Victor Vran Developers on Early Access Experiences

The developers at Haemimont Games, whose last title was the action-RPG Victor Vran, have written a short blog post about their experiences with Steam Early Access. In the blog post, they make a case for the oft-maligned Steam outlet for games that are still in development and list the ways it helped them during development.

It’s interesting to learn, for example, that Victor Vran wasn’t originally imagined as a loot-driven action-RPG in the vein of Diablo, and that the change was directly inspired by player feedback. Most importantly, though, the developers seem to have very simple but effective ideas as to how to avoid angering their player base:

Communicating with the players

As with any relationship, communication is crucial and perceived problems will get worse if you stay silent. This is particularly true for the Early Access community that consists of gamers who want to talk with the developers and help them shape the final form of their game.

We encouraged the whole design team to partake in forum discussions, comment on our reviews and generally talk with the players as much as possible, even in-game. The programmers also got in touch directly with any user that experienced some kind of issue that we can’t replicate.

This was all very new to us and we’ve certainly made our share of mistakes, but in general we adhered to two simple rules that helped us avoid PR nightmare:

• Never promise anything that is not yet set in stone
• Never, for any reason, lie

So, here’s my advice: talk to your players, listen to them, act on their feedback, explain your decisions with logical arguments and be the engaged, communicative developer they deserve. Always keep in mind that they want the same thing as you a better game. In the end, when your players know that you listen and respond, you will receive much more valuable feedback from them.

The full piece is rather short, but it’s still a valuable read, as it provide a number of examples of the utility of Early Access to developers, without pretending its problems don’t exist.

Originally spotted on RPGWatch.