You are now just arguing againist the very concept of early access games. The concept if you didn’t know is you are donating towards the completion of a game product which you will receive at the end if it is completed and as a sign of good faith you get prototypes along the way but it’s really just Kickstarter. But hey they are a thing that exists and are out there and enough people believe in the concept that it is now an actual factual thing. The genie will not go back in the bottle.
I come from the side of the history of reviews in games journalism is from technology product reviews. Where journalists try to assign some sort of authoritative stance on the functionality and value of a product to guide consumers to make a more informed purchasing decision. Even with numbers taken out reviews still serve that purpose since they are written to be a possible point of first contact with a product or at least for those who have not already purchased the game. If reviews were only about the raw reviewer experience with a game without any other considerations, they would have to contain direct spoiler filled examples to adequately serve that purpose.
No I’m not, I’m saying that early access games should be held to the same standard of any other game that is released.
This is not universally true, there are games in early access with no final release in sight, there are games that came and went through early access without much change in the overall experience, and as KestrelPi noted, there are games that just die in early access without ever seeing a ‘final’ release.
This is literally what i am advocating for.
I have not interest in software evaluation in a game review. No other forms of media criticism functions that way.
There were these things called “previews” back in the day that people wrote about their thoughts about a game before it was released in its final form, whether through beta access, playing it events, etc. They never gave the game a score, just a “this is what it’s looking like now, be excited or don’t”
If people want to write about Early Access games, write those.
Writing an official review about a game when its not even done is poor practice, especially when the importance and rigidity of things like Metacritic are well known. I hate that it’s the case, but that doesn’t change that it is. It’s not like I’m not the type of developer who will say “hey, you should give every game a 85+ so the developer will actually get paid by the publisher”. I want honest reviews and scores (actually, I want scores to be done with so we can shed this metacritic nonsense, but I digress). But giving your final impression of a game when the game isn’t final is dishonest to your readers, dishonest to the developers who made the game, and, honestly, dishonest to your own opinions and feelings about the game.
Let’s just say this: I respect a publication more that will wait to do a review until the game is out, but post a preview saying the game is dogshit than a publication that will write a glowing review about the game before it’s in its “final” state.
How the process plays out for individual games doesn’t change the nature of the model. Early Access games are put out with giant disclaimers saying these are not normal games releases and here’s how you adjust the expectations about what you are buying. You are buying into something way more empheral than a box on a shelf.
That’s the history of them in our medium. That’s what the core expectations of 90% of people seeking out game reviews lies. There is space for the writing you are looking for in games journalism. It just doesn’t with the current or historical understanding of game reviews.
Also plenty of movie reviews function in the same manner. Ebert and Siskel thumbs up and down reviews were explicitly value evaluations of if a movie was worth your ticket money to go see. They weren’t drenched in spoilers. There are myraid spoiler free reviews that serve the same purpose as games reviews do.
Again: I keep landing on - if the review states it’s in early access and is expected to change over time, clearly states the date of review, and nobody is under any illusion of what the review is of, then where is the problem? Nobody’s being misled, nobody’s being treated unfairly, and nobody’s misrepresenting what they’re doing.
And a review of an early access game can acknowledge that the game is likely to change post release while providing a perspective on the game as it is in the moment. the same is true of most online multiplayer games.Even games like Outlast 2 and Dark souls were changed significantly after release (In both cases made easier)
The crux of this issue is how much should we should be allowing developers/publishers to decide the terms on which their games are reviewed.
If Ubisoft had released Rainbow Six Siege in it’s launch state, but called it early access, should it not have been reviewed?
Based on your previous response I would guess that you see that as a very different situation, since Ubi is a big bad corporation, and early access is the domain of the scrappy little guy developer, but I just don’t think it’s a reviewers job to draw that distinction.
