So a game has come out of early access that I kickstarted 5.5 years ago roughly. It’s been quite a wait. Now I’m too scared to actually try playing the game properly.
Your thoughts on picking up games that spent forever in Early Access and then finally were released?
I’ve only ever got one game on early access and for all intents and purposes it seems the devs have abandoned ship long ago.
It was Afterfall Reconquest. I loved Afterfall Insanity despite all the flaws it has so I was excited by a follow up. They released the first episode partially and then one patch I think and then nothing ever again.
So yeah, screw Early Access. 
Here’s my thoughts on “Kickstarter campaigns” and “Early Access”, or as I prefer to call it “gambling for games”
The basic premise seems to be “give me your money now” based on “this is what I want to do” with a little bit of “here is what I intend for it to look like”. The biggest issue is that you’re paying someone for something that’s incomplete, thus satisfying his/her need for getting paid to make it. Then you’re hoping they actually finish it, plus you’re hoping it’s actually good.
It’s not all doom and gloom, but not every developer is a saint that will do exactly what they intended to do. Some will just take your money and run.
In my experience it all depends on the developers, here are some examples of backing/early access games I have played from the beginning to release:
Subnautica: played alpha, beta and early access, played it in release. A game that has a team of hard core dedicated developers, making it a success through all its iterations. I love this game and it is a shame not more people know about it
Empyrion Galactic survival. alpha, beta, early access this game grew slowly, small dev group, still in some form of beta/early access and still being added on but at a snail pace. I play it every now and then am still impressed but it is running out of steam (please excuse the pun)
Osiris new dawn: beta and early access, amazing development (especially on the graphical assets) and now it is almost dead in the water, development almost to a dead stop. Again, the dev team was technically very well qualified/skilled but ran out of momentum.
So you can see, it all depends on the devs. Personally I am in two minds about this kind of game:
Wait until it is done, then play it. Playing it over and over again in each iteration means that when it is released that you have seen and done it all and dont want to play it at all
Play it in each iteration with the goal of enjoying it. See it as money spent for game time played over a long period.
Based on how I feel about these games now: I am leaning to 1
I must confess, I’ve supported quite a lot of early access games that actually turned out good but that I never ended up playing very far, or at all.
Satellite Reign
War for the Overworld
Tex Murphy - Project Fedora (The Tesla Effect)
Reflex
Don’t Starve
CrossCode
Prison Architect
I think the only game that I backed and actually played all the way through was Divinity Original Sin 2
Ark Survival Evolved… Supported it from an early stage after admittedly playing many hundreds of hours of a torrent download. The Devs did get side tracked trying to make a Battle Royal (name escaped me now), which was very popular at one stage.
I have also recently bought into SurvIsland, it looks very pretty, but it still needs tons of code IMO.
Yeah that’s why I have the emoji. There have some great kickstarter success stories and it has produced some games that I really enjoyed such as Torment: Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity.
http://projectphoenix.info - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1300298569/project-phoenix-japans-indie-rpg-feat-aaa-talent - That was ~6 years ago…
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/littleorbit/unsung-story-tale-of-the-guardians/description <- ~4 years ago
I got PUBG in early access, and it has been a pretty good success overall. But in general I try to stay away
I want to add Star Citizen to the list of failed EA/Kickstarter titles, but it does seem like it’s under active development.
Hell no. I don’t think there is any justification for that. The dev team is bigger now than ever before, we’re getting constant feedback and frequent game updates.
So far my early access experience has been pretty good. I backed Satellite Reign, Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, and Star Citizen.
Satellite Reign and Hero-U are both released and I’m very happy with the end result. Star Citizen of course is the big kahuna, and the one that has most divided opinions. I’m still very positive about the project and the progress being made, but not everyone agrees.
That’s the important bit
I’ll buy it when it’s launched officially. as in out of early pre-alpha, alpha, beta, release candidate, early access or whatever else they decide to call it.
That’s perfecly fine. No one is twisting your arm. You don’t have to buy it ever if you don’t feel it’s worth the money. That goes for any crowdfunded or early access game.
Maybe Star Citizen is kind of a special case because of the amount of money they’ve raised (over $203 million)
Well, Project Phoenix raised $1mil (which was 10x it’s target) and it’s kinda just died
Well, not according to the creator, but how should we know anyway?
If anything, that makes many people even more suspicious.
My experience of Early Access has been that even though the games officially “release” they never quite seem to be in a finished state but rather still resemble a work-in-progress.
The only game I backed on Kickstarter was Planetary Annihilation which at release was still buggy, unoptimised and lacking features - eventually the developers created a standalone expansion to address flaws in the original game, which fortunately was given for free to the KS backers but anyone else who had bought PA would have to buy PA: Titans (at a discount)
I’m a big fan and supporter of indie developers and crowd-funding type game development, and have supported a fair number of projects over the past 5 or so years - not just through Kickstarter and Fig, but also in some cases, directly through the developers themselves. There’s also a fair few games in my Steam Library that are still listed as Early Access after many, many years.
In terms of backing a new game before it even reaches that stage though, I don’t just throw money at my screen and hope some of it bears fruit. I read, investigate, research a lot, and then only pledge what I feel I’d probably spend on a final version of the released game (with the exception of Star Citizen - I’ve put way more into that than anything else, but that’s because I want to. And it’s still a lot less than I would have spent on playing golf, buying a jet-ski, or starting a classic car restoration project, if I’d decided to take up one of those as a hobby instead 
)
All in all, I’ve been generally pretty happy with the resulting games that have been released and that I’ve got access to. A couple of them still need work - I’m looking at you Battalion 1944 - but they tend to go into Early Access states when they launch on Steam for a while. Of the games still in development, all of them have produced something playable so far (except for Space Odyssey and Beautiful Desolation), and none have up and ducked or done a runner with my pledge money. Of the games still in development, the only one I’m a little concerned about, and in hindsight probably shouldn’t have put anything into is, Identity.
Here’s some of the games that I’ve pledged to in one way or another, generally from before they even got to Early Access point, never mind release: