“Buy Before You Try”
Think back to a time when you had the perfect business idea, one that was so seemingly flawless that it boggled the mind that no one had thought of it before. Have it in mind? Good. Were you successful? Yeah, me neither.
I’ve had my share of too-good-to-fail ideas (i.e. a haptic feedback vest for FPS games that make the bullets feel real so you know EXACTLY where the bullets are coming from, an idea I swear I came up with first during middle school). These ideas often never come to fruition, and the barrier that you and the countless others who have had the same, similar, or totally unique ideas winds up being because the idea is not possible, probable, or feasible. The time and resources required to bring your dream idea to life reveal themselves to be unreasonable and the idea gets buried shortly after the conception. Video game development especially must contend with these limitations.
Video games provide a fertile ground in which to sow clever ideas., and they allow people to experience media in a unique way. However, if your life does not already revolve around making games for a living, how do you go about bringing your dream game to life? That’s where early access steps in.
The Framework
Early access games are pitched as a panacea, a fix-all solution meant to bypass the inherent difficulties of becoming a game developer or make a “good” game. Some , like Minecraft, blur the line between what it means to be early access. Other difficult to label examples include episodic games, as they technically are sold in pieces, with the full release being billed as the complete season, such as the Telltale games or Life is Strange. Continue reading “Metanalysis: Early Access”
