Why Early Access?

“I want to develop the game with the players! I know this sounds cliche but I really feel that building a "base" of a product, and finalizing it around the input from passionate members of the community is something I've always wanted to do. Instead of developing this product in a vacuum, or based solely on the feedback of a few testers, and execs at a publisher - bringing the game to passionate users in the target audience and tailoring the product to their feedback should save me time, and prevent unnecessary or unliked features from receiving my attention, while important features ( to the community ) will receive a majority of my development focus.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“I'm anticipating the product being in the Early Access phase for 6-12 months. The actual answer is "as long as it takes" for the product to be fun, and to achieve the goals I've set for it, and those may change based on community feedback.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The full version will be more polished all around, and will feature a much more robust offering of multiplayer features. I'm keeping a forum topic of items being worked on here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/336210/discussions/0/412447524179223023/
Some of the major improvements/features I anticipate (before player feedback), are things like:
- Improved character animations & animation system.
- More variety of character/player models.
- Additional building types in the procedural cities.
- More help & tutorial features.
- Enable dynamic creation of procedural cities in the client & server (currently I lock the 'seed number' while finalizing the procedural city generation algorithms, to help debugging).
- More variation of weapons available (already created just need to be integrated).
- More variation of vehicles available (already created just need to be integrated).
- Making the game more fun, in general.
- More Steam Achievements.
- Better support for virtual reality headsets (Vive, Oculus, etc).
- More servers & better multiplayer netcode.
- ZOMBIES ?!”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The industry nomenclature for the state of the product would be "Pre-Alpha", or "Alpha", depending on how many new features the community would like me to add to the product. One other way to look at the first release is that it's "66% done", in the sense that I've spent 2 years on the game - and expect it needs about 1 more year of work. The game has 3 major Offline gameplay modes, and an Online open-city multiplayer mode. The game server technology is a constant work in progress, as is the game client. Some features are rough around the edges, and there may be crash bugs in the product. Also some visual elements of the product are in a somewhat early stage, and can be improved in the future, based on user feedback.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“I anticipate the price of the product increasing gradually, as the quality and amount of features/content increases.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“I love interacting with players/users and seeing what they think of my work, in a POSITIVE way. I've developed this game and engine by myself, from scratch. For a multiplayer"Open World Crime" type game, this is a huge undertaking. I have no illusions about the complexity and challenges of creating such a game. I've spent many years working on this and very much look forward to having constructive conversations with a mature gaming community as the product progresses in quality and content. Thanks a lot!

- Dan”