Why Early Access?

- Why Early Access?

We originally published Eastside Hockey Manager as a traditional ‘boxed’ game between 2004 and 2007. However, we decided to shelve it at that point because it simply didn’t make financial sense to continue publishing it in the old-fashioned way.

At that time we were not only badly affected by piracy, we were also hit by the way retail used to work, particularly in the US. Boxed copies of the game would fly off the shelves in places where hockey was popular, but would languish in places where it wasn’t – and there was no system in place for those boxes to be shifted from one State to another. Steam wasn’t anywhere near as popular back then as it is now, so we didn’t have a digital solution to this problem like we do now.

We have never wavered in our belief that there’s an enthusiastic and active fan base for this game which we’ve seen at the Blueline community (http://www.ehmtheblueline.com/) and now, using Early Access, we want to prove that to everyone else.

Getting the game into its current state has been very much a ‘hobby project’ for a few of us at the studio. Up until now we’ve worked on EHM in what little spare time we have (Football Manager keeps us all very busy) but now, using Early Access will give us some budget to be able to put more resources into EHM, whilst not losing any from FM. We’re doing it now because we’ve hired some of the people we need to cover the extra work.

Early Access will also give us an opportunity to get the feedback we need from the community to ensure that this is the game they want to play.

Finally, we need to prove that there is enough demand to justify resurrecting the series fully. Whilst this version has ‘fake’ data, we want to show that there is a demand for a fully licensed version of the game. That won’t come with this release but, if it’s successful, it means we can go to the leagues around the world and get licenses for future, annualised, versions (in much the same way that we do with FM).

And, bluntly, nothing beats a testing resource of hundreds or thousands of people. Your help in this regard is greatly appreciated.

- Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

We’re not completely sure on that just yet. But we’re talking months, not years.

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

Polish, polish, polish. But we’re also planning some extra features – a play-off tree view will be rolled out in the first update, with some major improvements to player progression following in the second. At some point in the Early Access cycle we also plan to include a network game mode and some further playable leagues. And we’ll be looking at features that you, the community, suggest – if we like them (and they’re technically achievable) then we’ll do what we can to get them into the final game.

- What is the current state of the Early Access version?

It’s fully playable and includes 11 leagues from around the world and 13 international tournaments. At the moment the game is English-language only.

We haven’t seen any crashes for a while, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a few when people start to play the game for the long-term on a variety of different hardware configurations.

If and when we do find any crashes we’ll roll out updates as soon as they are fixed. We also plan to put out a regular update every two weeks (on Thursday evenings, UK time).

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

Yes. It will be cheaper during the Early Access period to thank people for helping to steer the game in the right direction.

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

We want as much feedback and as many bug reports as possible, please. We were one of the first ‘community driven’ studios – our fans have been directly involved in shaping our games for 20 years – and we want to keep this going both through our own forums (at http://community.sigames.com/) and here on Steam for EHM. We will always make the final decision on what does and doesn’t go into our games, but we treat every idea from the community in exactly the same way as we treat ideas that come from people within the studio.

Is it playable (or will it be) on a Windows 8.1 tablet?

If you have an external/bluetooth keyboard and the tablet can do a 1024x768 resolution, then you should be able to play. I've got an ATIV3 Win8 tablet myself and I've had a few goes on it so it should run. It's not officially supported as a platform though.

If I buy the early access version of the game, will I have to buy the full game when it will be release?

No. Buying the Early Access version automatically gives you the full game when it is released.

If I buy Early Access now will I have access to a Mac version before final release?

We are currently only developing a PC version on Early Access. There are no concrete plans for other platforms at this stage, as we need to first assess how the Early Access version is received and what kind of demands there is.

However there are people currently playing the PC version using Wine or Parallels on their Macs, and the purchase on Steam is not tied to a platform so in the event that we get to do a Mac version at some point they wouldn't have to re-purchase anything.