Mohawk wants user reviews, sales, refunds removed from Early Access

Civilization IV designer Soren Johnson believes that Valve should shift the emphasis of Early Access away from selling products, and towards creating a better environment for developers to iterate on and experiment with their games.

Johnson co-founded Mohawk Games in 2013, and elected to release its first project, Offworld Trading Company, on Steam Early Access. In a detailed postmortem on Gamasutra, Johnson's reasoning for that decision is clearly stated: "the most common problem in the games industry is waste," he said, "wasted time, wasted effort, and wasted money on design ideas that aren't actually fun in practice."

In principle, Early Access would provide an environment in which Offworld Trading Company could receive outside feedback from an early stage, and throughout its development. Mohawk Games had little hesitation in taking part, despite the possible impact of the game's availability on the launch of the finished product.

"Valve takes an all-or-nothing approach to Early Access; launch will put the game on the front page of Steam whether the developers want it there or not"

More than a year later, Johnson has some clear recommendations for Valve on how to improve Early Access for developers, all of which address problems that, "result from differing expectations between developers and consumers." In summary: developers want an environment in which to build the best possible game, while consumers want to play games early and at the cheapest possible price. Based on Mohawk's suggestions, Early Access currently leans too far toward the latter.

First, Johnson suggested the introduction of "unlisted pages," which would allow developers to launch their Early Access games in a more controlled manner, reaping more benefits from Steam's infrastructure as a result.

"Valve takes an all-or-nothing approach to Early Access; launch will put the game on the front page of Steam whether the developers want it there or not," Johnson said. "The answer is to allow developers to sell games on Steam with unlisted store pages, meaning the page is only available via a direct link and does not show up in any advertisements, ranked lists, discovery queues, curator collections, or any other method for exposing the game to the average Steam consumer."

The first suggestion flows naturally into the second: no user reviews. Mohawk concedes that user reviews are, "a staple of online commerce," but Johnson called for the concept to be reappraised for a programme like Early Access. "What exact purpose does an Early Access review serve when stating that the game is not ready? The game's presence on Early Access is an explicit statement that the game is not ready."

With no user reviews, Johnson said, teams will feel more empowered to embrace iterative design and, "take wild swings in quality during development." It would also, "send a clear message to consumers," about the nature of Early Access relative to buying a finished game.

Mohawk's final suggestion is perhaps the most radical, with Johnson calling for an end to price-cutting and refunds on Early Access games. Ultimately, the idea is motivated by the belief that Early Access becomes more useful to developers with fewer but more engaged players - "a special type of consumer," to use Johnson's description, one that explicitly wants the unique experience Early Access was ostensibly created to provide.

"What exact purpose does an Early Access review serve when stating that the game is not ready?"

"Turning off the developer's ability to reduce the price of a game to drive sales and turning off the consumer's ability to test out a game knowing that a refund is possible should both drive down game sales, especially among the more casual audience looking for either a bargain or a de facto demo," Johnson said.

In fairness to Valve, it has implemented changes to its user review system, introducing a separate score that only reflects reviews from the last 30 days. However, the system still avoids distinguishing between Early Access games and finished products, a concern that is at the core of each one of Mohawk's suggestions.

Ultimately, it's hard to see Valve acting on these points, because so many of the changes would involve restricting rights it has already afforded to its customers. In addition, it would likely result in fewer transactions from which Steam takes a percentage, which rather begs the question: Is Early Access a tool for making better games, or a way of selling unfinished products?

There is a great deal more detail, and comprehensive exploration of all aspects of Offworld Trading Company's time in Early Access, in Gamasutra's excellent postmortem.