Talk:Early access

Article name

Early access is a very Steam-centric term. I think alpha funding would be a more neutral, cross industry term, and a better name for the article. (I can't really be bothered to start a formal move request though) - hahnchen 14:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

It's a fair point, though when trying to find sources, they're all over the place on the actual name. I see no problem changing to a more proper name but we have to be reasonably assured that that's a good name, and while alpha funding is neutral, Steam's prevalence would seem to make early access the more common one (per WP:COMMONNAME). --MASEM (t) 14:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I think there's still debate over what "Steam Early Access" is: reaction to Spacebase DF9 from Project Zomboid developer and Valve releases new "guidelines" to Early Access developers. --24.86.44.25 (talk) 06:38, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. The term is never used to refer to games which aren't on Steam, as far as I've seen. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 01:02, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Guidelines

Well basically I've put in some of my free time to contribute some valid guidelines (see the Kickstarter#Guidelines page for an example of an approved guidelines section) to this short article. I would have understood the need for corrections (since it's my first attempt in 2 years to gather good references for Wikipedia and compiling the section properly) but I can't really hide my surprise to see the whole section deleted. As I've already pointed out I've done it based on an already approved section in a really (and I mean really) similar article.

The comment stated: "we're not a howto guide, but if sources comment on how to use early access effectively, we can include that." I'm afraid I find this a bit too vague. For example, most articles in Wikipedia that cover math or programming include at least the simplest of simple guidelines. I don't see how project management of the early access model or other soft skills can't have a word or two that outline proper usage. I'm also confused since the sources did comment on examples of effective early access development procedures. I've also found 3 examples I thought had clear references about how the community helped form the games. I was actually hoping people would expand on the section or introduce (clarified) corrections instead of blocking it entirely.

Can anyone expand on this? Balthazzar (talk) 16:56, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

We as editors can't add our own HOWTO advice as that would be a violation of original research, nor can we explicitly outline the steps one should take to do early access. On the other hand, if we get developers or game journalists that put out suggestions for how to do Early Access, we can include that, not likely spelled out as a howto, but like what are elements of successful early access games. And as for the examples, we'd need secondary sources that make the comment of being successful Early Access titles, we can't use the steam store pages for that. --MASEM (t) 17:00, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

So, what I gather from this is that the unordered list I cited was somehow not allowed. Fair enough. I won't suggest that I know more about copyright violations than you. But the list was not the only thing written in that section... The examples! You mentioned that they required "secondary sources that make the comment of being successful". Even though I disagree because the level of modification a game received by community suggestions isn't tied to it's success/fame we can easily add references like http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/04/the-best-pc-games-of-2014/4 (that particular page suggests that Starbound and Starpoint Gemini 2 are very recent and successful titles) and I'm sure there's a ton of articles on the Kerbal Space Program. My point is, it would have been trivial to add more citation if you had placed a "citation needed" tag. I'm not that experienced to notice such problems so I was hoping you'd provide constructive help. Balthazzar (talk) 17:18, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not a copyright issue, it's original research - we as editors can't make claims that can't be verified, even if we are "experts" in the field. (This is per WP:V and WP:OR). In terms of sourcing, we also avoid things that involve user or community votes, as even at a place like Steam where abuse can be stemmed, such places can be gamed. However, sourcing like PC Gamer and the like can be done as these are reliable sources, and yes we should expand of other games that these types of sources have considered commercial successes in part to being available for early access (Kerbal definitely qualifies, Starbound probably does now, etc.) But where they were being added probably wasn't the best place. Also, from experience on the crowdsourcing of video games article, we want to be careful with flooding with too many examples, and use the ones that really stand out (like Minecraft, Krebal, etc.) Let me find a section to ada a few examples to start. --MASEM (t) 17:39, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Noted! I appreciate your explanation. Btw, I was hoping to include Minecraft as well but the reason I didn't is because I couldn't find any sources praising the fact that they added community suggested features or non-bugfix-changes at least (which is kinda THE THING the whole early access model revolves around). Seems weird since you'd normally find such statements on various forums, youtube and reddit. Also, what counts as a 'commercial success'? Obviously, the price affects how many titles need to be sold to achieve a certain profit threshold, but I'd like to know if you could give me a rough estimate of the lower minimal threshold? Balthazzar (talk) 18:03, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, we have Minecraft as the prime example (if not the pacesetter) for early access already. As for what is a "commercial success" I would base it on the similar types of articles I've sourced for the four current examples that highlight the large # of sales or sales figures for early access titles. I know I could probably add Don't Starve and Starbound too, as well. Eventually, that space at the bottom, they'll be a table to list any notable game (one that has a standalone article here on WP) but we want to highlight the games in that example section that come to mind as well-established examples of early access successes. --MASEM (t) 18:12, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Thunderbringerstormbrook.

I believe Game reviewers opinions should be voiced on early access as they are influential amongst the community in this area. It's relatively new and their opinions voice concern about them. Early access is relatively also very shady and in a grey zone right now. Minecraft was not a 'early' access it was a indy game released and as more people found it popular---it got more expensive. Mojang started the copy out free, and people gave feedback until the game grew to be a cult classic, to a fun classic, to a all time hit. Minecraft was never early access. Early access strictly talks about crowd funding and alpha funding in early game releases before they are considered 'finished' by the developers or the community. I added controversy arguments which should not be removed due to their signs of pointing out flaws in the article. They are indications of these are things that will be included, but cannot without opinion and no real history to back up. But they cannot not be included because they voice concerns people should be aware about before they purchase the games which many game reviewers, critics and even some developers. Minecraft was more of a game which came to be and as time went on people bought it until it's at the price today. It's a misconception that people think it's a real early access game. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.183.177.112 (talk) 02:01, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I do not believe they are violations either because they are statements of what people may think as well. They give insight to the article as they do not say how to per say but these questions do have merit as they point out where the article may be heading and what credible sources are stating. However I did not know how to give more credible sources and the best neutral voice possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.183.177.112 (talk) 02:04, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Spacebase DF9

I've added citations and reverted my edit. Feel free to clean up the language I just feel the article is currently lacking more recent developments on Spacebase DF9. 24.86.44.25 (talk) 11:14, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Article name - again

"Early access" is a term that is not confined to game industry, as the article seems to claim.

E.g., IEEE Xplore; Sage and Inscopix, manufacturers of research tools, offer their own early access schemes. Here is a public program in Iowa under this very name.

Gżdacz (talk) 07:14, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

For purposes of WP, if there's no other notable use of the word "early access", we don't consider that a conflict - so for example, the Iowa thing is a completely different topic and thus we don't consider it in this scope. Now, the Sage thing might be inspired by the video game field's approach (the ideas are similar) but we'd need a source to affirm a linkage. --MASEM (t) 14:23, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

First: if the article's titile is "Early access", I would expect it to cover the most notable uses of that term, or else to be a disambiguation rather than a regular article. According to the plwiki customs, from which I come, the present article would be named "Early access (video game industry)" or the like.

Next: Concerning the flow of ideas, I would rather expect the reverse direction. You can trace IEEE Xplore Early Access back to 2010 here (see the first publication on the list), while Steam Early Access begins in 2013. It is also extremely likely that Steam's managers or developers read IEEE Xplore publications. Of course Minecraft is older than that, but did it use precisely "Early access" term? Gżdacz (talk) 17:59, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

If there are no other notable or even popular/important uses of a term, WP does not consider the existence of those other uses. We're not saying they don't exist by that, but that because we have no where to direct the reader otherwise, we don't include those others. Taking the IEEE Xplore as an example, there's nothing at our article on that about the Early Access factor (and a quick check of online sources don't seem to talk about it). That said, if the IEEE Xplore Early Access was a part of that article, then it would be reasonable to include a hatnote here to point to that. If there were multiple such cases, a disambiguation page may be necessary then, though I will still argue that the video game use of the term is the most common name approach. --MASEM (t) 18:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I am sure you can argue, but do you have a source for your claim? I expect that your are right, if you restrict yourself to the population of people under, say, 25. Being 50+ and a researcher, I was absolutely sure that the article was about early access to research papers (quite an interesting topic), and I expect that in my age and profession group I belong to a vast majority in this respect. Gżdacz (talk) 19:27, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Going by google news hits, "'early access' steam" gives 60,000 hits, "'early access' IEEE" gives 100 (and some of those are about the video game term). The problem is that research sciences/information sciences that Early Access there would be interesting is a very niche field compared to video games, so WP:CNAME would suggest the popular use have a term. That said, in checking a few places, I do think that we can at least add a hat note to redirect to a section at Scientific_journal#Electronic_publishing where the concept of early access is discussed, as that exact term does not appear unique in the publication space to IEEE. --MASEM (t) 19:48, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Number of hits in Google does not seem to be a very good measure of importance. Have a look at the standards your WiFi adapter complies to. These are IEEE standards. The same applies to Ethernet and many other components of the machine you are working and gaming on. Being honest, if I compare Steam and IEEE, the latter is orders of magnitude more important. The former is just a temporary buzz and will probably fade out or even disappear soon, while IEEE will remain with us for decades. Gżdacz (talk) 21:22, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

But again, there is no article for it, nor do I see enough sources to make an article out of it, particularly considering that there are other types of similar pre-print/as-accepted electronic access approaches that appear to follow IEEE's, just not named "Early access". As such, it does not make sense to change how this article is title (reflecting a term that does exist readily in the sources for video games) to one that we don't have a specific article for. The hatnote I added does address the fact the term's not limited to video games, but also the fact that there's no real detailed discussion of it on WP. --MASEM (t) 21:33, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Capitalization of "early access"

In this edit, I made changes that made uses of "early access" match the title and lede, that is, make it lower-case instead of capitalized. I base this also on the assertion that it's not a proper noun. However, I left uses of "Steam Early Access" as capitalized, as that might be considered a proper noun, and it matches the (former) WP article (now a redirect).

I understand the temptation to use caps, as it is often used like a definite thing rather than just a description. I note a few sources capitalize it (a couple, confusingly, capitalize "Early" but not "access" -- I don't understand what their reasoning might be). But within this article, we should stick to a uniform way of capitalization.

If enough reliable sources are shown to use it capitalized, then this change can be reversed. But then this article title should be moved to Early Access (currently a redirect).

(Another option, which I haven't seen anywhere, is to hyphenate it: "early-access".)

--A D Monroe III (talk) 17:51, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

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Early access is a medical term, and a very important one.

My edits to disambiguate this term for the benefit of desperately ill people have been repeatedly reverted. Please see Expanded access, which has sourced material pointing to this paper. Some people have been refusing to accept the citation, and I can only guess that they must be having trouble understanding the citation format, which is why I'm adding a direct URL here. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 07:09, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

• This is just a single citation, if it was a more popular term it would have more coverage, yes? That's my only issue with it, not that sob story of yours about "cancer patients" dying or whatever. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 21:57, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Trends and lifecycle

I believe its worth noting early access it had become a trend, with lots of games being "released" and spend their entire lifecycle in this "phase" up to their death. Is it an "early" access if its a 6 year old game that is dying ? Is this just an excuse to release low quality game and charge people for them?

Funding is not systematic

The introduction makes assumption that Early Access is always used for funding, and early access games are always accessible through purchasing, but Early Access is not always for funding, but always for testing, some Early Access games are meant to be free. For example the Steam category for Early Access games features plenty of Free games: https://store.steampowered.com/genre/Early%20Access/
This Steam search for both the Early access category and the “Free” keywords list both free and free-to-play games: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&term=Free&genre=Early+Access
Note that the Early Access page in other language may already not assume the funding to be an absolute characteristic of Early Access, for example the french one: fr:Accès anticipé -- Illwieckz (talk) 02:09, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Steam may group those free to play and other nonpaid games under its "Early Access" banner, but anywhere else, that's normally just called "closed beta" or "open beta". "early access" , not Steam's term, is associated with paying for early access to a game. --Masem (t) 04:14, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

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وؤزؤزوبوبزب 37.18.99.123 (talk) 14:24, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

,עבעב

חע ליעוז זהבי של 2A00:A041:394F:5100:F98D:590C:40DA:5BB2 (talk) 13:36, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Early access as a term has been diluted

These days, more and more publishers are using the term "early access" to describe the practice of releasing the game at an earlier date for higher-paying customers as part of premium game editions. I don't actively follow video game releases these days, but some recent examples of this practice are Starfield and World of Warcraft: The War Within.

I've edited the hatnote to point to the pre-order article for this meaning of the term, though the article currently doesn't describe this aspect of pre-ordering. --Veikk0.ma 23:35, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

We need sources to make that distinction. I know there is player sentiment around this practice but that doesn't translate to usable encyclopedic info Masem (t) 23:52, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Seems to me more like a sarcastic use of the term than it evolving. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 23:58, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Player sentiment doesn't really factor into it. This is industry terminology and this usage of the term has been picked up (and commented on) by the media.

As for sources, you can look at the following articles from major publications that this term is indeed being used by the industry in a way that isn't described by this article:

• PC Gamer: Starfield Early Access: How it works and when you can play
• PC Gamer: World of Warcraft: The War Within early access release time and release date
• Eurogamer: Star Wars Outlaws release date and time
• IGN: Hogwarts Legacy Has One of Steam's Biggest Early Access Launches

None of these games had "early access" development periods, they were just released at an earlier date to players who bought more expensive game editions. But if inferring the usage from these (and many other) sources is not acceptable, then the following editorials specifically comment on this usage of the term:

• PC Gamer: 2023 was the year I got fed up with seeing those 'early access' deluxe editions where you pay more to play the game a few days early
• Kotaku: Greedy Publishers Have Won And Normalized Paying To Play Early

This also isn't games media just making things up as they sometimes do. You can Google "gamename early access" for any of these and go to the publisher's/game's websites to verify that this is how publishers are officially describing this practice.

I'm going to redo my hatnote edit. Since this alternate usage of the term has been in the public sphere for over a year (Bethesda used the term for Starfield in June last year), there's probably at least some confusion from readers of this article. --Veikk0.ma

Those sources support the idea that some uses of early access is as a pre-order incentive, but this is not a meaning that applies 100% across the board. Many many indie games still put out early access as a way that the article still reflects - a way to get feedback well before the actual release. --Masem (t) 03:02, 31 August 2024 (UTC)