The publisher of Manor Lords, the hit medieval city-building game made by solo developer Slavic Magic, has hit out at critics of the game’s gentle update schedule since launch: “This is exactly the kind of distorted endless growth/burden of expectations/line must go up perspective that causes so much trouble in the games industry,” Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender said on LinkedIn.
Bender was responding to another LinkedIn post by Raphael van Lierop, CEO of Hinterland Studio (the developer of The Long Dark, a Steam hit that had an Early Access release in 2014). In his original post, van Lierop said Manor Lords is “a pretty interesting case study in the pitfalls of Early Access development.”
Van Lierop said that, while high quality, Manor Lords is lacking in content, and due to the size of the development team (which is essentially one person), the pace of updates to the game is slow. He noted that the number of concurrent players of Manor Lords had dropped quickly since launch and wrote, “Given the huge number of wishlists and hype around it leading up to launch, this is something the developer and publisher should have been better prepared for.” He advised Early Access developers to have a plan to release “2-3 major updates with new content and features” within three months of releasing the game.
Bender’s passionate response to van Lierop’s criticism is worth reading in full:
This is exactly the kind of distorted endless growth/burden of expectations/line must go up perspective that causes so much trouble in the games industry.
Manor Lords just sold 250,000 copies in the last month — after selling over 2 million copies in its first 3 weeks — and has a Very Positive review rating of 88% with a median playtime of 8 hours 48 minutes per player (very long for any game, especially a recently released one). Players are happy, the developer is happy, and we as publisher are thrilled beyond belief.
And yet here we are — Manor Lords is apparently a “case-study in the pitfalls of Early Access” because the “game has been out for 2.5 months and there have been three fairly small patches” (one of the patch notes being called ‘small’ here runs over 3,000 words and over 10 single-spaced pages) leading to “CCUs have plummeted since launch” (yes, we didn’t maintain the 173,000 concurrent player peak) and the apparently dark reality that some people, after enjoying their purchase of a premium, single-player title, might decide to go on and play another game (The horror! The horror!).
Before the release, I had a chat with Manor Lords’ dev. I told him that after release, he was going to hear from all sorts of commenters talking about missed opportunities because he failed to grow as fast as they wanted, and judging the game a failure by some kind of expectation they formed. I told him to ignore all that — to focus on his core vision for the game, and to keep in mind that the Early Access road is long and that he should not feel any sense of pressure from the expectations of others — for both his own health and stress levels over the coming years and for preserving the state of calm and peaceful mind that supports his creative vision.
If this industry is to find a more sustainable path forward, we need to move away from takes like the below. Success should not create an ever raising bar of new growth expectations. Not every game should be aimed at becoming some live-service boom or bust. And a release should not begin an ever-accelerating treadmill on which devs are forced to run until their mental or physical health breaks down.
Van Lierop has since clarified that he himself is “deeply anti-crunch” and that he was only commenting on Early Access release strategy. Still, Bender effectively exposes how the thinking behind van Lierop’s comments can be limiting, or even harmful.
Essentially, Bender is saying that it’s important to reframe the idea of success around Early Access game releases — or, perhaps, all single-player game releases. Decrying the “live-service boom or bust” thinking that has permeated the industry, he argues that it’s OK for people to buy a game, play it, enjoy it, and then set it aside — a completely normal gaming habit that isn’t accounted for in the increasingly dominant narrative around Steam player numbers. And he agrees with van Lierop that Early Access is “a marathon,” but comes to a very different conclusion about how to handle that: Work at your own pace, and trust that players will return to see what you’ve built.
Bender’s post has made me think twice about the way I report on things like Early Access games and player numbers; reporting around update schedules and Steam charts without context can heavily contribute to the impression of a game’s success or failure that might be distorted or just plain irrelevant. If Bender’s words encourage just a few players, publishers, and developers to think twice about the way they approach these games, too, then he’s done the whole industry a service.
Oh, and give Manor Lords a try. There’s nothing else quite like it.
