Early Access (your comments)
Matt Solomon had a very thoughtful perspective on this:As games increasingly move to services, and for games that aren't heavily narrative focused, early access going to be a very prevalent thing. The idea of a game being complete before it launches is not going to make a ton of sense. Look at how much Minecraft has changed despite coming out of beta, or how, even though your own Gridiron Solitaire is a proper launched title, it's still getting significant feature updates months after release.
Even though Early Access is in an even rougher state, launch is no longer a guarantee of completeness. You don't get to play the 'full' game unless you play it for months as it evolves, or you wait a very long time in some cases.
There's more of a demand for engagement from both the player and the developer under this model, and that has its positives and negatives. It can be a bit exhausting, and it makes it harder to have a lot of diverse interests at the same time. It's a very different way of interacting with games. I don't think it's going to be the only way things get made, but because it stimulates a much stronger sense of buy in and community, it's an important way of making things.
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