Should Developers Sell Early Access?

[Lili Birchflower]

What do *you* think?  ~Lili

Column By Christopher Coke on February 06, 2014

Welcome back to Player Versus Player, the column where two MMORPG writers enter to debate the hottest issues of the day before handing it to you in the comments. Please note, Player Versus Player is a LIVE product but if you would like early access to PVP 2.0, alpha packs can be purchased for $19.99 at your local editor’s desk. Readers should be aware that alpha articles may be missing critical features such as paragraphs, capitalization, and proper grammar. What’s that -- that only works for video games, you say? And some players think it’s downright shady while others just plain love it? Well then, I think we’ve found our topic: Should developers sell early access?

The sides:
- Selling Alphas and Betas is a Good Thing: Players are given all the information up front. If they want to pay for access to an alpha, they should be able to.
- Selling Alphas and Betas is Underhanded: Players willing to test in-development games are providing a service and shouldn’t be charged. It is greedy, plain and simple.

The combatants:
- Chris “Free for All” Coke: Chris is a columnist at MMORPG and tired of scouring his inbox for beta invites. There has got to be a better way!
- Adam “I won’t buy that for a dollar” Tingle: Adam is a writer at MMORPG no longer willing to have his wallet squeezed by the ‘man with his finger on the button’.

Let’s get started:
Chris: Welcome to the podium, Adam! This is a topic that’s been on my mind for months -- years even! I’m all for developers being able to sell early access to their games. For too long, betas have been a velvet rope experience. Some players get in and others are left searching their inboxes for invites that will never come. I bet a lot of players can relate to the feeling of being left out or annoyed that they can only play a weekend stress test. Providing players with more options to get in on beta isn’t something to shun.

Adam: I feel it is only right that I get out my soapbox, stand loud and proud, and attach a metaphorical beret to my head. Hear me comrades! It is time to take a stand against the capitalist pig dogs and their attempts to extract the (virtual) gold from our teeth by monetizing every aspect of our beloved genre. Pay to help them stress test their own game? Poppycock I say! Nonsense! We’re helping them out, not the other way around. We pay through the nose for the box, slam down a subscription fee, and sometimes meddle with cash shops, where does the one way stream of green end?

Chris: Selling early access is kind of taboo. I get that. These were invites that were given away for free, right? But let’s look at the other side of this. Betas were always something that would cost developers money (server costs, etc.) -- cash that could otherwise be spent on new features and polishing what’s already there. Selling early access not only provides developers with more testers they don’t have to pay for but it also presents them a nice influx of cash to invest back into the game. Players that buy early access to games are doing a much greater service than simply filing bug reports. More importantly, that influx can help guarantee smaller games release at all.

Adam: Small companies aside admittedly, oh boo hoo for the developers. It’s almost as if they’ve set out in business. Somewhere along the line I think we’ve forgotten that a beta isn’t a sponsored free trial for players, it actually serves a development purpose. We’re not invited in to the party to take a look around, eat the free cake, and leave questionable stains in the restroom, we’re there to help prep the buffet, plump up the pillows, and set out the banners. Stretched metaphor aside, we shouldn’t pay to help an MMORPG out at this stage, surely our subscription fee over the next decade can provide such an influx of cash?

Chris: Sure, our subscriptions will do that, but how about the players who just want to take a peek a little early? Surely developers should be able to capitalize on that. Then again, one of the most common criticisms of early access is that it tricks players into thinking they’re buying a complete game. Bullocks! Each of Steam’s more than 100 early access games include a giant blue box above explaining just where the game is at. If we don't read the product description, that's not the developer's fault. Their job is to be honest. Ours is to research what we're buying. When a game says “UNFINISHED” it probably warrants some extra thought.

Adam: I disagree. By getting that first-look glimpse, like it or not, you’re cashing in your one-use ‘surprise’ ticket. Getting in early can sometimes tarnish an otherwise enjoyable game. Find it unseemly, slightly ungainly at that stage of development? Well guess what? It’s hard to go back. Just look at the countless false starting MMORPGs that failed to recoup any credibility after a shaky launch. Kickstarter, early access, green light, or not, you’re meddling with expectations and when they’re not met, it takes a hardier man than I to step back into the fray several months later to see what’s going down.

Chris: Let’s talk about free-to-play. There has been all kinds of hullabaloo about Everquest Next: Landmark and Trove selling early access. Founder’s packs this and eventually free that. Can anyone against these things say that they really need to buy these packs? Is anything stopping them from waiting for a free invite or the game’s release? Of course not, which leads me to believe many of these critics are just jealous they can’t have their cake and eat it too. Sure, buying into free-to-play early might seem silly but it is entirely the player’s choice. If there is a real problem here, I’m not seeing. These are in-development games you can check out now if you’d like and if not, hey, cool. See you in a few months with most other players.

Adam: While I can certainly understand granting early access to those buying into a Kickstarter MMO, the same can’t be justified with a big company like Sony. Do they really need to hoist a ‘Founders Pack’ on us? Do we really need to be in at the ground floor? Let’s face facts, EverQuest 3 (Yeah, I’m calling it what it is) was always going to be funded, Camelot Unchained however? Probably not. One can be justified because fans have literally brought the game into development, while the other is just corporate greed. Why not give something back you big fat cats?

Chris: Players buying their way into early access is the wave of the future. Developers have found a new way to fund their games and that's not a bad thing. No one makes a player buy into an unfinished game. It's their choice. What I take away from this isn't a negative. Players care about other players being fleeced. Good on us. But if we enter into an agreement to test an unfinished game, to have our voices heard, to remove the velvet rope and make sure the games we want to play get made, all the way to release... I see a future where more indie games see light of day. I see more creative ideas that would never get publisher backing. I see our games becoming wider and more varied and better because we supported them with our time and development dollars. That's what early access means to me.

Adam: Nobody can deny the positive effects that selling the carrot on a stick early access can have for an indie MMO. But this isn’t about the small timers. This is about big companies peddling more and more ways to extract coin before we have even had chance to sit down with the finished product. It represents the slide into rampant monetisation that is extending to excluding races, including cash shops with subscription fees, and now asking us to pony up to help test the product. We’re in the era of 60% finished products with 200% mark-ups. Shelling out hard earned cash to aid in development is wrong. The buzz, the excitement of an unexpected beta invite is just one of the facets of this genre. It’s an institution two decades in age now, and to make us have to pay just seems like a step too far. Pay for early access. Pay for the box. Pay for the subscription. Pay for the cosmetics. Pay to unlock the races and classes. No thanks.

So what do you say, folks, is selling early access the wave of the future?

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/8197/page/1

[Grei]

I have to agree that the big houses don't have any justifiable reason to be selling early access.  They're usually the ones bragging about how much money they're already making.

Still, I can't fault them for seeing how the smaller companies are using early access to bring in early revenue and wanting part of that pie. 

Though given my past track record with Sony's betas and how they test one game and release a totally different game, they'll never see me buy-in to beta test their stuff.  SWG and EQ2 both come to mind where a last minute gameplay change never went into testing to 'preserve the surprise', of which the change was not widely appreciated by the testing community.

Frankly, I have no problems pitching money towards promising games from the Indies.  I've had a lot of luck with finding games that I enjoy, such as Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program, Starbound, and Star Citizen most of which I expect to play for years to come (already been playing Minecraft for years). 

The same can't be said of games from the big names though.  Almost every game from the big companies in recent years have been the kind where I play it while it's 'new' and then rarely, if ever, go back to it--usually because it's not what was advertised, or just didn't play that well, or was just monotonous.

[Remi]

If a beta were just about hunting bugs, then I'd agree the 'big houses' have no real business offloading development.

The thing is though, betas are also where you find class imbalances, unexpected synergies overpowering things,  players demonstrating  unconventional approaches nullifying challenges...
You learn the pet class of the devs that all the players find abhorrent, the map/dungeon that makes other maps/dungeons irrelevant.  The item that everyone HAS to have or else can't get partied...

...and they can adjust/fix them.  In the beta they are more apt (in theory ) to listen to the players, uncover things that aren't readily apparent to their in-house hamsters, and correct them. 
Once it's 'released' they are more loathe to fix things...it's now admission of making a mistake, and finding time to remedy it (and not make it worse) when they are SUPPOSED to be onto the next development cycle.  Plus any change made impacts players and always ends up with SOMEONE mad about the change; at least during a beta they've the excuse all things are in flux and to not get overly attached to the status quo.


Sure it's like going with the parents to pick out your Christmas presents... but it's better than going with them to return the presents on Boxing Day.

[angrybunny]

I don't like the idea of paying a fee to help a company like actiblizzard or Sony work the kinks out of their games. The gaming industry (generally speaking) is already fueled by greed and a need to exploit the player base for every damn penny it can get. If it's an indie company I can see where charging a fee for early access isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as it comes with a perk once the game releases; even if it's something as simple as a title or exclusive item of some sort.

All that being said I'm still really fed up with the exploitation rampant in the gaming world now. 

[Brethraeus]

on top of all of this, the pay for alpha/beta access games 6 out of 10 times are the first to go bankrupt due to either players not liking the game or because they took too long to develop and players don't get their money back. I purchase VERY VERY few early access closed alpha/beta games if I know they are the most anticipated games of the year (IE: D3: Reaper of Souls, or Rust). but for games like landmark where the game is already having trouble with servers and populations, you wont find me wasting my money for.