Why Early Access?

“This game has been in development for about 10 years, but is still considered unfinished.
Early Access will allow people to play the game while it's still in active development and potentially offer their own insights/perspectives/suggestions to contribute to the refinement and expansion of the game, and possibly locate any problems before it's considered final. It is also fine for someone to abstain from this and simply enjoy what is already available, become a part of the community, talk trash to the developer every day, and argue with everyone about everything. This is also a time where the balance of the game is more volatile/experimental, and players can help to expose critical problems in balance simply by playing.

Many 'standard' features that people have come to expect from feature-complete games are currently absent here, while strange new experimental innovations take precedence instead. Developmental priority is mostly centered around covering new ground in game design and multiplying possibility space within the game, while other typical things found in games remain neglected and are viewed as low priority by the developer.

These options are not unknown, they are simply set aside in favor of something greater. As such, this game is considered "Early Access" and "beta" by the developer, and should be labeled as such for upfront indication of its unfinished or 'unrefined' state of being, as many improvements, optimizations, and features are planned to be added, while existing parts are subject to change, rebalance, refinement, remaking, and reworking.

CEO aims to be the greatest strategy/tactics game ever made - bar none. Some might even say: it already is. However, despite the nature of this game's design creating illusionary comparisons it actually does belong in Early Access, because no matter how it compares to another game the current version of CEO will be completely dwarfed by what it's planned to become: a chess game so profoundly extreme in magnitude that it will begin to rival every chess variant ever made - combined.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Longer than you should wait - play the beta. CEO has been in development for a decade and it's releasing into Steam Early Access as "CEO v0.56". These updates are not and will not be arbitrarily rushed to meet some cynical/corporate idea of a deadline, but the current approximation for v1.0 is no sooner than 2025. It will remain in beta for years, not months. It will be considered 'Early Access' for most (if not all) of the beta.”

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

“There is honestly no such thing as a "full version" for this type of game, and for this design specifically there isn't much frame of reference to easily describe the types of game mechanics that are missing, but the most obvious difference between a 'feature-complete' version and the current one would be complete steamworks integration instead of the current minimal subset of what is actually possible. The primary intention of releasing before these things are made is that delaying release for non-essential features is complete disservice to anyone that's currently waiting to play the game on Steam.

The typical CEO update includes new content/mechanics in the form of new units, expands on the available features, and refines existing functionality marginally closer to perfection. That being said, the game is at least 40 updates away from v1.0, and because of this, the 'full version' will include a massive selection of units, game modes, and secondary functions/tools, in addition to expanded scaling of all existing systems and mechanics already found within the game.

CEO is designed with unlimited scope, and is not constrained by any precedents set from "chess variants", or even the game industry itself. If it isn't considered the indisputable paragon of tactics games, then it isn't finished yet.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Matchmaking, gameplay, collection, army building, daily challenges, and anything else listed in the main description of the game's store page is already available and mostly stable. There are a few technical problems in the game that can be frustrating, such as disconnects followed trouble reconnecting, infamous 'SNQR' loading screen error, and a few areas of the game that are lacking optimizations. The major issues are somewhat rare, but developer still considers them critical. Other than these problems and some missing options/features, it should mostly play about as well as any other multiplayer game.”

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

“It's free to play with no plans to change. There's an in-game store that can be used to support server/development costs, and more options will be added there eventually, but it isn't considered a priority. This is sometimes adjusted slightly based on completely arbitrary or imaginary criteria, then changed back for no apparent reason.”

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

“People can drop suggestions or report problems in discord/forums, and I generally make an attempt to read everything (even if I don't respond). There are also some very fancy community-made tools available for creating unit suggestions, and ideas/suggestions are often rewarded. Bug reports for 'known issues' are not rewarded to prevent false positives, but are otherwise still useful for determining how often a problem occurs, which helps to decide priority.”