What I love about Early Access games is that by and large, they are experimental. Or at least, the only ones I’m ever interested in. EA gives small teams the ability to grow an idea. Darkest Dungeon, Planet Crafter, Hades… all games that would not exist without EA.

Sometimes though, sometimes a dev has a small-ish idea and just goes straight to the deep end quickly. The game starts in one area, and then takes a massive turn into something completely different. In most cases, these “twists” generate a lot of negativity, which modifies the EA promotion algorithm, and then the devs have paved their way to obscurity.

I have three examples, of varying degrees here, all in the same factory-automation genre.

Dyson Sphere Program : an absolutely stellar game from start to finish, where its taken years to get the “math” right on optimization. PvE combat has always been in the roadmap, though the implementation is only half way there now, and has some rather obtuse requirements. The other half is sorely needed, and it’s taking the time it needs to bake. A result is that the reviews have gone from Overwhelmingly Positive, to Very Positive. It seems like a minor thing, but that has effectively removed it from many lists.

Techtonica : The game as it is now appears to be missing a fair chunk of content (like 2 more zones) and a lot of optimization (mid-tier? resources are not balanced). They had a somewhat clear roadmap and a very accelerated release framework – something close to every 6 weeks had a major patch. And then v0.5 released, with PvP laser tag and teleportation (this is akin to putting a garden simulator in CoD). A name for v0.6 was provided, but nothing about what was in it. Reaction to this has been extremely negative, where the devs have provided a mea culpa on poor communication and held a live stream to explain what’s next – which unfortunately had much more “we can’t talk about this yet” that folks wanted. It went from Very Positive to Mostly Positive, which frankly means only word of mouth can save it now.

Foundry : Only released a bit more than a month ago. The devs put out a journal asking for feedback on some system development, namely more time spent in the resource simulator of selling space stuff. Feedback on this was clear and unanimous – fix the game first. Devs responded that they heard loud and clear, and the reviews have stayed stable as Very Positive. I would like to think that this approach is a result of watching what happened with Techtonica.

EA is an interesting space. Devs get to test ideas and are in turn subsidized for that exploration. This is a two-way street, where there are now expectations on that funding. Clear communication is required, and the timing of it it matters. Satisfactory may have the gold standard here, but DSP is darn close – the language barrier here is why it’s all text, but it is fullsome text. Techtonica has a similar structure to Satisfactory, which does give me some hope that they can recover from this mistake. (And for clarity, the Laser Tag / teleportation is not the mistake, it’s that they didn’t communicate why they launched it instead of the clearly missing content.)

I’d like to think that the golden age of EA is moved on, where free money and loose promises are drowned out by a more realistic relationship with the community that keeps the devs afloat. Like it or not, there’s a recipe to success in EA, and it is much much more than simply pumping out a product. Given the lack of investment stability, EA is likely to be the place to get most funding, if you can figure out how to cheat the algorithm and build crazy word of mouth.