So I wrote previously about how I wish R.E.P.O. had more content and that I felt bad for maybe having unfair expectations on the game. Well, R.E.P.O. was received a content update, which added a new map, items and better mechanics to make the game harder. Have I played any of the new content? Nope. Will I give it a try at some point? Maybe not.

It’s not that the game failed me and I refuse to play the new content out of spite. I think it’s more just the nature of zeitgeist games at the moment that specifically affect multiplayer games.

Games like R.E.P.O., Schedule I, Headliners and Fast Food Simulator are games that might blow up on Twitch and cause you plus your friends to all pick them up. Usually they’re cheap and easy to start so they’re the perfect match for when gaming with your friends hits a lull. The problem is that most of the times these games are early access, so still very early days and games might be nowhere close to being completed. The tricky thing I’ve seen happen is what happens when these games blow-up.

I’ve seen situations where most of the time the devs are very small, like Schedule I is, I believe, one person. So they have all this time and money, but they don’t grow to fit the new demand. Which is definitely enticing, you just got all this money and less financial pressure all of a sudden. I think it’s totally fair to think that you can still have full control of your game and tweak it until it’s perfect. The problem is that because your game blew up due to it being the hot new thing, how can you keep the game in people’s minds? I’ve seen some games just kind of disappear because maybe features weren’t thought out or maybe the truth that development is hard and throwing money at a problem doesn’t necessarily smooth out those rough edges.

All of this is to say that R.E.P.O. finally gave me all this stuff I wanted, but in talking with my friends, we all admit we should go back and give it another try but then…we don’t. We jump to the next hot game that is super cheap and new. I kind of hope we do go back because I want to have an environment where these games are allowed to grow and avoid an environment where someone will put out a half-baked game and maybe just take the money and run. I don’t know if that would fully be malicious though, it would more just being responding to the market in my mind. If you can tell your game is a flash in a pan, how do you devote time to it if you can’t tell if anyone will still be playing once you get your complete game out the door. You can make all the fanfare you want about hitting 1.0, but can you compete with the other hundreds of games that came out that month?

Weirdly, I will close out by saying this doesn’t really affect singleplayer focused games. Games like Hades 2 are allowed to grow at their own pace in early access and some people have no issue replaying the same sections over and over again as they see the game grow. I still have yet to beat Baldur’s Gate 3, but I know some people that played through Act 1 dozens of times when that was the only content available in the Early Access. I think that’s more because you’re doing that on your own time, so you’re not having to make sure you and your friends are locked in on what to play next.

One day, I’ll go and revisit all the games I picked up during Early Access and I hope to see a ton of games where the developers were able to realize their vision and maybe even expand past that. I’d hate for anyone to give up on their game because everyone else moved on.