Kickstarter Reward: Early Access - Yes or No?

[Jellyfunk]

[Taylor]

[Jellyfunk]

[Taylor]

[Jellyfunk]

[Taylor]

I feel that releasing loads of alpha/beta/pre-release versions will spoil the experience.

It's like telling someone you're going to be hosting them a surprise birthday party; letting them try a piece of birthday cake, showing them who's going to be there and giving the exact hour in which you plan to surprise them with the party. It ruins the final experience.

But we're going in circles -- let's agree to disagree for now.

[Jellyfunk]

"Hey, want to come to the practice Birthday party?"
"No thanks"

Not hard.

[Taylor]

[Jellyfunk]

[TrenteR]

[lankykong422]

I would definitely agree that early access is not necessary. Betas do spoil aspects of the game. They also do take away from the final experience as part of it will be replaying sections rather than first experiencing them.

[Taylor]

Excluding people who aren't sure:
For: 1
Against: 5

I think the deciding factor comes down to:

1. Do Playtonic want to potentially gain money by selling full early access as a Kickstarter reward?
2. Do Playtonic want a large number of free 'beta testers'?
(But in the process, ruin the surprise factor of a day 1 multi-platform release)

I think releasing a pre-release demo with just a single level (on PC) would be enough to wet everyone's appetites, build up hype during development and draw in some decent funding, but I'm not a marketing strategist...

[Epic Elliot]

EHH banjo kazooie never needed early access at the most just release a small demo a week or to before release

[nicholas362]

[Taylor]

[Rare]

I don't want them to do early access. We know that they know what they're doing.

[Taylor]

Excluding people who aren't sure:
For: 1
Against: 8

I think it's safe to say we don't want to see a beta/alpha version reward on Kickstarter.

The only exception being a short one-level demo just to raise some Kickstarter funds and (when it's released) increase some hype. Although I don't think it's necessary to include it to the Kickstarter.

[dotEXE]

I don't think EA will happen ANYWAY because their goal is to do multi-console and you simply can't do fully-fledged early access on a console. But,

NO. I would not play an early access version. I do not want to spoil the story for myself.

I will look at screenshots, I will look at official demos. I will read every word of every interview. I will read every word that comes from Playtonic Games. I would play maybe a SINGLE level like how Playstation used to give out demo disks of Crash Bandicoot and other games showing off a single level.

I will not play an early access version of a full game, and I'll be avoiding story beyond a basic overview (like, "Tootie was kidnapped" for example).

[vonboy]

I wouldn't want early access either, but them releasing some stuff after release, like early builds of the game, or stuff they had to cut for whatever reason, would be great. A documentary of the whole process, like some other people have suggested, would be great, too.

[MazLad]

I'd be against early access too.

I follow a couple of early access game on Steam, there are those that do it well like Prison Architect (which while well supported has been in Alpha a very long time and is admittedly heavy with bugs) but Next Car Game has had a poor update record while keeping followers of the project in the dark.

Personally I'd not even be keen to even see a playable demo before full release either. I'd be more inclined to see only short video clips via their Twitter feed etc showing a few gameplay mechanics and early areas as time wares on. I think they might go down this kind of route as the delayed reveal of the main characters is a similar tactic.

With early access comes more hype, but then also more pressure from people who want the game a) immediately and b) the way they want it. Even the threads on this forum about things you want and don't want in the game are heavily commented on. I'd be worried that in trying to please everyone, they don't actually get the core feel right and end up with a disjointed end experience.
As a previous poster said there are those out there who write off early accesses as being awful and thus give the game an unfair bad press to friends, via social media etc. Steam forums are pretty depressing in that regard.