It appears to me that the gaming industry is a rather unique one, not in the literal content that derives from it, but rather how consumers are treated and how we as “gamers” (rise up) are repeatedly expected to wilfully accept absolute mediocrity or accept paying typically above £20 for some half-arsed attempt at an already tried and tested model.
One of the biggest sinners of this from my own experience would have to be with the now infamous Dayz. The game which was originally an imperfect mod for Arma 2, it was extremely successful and garnered worldwide attention, and rightfully so, for who doesn’t like survival and zombies? Long gone are the days of this being an original concept. And what followed was an unholy alliance between the original developer of the Dayz mod Dean Hall joined the Arma developers at Bohemia Interactive to create a standalone version of the game under the same title. I’ll save the details on how exactly consumers were ripped off, but let’s just say after 4 years (Dayz first released on Steam in 2013) the game is still far far away from being anywhere near a polished game that the original players of the mod came to expect and as a whole has left a rancid taste in the mouth of those that enjoy open world zombie survival games.
However, one would think that a mistake like this could only be produced once, I mean surely no one could look at this and see a successful model for producing a product. Alas here we are, in a world where the exact opposite is true, and “indie developers” are growing like fungi, popping up everywhere and flooding the marketplace with their own oh so unique attempt at what is now my least favourite genre of game, which is a shame since it is an exceptionally cool idea, but the amount of cheap asset re-branding that I’ve seen con thousands of unsuspecting consumers expecting a fun zombie experience are left with nothing but resentment. Or we are left, like with Dayz, waiting years for any kind of improvements being made to the games, which leads to the whittling down of player bases and a rightfully frustrated experience.
Let’s just imagine this was the case in any other entertainment industry, like a TV series or films or something a little more abstract like a DIY shop. For example, could you imagine spending loads buying a new bathroom and then the shop not installing your new bath for you because it’s still being developed and that they are “only a small team” so people should be patient, god no, so why on earth do people accept and even defend this sort of practice in the gaming industry. It has to be said though that I am not against the concept of Early Access games, but rather that I implore people to be more vigilant about the games they buy or at least learn to stand up for yourselves when you are clearly being ripped off by con artists that are looking for nothing more than a cash cow.
Early access has the potential to be a wonderful way for small developers to flourish and showcase their beautiful ideas, but there needs to be some form of consequence for those that are clearly abusing this system. Steam have taken some steps to tackling this by getting rid of their Greenlight system (debatable whether this was good or bad) and implemented a refund system where if you have played the game for less than 2 hours and have owned the game under a certain time frame you are entitled to a full refund. But, this won’t put an end to it, there are all sorts of obnoxious and sketchy business practices happening in the gaming industry and the abuse of the early access is just one of them. The Youtuber Many A True Nerd summed up quite succinctly what exactly an Early Access game should deliver when he said “you take something, and you make it the core, the foundation of the game… that’s always going to be better than trying to do everything in one go” otherwise we are left with huge sprawling worlds that make look pretty to the eye, but on the inside are left barren and plain, leaving the person who just forked out their hard-earned cash rather empty handed and a lot more unhappy and mistrusting of indie developers, which in turn will only serve as a boost the monoliths of the industry like EA, Activision, etc. who we all know have their own vulture like attitudes towards their users.
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