky where we had an initial release and then more and more are just added on top of it and even though it's like technically a finished game I don't know if people agree with the with me on this or not maybe the initial release of No Man's game wasn't the 1.0 release like maybe people were expecting but I think that's part of relaxes it's like you are managing expectations and that's the most important thing I think that's the main tip I would give anyone who was considering doing early this game is like you need to be able to cater and manage expectations as to what it's like making Early Access games bold comparison I'm sorry like I don't want to say that our game is similar to No Man's sky but I'm just like when you think about like if you think back as like should no man's Sky have been an early access game when they first launched like would that have been a better approach for them and like thinking about for us like should we have really satisfactory as like a early like this is a 1.0 and then we keep building on top of it based on like if people like it or not you know so that's that's sort of the tricky and I don't think there's a right or wrong answer really that there's like good and bad examples maybe but I think there's a bunch of exceptions to the rule as well so I don't know I ranted on a long time about this it is an interesting question though I think about this a lot but maybe that's just because it's part of my job to think about that stuff, because a lot of a lot of like The Branding of the game comes from the fact that it is an early access game so it needs to make sense with the game that we're making that we address the fact that it is an early access game I don't know, It's A Hard balance because like if there's a lot of stuff that could have been finished like there's a lot of bucks in the game that we haven't been able to address yet because we want to like finish the systems that are surrounding the bugs so and because we're in Early Access we don't feel like we always have to you know fix every single issue for every single release because we've we have you know the work leading up to the final release and then and then we'll see whether you guys agree with us or not if the 1.0 release of satisfactory is the what a 1.0 release of satisfactory should be you know like it'll be a daunting period for us when we actually do hit 1.0 and we don't have that early access, staple anymore like we don't because that's like a little bit of a crutch for us as well where we can sort of fall back and be like but we are Early Access we are advertising it as a little access like once we're in 1.0 we can't do that anymore so, be a fun fun, fun time to be alive at that point I guess I'm looking forward to it it's gonna be exciting, anyways that was a long ass answer but hopefully you guys found it interesting I don't know I don't feel like a lot of people are talking about this stuff a lot of game devs talk about that stuff and, I feel like there's a lot of

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, a lot of discussion surrounding like what consumers view games but I feel like there's a lot of times our developers don't answer those questions fully and I feel like this is one void that I feel like has been left out a lot, even gamedas asked about that stuff when it comes to Early Access games what it's like so, thanks for coming to my TED Talk anyways what was the question it was five years, hopefully answer that question, this is mainly like what's like making games Early Access anyways