Disadvantages of playing an early access game

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about a few disadvantages of playing an early access game. New functionalities implemented to the game could require the players to redo their current progress thus reducing their enjoyment of playing the game.

I already wrote an article about the fun of playing a computer game which is still under development and receives a lot of updates and changes within a short amount of time[1]. The way of selling an early access version has become more and more popular among computer game developers. Especially indie game developers can benefit from the early sales of their products[2]. However, early access releases can also require more management in order to sell the product over a longer period of time compared to a fixed release date[3].

As a gamer, I really like the opportunity to play an unfinished game and to experience the new features as they get implemented. Sometimes, it is even like playing a completely new game which still has the same interesting setting, but offers more ways to interact with the environment or has a better accessibility.

However, the approach of playing early access games has also a few disadvantages:

• The developers could deploy a new version of the game which is no longer compatible with the old save games. Suddenly, the current progress through the game world is lost and the player has to start over again.
• The game receives a new functionality which challenges the player to visit certain locations or to achieve certain goals. Players who have already completed these tasks need to redo them in order to take advantage of the new functionality.

These issues are not a real problem and they are just a side effect of the regular game development process, but they can reduce a bit the overall enjoyment of the game. On the other hand, by playing an early access game, the player accepts the risk of experiencing these issues during the gameplay.

I have played several early access games during the last year and I noticed that these issues are more problematic with certain game types / game mechanics. In most cases, I noticed these issues with open world and exploration games.

Losing the progress of an open world game can be quite annoying because it is also the loss of a lot of unique experiences and achievements[4]. Moreover, the players of open world games are also more likely to be affected by the implementation of a new functionality which requires a certain accomplishment in the game world than the players of computer games with episodic content. The players could have already completed the tasks and would need to redo it. Depending on the game, this would not feel right. On the other hand, begining a completely new game could be also disappointing because it would result in the loss of the old progress.

The players of exploration games can experience the exact same issues. The exploration of a virtual world works only once. The enjoyment of discovering a beautiful spot in the game world is an unique experience. Often the players need to find the right way and need to overcome several obstacles in order to reach a certain spot. However, after the players have achieved this, they probably will not be experiencing the same level of excitement if they need to achieve it a second time.
Losing the progress of a save game or taking advantage of a freshly implemented tracking functionality would require the players to explore the world again. Unfortunately, the players are already aware of all the shortcuts at this point.

Although the players could take advantage of new functionalities, it would seem redundant to the players because the new features are just an enhancement of the core game mechanics.