The publisher of LandlordsThe hit medieval city-building game from solo developer Slavic Magic has drawn criticism for the game’s soft update schedule since launch: “This is exactly the kind of distorted endless growth/burden of expectations/line must go up perspective that causes so much trouble in the games industry,” said Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender said on LinkedIn.
Bender responded to another LinkedIn message from Raphael van LieropCEO of Hinterland Studio (the developer of The Long Darknessa Steam hit that had an Early Access release in 2014). In his original post, van Lierop said Landlords is “a pretty interesting case study in the pitfalls of Early Access development.”
Van Lierop said that, although of high quality, Landlords has a lack of content and due to the size of the development team (which is essentially one person), the pace of updates to the game is slow. He noted that the number of concurrent players of Landlords had quickly declined since launch, writing: “Given the sheer number of wishlists and hype surrounding it leading up to launch, this is something the developer and publisher should have been better prepared for.” He advised Early Access developers to have a plan to release “2-3 major updates with new content and features” within three months of the game’s release.
Benders passionate response It is worth reading van Lierop’s critique in its entirety:
This is exactly the kind of warped, endless growth/burden of expectations/’the line must go up’ perspective that causes so many problems in the games industry.
Manor Lords has sold 250,000 copies this past month – after selling over 2 million copies in its first 3 weeks – and has a Very Positive review score of 88% with a median playtime per player of 8 hours and 48 minutes (very long for any game, especially a recently released one). Players are happy, the developer is happy, and we as a publisher are incredibly happy.
And yet here we are – Manor Lords is apparently a “case study in the pitfalls of Early Access” because the “game has been out for 2.5 months and there have been three fairly minor patches” (one of the patch notes referred to as “minor” here is over 3,000 words long and over 10 single-spaced pages), leading to “CCUs have plummeted since launch” (yes, we haven’t maintained the peak of 173,000 concurrent players) and the seemingly grim reality that some people, after enjoying their purchase of a premium single-player title, might decide to move on and play another game (The horror! The horror!).
Before release, I had a conversation with the dev of Manor Lords. I told him that after release he would hear all sorts of commentators talking about missed opportunities because it wasn’t growing as fast as they wanted, and how they were judging the game as a failure based on some kind of expectation they had formed. I told him that he needed to ignore all that – focus on his core vision for the game, and remember that the Early Access road is a long one and that he shouldn’t feel any pressure from other people’s expectations – both for his own health and stress levels in the years to come, and for maintaining the state of calm and peaceful mind that supports his creative vision.
If this industry is to find a more sustainable path forward, we need to move away from notions like the one below. Success shouldn’t create an ever-increasing bar of new growth expectations. Not every game should be geared toward becoming a live-service boom or bust. And a release shouldn’t be the start of an ever-increasing treadmill that developers are forced to run on until their mental or physical health gives out.
Van Lierop has since clarified that he himself is “deeply anti-crunch” and that he was only commenting on the Early Access release strategy. Still, Bender effectively exposes how the thinking behind van Lierop’s comments can be limiting or even harmful.
Essentially, Bender says it’s important to reframe the idea of success around Early Access game releases – or perhaps all single-player game releases. He rails against the “live-service boom or bust” trope that has permeated the industry, arguing that it’s okay for people to buy a game, play it, enjoy it, and then put it aside – a perfectly normal gaming habit that’s not being factored into the increasingly dominant narrative around Steam player counts. And he agrees with van Lierop that Early Access is “a marathon,” but comes to a very different conclusion about how to approach it: proceed at your own pace, and trust that players will come back to see what you’ve built.
Bender’s post got me thinking about the way I report on things like Early Access games and player counts; reporting update schedules and Steam charts without context can contribute massively to the perception of a game’s success or failure being skewed or simply irrelevant. If Bender’s words make even a few players, publishers, and developers think twice about how they approach these games, he’ll have done the entire industry a service.
Oh, and give Landlords an attempt. There is nothing like it.