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Comment by justinplouffe | Hacker News Reader

The average build for a AAA game coming out in 2020 is barely in playable shape and certainly not ready to be shown at E3. Making one polished enough to show off is both time consuming and not representative of the final product. I really wish people were more open to seeing blocked out levels and unpolished animations to have an idea of where these projects are going but unfortunately even the most pristine presentations get picked apart online so I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon.

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That's more or less what Steam Greenlight was and one reason why I love it even if it goes by a different name now. I can pick up something interesting, play around with it, and then catch up on it's progress over years.

I've done this with Subnautica, Starbound, Rimworld, and The Long Dark. I don't regret going on a journey with the developers at all.

Yes, Steam Greenlight (whatever it's called these days) is a cute idea, but for every gem like the games you mention, there are hundreds if not thousands of crap, minimal effort "games", many of them in a barely working state, which are released there just to make a quick buck or two, either via direct sales, or via the Steam card sales.

Which is also why the Steam curation function is an absolute boon. Let influencers I know trawl through the ocean of games and show me what is good.

You're talking about early access. Greenlight was just a community based moderation process to allow anyone to submit their game without depending on a well known publisher. A greenlit game doesn't have to be in early access. Nothing prevents someone from submitting a completed game.

One of the things that I wish was available to customers on a regular basis is the playable demo that was pitched to a company for a game that gets picked up. An example of this would be id software's demo for Super Mario Bros 3 on the PC[0] (even though that didn't get picked up).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YWD6Y9FUuw

> The average build for a AAA game coming out in 2020 is barely in playable shape and certainly not ready to be shown at E3.

Yet Nintendo let people play Breath of the Wild at E3 2016 and it came out in 2017. Everything from that trailer are things from the actual released game as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LIq8ryhG9c

So some companies clearly manages to do this. Another example is Blizzard, they typically have wysiwyg games as well.

Blizzard and Nintendo are also the companies that have scrapped the most games that I know of.

Even if you dislike their games, you have to admit they 1) have the best polish, 2) always communicate clearly what's in the game. If I don't like a Nintendo or Blizzard game I would know much before I buy it.

Other companies give you a 3 minute video to get you hyped about a game.

Nintendo gives us 3 minute videos apologizing for a previous video announcing that a game was in development and that they're restarting development because they don't like where it was going.

One of these companies is worth your money, the others aren't.

> have the best polish

Overwatch was a buggy mess in the first year and disposing a weird handling of inputs to the max. SC2:WoL and previous season in LotV had the most unbalanced multiplayer towards single race in a whole 20 years history of the franchise.

> always communicate clearly what's in the game

Like getting hype in Diablo community towards Blizzcon 2018 to ask "You don't have phones?"

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