The publishers of recent city-builder sensation Manor Lords and elder survival sim juggernaut The Long Dark are engaged in a mostly gentle skirmish over how many major updates the game should get in Early Access, and the potential consequences in terms of overworking developers and losing players. .
Yesterday, Hinterlands CEO Raphael van Lierop posted on LinkedIn describing Manor Lords as “a pretty interesting case study in the pitfalls of Early Access development when a game with a small team (and heavily marketed as such) hits a reality hungry audience.” “. Like domestic bourgeois serf Nic Reuben in RPS, Van Lierop is interested in the Manor Lords, describing them as “very high quality”, but concerned about the lack of major additions since the release.
“Started with a pretty strong core game, but not much content,” van Lierop writes. “A heavily system-focused game needs either a variety of maps, game modes, or some dose of proc-gen dynamics to keep it fresh.
“Manor Lords is having none of that. So once you’ve played 5-10 rounds of the game, there’s nothing left to do. The fixed maps and resource simplicity mean that there aren’t many different permutations in the early game, as the starting conditions are almost always the same. That’s not great for RTS/city builders.’
Van Lierop claims that the developers of Manor Lords Slavic Magic are unable to satisfy the need for an expansion because the studio is essentially one person, Grzegorz Styczeń (he had some help with the sheep gut-based soundtrack), but still believes that Hooded Horse should have worked with Styczeń to introduce some juicy changes closer to launch.
“Due to lack of CCU updates [concurrent users worldwide] have plummeted since launch (which isn’t all that unusual – it’s the current trend for many Early Access titles blowing up these days),” he writes. “But given the huge number of wishlists and the hype surrounding it leading up to launch, it’s something the developer and publisher better be prepared for, IMO.”
“Early Access is a marathon, and when you launch, you need to have the next big content expansion lined up,” the post continues. “The game has been out for 2.5 months and there have been three fairly small patches with no new features or content.
“As such, I’ve shelved the game and don’t expect to look at it again for another 6 months, at which point I’ll probably focus on playing something else. It’s really hard to get people’s attention back once you’ve lost it.”
Van Lierop concludes by advising that Early Access game developers are planning “2-3 major updates with new content and features (in addition to any hotfixes you need to implement)” within three months of release.
Tim Bender, CEO of the publishing house Manor Lords Hooded Horse, does not see the situation that way. He describes van Lierop’s contribution as “exactly the kind of skewed infinite growth/burden of expectation/lines have to go up perspective that causes so many problems in the gaming industry”. He also doesn’t care that Manor Lords has fallen short of its initial massive popularity, poking fun at the “apparently dark reality that some people, after enjoying buying a premium single-player title, might decide to play another game (The horror ! Horror !).”
Bender says he warned Styczeń not to pay attention to comments about players moving away from the Manor Lords. “I had a chat with the developer of Manor Lords before the release. I told him that after release he would hear from all sorts of commentators talking about missed opportunities because he didn’t manage to grow as fast as they wanted him to and judging the game as a failure based on some kind of expectation they had created.
“I told him to ignore all of that – to focus on his core vision for the game and to remember that the Early Access journey is long and that he shouldn’t feel any pressure from other people’s expectations – both for his own health and his stress level in years to come and for maintaining a state of calm and peaceful mind that supports his creative vision.
“If the industry is to find a more sustainable way forward, we need to step back from actions like this [van Lierop’s post]Bender concludes. “Success should not create an ever-increasing bar of new growth expectations. Not every game should be aimed at becoming some kind of live services boom or bust. And the release shouldn’t start with an ever-accelerating treadmill that developers are forced to run on until their mental or physical health breaks down.”
Missing from the discussion is a sense of how much money Slavic Magic and Hooded Horse need right now to keep the Manor Lords going. I think Bender is right, but in defense of van Lierop, he is calling for a specific rate of new expansions to keep players coming back, not crunching for “infinite” growth. Hinterland itself isn’t too big of an overhaul in the name of fattening the schedule – The Long Dark’s splash screen includes the words “made seamlessly by people who care about their players in a studio that cares about their people”.
Bender and I ourselves spoke earlier in the year about how Manor Lords would change during Early Access. He described Stycze&nacute’s approach as “collaborative” and “engaged in the community.” If you love the game and are trying to do something about it, maybe take a leaf out of the Reubensday Tom and chase the cattle.