Why Early Access?

“The scope of the game is to archive an endangered language and combine resources in an easy to use tool. I have about 10,000 translations in excel and have only gotten through about 5000 of them for showroom purposes. Early access will allow actual experts in the linguistic field to evaluate my representations before I call it 100% done and ready to get out of early access. For example, if a Haida linguist comes to me and says they have better conversations written down than the ones I used, I am likely to defer to their judgement as they are further on the linguistic path. The hope is that early access will allow learners to begin their linguistic journey, but also allow them to ask questions and provide feedback during the process. This feedback will mold how the game is ultimately portrayed.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“I don't want to be in early access for longer than six months but understand it could take up to a year. I don't want to delay release for that long either because learners could be utilizing this over the summer and learning their language.”

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

“We plan to implement more audio features, as well as additional set of showrooms. The early access version will be the barebones foundation of the project whereas the official release aims to be a well rounded product with more added features than the early access release. The hope is that more experienced linguists would have feedback/criticisms that will influence the game design from early access to the final release.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Current state is that I have 1 and a half showrooms depicted with pictures. All other programming functions are ready to go such as my glossary and the games associated with it. The showroom is really just a "wouldn't it be nice" kind of thing. The EARLY ACCESS release is also my way of marking my 90 day mark for this project as I have put all of my time and energy into this these past few months.

It currently has a set of showrooms to view verbs as well as a showroom to view the first half of the Haida phrasebook. Additionally, there are games in the Haida language that gamers can play if the studying process is getting fatiguing.”

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

“No it will remain free to play as this was always meant to be a non-revenue generating project.”

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

“I plan on involving the language community in a critical review process of how I portrayed the words and the easiest way for me to allow them to do this is to just post to early access on Steam and have them hop on and review in real time. Before March, I wouldn't have known how to onboard people but have since gotten more comfortable with the development process.”