Single Malt Strategy: Episode 78 - Early Access is Failing? - Featuring: Alekius - Single Malt Strategy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome every one to episode number seventyeight of the Single Malt Strategy Podcast.
Today, I have with me,as always, my trusty co host.
That feels weird to say, actuallyI should say I the trusty co host
and with the normal leader Matt.How are you doing, Matt Um?
Co host is fine? I meanyou're you're you're the lead guy on this

(00:21):
one, right, so like thatwould make you the host. I mean,
I guess I spoke first, ifthat's what we're referring to. But
I prefer to like defer all responsibilityfor negative things that we say to you.
And that's why I prefer to justbe the co host, whereas you
know, the full blame of everythingfalls on you the host. I guess.
I mean, my head is Ilike, when someone's in their car
on their way to work, becausethey're listening to this like seven in the

(00:44):
morning, we might be the firstvoice that they hear. Whose voice will
that be? It'll be your voice. That's horrifying. I'm so sorry.
Oh my gosh. Well, lookat if they're they this is episode number
seventy eight. If they've come thisfar, then I guess they know what
they're getting themselves. Into Can youimagine being the first voice that some you
know, some random person here iswhen they wake up. No, I
guess I've never thought about it.Yeah, I mean I don't know where

(01:07):
I'm going with that, So that'sall I got. Well, let's quickly
I don't avoid any awkward pause hereby bringing in our third person. The
guests for today is a first timeappearance the man, the myth, the
legend known only as what do youwant to be known as? Most people
will know me as Alexis, butI am willing to go by first names

(01:30):
today, so this may come asa surprise. My real names not Alekis,
but you can call me Tony.Oh great, well Tony. Now,
Actually, quick backstory on Tony andmyself, Eric. We've met in
real life. One of the veryfew people I've actually met in real life.
I think I was your first fanthat you physically saw face to face.

(01:53):
Yeah, and you know this iswhy I don't want to see any
other fans. No, no,No, that's that's true. We've met
for tacos. It was delicious.Yes, um, No, Like I
mean, Tony, how much sumabout people do you want to reveal?
Do you want to tell us alittle bit about yourself. Why you're on

(02:13):
this podcast A fan of strategy gameobviously the fan of gaming period. People
who have seen my YouTube wolves havenoticed the icon is ATG. I went
back and forth about what that actuallystands for quite some time. The teeth
stands for tinkering because I do absolutelynothing optimally. I'm always messing with it.

(02:36):
Strategy is perfect, great, atworked this time. Let's do something
different next time. Oh it fellon its face. Oh well, let's
try something new now. I can'tleave a strategy well enough alone. And
I think you're well known and belovedfor that for the people will watch you.
I don't know why they they're soattracted to suboptimal play, but I

(02:58):
like to consider it realistic. Well, in the event that anybody doesn't know,
where can they find you? OnYouTube? If you do a search
for a l K I U S, you will see the blue dot with
ATG and white. That's me.I want to rehash for people that your
name is Alkist. We will tryto call you Tony, but since you've

(03:21):
only ever been alkist to most people, including me, except for that one
time at the taco shop. Yeah, I know, but it's the same
thing with my name. We goback and forth. Nobody really calls me
Eric, I'm just Tortuga. Allright. Well, let's start off get
things rolling by talking about what we'vebeen playing lately. And since you,
Tony are the guest of the hour, why don't you talk about anything you've

(03:43):
been playing for the last month orso. Well, I've been playing a
lot of Microsoft Flight Simulator twenty twenty. I don't know why Microsoft decided to
drop a number and just call itMicrosoft Flight Simulator for literally, I'm pretty
certain it's the longest running series incomputer gaming. Their first one, Microsoft

(04:05):
Flight Simulator, same title as theyhave now. It's like nineteen eighty two
or three or something, and everybodyjust calls it twenty twenty. Why didn't
they just leave that in? It'sneither here nor there. But I've been
really enjoying that beautiful game, absolutelystunning, and some of the third party

(04:29):
purchasable aircraft are considered study level bypilots in the industry, not meaning that
it would count as simulator time forthem, but that like all the bells
and whistles work exactly like they wouldin real life, which I found amazing,
so I've been learning how to doall sorts of like air navigation and
such. It's been my passion latelyas well with what I've been doing with

(04:53):
my channel, which is Shadow Empire. It's been my long running series for
currently as well some Distant Worlds too. Thank you Slytherin, they gave me
an early access to their new DLC, so I've been exploring that. And
then because I've been into airplanes recently, like Airbus Aerobis, Supersonic Airport,

(05:15):
Tycoon Airline seven, I've been tryingto find some sort of Tycoon type game
that would scratch that itch, butnothing's really been sticking yet. Yeah,
funny you talk about Tycoon stuff becauseI've kind of had the same thing,
and I guess I'll go into whatI've been playing lately, because this is
perfect segue. I have been doingthe same thing but for railroad type stuff

(05:36):
for trains, and the thing I'vebeen playing lately, which has been surprisingly
better than I expected as a wayof scratching that Tycoon itch, especially for
trains, is Railway Empire, andit's a game I actually played like a
year ago or more than a yearago, and kind of like hoopooed it

(05:57):
a little bit, didn't really thinkit was all that great. And I
don't know what. I don't knowwhat I was looking at or what changed.
Maybe the game has been updated andjust it clicked better. I don't
know. It's one of those raremoments where you put a game down and
then you come back and you actuallyreally enjoy it the second time you pick
it up, which for me isnot usual. Usually it's oh, I
really should give this a second try, and then no, no, no,

(06:18):
really, it was better to leavethis as a first try only.
So Railway Umpire is one of thethings I've been playing really enjoying that.
Otherwise I have like no free time, so I haven't really played anything else.
I guess I played a little bitof MEC Warrior five, which is
just an action game, but alittle bit of baltech, which actually drove

(06:40):
me to play Mac Warrior five,And that's probably it. So, Matt,
why don't you pick up where I'mleaving off? I mean, I
haven't been playing a lot lately.Well that's not true. I have not
been playing a wide variety of games. I have been playing a lot lately.
Your favorite game, Oh, Iknow, actually, I think both

(07:02):
of your favorite game brother ultimately AdmiralDreadnoughts. Yeah, I mean, I
guess the done silence is, isyou know, indicative of your excitement level.
I actually love the game, really, I'm one of the weirdos that
really likes it. I was neversold on the campaign and so like,

(07:23):
the game's great to me. Oh, okay, so you haven't you don't
play the campaign. No, thecampaigns so you don't play the campaign at
all. I've tried. It suffersthe same flaw as I see in Rule
the Waves. That is true.They found all of the problems that Rule
the Waves had and they made them, and none of the solutions, mind
you correct, they didn't ever decideto solve things like auto resolve. Well,
I guess auto resolve isn't that.I guess auto It's solved in Rule

(07:46):
Waves because I solved it. SoAuto resolve is in Ultimate Admiral. But
it's very bad, yes, itis, like, yeah, that's I've
heard. It's terrible. I wasplaying. I was playing a campaign the
other day and there was a singletorpedo boat of the enemies against I want
to say, literally like twenty shipsof mine and like ten, it was

(08:07):
like five battleships like ten armored cruisers, three light cruisers, and the Auto
resolve somehow had a single enemy torpedoboat. It didn't sink anyone, thank
goodness, but it had a singletorpedo boat damage like twelve different ships,
including two capital ships heavily damaged orI like, I don't think they had
enough torpedoes to do what? Whowho's writing these auto resolve I like,

(08:31):
I speak from experience here that Imean, I've written in an auto resolve
four rule the Waves that I considerpretty decent. I mean, it's not
great. I think it needs moretesting to be good, But I don't
understand how somebody can write something thatbad. I just you should be able
to give auto resolve. It's it'spretty simple task. I think you should
be able to give it to likean intern, and they should be able

(08:52):
to develope your auto resolve. Andyou know what's interesting about that, It's
not like auto resolve is this newconcept, like even ignore or strategy games.
For a second, Auto resolves havebeen around as long basically as long
as any sport games have been around, and sporting games are remarkably complex when
it comes to like all the differentvariables that come into play. And yet

(09:13):
it seems like most sport games tohave very good job with auto resolve.
And it's not just like you know, the behemoths like EA making auto resolve
for like Madden or whatever, likea lot of small studios. The guys
behind Out of the Park Baseball,they've had auto resolve forever and that was
always a really small team or BaseballMogul again, I think that's like a

(09:35):
one or two person team and theyhave very good you know, you don't
look at the auto resolve and say, like, what that was happening here?
And I don't know. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be
that complex. I have a theoryhere which is just I just developed it,
but I think it holds auto resolve. I think knowing how to make
a good auto resolve requires that youknow statistics. And maybe it's just not

(09:56):
the case that a lot of peoplewriting game code for something like Ultimate Animals
dreadnoughts. I mean most of thegame, the real time strategy game,
I don't know how much statistics youneed to know. And that's what I
even was kind of alluding to whenI said, I need more testing to
make mine better. You kind ofhave to know about probabilities what you're doing.
I mean, I guess it shouldbe at least some elementary form of

(10:18):
understanding of statistics should be necessary foranyone who has RNG in their game.
But I think that a successful autoresolve is all about knowing how to make
the statistics work in a meaningful way. So I think that therefore statistics aren't
necessary and understanding of them. ButI don't know and anybody writing a sports

(10:39):
game, because a lot of thoseall have like stats right like zero to
one hundred different attributes. I feellike those kind of people are the people
who would know statistics just the theory. Though. That's interesting because one of
the ones I wanted to bring upbecause it only has auto resolve is Dominions,
and even the Dominions games are allauto resolve. You get some influence

(11:03):
in how to set up where unitsstart and what actions they're supposed to take,
but that's giving orders to the AIwho actually executes it. Yeah,
that's I have not actually played inthe Dominions games, but I've heard good
things. I like it, andI think being able to see the auto
resolve and review how it happened takesthose edge cases where you're like, that's

(11:26):
outrageous and you can actually see howit went down. I think that demystifies
it a lot. And to Tortuga'spoint, like, I think they they
really paid attention to the statistics ofit because it's nothing but auto resolve,
so they had no choice. Yeah, and I also think that the Dominions

(11:46):
people are very good with their Imean, the the AI isn't like great,
but they managed to make the tacticalsystem work given the orders because in
that one you have the since you'reactually seeing it play out, you have
people going moving and attacking, andthey made it. It's very simple,
but it were it's functional. Andyeah, I do agree by the way

(12:07):
that seeing it play out, notonly is that helpful for the player,
I can imagine that's very helpful fordebugging and figuring out what the hell's going
on yourself. Speaking of debugging,I also imagine that the games where Auto
resolve seems to do the worst,something like Ultimate Admiral, that game's focus
is clearly playing battles in three D, right. The core of that game

(12:28):
is about playing those battles out,and so they have an auto resolve,
perhaps because they realize that the campaignis going to be too grindy if they
don't have one. But I imaginethe vast amount of their time and effort
went into not doing the auto resolve, and the auto resolve maybe kind of
feels a little bit like an afterthought, just a thought. But I will
say, like, I don't wantto do the whole episode on Ultimate Admiral

(12:50):
Tortuga, but I've been playing it. I've been playing as a campaign.
It's actually been doing really well streaming, Like a lot of people seem to
really want to walk watch this game, which kind of makes me. I
wonder if it's because the game ispretty good looking, regardless of whether it's
always fun to play, and Iwonder if it's a game where it's like,
hey, it's more enjoyable to watchthan it is to actually play.

(13:13):
Sometimes when you're fighting, you don'thave to fight the game, right,
But I do find the UI justabysom ly bad. I also find the
campaign a little grindy, but it'salso kind of interesting, like the AI
war has add such a huge thingto it, because I mean, I
had this incidence where I was inthe middle of a war with Italy and
then some tension thing got triggered,and all of a sudden, the entire

(13:37):
world was at war. It wentfrom being a one v one regional war
to literally the US and the Britishwere both fighting each other, and also
Italy. Germany got in the war, the Soviet Union got in the war,
Japan got in the war, andit was this trigger where it just
all happened at once, and Ijust had this moment of like, holy
fucking shit, Like nothing like thatcould ever happen, at least not right

(14:00):
now in Rule the Waves, andit was a pretty cool moment. I
do think, you know, thegame is certainly flawed in many ways,
but it does have an appeal,even if the AI is not always great.
I actually also think they do apretty decent job with like the technology
clearly making olderships obsolete. I've noticedas my wars progress, as time moves
on, you can really feel yourships getting older, getting obsolete, not

(14:24):
holding their own in the battle line, and suddenly these newer designs are just
stomping them. And it can happenpretty quick at times, like I think
it does a decent job of sortof conveying the importance of upgraded technology and
so like. I have major reservationswith the game still, but I am
finding as I'm playing it more likethere are some redeeming qualities about it that

(14:46):
that kind of keep me coming back, even if I would a hundred percent
agree. The game is not anywherenear finished, and I worry it's going
to be abandoned before whatever is.And when you say that AI Wars doesn't
exist in Rule Waves, have youheard I'm talking the base game, Tartuca.
Yeah, I know, I know, but it's so what you're saying

(15:09):
is exactly right. Though. That'sthe reason why I don't. I didn't
ever have a desire to write thosetwo mods, Auto Resolve and AI Wars
for Rule the Waves. But it'sjust it's to me, it was obvious.
Obviously to me, I thought thatthey were very important, very huge,
missing components of the game. Thatis just because the developer of Rule
Waves obviously has focused on different things, not on the strategic level so much

(15:31):
so in his mind he probably doesn'tmatter. But those things are supposed to
make their appearance in Rule the Wavesthree. Yes they are, and so
that's that's exciting. We'll see.I wonder if they will release into early
access. So you wonder if ifRule the Waves will release into what again,
Tartuca? I wonder if it willrelease into early oxus otherwise known as

(15:56):
early ass sessed, because that's mythoughts on early access lately, which is
the title of this episode, right, you're I hope you're posting this as
early access or early accessed. Iwas thinking about why do all games suck?
Now? Okay, all right,but they all suck because they're all
early access. But that's not necessarilytrue because actually, Distant Worlds two is
not early access, is it?I don't think so. I think it's

(16:18):
full release. Oh no, what'syour definition of early access? Oh gosh,
yeah, basically everything is crap,which you already know because that was
my that was my opinion on everythinglast episode, which, okay, let
me reel back. Obviously that's nottrue. We don't need this fatalistic viewpoint
this time. So I guess thequestion that I had like this was this

(16:41):
the reason I posed the question ofall, why are all early access games
bad? Which I don't think theyall are. No, what I have
noticed over the last. I don'tknow, maybe year or so, maybe
a little more. Is it seemslike when games release, it's les.
Let's step back a couple of yearsago when early access first started, and

(17:02):
always like four or five years agowhen it first started becoming no no early
access I think became popular or maybelike twenty fifteen, maybe even two thousands.
Has it been that long? Ohmy god, I'm old. It's
been a while. Okay, Sowhen everything started switching over to early access,
I do feel like, you know, whether it was seven years ago
or whether I'm ancient and buried bythe time this podcast airs, I do

(17:23):
feel like when it first started,there was a lot of goodwill that gamers
had around it. Games would cometo early access, but like people didn't
trash games in terms of reviews.People didn't say like, oh, this
is incomplete or this is terrible orwhatever. And then you had games that
like didn't technically go to early access, but we're very clearly early access,

(17:44):
like c K two. You know, when it was like, oh,
you can only play as the Christiancountries and like, but the mechanics for
all the other countries were clearly there. They just didn't let you playism yet
and so like I feel like andthat was that was going back, even
they're right like c K two waswhat like twelve years ago. I guess
my point is it seemed to melike when early access first started and you

(18:06):
had games like Ultimate General Gettysburg goingthrough it and Ultimate General Civil War,
there was a general degree of acceptancefrom gamers where it was kind of like,
all right, well, we knowit's not finished, but we're excited
that we get to play it sooner. We might have, especially if it's

(18:26):
a smaller studio, we might havesome influence over the game actually as it's
being finished. And it feels likeover the last maybe two or three years,
that sentiment has vanished entirely. Wasn'tdidn't happen instantly, But like I
said, over the last two orthree years, gamers seem to have gotten
much less accepting of games coming torelease when they are not finished, of

(18:52):
paying money for early access, eventhough everybody's still doing it, because developers
are still doing it, so presumablythey're making pretty big chunks of cash,
and it seems like maybe games aremore and more like unfulfilling in that regard,
Like you know, the reason thisall came up was because we just
had a series of games release,Company of Heroes three, Kerbal Space Program

(19:15):
Manager two, and I think itwas what blood Born three or blood Bowl
three? Yeah, blood Bowl three, And like each one of those games
got absolutely eviscerated to varying degrees,but like each one of those games got
pretty pretty pretty heavy criticism. Well, before you go too deep, I
just want to step back for asecond and like why when early access games

(19:37):
were first released, people had goodwill? And I want to make this short
also because I'm sure Alecki has hasan opinion on it, But I think
that briefly, I would have toguess that early access games start off when
they were first done, they weredone by professionals with people who had real
serious intent, and there wasn't alreadya market for people to take to abuse.

(19:59):
But then with everything, when peoplewill start doing it right, that
bought people's good will so that peoplecould do it wrong. And I think
that we're just probably and maybe anoscillatory cycle that'll happen forever now and we're
just in a downswing where people arejust abusing the early access There'll be a
pushback where people stopped doing as much. Actually, I'm not even sure if
it's an oscillation. It might justbe this is just the new norm.

(20:22):
Yeah. I think that what happenedis that people got so used to releasing
early games that developers thought that theycould get away with more, and eventually
all the goodwill was chewed up.It's my two cents. I think there's
multiple factors there. And I reallysurprised myself when I sat down and thought
about it and actually like wrote down, these are early access games that worked,

(20:42):
and here's ones that didn't, andOkay, well what are the goods
and bads for early access? Andmy opinion's not too far off. Like,
I think it is good for theindustry and gamers because it helps indicate
what people are interested in rather thansubject to what marketing thinks is viable and

(21:06):
what industry studies think is a viablegame by lowering that barrier for new developers
with a unique, interesting idea,and ultimately that's hoping that we get a
larger beta phase and a tighter fighterfinal product. But you see all these

(21:26):
cash grabs, shovelwear bait and switches. Don't get me started on Fortnite and
its skews things tremendously, and Ithink the market is just kind of fed
up with it. I'm a littletorn on this. If I had to
say, like what games I playedin early access that seemed to get the
best reception and seem to do agood job of it, I would use

(21:49):
and I'm going to use three games, two positives, one negative. I'm
going to use three games as sortof an example. The two positive by
the same developer. The two positivesare I would say, Ultimant General Gettysburg
and Ultimate General Civil War, andthey got really positive reviews, and I

(22:11):
think the reason for that is theirapproach to those games. The UI stuff
wasn't fully finished on either of thegames, but basically their approach was,
we have a functioning and they're basicallyreal time battle games with sort of linked
battles or campaigns or whatnot. Onehead linked battles, the other had or

(22:33):
linked linked scenarios, and the otherhad linked battles, And their approach seemed
to be, we have a functionalbattle system, but we haven't had time
to like get all of the allof the game, all of the scenarios
built up, so like we're stillworking on scenarios. We're still tweaking some
of the features, but fundamentally it'sa functional game. You can play,
you can enjoy yourself and have agood time, even though like you can't

(22:56):
finish the campaign, you can't fightall the battles, you can't do everything,
but like, functionally you can jumpin and you can play it.
Like that was my memory of thesegames. Ultimate Admiral dreadnought on the other
hand, did not have a goodearly access period. Now they Game Lamps
does weird things where like you canbuy directly through their website earlier and so
like it's kind of like a hiddenearly access at first, but Ultimate Admiral

(23:21):
Dreadknots didn't. And I think theproblem with Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts is like they
released sort of chunks of battles beingable to be fought through like this academy
system. But what everybody kind ofwanted was the campaign, and they took
like two years to get to thecampaign, and then they kind of like
released the campaign in a half bakedformat that is nothing like what the final

(23:41):
version of the campaign was like justto have a campaign, it seemed like,
and then like two and a halfyears later they finally released like an
actual global map campaign, the AIwas still really struggling with it. So
like I think in that scenario,I guess what I'm saying is in the
first two examples were worked, theyplayed, they had a game that was
functional played with SATIS find just wasincomplete. In the case that didn't work,

(24:03):
they had an incomplete game with anincomplete experience with some features that worked,
and they took two years to getto the thing that everybody wanted them
to get to in the first place, and they released like several half broken
versions of it along the way.And so I think based on that what
early access like what people I thinkI think to a large degree, where

(24:26):
people are getting frustrated with early accessis probably around like quality control of like,
if you're going to ask me topay you for money, there's got
to be something I can play andenjoy and it can't just be like a
half baked idea, Oh, I'llask you to pay me for money,
all right. I'd like to useanother example due to the same kind of
thing, because at first I wasstruggling to think of an example, but

(24:47):
we already have one right in frontof our face, same company. Let's
compare Curball Space Program two with CurballSpace Program one. So I think this
is actually a really good example ofwhere early access is gone. Early access
used to be Kirball Space Program one. It used to be really small dev
teams. This I mean KSB wasstart off as a one man project.

(25:08):
I think he was just taking somephysics simulator and making it work for space
travel type stuff. And that's prettycool. And I think that people,
you know, they really liked theidea, they get behind it, and
then they support what they realize becausethe dev team is not season development team.
They support this person slowly making whatthey see as a really cool idea,

(25:32):
and they see that this person ispassionate about it, they want to
support that. So that is tome, like the previous the beauty of
early access, what it used tobe and what like I think it's best
used for. Another example of thisis Prison Architect, just to say,
and I think a rim World anothergreat example. These are all like small

(25:52):
dev teams that people were supporting thatthey had a good idea, they had
like some placeholder art on some stuffand all this, but the basic game
loop looked interesting and people were willingto buy into it, and I and
I don't want to like interrupt toomuch, but I do want to just
add that that was true of UltimateGeneral Gettysburg too. It was like the
first game I think by game Labsmight have been Naval Action, and it

(26:15):
was like this guy who had beena motter for Total War was really passionate
about making this game, and hewas able to make it through Game Labs.
So like a very similar situation.But now Early Access has become Curveball
Space Program two. This is ateam that's been working on the project for
five years. It's a team thatprobably is more than ten people. It's

(26:37):
like a real I mean this isby Take two. I mean it's not
the dev team is in Take two. Take two is probably embarrassed that they
decided to publish this. But thisis like a seasoned This is the exact
opposite of the first games, rightyou have which should be basically a not
triple A. But it's at leasta functional, professional dev team that has

(26:59):
put together some thing. Not onlythat, it's not a new idea,
this is a sequel. They justneed to take what was already good and
then make it better or at leastredo a better graphics. I mean,
I mean, it doesn't seem likethe mission statement for a KSP two is
that much to ask for. Imean, it's basically just have some programmers

(27:22):
and iterate on something that was alreadydone. That's kind of a cool Everyone
likes reboots. I mean I nowwork in software development, and everyone loves
when you have a chance to rewritefrom scratch because I can tell you it's
a pain in the ask to lookat someone else's code. So I'm sure
that's exciting. But then they callthis an early access release after already having
developed something for a long time andtrying to make it with good graphics,

(27:45):
and obviously they have a huge marketingor creative aspect to it because they've released
like these really interesting videos and allthat. So I mean, this is
not like a one man effort oreven just a couple developers in their basement
making it. This is like areal studio. And then when you then
bring something crappy to the table comingfrom a professional team, I think that

(28:10):
we right fully are very upset whenthat is what the new face of early
access is. It's just crappy professionaldev teams releasing crap, I'm paying for
a beta. Yeah, I meanit's it's not even a beta. I
think that an alpha because beta probablyassumes I mean, I don't know.
These terms are kind of like jargon. It doesn't really matter. They mean
what you want them to mean.But typically alpha means it's not feature complete,

(28:34):
and beta means it's feature complete,but you know we need to it's
not bug tested all the way.So yeah, these are alpha's. I
mean a lot of early access totitles would be considered alphas and that they're
not feature complete. And that usedto be the difference by the way,
between full releases and like expansions thatyou would get new features and expansions or

(28:56):
in DLC. But I don't know, all these lines have been blurred,
so it's hard to really say anymore. Kind of doing the same thing because
I want to highlight a point thosepassion projects, they're still around. I
just think they're kind of stuck ina sea of a lot more going to
early access to capitalize that, andI want to get to that point here

(29:18):
in a moment. But you havethings like auctions are not included, which
was in early access for a reallylong time. Before it it fully came
out and it went through a lotof iterations and was very very basic when
it first hit early Access, butit's been highly successful and well liked from
what I've seen. To get toreal small projects, you have gear City,

(29:41):
which I think you've talked about beforeduring your episode on Tycoon Games.
A small I think it's one guyhe subcontracts for like art assets or something,
but gear City's really small tycoon gamepassion project, very clear vision factorio,

(30:02):
small development team. It's not justone guy, but they had a
very clear vision. They took thetime to do it right, and the
quality tells. And you compare thatwith some of the other things that have
come out that fell flat on theirface, and it's what are the differences
there? Because you do have thosepassion projects that fold under, like Noumoria

(30:29):
was like a door Fortress like gamethat wasn't developed early Access for a really
long time. Was one of thosepassion projects but folded under for reasons.
I didn't keep close tabs on it, but it folded. The developers stopped
working on it and it'll never becompleted. Whereas you have the bigger example

(30:56):
of like sort of the Stars toosupposed to be. It's supposed to be
one of those editive things. Let'sjust take the previous title, will redo
it, will make better graphics,will make it better, fidelity better,
UI, will just make the lastgame but better. And it had kind

(31:17):
of a release that looked a littlebit like KSP two's and the publisher pulled.
And I think that's one of thepitfalls of what we're seeing with early
access, and that if you havea passion project, you do the early
access because you need to spend moretime on to really actually complete a game,

(31:42):
unless you're tarn Atoms and it isyour magnum opus, it is what
you will work on for the restof your life. Not everybody can do
that. And so you release intoearly access as a really small developer,
and you hope to get people tobuy into it so that you can spend
more time on it. You don'tneed to have a separate job or a

(32:06):
full time job at least, oryou can afford to subcontract get art assets
or specialized AI programming. And fromthe bigger studios, I'm wondering if there's
this push for publishers to be like, all right, we spent x number
of dollars x number of years.You're now a risky investment. We need

(32:28):
you to go early access and seewhat the market says, and that will
determine your fate of your development team. I'm wondering if that's happening more and
more for publishers to defray the riskwith the public. And I don't think
that's always fair. But what doyou guys think? Well, I do

(32:50):
think you nailed it with publishers pushingpeople to just do early access as like
a way of mitigating risk. ButI want to talk about I want to
like shift a little bit to why. Maybe it's it's kind of the same
question, what do we think?Right? Why have there been more failures
lately? Though? Because it istrue Matt already brought this up, but
we had three enormous failures this monthBlood Bowl three, Curball Space Program two,

(33:17):
and then Call of Company of Heroesthree. Right, I don't know
much about Company of Heroes three,but I did look into Blood Bowl three
I was interested in and it waskind of following and certainly following Curveball Space
Program two. And these are justI mean, it could be a coincidence,
but I think we should at leastask the question, why are these

(33:38):
early access games, especially by biggerstudios or like by bigger groups of people,
failing so much like this year,this time, and Matt, do
you have a thought on that?And here's a spoiler or not really a
spoiler, but someone might be yellingat at their speaker right now. You'll
notice two of those three failures weren'tearly access games. Company of Heroes three

(34:00):
is not listed as early access onSteam. Neither's Blood Blood Bowl. Oh
okay, that makes me very awkwardfor me, doesn't it. I think
what it comes down to, fundamentally, I think there's two things. The
first, I think you already touchedon a bit like Yas Saw. I'll

(34:22):
come back to that. But Ithink the second is a quality control.
So we say, like, whyare these early access games failing? But
then you look at like imparadoor Rome, which was not Paradox doesn't do early
access right like they're always quote fullreleases. I think a lot of Paradox
fans would tell you they're not fullreleases, but regardless, they're at least

(34:44):
nominally a full release. A Companyof Heroes three full release, Blood Bowl
three full release, and yet theystill do very poorly. And then also
KSP two that was early access andthen that failed too. I think a
lot of it comes down to qualitycontrol. I think people are willing to

(35:04):
play a game if it's in earlyaccess and incomplete as long as, like
there's a sense that it was readyfor people to play it and pay for
it. So like being future andcomplete could be fine. KSP one was
completely feature and complete. Like Idon't, let's not have rose colored glasses

(35:25):
about what KSP was when it firstcame out, Like, I don't know
that it was any more complete thanit is than KSP two is. You
know, it was very incomplete whenKSP one came out, and it took
a very long time to get tothe stage of being complete. So I
guess I'm rambling here a bit.I think it comes down to quality control

(35:49):
and expectation management. People didn't expectKSP one to be done because it was
a small team, and so peoplegave it a large amount of goodwill.
KSP two had presumably a multimillion dollarbudget because KSP one was so successful,
they had, as you pointed out, already a large development team, certainly
larger than they had before plenty ofresources, and they spent years upon years

(36:15):
working on it, and after allof that hype and all that expectation and
presumably all that money poured into it, it was no better off than the
original KSP was. And so naturallypeople, you know, one guy working
on it, people are going togive them a lot of good will.
Twenty guys working on it and spendingtens of millions of dollars and a whole
bunch of marketing behind it, andpeople are gonna be like, what the
fuck is this? I think youhave the same thing with Company of Heroes

(36:40):
three. The game released, andthere was some positive sentiment from some I
believe. I believe mostly they werelike Company of Heroes one fans who are
who are more forgiving of it becausethey like some of the gameplay changes and
styles and it kind of harked backto the original a bit. And again
there was some there was some positivityaround it, but like the campaign was
full stop broken, and you know, it felt like maybe they overpromised early,

(37:04):
couldn't figure out how to get thecampaign to work, and then presumably
their publisher was like, you've spentenough time on this, start making money
figure it out post launch like that, I would guess that was part of
it. But again, a companyof heroes, probably the biggest budget RTS
out there, maybe close to itthis year, probably certainly. Yeah.

(37:27):
I mean, I guess if wewant to classify Total Wars as an RTS
because it has that too, thenmaybe not. But like, there's not
a lot of those style of gamesout there that get the amount of money
that they got behind it, right, you could probably count them on one
or two hands. So again,I think it comes down to expectation management.
If you've got a big team andyou've got a big budget, and
you're going to release a game andit's not complete, whether it's early access

(37:52):
or whether it's nominally a full release, people are going to expect a lot
more than you know, when you'resinging you're one dude or or you're just
you know, a very small independent. You've kind of ticked off a brain
spark in my head that made methink with expectation management specifically, And I

(38:17):
know I personally I hate early access. I hate the extended development cycle of
we released the game, but we'regoing to be working on it and changing
core game features fifteen years later.I hate that. I want to know
what I'm actually buying. But Iunderstand that it's good for the industry as

(38:42):
a whole, but expectation management isit it's good for small I believe there
are use cases where it is goodfor the industry, and I believe those
use cases are for small individual developers. But is it good for the industry
as a whole, Because what Iworry is I worry it destroys any goodwill

(39:04):
or willingness to believe in an ideaearly on, because people get burned so
much just by the concept of earlyaccess that they stopped going to it.
If it was and I think thisis how it originally started when Steam first
started it. If it was limitedto small developers indies, okay, but
the fact that it's like used bylarge studios, it probably has this reputation.

(39:30):
I mean, first of all,the first games were all the first
early access games were small studios.And also in my brain, I don't
know if this happened with anyone else, but I kind of mingled the idea
of early access with like the Steamgreen Light program, and I don't think
that exists anymore, or if itdoes, I don't know, yeah it
doesn't, okay, But anyways thatthose kind of were like the same idea
where you had these small projects.It's kind of like the original go fund

(39:52):
means or what it's not go fundme? What's the video game version of
that? I mean people use Kickstartertoo, Kickstarter, thank you, that's
the kick so Kickstarter. I meanthere's originally these games that were small.
But then you know one of thegames that was not small that used Kickstarter,
Star Citizen, which I feel like, if we're going to talk about
release has gone bad, we haveto talk about or at least mention I

(40:14):
don't want to talk about it,but let's just at least mention this Starsism
is a potential release forever. Youknow, it's will never actually be released.
But hey, I watch a lotof classy packs on Twitch and he's
like, now an admiral something orother ambassador. He seems to like it.
Seems like a lot of people arestarting to like it. Okay,

(40:36):
well that's that's good news. Butlet me get to my I want to
defend myself. I want to doa little marketing here or I don't know
if this is marketing, this ism PR. You say, that those
games weren't early access, and Isay, what is early access? But
no, But seriously, I don'tknow what early access even means nowadays a

(40:58):
game games which come out as fullreleases should have been early access, and
games which come out in early accessseemed like they should have been full releases.
It doesn't make any sense. There'slike, it doesn't seem to be
any logic to it. I mean, there is a little bit you can,
in general maybe expect that an earlyaccess release will be in worse shape
than a full release, But explainto me how you know stuff like Blood

(41:21):
Bowl three happens. Then explain tome how these other releases which were really
bad happened. I mean, they'rebasically early access releases. And then you
have some early access releases like thedemo not even an early access, but
the demo for Manner Lords was probablybetter than most games I played last year.
I don't know. The quality isall over the place, and it
doesn't really seem to map to earlyaccess or not anymore, which just kind

(41:45):
of muddies the water even more.Which also means that pretty much anybody can
call themselves an early access the game. The term has lost meaning, so
why not just say early access asa defensive point. I always thought that
would be smart for a company torelease to early access purely for defense mechanism.
If something doesn't go right, youcan always be like, well,

(42:06):
it's just early access. Even ifyou intended it for it to be a
release and you had like some schedule, maybe maybe you release a little bit
early and you have some a littlebit of content you can claim is going
to be coming in the future,but you basically just do a normal release
and call it early access. Itseems like a brilliant way of just mitigating
or just doing damage control. Ifthere's a poor release, you just say,

(42:27):
okay, well, you know,early access for three months or whatever.
And I think even wasn't the CivilWar, what was it Grand Tactician
in the Civil War? Yeah,what weren't they like originally going to be
on a pretty quick timetable for releaseand then they ended up being in early
access for a couple of years.And I don't even know what their release
out of early access meant because they'restill kind of like developing the game in

(42:47):
early So in early access, theydidn't have all the campaigns, they didn't
have all the battles, they didn'thave all the maps, but like I
would almost use that as a goodexample of early access in the sense that,
like it was buggy as hell.It was a very small development team
too. I think there was likeone programmer. So again that kind of
goes back to like you're going toget more goodwill. Also kind of a

(43:09):
one of a kind game, Likethere's no other civil war games out there
that try to have a grand strategymap with real time combat like that just
doesn't happen. So I think there'sa lot of good will for that too.
Yeah, I think it was agood it was early access well done.
I don't want to like besmirch them. I just was trying to say
that I'm not sure if they're agood example of this or not, but

(43:30):
it didn't seem clear to me thattheir early access was like the clear I
mean, they did early access,and then when they were out of early
access, was that transition was itmeaningful? Maybe it was. I mean
it certainly it meant something for thembecause I know that they had like this
new release on Steam and it wassupposed to be a big deal. But

(43:50):
is it just a way to rereleaseyour game, or was it like the
development really new new items does reallystop? Is the game really feature complete
after early access becomes full release?I kind of get the feeling that none
of that matters anymore. That anda lot of people we've seen this too,
Matt. We've looked at this forwhat game was it? I forget.

(44:12):
We looked at how game has launchedan early access and then when they're
released, their popularity is much lesswhen they're released versus when they go on
early access, because early access isessentially just a release and the official release
marketing way of getting your name backon the Steam page basically, right,

(44:32):
I think there's another aspect going onthere where early access is potential. There's
all the potential in the world.I can see this developer wrote down a
whole bunch of stuff. They're puttingout diaries. They have all these dreams,
hopes, and aspirations, and thenone day they wake up and they're

(44:54):
like, wow, this is printingmoney, and those hopes, dreams,
and aspirations start to push higher andhigher until they've either overreached or they burn
out, or they get hundreds ofmillions of dollars and do nothing. By
bugattis and beach houses. I don'tknow what did citizens spend their money?

(45:15):
H Well, I don't know.Honestly, it's got a nice car,
though. No, I think you'reright to some extent. I wonder,
though, that's interesting that you bringup like, oh, you have all
these great ideas and so people buyyour game. Does that are Charlatan's just
using early access to be like,hey, I have these ideas, but
I'm completely incapable of ever ever likeupfront, just there's no way I'm ever

(45:38):
going to be able to do this, but the fact that my ideas are
making me money even though I don'thave the ability to execute on it.
Like, dude, who's that guyEric whatever his name is, the developer
who has these ideas? You gotinto a fight with the star sis and
main guy. I honestly don't knowmuch about Star Citizen. I mean,
it's not this fast starsism. There'sa guy who has all these ideas and

(46:00):
they're like kind of interesting, butthen he can't develop them for crap.
And if you say his name threetimes, oh, you're talking about the
guy who did Battle Cruiser. Derek, Yes, Derek, what's his name?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, him and Peter Molanneu that they
have huge dreams. I was gonnasay Mulnu, but Mulnu actually delivered.

(46:21):
Yeah, at least Mulneu delivered whenwell black and White, I mean something,
yes, his dreams no, no, yeah, yeah no, I
mean black and White is still innovative. Right, it's, you know,
pretty interesting from a game. Ididn't play the one before that, Populace
or what was it called. Iplayed Populus. Populus was good. That
was mulnow right, Maybe is there'ssomething positive? I mean, I don't

(46:45):
want to get too negative about thiswhole topic, but I mean you actually
have seen from my last episode thatI don't really think that there's a lot
of great stuff coming out. I'vekind of been a little jaded by a
lot of bad releases, I feel, And I don't know if that's hopefully
it's just a cycle thing, orhopefully it's not like a persistent trend hereafter

(47:06):
that we'll just have to shift siftthrough mountains of ship more and more ship
just to find the one or twofew good games. I do think what
we're seeing a bit of is thatI think publishers are increasingly impatient or games
to get developed. I do thinkearly access functions as perhaps a crutch for

(47:28):
bad game design decisions to push gamesout, perhaps when the game's like design
isn't even complete. You know,you asked earlier what early accesses and what
full releases are. It feels likeearly accesses in alpha where it's featur incomplete,
and full releases are beta's where it'sbuggy as hell. But in theory,

(47:51):
most of the features are in thegame like that. That's kind of
how it feels like now. ButI really feel like a lot of this
comes down to quality control. Ithink there's been a deg gradation in general
quality, especially behind the money toreleases, and that is causing a considerable
lack of faith in the gaming community. I think perhaps the bigger shift is

(48:14):
that I think gamers are getting fedup with it. They're getting fed up
with regularly having games come out thatare broken, and you know, they're
not willing to sit behind, oh, it's an early access anymore. I
think there is a groundswell of frustrationand disillusionment within the gaming community. And
that's why I asked you earlier ifearly access is actually a good thing for

(48:37):
the industry, because what I fear. What I fear is that if it
allows and incentivizes games to be releasedwhen they are not a good experience.
And I think what we've sort ofdescribed as a lot of a lot of
early access games that do well eitherit's very clear that it's a very small
team and people almost feel like theyare a part of the development process,

(48:59):
and so they have a sense ofownership with it. And I think you
see a lot of that stuff inlike the Indoor Fortress or even in KSP
one And is that good and sometimesit isn't. When you have the developers,
I think it's better. I thinkI think it's better for gaming than
the alternative when people feel like I'mpaying and getting ripped off and no one

(49:20):
played how like you've asked multiple times, Tortuga, how did a game get
released in the state? Did theynot play their own game? And I
think that's where my concern is.That is that if if gamers increasingly feel
like I can't trust anything and allthese games are coming out and they're terrible
because their messes, I think thatposess some really long term risk to turning

(49:46):
people off from buying games or waitinga long time to buy games. Here's
another question I have, how doesthis all work for console gaming? By
the way, I mean not thatour podcast is focused on console gaming,
but I feel like lately on allof the games I play, they could
have, you know, console portor whatever. I don't. You can't

(50:06):
really do early access on a console, can you. Yeah, you can,
it's just a computer. Buy aCD for a console game or a
cartridge or however your your console works, and see how many patches you get
to download once you've installed it.I would counter that a little bit.
Luckys, you can release a buggyproduct as a console game. I do

(50:31):
think the fact that many of themstill published, especially for like PlayStation and
Xbox with physical media, I dothink that has some impact on at least
games becoming a feature complete like earlyaccess doesn't exist as it exists on Steam,
on PlayStation or Xbox. Like notsaying games get released in perfect states.

(50:52):
No, it's a fair point.You know you don't. You don't
have a game in development for twoyears on PlayStation. Now where's the incentive
When it comes to the gaming industry, It comes down to the dollars.
If I release I have a goodidea, I get some investors to fund
me for a little bit. Ispend that money. I'm like, all

(51:13):
right, time to go to earlyaccess, and there's a ground swell.
I make a bunch of money.I keep working on the game. I
make some more money because it's improving, and I keep working on the game.
And then everybody who's really interested inthat idea has spent their dollars,

(51:34):
but I've still I've only made itsixty percent of the way, but now
I'm getting no dollars. Yeah,this is a really good point full release,
let's move on. Cough Ultimate AdmiralDreadnoughts possibly cough. They haven't done
it yet yet. They haven't doneit yet. You're right. But my
fear is when they said, like, here's our six month roadmap. I
think that was like damage control tosay like, oh, we're not really

(51:55):
just releasing and walking away. I'mso afraid that because the roadmap is not
anything terribly It's like to me,it feels like they're like, all right,
we're going to patch it and getit in as decent estate but as
we can, and then just justgo. I think that's one of the
problems I personally have in the industry. And I don't want to stay on
the negative either, because I thinkthere are positives to see. But my

(52:19):
frustration is I've seen too many developersparadox included with their extended development cycle,
where they never really make a tight, really good experience for me. And
I know that's not true for everybody, and I'm not gonna ignore that,
but like, I want a reallygood, tight experience, and I don't

(52:43):
know if that's the case until thegame has gone gold or platinum, which
you don't hear that term anymore becausenobody ever finishes their game anymore, which
is it's an exaggeration. But Ihave like two things that I'd like to
discuss actually on this topic of twomore things, at least, what about
regulation. I feel like maybe thisis the place where regulation could actually step

(53:05):
in. When you see that themarket is being has like this kind of
dump of really bad quality, thatseems like the appropriate situation for there to
be a regulation where you, Idon't know, there's some kind of there
are people who are releasing early accessgames getting sixty percent, dumping their product
then leaving. You maybe can havesome some regulation. I don't know that
that's that's basically that's the idea,guys. Regulation you fill in the blanks

(53:28):
for TOOGA is calling for big gov. Just it seems like it could be
useful here. How do you adjudicatethat If they say they're going to deliver
on items, then you say,okay, but if this amount of those
items aren't that I don't know.If people say that they're delivering a product
and they don't deliver it, thatI think is something that is regulated in
other industries. If you say,hey, this is toothpaste and on the

(53:49):
label it's like cyanide, that wouldbe you know, taking off the shelves.
Okay. Oh so if you murder, maybe we need to take the
sign night off the shelves in theearly access since I think there is room
for that because I remember a particularearly access title called motor Rama, which
did exactly that. It was.It was a cash grab. It killed

(54:13):
people, No, it killed thema cash spiritually. Mentally, I felt
burned nostalgia they played on it.I fell for it. Wasn't there a
recent F one game or whatever thatcame out that like they stopped. They
basically like we're done, like twomonths after it released, oh F one
two thousand and two. Yeah,it's just come on, man, see

(54:36):
that's the kind of thing that we'reAh. I don't know, I'm not
usually I don't usually think that regulationcan solve problems too much, but this
seems like I actually do think thisis a good situation for regulation to maybe
kick in if people are over,if they're abusing, they're abusing. It's
a really an abuse of the earlyaccess title. But it sounds like,

(54:58):
actually it's games even like blood Bowland all these things, like when they're
being released and the campaign for Companyof Bueros three doesn't work. That's a
game which is being released. Thatis it's saying it's one thing and it's
actually not delivering what it says itis. That's like false advertisement. I'm
very confused to toot. You keeplike flip flopping your hat here. You
know, it's like you're throwing onYou're throwing on one political party's hat,

(55:20):
you're thrown on the other party,and then you're backtrack. And I do
think so. I think it's interestingthough that you bring that up, because
I think there is room and thereare ways to do this, and they
don't actually involve like formal government regulation. We already mentioned consoles. One of
the reasons consoles don't have early accesssuch as it is is because to sell

(55:45):
your game, and this is stilla little bit old school, and I
think they've loosened up a bit inthe last generation. But you always had
to go hat in hand to PlayStationto Sony if you wanted to sell your
game on their platform, Like youhad to get approval to sell your game
on their platform, and like theywere pretty stringent, like they had requirements.

(56:07):
It didn't just let any game on. There's a reason it took until
what like fifteen years ago for indiesto actually show up on any of these
consoles in any kind of way,even just a handful of them. And
like there's a lot more of themnow, but even so, like there
are still a series of rules thata software developer has to follow to be

(56:31):
on the platform. And that istrue Xbox, and that is true on
the Switch. And I think theSwitch has probably been the most like embracing
of indies in the most recent generation, or Nintendo has been the most embracing
of indies in the recent generation.But like you couldn't just expect your game

(56:52):
to automatically be on the platform andthat also used to be true a Steam.
Steam used to have a very curatedexperience until they threw the floodgates open
and what like oh nine or so. I think a big part of this
is just the fact that like Steamdoesn't put any effort into into curating their
content anymore. And I'm not sayinglike they should go back to the way

(57:13):
they were before, where like note, no one got on Steam, you
know who who were smaller publishers,because that wouldn't be good I don't think
for the industry, but like,hey, maybe there should be some level
of Steam doing something to validate thatgames are meeting a certain criteria in order

(57:35):
to be on the platform. Idon't know, it's just a thought.
I think, you know, toget your and maybe the mobile stores on
like Apple or a really bad examplebecause they're flooded with a bunch of crap.
Two. But like in theory,there's a bunch of rules that you
have to follow to get onto Apple'smarketplace on mobile as well. You know,
I don't know that it's a catchall solve, you know, easy

(57:58):
solve, but it's definitely been donein the past. I'm going to go
out on a limb here. Ithink you've already said it. The market
is starting to get fed up withit. The market is going to shut
this down. Not that I wouldn'tmind opening up a new venue for curated

(58:21):
game content, if you will,but like me personally, I don't want
any regulation at all. I thinkwe live in a golden age of gaming
where the barrier to entry is solow that I just need to wait out
the development cycle and like a giantbuffet. Oh, those muffins look pretty

(58:44):
rancid, but that tuna tarragon thatlooks money. Like I get to choose
exactly the kinds of games that Iwant to spend my time on with just
a little bit of effort and patience. Not that that's the end all,
be all solution, but like Iwas thinking about the other day, I
feel like there's a lot of positivethings to see, even though there are

(59:10):
all these negative aspects with the wayearly access is right now. You know,
Tony, your grumpy old man isvery disappointing to me. This is
not grumpy old man at all,I know. Let me let me clue
you in, like I when youtold me the topic I went through,
and I'm like let's let's go throughmy Steam library and the icons on my

(59:34):
desktop. Early access games that worked. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. That's about twenty currentearly access Okay, about twenty early
access failures fifteen. I feel likeI've been burned more times than this.
The early access failures are fewer thanthe others. But I don't know if
that's because I've been grumpy old manand I just don't buy into early access

(59:59):
anymore. But I I was lookingat titles that I bought after early access
too. Well, if you lookedat any other product, though, and
you said you have a fifty percentsuccess rate, I think a lot of
people would say that's outrageously low,right, So like when you're talking about
spending money, they're like, sure, maybe a lot of them still pan
out, but you're still in afailure territory, I think in terms of
customers feeling good about it. Allright, I want to bring up one

(01:00:21):
another point. What about this?How much of the early access releasing crap
has to do with the lower barrierto develop a game due to the prevalence
of unity. Do you think theunity is actually creating an ecosystem for bad
early access titles. Yes, lookat how many jank sims are out there,

(01:00:42):
Like there's a whole subgenre of terriblegames that are like people like because
they're terrible, not just that.If you look at what was it,
RPG maker, like Unity is thenew RPG maker, where there's just floodgates
of titles and finding a good onein that engine is kind of difficult.

(01:01:02):
And I noticed actually that because peoplesay at least that the two main game
engines for PC right now are Unrealand Unity. I mean, like Unity
is not just for indies or whatever, It's like everywhere. It's like ubacuous.
But I haven't noticed big flops fromUnreal engine, which is probably purely

(01:01:24):
lack of knowledge of them, orthere are games I know that have failed
that I didn't know were made inUnity, I mean Unreal. But also
I think that Unreal games probably moreaction oriented, and I tend to not
play those titles. I wonder Ihaven't looked at this. I should I
because I have some software knowledge nowI should actually look and see how difficult

(01:01:45):
it is to code to like starta project in Unreal versus Unity. I
know Unity is very easy to pickup, but maybe if unreal is harder
than you actually have to have moreserious people who will engage in it,
and therefore it can't be just asmuch of a passion project. I think
it's possibly that I don't know enoughabout coding to assess the two against each

(01:02:07):
other. Yeah, I think Unityis done in C sharp, which is
easier, and C plus plus.I think is that I'm real engine is
in C plus plus, which ismore difficult language to learn well. But
where I was also going to gois because unities and C sharp, So
Unity is also literally a huge sellingpoint. A huge selling point for Unity

(01:02:30):
is the cross compatibility between PC andeverything else, especially mobile operating systems,
And so if you're going to makea crash grab, a lot of the
folks who are going to make acash grab want the biggest possible exposure.

(01:02:50):
And right now, mobile gaming isand we don't talk about it a lot
here, but like mobile gaming I'mpretty certain is larger than PC gaming in
terms of revenue. So I think, like if if you're going in it
with that intent, it's a hugemarket. And what mobile phones are capable
of actually doing processor and graphics wisecan kind of impressive. Actually, Oh

(01:03:13):
for sure, but but my pointwas more of if you're going into it
with the intent of, like maybenot. I don't mean this as a
negative for folks using unity, becauselike I'm pretty sure all the ultimate general
games are unity and I love thosethings. But like, if you're going
at it perhaps with a more nefariouspurpose or or maybe a less less noble,
less passionate you know, myself,being a self proclaimed guardian of who

(01:03:37):
is authentic and who is not,if you're going at it with that mindset,
I think I think you're more likelyto choose unity. Skill set aside.
That's a good point. Oh,I have one more thing I wanted
to say that no, no,this is this is a good one.
Though You're gonna like it because it'sactually me. It's me defending paradox,
which doesn't happen very often. Butyou know what, I think that the
climate of people's perception, I mean, people's perception of releases is all so

(01:04:00):
a little bit off right now.I would think because Victoria three didn't it
release had like a sixty percent orsomething. And I'm pretty critical of game
releases, and I'm like very leeryof like games that are being released in
a poor state. I really enjoyedVictoria three. I have no idea how
that only got a sixty percent.I mean, it's had issues, but

(01:04:24):
the game. I think that thatis a game which did release like it
had some bugs, it was kindof a typical Paradox release, but it's
a fun game. It's pretty muchexactly what you would hope the Victoria two
sequel would be. Yes and no. So I think part of Victoria three's
problem was Victoria two. Yes,Victoria two was released, and it was

(01:04:45):
released in an era when Paradox wasvery different and it's fan base was very
different and catering to a large audiencewas not their core approach when Victoria two
came out, and so Victoria twowas very Finnic, very micromanage everything that
Paradox used to really be and kindof hang their hat on. But also

(01:05:06):
it was a kind of nische community. Victoria two, they've said, was
like at the time when those gameswere coming out of Victoria two, Hearts
of Iron three, at the time, CK one Ish was out around then,
Like they were a very compared towhat they are now. They were
a very small development studio that cateredto a very particular audience in Victoria two

(01:05:29):
was the smallest of their titles,and Victoria three is very much the new
paradox in terms of sleek ui automatedsystems, not micromanaging every little piece,
not micromanaging every little good and so, and not micromanaging war. And I

(01:05:50):
don't think a lot of that hardcorefan base, which was the ones clamoring
for Victoria three all along, we'reclamoring for the Victoria three that they developed.
But I liked it. I enjoyedit. I've played the earlier Victorious
too, for what it's worth,but I liked it. I thought it
was fine. I thought it wasa pretty solid release compared to you know,
like, I don't little what wasa buggy release for them, Imperator.

(01:06:13):
I don't even think Imperative was buggy. I just people just didn't like
the game. Design, wasn't didn'tstick. You know, that's funny,
because man, man, man,I'm not even that big of a I
really didn't like necessarily to play thegame or whatever. But I also didn't
think that that was such a disastrouslaunch. I mean, maybe this is
again back to house Steam rates games, but I don't think that those games

(01:06:34):
deserved to be at rated that poorly. They were like, I think the
Imperative Rome was just kind of mediocreat launch. I think a lot goes
back to expectation management. Yes,if I might break in real quick,
but how were people rating games sopoorly if their expectations should be that there's
just crap on the market already.Matt started to get into it, and

(01:06:55):
I think there's more there because it'snot just the Victoria to community. What
other communities are at Paradox war gamers, there's all Paradox makes war games.
I really like Hearts of Iron four. Let's go play Victoria three. Wait,
I don't get to play a wargame because the focus is entirely different.

(01:07:17):
So you have that side, andyou have people who haven't even been
with Paradox at all, and they'relike, well, this studio is known
for grand strategy, so they've gotto have war. I want a good
war game. I hear it's moreaccessible, let's jump in. And so
I think that's hammering their reviews.As much as I don't like Paradox anymore
because they don't make games for me, I have to defend they don't deserve

(01:07:41):
Victoria three doesn't deserve that reviewless becausethey're still at sixty seven percent. So
wait, does that mean you agree, like, yes, that the sixty
seven percent was too low? Correct? Yeah, I think we're also kind
of and I don't know if it'sa new era, but like it does
feel you know, I watched maybeten years ago, I watched a fair

(01:08:03):
bit of like film reviews stuff onYouTube or I forget what the platform was
before, but there was another likevideo platform that used to have a lot
of people who are making like reviewsof videos and TV stuff just because I
thought it was entertaining, not somuch because I was ever really a big
TV movie person, but there wasthis period of time where those individuals really

(01:08:29):
got into a funk, like asa community, the content creators who were
doing TV film like classic movie typereviews, they got into like this funk
where like the hip and trendy thingto do was basically just just hate on
everything. Like there was just thiscycle of negativity around everything in piling on

(01:08:50):
finding the smallest little thing and tearingthings to shreds. I don't feel like
there's a couple of exceptions out therein the gaming community and the intent creator
community, I don't think in generalwe've really had that same kind of reaction
for games. I wonder if we'reentering in a period of where that is

(01:09:11):
not true anymore, though, wherelike you see a game doesn't have exactly
what you want and so you justtear it to shreds, whether it's a
good or a bad game. LikeVictoria three, I think it's a good
game. I think it's a gamethat it probably is not for the community
of Victoria two. They obviously madea strategy change. They're saying like Victoria's
two is more of a war gameish but also big on economics, and

(01:09:32):
like they made the point in Victoriathree like we're going to focus basically entirely
on social society and economy, andthat's the story we want to tell.
I don't know. I just feellike, especially with Paradox games, it
seems like we're in this cycle whereeverybody just wants to pile onto every single
Paradox game and just be negative aboutit because it's not the game they want

(01:09:53):
it to be, as opposed tojust saying like, hey, if it's
not the game for you, maybeyou just do what a luckiest is and
just don't I move on and playsomething else. But like it really seems
like we're and I'm gonna just talkingabout Victoria, but it seems like we're
kind of getting into this phase wherethere's just a really negative vibe going.
You know, I'm speaking to theyoung ones now, we're just vibing,
but like in a negative way nowabout everything in gaming. And I think

(01:10:16):
some of that is the fault ofthe way early access has been handled,
the way quality control I think isdeclining, the way that companies are pushing
games out to start getting revenue,when in the past maybe they would have
waited to get it to be alittle bit more polished. I also think
like a lot of the suits andthese bigger companies are probably saying, like,
well, shit, no one elsebothers to like quality control their game

(01:10:39):
just because we have a QA team, Like fuck it, just put it
out there. We need money,we need to appease the shareholders. But
like I also so I think likesome of this is self inflicted. I'm
not going to say that, likedevelopers haven't done this to themselves, but
you know, I do think there'ssome of this is just there's almost got
a hive mind mentality of negativity alot out there, and honestly, sometimes

(01:11:00):
we're guilty of a two tour.Two we talk about a game. I
remember War on the Sea. Wetalked we talked about War on the Sea
in this podcast, and it wasvery, very very negative. And then
at the very end of the podcast, we're like, well, shit,
I got like sixty hours in thisthing. Clearly they're doing something right.
It wasn't so bad that I stoppedplaying A walked away right, But if
you listen to a podcast on it, seventy percent of it is negative.

(01:11:23):
And I think, you know,I was on Three Moves Ahead when we
were talking about Ultimate Admiral Aga Saila little over a year ago, and
that kind of went the same waywhere it was like we were talking about
a game. We ended up gettingto a funk for like thirty minutes where
I think like everything we said wasnegative, and then like at the end
it was kind of like everyone's like, yeah, I kind of liked it.

(01:11:44):
I just wonder how much of thatis, like we're there's this sort
of ability to fall down the negativityhole, and I think to some extent
that's true. And content creator spacesand I think maybe that's also true in
like game player spaces and if ifwe're just in this period of negativity around
some of these things. I don'tknow, and I think there was a
spark, but I think it maybehas overcorrected. It could be true,

(01:12:06):
but speaking to your own experiences ispart of that because it gets so close
to what you want it to be, so you get negative. But it's
not a bad game, but it'sso close to what you want it to
be. Well, from my experience, War on the Sea was just it
had some things which were obviously terrible, like the AI in that game at

(01:12:29):
release was just awful. I reallydo ask this question. I mean it's
not rhetorical, it's a very realquestion. Do the developers even play their
own games? Because when people misssomething which is so obvious, like he
the person and this is a oneman development team right mostly War on the
Sea, so that's admirable, Buthe couldn't have played his game and like

(01:12:51):
and thought that the AI was good, just you couldn't. You couldn't have
done it. It was impossible tomiss that the AI was just terrible.
So I don't know. It's whenyou have something which is such an obvious
miss I think that's part of thereason why you might start getting tainted Matt
like about why a game is goodor not. If there's some obvious misses,
then it's pretty easy to be likesour Grapes even though you're right the

(01:13:13):
game is still enjoyable. And Ithink that's on me. I think I
need to learn how to develop amore a better critical It's kind of like
maybe my ego. I don't wantto say this in general, I at
least speak for myself that I sometimesfeel when I play these games, my
egos hurt that I can't believe theseguys miss such a basic thing that you
know, I have to play thisone silly AI thing for want to see

(01:13:33):
just because they didn't like look atthe game. And yeah, I guess
this is to Tony's point. Isee how good the game would be with
a great AI and it makes mereally lament that and maybe I like overfixate
on it with this underlying hope thatthe game will be fixed more quickly because
I'm complaining about it. Rusty Wheelor sorry, Squeaky Wheel gets the grease

(01:13:55):
and all that. I think I'mmore aware of it because the last few
years have been difficult for me personally, but also was around the time that
I gave up on Paradox, andI was angry for a while, and
I did really get down to brasstacks of why. And I think Paradox
might actually be a victim of theirown success when it comes to doing something

(01:14:15):
new and interesting like they have withVictoria three or Imparative Rome. People have
an expectation of what kinds of gamesthey produce as a first party studio,
and I think if they try toventure outside of that lane, there's a
lot of backlast. Yeah, Ithink that's what Matt was also sane as
well. I have one final take, a hot take for the I know

(01:14:38):
that we're a little bit over ontime, but I kind of also think
that marketing is to blame forever allthe world's problems. That's not not much
of a hot take, is it. It's like, you know, just
marketing is evil. No, Ifeel the same way, But I mean
marketing is pretty much getting I mightwork in marketing, but you know,
go ahead, let me elaborate alittle bit what marking marketing used to be.

(01:15:00):
People don't know about your product,so advertise so that they know that
it exists, and that's still thereto a degree. But marketing nowadays,
I feel like is mostly people mayor may not want this game. Let's
make sure that they want it whenthey see it, regardless of who they
are, we want them to buyit, and that can also lead to
this kind of backlash where let's say, I don't think this is true with

(01:15:23):
Paradox. I'm just going to usethem as an example. Let's say that
they advertised Victoria three and they didmarketing for it. Did they market it
in a way which would appeal topeople who would eventually not like the game.
Who knows if the marketing people werereally in the same room with the
developers. Again, for Paradox,I would believe that they would be all
on sync. But for a lotof these games, you probably have like

(01:15:44):
a publisher and control of the marketing, and they may be complete completely out
of touch with the game, andthey may not even care if they're in
touch with the game. They justwant to sell more product. And then
if that's the case, marketing isevil. It needs to go to hell,
and then we'll have a better world. Is that a good place?
Wrap it up? Matt, Goahead, let me let me speak in

(01:16:04):
defensive marketing. For first, Ithink what you're describing as brand marketing.
Just to be clear, product managersare also technically marketers, even though they're
not like the ones telling you like, here's why my game is deceitfully great.
Um, they're usually the ones whoactually like manage the features and define

(01:16:24):
the product. And just to beclear, I do I do product manager
marketing. So oh my gosh,we don't get out home with your point.
But what I was, what Iwas gonna try and say, is
I think to some extent that's true. I would be just to be very
clearer, And I know you saidyou don't think Paradox is guilty of this.

(01:16:47):
I think Paradox is pretty damn transparentwith what they try to do with
their marketing and their games. Yeah. I don't think anyone went into Paradox
thinking like, oh, this isa war game. Like they were very
clear war is secondary. Like inall all of their marketing, it was
all about society, economics, allof that. For Victoria three, like,
they were incredibly transparent about what thegame was. I do think,

(01:17:11):
and I think strategy games may beespecially guilty of this. So such as
they spend money on marketing that strategygames tend to be guilty of this,
And not to like pick on Slytherin, because I do enjoy many of their
games, but like I know whenI was it. I can't remember when
they started like this new trailer processthat they used. I want to say

(01:17:34):
it might have been like PANS orCore one, and they started using like
all these stock images or other thingslike basically just like a bunch of World
War two like imagery or photos thatthey kind of like made like have explosions,
like almost like they were trying tomake them look like they were interactive

(01:17:54):
for a lot of their games.And they did this for a long time,
and I remember being a little uneasyabout that, just being like that's
not the gameplay, like that thatdoesn't have anything to do with the game.
There's no videos in your game.There's it's like their turn based highly
static. Like I know why theydid it, because if they just show
a hex based turn based game withnothing exciting visually anyway, like, they're

(01:18:18):
not going to reach anyone who's notalready buying their games. So I know
why they did it, But Ido think, like I remember looking at
these, and I'm like, I'mhow are you going to get any good
reviews on this? Because like thiskind of feels little deceptive. I don't
have a lot of like other examplesto be like, here's other people who

(01:18:39):
have done this horribly and honestly,like Slitherin doesn't really use early access a
whole lot, So I think they'relike less guilty of pushing out half complete
products. I think they usually doa pretty good job with their products,
you know, being ready when theyrelease, like even Distant Worlds, Like
it wasn't perfect but and it certainlywas buggy, but but it wasn't like

(01:18:59):
a half complete game like we werekind of talking about for some of these
other things. Man, I don'teven know where I'm going with us.
But but like in terms of interms of deception, like I think it's
easy for strategy games to feel likethey have to be shiny and new,
Like look at Superpower three, Likehow many of that? How many?
How much of that trailer had anythingto do with the gameplay in Superpower three?

(01:19:20):
Now we're not looking at soon willI refuse to look at super Power
three? Okay, but I watchedthe trailer multiple times because it was in
one of my most anticipated videos andthe like it's all just like nonsense compared
to what the game is, youknow, And I do think that's I
think strategy games suffer from that becauseit's really hard to show someone a X
base map and a turn based gameand make it look it's going to catch

(01:19:44):
them like that and they're like,oh, I want to play that.
And I've seen some discussion around streamingtoo, Like I know there have been
a lot of folks, especially inthe past, where folks are like,
I don't know how you stream thesetypes of games, Like they might be
okay if you edit videos, butif you're trying to like live stream a
lot of the these kind of games. I think originally for a long time
there was a lot of skepticism thatanyone would want to watch that. I

(01:20:05):
think some of us has proved that'snot true. But I think a brand
marketer is going to know, Igotta snaz that up, I gotta make
that look better. I gotta likefigure out a way that it's going to
convince people to buy this because thegameplay is not going to do it.
I think there's another aspect there too, of chasing the market, where I

(01:20:26):
can envision a team sitting down inthe meeting. I'm just going to use
from the Depths as an example becausethey did something I didn't like and I
don't know why that is, butI'm going to use them as the example.
So they sit down and they're like, well, the game seems to
be doing really well, but alot of people are complaining of difficulty in

(01:20:47):
managing five different resources and that theysay, that's very frustrating. I think
we should go down to one resource. Developers like, that doesn't make sense.
That's not how the game was designed. Marketings like, but we could
sell x number of extra units ifwe just get rid of these extra resources
for one unified resource and eventually theyrelent, And that's not what was envisioned

(01:21:14):
and not what the rest of thegame was built around, and so it's
kind of doesn't make sense. AndI think Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts is at risk
of this too, because they're atrisk of getting cut off of funding,
is what I think is occurring,and so they're chasing the market, and
what are people saying in the forums, we should add that feature, that's

(01:21:38):
what will get us money. Andkeep the studio open longer. I think
it really goes to quality control,and I don't just mean bugs. I
think a big part of this isand again I would love to interview a
developer or someone who from a publisherwho will never come on here because of
the things we said in this episode. I would love to view a developer

(01:22:01):
or a publisher to kind of talkthrough this because I think part of what
early access does when you release agame that's not feature complete. The game
design has to be complete, andI think a lot of games aren't.
Ultimate General's design fundamentally was done.Ultimant General, Civil Wars design was fundamentally

(01:22:27):
done. But when you release agame and the design is not done,
and I think Ultimate General, UltimateAdmiral Dreadnought was not, what you end
up having is you have people whoget involved early who have very strong opinions
about the direction they want the gameto go, and they speak up,
and you're an early access so youcan change those things and you can make

(01:22:49):
changes to this. And what youend up doing is you early access completely
or can does not always. Earlyaccess can completely corrode the vision of what
a game is trying to be andnow you have designed by committee. Yeah,
now you have Kindagon Wars making theBradley and you lose your focus.

(01:23:14):
Now you have Fortnight a wave defensebuilding game. What that's what FORTNIGHTE was
Originally? I almost bought it becauseit was a cooperative wave defense game and
that doesn't even exist anymore. Butthey made a lot of money. Oh
yeah, I don't deny that froma business standpoint, absolutely, But going

(01:23:35):
to Tortuga's and I'm against regulation,but to his point, did they deliver
the product they said they were goingto. No. The only other thing
I would I would add is likeagain I herp on it, quality control,
quality control, quality control, andthen expectation management and where I go
back with expectation management. And bythe way, just to be clear,

(01:23:58):
quality control doesn't mean it has tobe entirely bug free. It doesn't mean
it has to be entirely finished.Like I get the concept of early access,
but like your design has to bedone. You have to have a
clear sense of what you want todo. And there are probably exceptions where
people are like, wow, thisone time someone made a great recommendation and
it worked out. But I thinkwhat I really sorry, Tony, I

(01:24:26):
think what I really want to getback to around this regulation idea. I'm
guessing it was a pain for Steamor maybe it didn't get the games the
exposure they wanted. But you knowwhat they could really do bring back sue
people. Oh sorry, yeah,go ahead, bring back green light,

(01:24:49):
but for early access. Studios ofa certain size would be allowed to put
their games into early access. ButI don't I want to see any huge
companies with multimillion dollar budgets putting theirgames into early access. If it's a
small studio, passion project or whateverlike, and it doesn't have to be

(01:25:10):
green Light, it doesn't have tobe whatever. Wall this off. Don't
just throw everything in your store indiscriminatelylike indior storefront, where there's no difference
between early access and full releases,and who knows what either of those mean.
Have some criteria to qualify to bein early access, have some criteria
to qualify for a full release.Make it clear to customers what one or

(01:25:32):
the other is. Help people outand help people discern, and do your
freaking job as a as a storefront. You know, like it right now?
Steam is like it's like you walkinto a you walk into a department
store, and everything's just flung everywherewith a couple of like okay, maybe

(01:25:53):
one section is for jewelry and onesection is for clothing, but like there's
no organization. It's just all allthe fuck over there, and who knows
what's made by a major company andwho knows what's made by like a local
company. Like there's nothing, there'sno organization, And like if Steam actually
put any effort behind there, behindlike actually helping consumers out in terms of

(01:26:16):
discoverability of games they would like,which there's a guess an algorithm kind of
actually discovering which games are in earlyaccess and which are full releases, and
discovering which games are you know,maybe putting rules around early access where not
everybody can just go to early access. I think Steam can do things there
that would help immensely and might winback some goodwill from customers and might Yeah,

(01:26:41):
maybe it's going to be a littlebit harder on certain developers, but
frankly, if you're a big company, I don't care, Like, I
don't have the sympathy for you.If I had sympathy for KSP one,
I don't have sympathy for KSP two. I don't think Senor Nuel got of
the universe. Steam just prints money, man, I don't think they give
a shit. I don't think theycare. Yeah, it does about the

(01:27:02):
stay of the store and all that, but they sure will if if they
start printing a lot less money becausethere's a general like a general withdrawal of
people willing to spend money in gamesbecause they feel like they got burnt.
Yeah that, and how else arethey supposed to differentiate themselves from Epic Games
once Epic gets more developed as astorefront. I don't know how are they

(01:27:26):
actually really different now. I don'tknow anyone who regularly uses Epic, But
yeah, I don't think the Steamhas a problem, not yet at least.
And I really don't think that steamscan do anything about this. I
don't see the incentive for them.Basically, it's worked for them to do.
I don't know, it could happen. I hope something does happen.
So let me put it this way. Steam would have access to the numbers,

(01:27:46):
and if they see like games areup taking like a huge trend in
negative reviews and hostility, like youwould think they'd be proactive and realize this
is going to start costing us moneyeventually. Wow. I don't think so,
though. I mean, that's kindof already the state role. You
don't think that there will ever bea period where people might be like,
I'm not going to play these gamesanymore. I'm not going to spend as
much money. I'm not going tospend as much time. Like if people

(01:28:10):
are generally as frustrated as we makethem out to be, I don't know.
I don't know if from the storefrontwill change that. I think the
people will still be buying games,probably okay, because I think that we're
trying to make a points, we'reprobably exaggerating things a little bit. At
least I think to make my points, I was exaggerating things a little bit.
I don't think that the actual stateof the gaming universe has declined by

(01:28:33):
like thirty percent, maybe like byfive percent. Do you feel like there's
more lower quality games right now?But if I'm a gamer, I'm still
buying games. So Steam as astorefront is still making money. I don't
think that. I mean I kindof feel like the right now, the
onus is on the user, ason the buyer. Caveat emper and all

(01:28:53):
that that Basically the buyer has tobe aware. Early access means you can
get screwed, and we've kind ofjust up to that and that's just the
world we live in now that Yeah, I mean, we can sit here
and pout in which I like todo, and I'm going to do on
this DM podcast. I'm going totalk about how much I dislike KSP two
and how it was released in thatcurrent state. I mean, I hope
it gets better. Of course,that's the main reason why people are upset

(01:29:15):
is because these are really good ideasand then they are they do turn out
like Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought's campaign unfortunately.So yeah, people are upset because mainly
it's it's something that they're really interestedin. They get disappointed. I think
people are going to continue to throwmoney at these things and I don't I
don't see how the revenue. Theonly thing it could they could happen is
it could shift somewhere else. Idon't know where that somewhere else would be.

(01:29:39):
You know, if console gaming becamelike what you're saying, if it
was like the console gaming has.First of all, we're strategy gamers.
It's harder for us to play consolegames, mouse and keyboard is it's just
very functional for a lot of thethings we want to do for hex games,
you know, comp kit interfaces.So I don't know. I don't
see a solution. Um, Ijust see us sitting here complaining about it.

(01:30:03):
Come back in a couple of yearsand see how the state of the
field has evolved. That's kind ofwhy I don't. I took my ball
and I went home, Like,how many of these games have I actually
shown any interest or even bothered purchasing? I live five years behind the times.

(01:30:23):
What are we doing here, Matt? I don't understand how what's our
conclusion? I was I was gonnaread the John Luke Picard's speech where he
says, you know, basically,we've made too many compromises, too many
retreats. The line must be drawn. That's far no further. That's a
good that Okay, that's a goodidea. Yeah. In fact, we

(01:30:46):
should probably just edit that back inlike an hour ago, yeah right,
and make you laugh. Um,can I can I get like a stock
studio laughe like filmed in front ofa live studio audience. So but I
couldn't think of like how to doit on the fly with like inserting gaming

(01:31:09):
references. But uh, you know, I don't know to drink it,
But I honestly I don't know.I do think I think there is a
point at which things will break,and I think there is a point at
which some gamers, not like everybody, but they will start spending less money.
They will start doing other things,not not gaming, but maybe buying

(01:31:33):
older games, or maybe doing thingsplaying that game that's been in their catalog
forever that they never touched. Like, I legitimately think there is a point
at which which gamers will say thisis enough. And that's why I was
suggesting Steam would do something about Imean, I don't I think you're right.
I don't think they're going to doanything about it. But like if

(01:31:53):
suddenly, over the course of acouple of years, they sudden revenue drops
ten percent, If they drop tenpercent in one year, I think Steam
would freak the fuck out. AndI think if a recession comes, which
there's a lot of talk, notthat that's what our podcast is about,
but if a recession comes, it'sgoing to be that much easier. You

(01:32:15):
know, it's going to be harderfor people to justify spending money on games
that are not satisfying them, youknow, and they're going to have less
money to do it, and soI think that could sort of be pouring
gasoline on the sentiment fire too,and I think it's going to take.
It is much harder to rebuild customersentiment than it is to maintain it once

(01:32:35):
you've Like, if you have apositive sentiment, it is much cheaper in
business, it is much cheaper tokeep a happy customer than to convince someone
to buy from you. And Ithink if if folks lose confidence and Steam
as a as a platform of wherethey can know what they're buying and have

(01:32:57):
confidence in the in the quality,like, yeah, I think there is
space for an epic or for someonewho puts an effort a level of effort
into their their content creator or curation. I don't think it's immediate. I
don't think it's highly likely, butI think it's possible. And you know,
I guess I hope that I likehaving everything in one place, so

(01:33:21):
like I guess I hope that Steamimplements some rules or I hope that developers
learn their lesson. I mean,at the end of the day, if
this really happens, it's going tobe developers or are going to be the
ones who are going to get fuckedthe most, you know, especially the
smaller ones. They're going to bethe ones who gets screwed. But I
definitely think it could happen. Imean, there have been video game crashes
in the past. It's not likeit's never happened. Well, see,

(01:33:45):
um, Tony, we're gonna wegotta think we're getting a little bit over
on time, so we probably shouldwrap here. Do you have any other
final comments you want to say?Well, I do want to think alackyist
Tony whatever we want to call youfor coming on the podcast. It was
a it was a good conversation andI sh you coming on and sharing your
time with us. Um, didyou want to do you have anything you
want to plug before we let yougo, before we close it out,

(01:34:09):
and before the plug, can webreathe some hope back into this, like
early access games that were successful oryou you really enjoyed like I'd like somehow
hope. I came into this andI'm shocked. I'm not the super negative
one. I'm I'm one of theones that has a little bit of hopeful
for it. Oh yeah, Imean I can, I can. There's

(01:34:31):
like some amazing I think the onesthat are the prototypes of how to do
early access, right, I've alreadytalked about Prison, Architect, Room World,
Carball, Space Program. I mean, these are the ones that jumped
to my mind. Um, thosewere perfect, I mean, like the
best. They're great games. DoorFortress too. Ultimately granted their early access

(01:34:54):
was not on Steam, right,so like that was kind of weird.
Um, Game Labs is Ultimate GeneralGetty's Goldman General Civil War. I think
so far anyway, Um, GunnerHeat PC is doing a really good job
with their early access. Um,you know, hopefully it turns out,
but like, I think they're doinga great job. That's a tank sim

(01:35:15):
game with their early access factorio hardSpace Ship Breaker. Oh yeah yeah.
And what was that third? OhMountain Blade it's older. I'm talking about
the original, like Mountain Blade earlyaccess. Look at what it's become.
Oh well, not all of it'sgood, but you know, early access

(01:35:40):
done right, Star Sector it's earlyaccess, isn't it. Oh man,
it's still an early access. ButI have a lot of faith in that
developer. That guy's a champ.There's a lot of good tiles, but
basically I don't know. I thinkthat um, those are those are good
examples. Yeah, so there ishope, but I feel like that kind

(01:36:03):
of like my focus on this podcastwas just I was fixated on the fact
that early access, I think isjust being abused. Yeah, and I
think early access being abused is alsodrawn down the general release quality of many
non early access games as well.I think when you have this like concept
of like, oh, there's allthese half finished games out there, it
puts less pressure when you're releasing straightto a full release for it to really

(01:36:26):
be ready. Well, you askme if I wanted to plug anything.
Just my YouTube channel. That's whereI'm at. I stream sometimes I put
out a lot of content recently,but that always comes and fits in spurts
aleis al ki Us. Put itinto a Google search, I'm usually the
blue dot ATG that you'll see first. You were the first. If you
search Alekias on Google, you werethe first result. But Google knows you

(01:36:51):
TC, so it might be oh, yeah, that's true. That's for
my own that might not be truefor other people. If I go into
tagnito mode, you're still the first. I wonder what Duck buck Go says.
There's also another place that you arepopular on, Alekias another I mean,
Tony, you're even in the title. Oh yeah, that's right,

(01:37:15):
I'm in the Yeah, yeah,that's true. That's on the Tortuga Power
and Alekias discord, which I believeboth of us put that in all of
our video descriptions. Oh yeah,you changed the name of the discord a
while back. I'm not on thereanymore. I got rid of man.

(01:37:35):
Tony's a new one. Still havemy own channel, Still have my own
channel. That's true. That's morethan Tony ass. All right, Well,
I just want to thanks to bothof you for entertaining a negative conversation
with me. It's been fun totalk about this. Thanks everyone for listening
for Single Mall Strategy episode number seventyeight. Early access or early ass Sessed

(01:38:00):
is his Air Tortoga Power signing outsay goodbye everyone. You're gonna really make
me put that in the title.Yeah, it's um, well, I
don't know, would it pass filter? Is probably not? I mean this
is a very family oriented thing withit. We don't swear at all?
Is it? I explicit all thetime? You guys swore like several times.
I don't think we dropped any fbombs. No, no, no

(01:38:21):
no. I make my children listento this when they go to sleep.
That's what they listen to. ASeeing Lost strategy funny. Oh man,
you're gonna have messed up kids.Hey, you want to hear a fun
story before we totally finish. AndI'm fine with this being on the podcast
too. In like a post postbuy um. So, I have a
I have a two year old weldshe's almost two h and she has this

(01:38:43):
little like my sister gave her thislittle like riding pony thing so she can
like get up on it and holdthe handlebars and like rock back and forth
or whatever. It's like a littlepony. Um. Well, anyways,
so she also has this like sheloves sweeping the floor, so she has
this little like duster for kids.I don't know where she got this idea.

(01:39:03):
I have no idea. But shenow thinks that she will not ride
that horse unless she has the duster, which is a long object in her
hand, and she will raise itabove her head while she is on the
horse and yell geuge. She's beenhanging out with mama a lot then right,

(01:39:28):
yeah, I'm sure, so shethinks she's going. It's also also
a unicorn, so she thinks she'sgoing to join the first Unicorn Cavalry Regiment.
I'm pretty sure.

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Single Malt Strategy: Episode 78 - Early Access is Failing? - Featuring: Alekius

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Single Malt Strategy: Episode 78 - Early Access is Failing? - Featuring: Alekius