While Baldur's Gate 3 is being widely celebrated by fans and developers alike, some are panicking that this could set new expectations from fans. Good. In th...

While Baldur’s Gate 3 is being widely celebrated by fans and developers alike, some are panicking that this could set new expectations from fans. Good.

  • Space Sloth@feddit.dk
    37·
    1 year ago

    Honestly I hope this does indeed set a new gold standard. Probably not with the whole early access thing, though. It’s a thing that needs to go away.

    • Pixel@beehaw.org
      40·
      1 year ago

      EA is an immensely useful tool for game devs, the issue is EA as an excuse to ship unpolished games or to leave games unfinished forever. Neither of which are problems intrinsic to early access, they’re just bad business practice that should be shunned like any other

      • soulsource
        13·
        1 year ago

        As a gamedev: Early Access was useful for devs, back when it was real Early Access. Think: Kerbal Space Program (the first, not the second).

        Nowadays it’s mostly a marketing tool, that allows to generate the hype for launch twice… Publishers and players expect “Early Access” games to be feature complete and polished before the “Early Access” launch…

        • Nalivai
          18·
          1 year ago

          And again, Larian Studios used EA as intended, which allowed them to publish a good, polished game.

        • Maultasche@feddit.de
          5·
          1 year ago

          I liked what Daemon X Machina did, where they released a demo, sent out questionnaires to everyone who downloaded it, published a video about the results save how they were planning to act on it, and a few months later released a new demo with a new questionnaire.

          • soulsourceEnglish
            4·
            1 year ago

            Yep, that’s probably the most helpful thing for devs. This sadly often conflicts with publishers’ announcement schedules. There are, however, companies that do NDA-protected play-tests, where you get the same kind of information, without publicly announcing the game.

          • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            3·
            1 year ago

            Ubisoft did (does?) it to a degree with their Rainbow 6 TTS (beta) servers to test the sandbox and did so for a few technical alpha/beta releases acting as selected pewviews to see how the game is received and where bugs are.

    • TauriWarrior@aussie.zone
      38·
      1 year ago

      Early access worked well for them, part of the start of the game was able to be play tested, the community got to give feedback, and they actually listened, its how it should be done

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        51·
        1 year ago

        Yeah but not how the remaining whole industry treats it.
        I saw literally no outcry regarding BG3 and early game bugs. Comparing it to CP2077 it was a stellar release in terms of PR.

        • Lojcs@lemm.ee
          16·
          1 year ago

          CP2077 didn’t have early access tho? How is this an argument against early access

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
      15·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think Early Access should go away as it’s not inherently bad in and of itself.

      What’s bad about it is when it’s used to sell a totally unfinished piece of shit that stays an unfinished piece of shit indefinitely.