The publishers of recent city-building sensation Manor Lords and elder survival sim juggernaut The Long Dark are having a mostly gentlemanly argument about how significant updates a game should have in early access, and the potential consequences in terms of both developer burnout and loss of interest by the players.
Yesterday, Hinterlands CEO Raphael van Lierop published a post 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 advertised as such) falls into the reality of a hungry audience.” Like RPS’s in-house bourgeois serf bore Nick Reuben, Van Lierop is keen on Manor Lords, describing it as “very high quality”, but has a bone to pick with the dearth of major additions since release.
“It launched with a pretty strong base game, but not much content,” van Lierop wrote. “A heavily system oriented game needs either a set of cards, game modes, or some amount of proc-gen dynamics to keep it fresh.
“Manor Lords has none of these things. So after playing 5-10 rounds of the game there is nothing more to do. The fixed maps and resource simplicity mean that there aren’t many different permutations of the early game, as the starting conditions are almost always the same. That’s not great for an RTS/city builder.”
Van Lierop claims that Manor Lords developers Slavic Magic are unable to meet the need for expansion as the studio is essentially one man, Grzegorz Styczeń (he got some help with the sheep gut-based soundtrack), but however, he thinks Hooded Horse should have worked with Styczeń to implement some juicy changes closer to launch.
“As a result of the lack of CCU updates [concurrent users worldwide] have dropped dramatically since launch (which isn’t all that unusual – it’s the current trend for many Early Access titles blowing up these days),” he wrote. “But given the huge number of wishlists and hype surrounding it leading up to launch, it’s something the developer and publisher should have been better prepared for, IMO.”
“Early Access is a marathon, and when you launch, you should have your next big content expansion almost in line,” the post continues. “The game has been out for 2.5 months and has had three fairly minor patches with no new features or content.
“As such, I’ve put the game aside 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 plan for “2-3 major updates with new content and features (in addition to any hotfixes you need to release)” within three months of release.
That’s not how Tim Bender, CEO of Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse, sees the situation. He described van Lierop’s post as “exactly the kind of warped never-ending growth/weight of expectation/line must go up that causes so much trouble in the games industry.” He’s also unfazed by Manor Lords lagging behind its initial massive popularity, poking fun at the “apparently dark reality that some people, having enjoyed the purchase of a premium single-player title, may decide to go on and play another game (The Horror! The Horror!).”
Bender says he warned Styczeń not to pay attention to comments about players moving away from the Manor Lords. “I had a conversation with the developer of Manor Lords before the release. I told him that after release he’d hear from all sorts of commentators talking about missed opportunities because he wasn’t able to grow as fast as they wanted and judging the game as a failure according to some expectation they had formed.
“I told him to ignore all of that – to focus on his core vision for the game and keep in mind that the road to early access is long and that he shouldn’t feel any pressure from other people’s expectations – both for his own health and stress levels in the coming years and to maintain the calm and relaxed state of mind that supports his creative vision.
“If this industry wants to find a more sustainable way forward, we need to move away from things like this [van Lierop’s post],” Bender concludes. “Success should not create ever-higher expectations for new growth. Not every game should aim to become the boom or bust of live services. And a release shouldn’t start an ever-accelerating treadmill where developers are forced to work 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 support the continued development of Manor Lords. I think Bender is right, but in van Lierop’s defense, he is calling for a certain rate of new expansions to keep players coming back, not aiming for “endless” growth. Hinterland themselves don’t tend to overextend themselves in the name of fattening the roadmap – The Long Dark’s splash screen includes the words “smoothly made by people who care about their players in a studio that cares about their people”.
We spoke with Bender earlier in the year about how Manor Lords will be changing during Early Access. He described Styczeń’s approach as “collaborative” and “engaged with the community.” If you’re into the game and struggling for things to do in it, maybe take a leaf out of Reubensday’s book and stalk the cattle.
