Comment on Game devs should follow the BG3 development footprint
bridge_too_close@kbin.social 6 months ago
A lot of devs already so this. That's what Steam Early Access is for. Now, whether or not the devs actually listen to feedback is a different story...
Carighan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Early Access is just “release”. Only the devs openly admit ahead of time the game is buggy and unfinished, and promise - as always - to fix it up and add the missing parts.
Often they do. Sometimes they don’t.
TBH it’s ultimately nothing but a shitty buggy release, but the honesty of making that known ahead of time buys a whole lot of goodwill.
It’s also very different from a beta version, which is usually feature and content complete (otherwise it’s generally called an alpha). Early Access versions are often very early in the development process, they’re feature-complete-ish, but never or rarely content complete, usually just starting out on that. This works exceedingly well for games that need “just more stuff”, but can miss the mark on games that need underlying systems reworked as this ires the existing playerbase and splits it.
yamanii@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I disagree, big publishers do not deserve the early access, they have money to pay for QA, it’s a gross misuse of the feature.
bridge_too_close@kbin.social 6 months ago
Early access isn't necessarily different from a beta version, it's just the name of the program used by devs to generate some revenue and get feedback during development. The game can be in alpha or beta or whatever.
Personally, I avoid games in early access on principle (with a couple exceptions) as I would rather play them once they are completed.
Carighan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Same, I got little enough gaming time, might as well play it once it’s in its best state and play something else before that.