Moon Studios' CEO Thomas Haler has defended the early access launch of No Rest for the Wicked after the game launched with performance issues and was criticized.
In a lengthy post on
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The best decision
“We're not even a week into early access and it's already pretty clear that the decision to go with EA is one of the best we could have made,” he emphasizes. At the same time, some players are “annoyed” when games appear in this form.
“I think the more complex and demanding games become, the more we'll see some form of early access. I speak from personal experience: We would never have been able to bring Wicked 1.0 to market if we hadn't been able to do everything “Seeing the data we see now and getting all the feedback from users. And by that I mean actual users, not a focus testing group.”
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“Even if we had two to three times as many people it would have been simply impossible, the product is simply far too complex to be reasonably expected. Nine women can't make a baby in a month and so on. “
According to Mahler, a Dark Souls would also have benefited from early access if FromSoftware had had the opportunity to do so.
“Imagine if Dark Souls 1 had been in early access – instead of releasing an unfinished product, they could have looked at the second half of the game and fleshed out the less polished areas like Lost Izalith, etc “, he writes.
At the same time, the changes that can still be made in Early Access are simply not possible with updates or DLCs: “Publishing games is always incredibly difficult and stressful, and it usually means that you have to make pretty drastic compromises, especially if the product wants to achieve something new,” he adds.
“And if you don't know that it's okay to add certain features and scope after the fact, you'll just end up making cuts before you get to market. Even if you don't like the idea of Early Access: It is a path that allows developers to really perfect a product over time, so please try to understand that there is value in that.”
Ultimately, he also calls on PlayStation and Nintendo to open up to this model.
“The industry is changing at a rapid pace, and sticking with things that were the norm five to 10 years ago is too restrictive,” says Mahler. “At the end of the day, people just want to play great games. It shouldn't matter how the game was developed, just that it was developed. And if players can't have a great experience on your platform, you're doing a disservice to your audience Service.”
What do you think about early access?