The Game is Coming? Tomorrow?

I'm trying to be as unfiltered here as I possibly can, and to help myself gain some insight on what I should do.

Early Access So, I’m going to be honest here. The game isn’t close to being finished. But since I have so many people that already have keys and have waited so long, I’m heavily contemplating early access. The only thing with that is, I know for a fact that the entire community is going to be disappointed with how unfinished the game is. What is there, is mostly polished, but what isn’t, just simply isn’t. If I did release it under early access, I know I’m going to receive a bunch of backlash for the lack of content. All I can really give out is the shell of a game with its systems in place. With that, since I’d feel like trash for releasing such an early, unfinished version of a game, I’d try to give those that buy the game beforehand as much of an advantage as I can. I’d try to give them some sort of incentive, but what that is yet, I don’t quite know. Clearly, I want to lower the price because when you buy a game, you want to get what you paid for. There might be 30 minutes of gameplay in there and that’s definitely not worth what I was originally hoping to ask for. If we want an actual number here, trying to be as transparent as possible, I’m thinking $5.00. For an unreleased game that’s still being developed, I think that’s a reasonable price, and obviously the people who have already bought the game wouldn’t be spending anything. The idea of the early access is to allow people who want to invest money into the game and watch it evolve, will be able to. I want to say it’s also to help support me but I honestly don’t care for the money until it’s done. I don’t feel comfortable getting money for an incomplete project but I also can’t give it away for free because that’d just sort of ruin all of my work. Because it’s early access, the game will still be developed over time. It’ll just be constantly being updated and at a cheaper, more accessible point, to prevent people for not being able to play the game.

I still really hate the idea of releasing a game in early access. It feels like it’ll just come off as wrong. Like a money grab, like a lazy way out. But with so much life in the way and the amount of people upset that they still can’t play the game, I’m sort of stuck at a crossroads. I wanted to lay out my ideas on a piece of paper and let the community decide in the comments.

It can go one of three ways,

1. no one comments, and I release it, and we’ll see what happens.

2. People commenting that they just want to play it, and I’ll follow out with this plan.

3. People comment saying its a bad idea, and I won’t do it.

Regardless, I’m not going to get it the way I originally intended, and that blows, but the more people I can make happy out of this, the better. I work most days of the week, my schedule is beyond full and I never thought that would be possible. Senior year in highschool really sucks, but I at least want this project to succeed before I graduate and head off to college. So maybe we should just go for it, and see where this journey takes us? The games not dead, but my sleep schedule is. So give me your advice and I’ll listen like I always try my best to do.

Thanks in advance, Seth Albertus