Steam launches "Early Access" program

[frvge]

Interesting stuff!
http://store.steampowered.com/earlyaccessfaq/

[NeoSuperior]

cool. Do you intend to take part in it? ( i know you want... else you would put this is in general/offtopic xD )

[frvge]

I don't know yet.

[NeoSuperior]

well, "early access" would make it an "open ?".

The last thing I would want would be the CoD kids giving their feedback here. Well luckily these people probably don't even look around in steam greenlight and usually only people interested in stealth-gameplay would be willing to give money for this game.

And I honestly cannot deny that I would like to take part in a closed ? with the other guys who wander around here. At least test games would be on higher level. The only problem with this would be, that we then had no data on the learning curve or on how newcomer-friendly the game is.

[Cronky]

It seems like Early Access would be a fine option to take part in, but doesn't seem really viable as far as what we've seen thus far. Since most, if not all, of the Early Access games have a playable bit already in place. Playable doesn't exactly have to mean functional, but it is something those projects have above PS at this point.

I had hoped the development of this project would have been more open. So much is secret that most people, outside of developers, seem to have no clue whether there is any progress at all. This doesn't help with consistently missed, self imposed deadlines of updates.

I don't mean to knock the devs, as this seems par for the course on a hobby project. Nobody is making money, and in turn not everyone is going to have a specific amount of time to set aside. Life, school, work... it all gets in the way even without an added project. Early Access may solve a tiny issue of being able to funnel some money the dev's way, but I don't think that it would change much in terms of dev availability.

[frvge]

Actually most of the current state is in the gameplay trailer thing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3YPo4K0c8j8#! Not all, but still most.

[Cronky]

I did indeed neglect to think of that video when making my response, but my next question would be if that instance of gameplay is accessible, in such that it could be released and played with easily? I, personally, would be very interested in playing whatever build that is just to see what is actually implemented at this point, or later on, what changed between builds.

I've wanted that for a long time though, so it has little to actually do the the Early Access stuff. :P