“I’ve been designing games since I was a kid,” he says. So long ago, in fact, that Hunt cannot remember exactly when he began working on it. Photograph: PR Company HandoutĪlthough Kenshi was one of the first Early Access games, its story begins much earlier. But it raises questions about the relationship between developers and customers, and the responsibilities of Steam’s owner, Valve Corporation, to monitor what’s going on.Ī screenshot from Kenshi. Steam Early Access facilitates projects that would be otherwise impossible to produce. Alongside Kenshi, the released games are Kerbal Space Program, ARMA 3, Prison Architect, Drunken Robot Pornography, Gnomoria, Gear Up, Starforge and Kinetic Void. Of those, nine have been finished, two have ceased development, and one is stuck in limbo. Kenshi was one of 12 games selected to launch the initiative in March 2013. It can be likened to crowdfunding, although rather than investing on a promise, purchasers of the games can play along as development progresses. Through the platform, developers can release their games in an unfinished state, and use the revenue raised from purchases to fund the remainder of development. Kenshi belongs to a sub-group of “Early Access” games on the biggest online PC games storefront, Steam. This bizarre situation has emerged because, despite being a decade in the making, Kenshi has been playable for half that time, and already has thousands of fans.
“People kept saying, ‘Ah, don’t release it too soon.’ I think they were worried that I was going to leave it buggy or incomplete.” “No one was really bothered by the official release, because nothing will change,” says Hunt, who speaks in a laid-back, laconic fashion that makes him seem affable and yet strangely distant. You might think finishing it would be a huge milestone in Hunt’s career.
Hunt had been working on Kenshi, in which players navigate a tribe of people through a strange, low-tech alien world, for more than 10 years. O n 6 December 2018, game developer Chris Hunt’s magnum opus was finally complete.
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