Inside the long, emotional journey of an early access hit

digitaltrends.com:

Less than halfway into 2022, it’s already clear that this year is going down in gaming’s history books — Elden Ring’s jaw-dropping success alone set that in stone. Though giant blockbusters have been the focal point of conversation this year, most of this year’s most impressive projects are much smaller in scale. It has quietly been a tremendous year for indie games exiting early access.

A concept that has become more popular over the past decade, the early access approach allows developers to release games well before they’re in a finished 1.0 state. That gives fans a chance to playtest games early and provide feedback to creators, having a direct impact on development. The strategy famously paid off for Hades in 2020, creating the decade’s first instant classic. Two years later, the approach continues to pay off for developers who are willing to let communities into their creative process.

This past month alone, we’ve seen major early access success stories in the form of Dorfromantik, Teardown, and, most recently, Rogue Legacy 2. Each one speaks to the potentially massive benefits of early access, though the process isn’t without its own stress, danger, and vulnerability for creators willing to take a risk — just ask the team behind Rogue Legacy 2.

For a long time, most video games followed a similar launch path. Developers quietly worked on a new title for years, releasing the occasional demo or holding playtests to gather feedback. A game would launch in a 1.0 state and either be done or receive post-launch tweaks based on feedback (see Elden Ring with its constant string frustrating of updates). Early access reshuffles that timeline, widening the player feedback phase and folding it into the road to 1.0.

Developer