this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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You forgot the part where the AAA product is released in a beta state and doesn’t get up to proper release-level quality until a few months worth of patches.
I could go on a whole fucking rant about how whatever potential good things about the Early Access model (and basically anything that isn't "release the full game as a complete product with no other potential added features. aside from DLC that are purely further additions to the game and not part of its main functionality", including seasonal games) have been almost totally subsumed by it just being an excuse to release games shittily and then go "Oh no worries, we're going to keep adding and developing it over time!" and then either don't, or spend three times as long doing that if they had just kept the whole project under wraps.
look at Elden Ring for instance. the game was kept so under wraps by Miyazaki and co that even like a year before it fully released, there was virtually no information about it at all. no early access period, no "Welcome to the April 2019 Elden Ring Early Access Update #3, where we have added Caelid! Go explore and give us tips on how to improve!" no, the dev team just dumped the whole game on us (aside from very minor things like the pvp colosseums and pvp was already a full feature before this) and it's already probably in the top 5 games of the decade and it was only 2022.
it's one thing if it's legitimately a small company doing this shit, I get that you need finanacing under capitalism and shit sucks in general, it's another thing entirely for larger, proven companies
not sure if every single professional game tester has just dropped dead in the last 10 years or what, but I'm not sure why we have to be unpaid game testers now. hell, we have to pay to be game testers in fact.
Baldur's Gate 3 is the exception that proves the rule
this is precisely why I avoided BG3 early access. I was excited to play it but I wanted a full experience. I've previously had a sort of grudging acceptance of playing Early Access games like Satisfactory for instance, but now I'm so tired of it that I'm just going to avoid certain games altogether until they fully release.
It’s the capitalist pressure to constantly be hitting those quarterly profit goals. These AAA studios are typically part of larger tech/media conglomerates whose shareholders want to see those steady profit streams and so they stick to these release schedules even if the game needed another six months to a year in the oven. And the gamers have made it clear they’ll eat up the slop regardless so there’s no real pushback.
It’s interesting that you mention From Software as an exception as the other company that comes to mind like that is another Japanese company, Nintendo (who of course have their own problems and sometimes suffer from that issue). Apparently on the new Mario Wonder game, corporate gave the devs no deadline to complete it, just “work on it until you think it’s release ready.” Might be a different attitude with CEOs/board members over there.
I won't lie, I was really enjoying D4 until the end. And then I just kinda went slack jawed because... oh, its a cliffhanger. They're never going to resolve this, are they? Season Passes? No. This is fucked. Oh well...
If you're talking about Swery's D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, that whole business still depresses me to this day. He signed on to make a Kinect-focused episodic adventure game (never do episodic anything, at least we've all learned this by now) only for it to come out just after Microsoft finally dumped the stupid thing
The whole debacle soured Swery's relationship with his old company and he got hoofed after the unsuccessful PC version and his career has never really recovered
I've never played that game, but now I'm intrigued.
No, I'm talking about Diablo 4.
Heh when Batman Arkham Knight released it was literally unplayable unless you had like 12GB VRAM in 2015. I would say that it wasn’t even in beta since it didn’t even work once on recommended specs