The NPCs Discuss - Early Access

On today's episode: In the days of old (and yes, we do mean old), the only way to get your hands on a video game early was to play at one of several kiosks at Walmart, K-Mart, or Target OR purchase a video game magazine that had a demo disk attached to it. Now with both the demo disk gone and the majority of kiosks all but history, the industry has found new ways to adapt to bring early peeks at games into your home. Open betas and closed alphas are ripe for signing up, enticing hundreds of thousands to sign up and play an early build of a game to help devs figure out what to fix or tune before launch. But what if there was another way that gave players full access in advance? A way where you could purchase the game and play it as it was being developed? Say hello to Early Access - a way for devs (both big and small) to open up their game to the masses when it’s mostly playable. There have been many successes and failures that have made waves, but it’s not all sunshine and roses. So let’s talk about what happened then, and what’s going on now with Early Access. Guest: PJ Chavez - Genetix Studio (Steam/Google Play) Intro & Outro: Run by J+1 Pick up his tracks on Bandcamp today @ https://jplusone.bandcamp.com/