More Games Need To Be Honest About Not Being Finished Yet

We are shy of two weeks out from the launch of Crimson Desert, and while I personally have been enjoying my time with the game, I feel it has been one of the more egregious examples of a modern trend in gaming: titles releasing as 1.0 when they should be releasing as Early Access.

Since the launch of Crimson Desert, the game has added a storage chest at the main hub for players to offload items they don’t want to carry, but also don’t want to lose. It’s added a bunch of fast travel points all over the map, including one at that main hub; before this, it took hours of gameplay to unlock a fast travel point, even if you were kind of close to that location. It’s also added new items known as Refinement Tokens, which allow players to quickly upgrade any low-level gear they come across to something more usable, without having to waste a bunch of resources in doing so. These aren’t little tweaks and fixes; these changes completely transform the experience of playing the game.

Before digital releases and internet connectivity, patches were nearly impossible, especially on consoles. Once a game was out in the wild, that was pretty much it. No changes could be made; any issues with the game or exploits players could leverage were forever etched into that experience. Now, developers are able to make alterations weeks, months, or even years after a game’s release. I do lament the idea of things like Pokémon Red and Blue’s Missing No., or the backward long jump in Super Mario 64, being removed in update patches if those games were to have been released today.