"We all benefit from great games": How the 4X devs behind Endless Legend and Humankind went from Early Access pioneers to Civ 7 challengers

Humankind, the 4X strategy game that aimed to let you craft the entirety of human history by blending together dozens of different cultures, had two main spikes in the arrival of new players. The first, says chief creative officer Romain de Waubert de Genlis, came with the launch of the game. The second, and far more unexpected, was the arrival of one million players in the direct wake of Civilization 7.

Now, as developer Amplitude Studios prepares to wrap up the latest entry in its Endless series, Endless Legend 2, and return to work on the newly-announced Humankind 2, it faces two notable challenges; the ever-changing face of an early access scene it helped shape, and the ever-changing desires of an ultra-passionate 4X community.

Early bird

"We were one of the first two or three games" to offer players access to games in their Alpha stages, says de Waubert de Genlis of 2012's Endless Space. "It was something that was in the air already at the time, and we were always looking for new stuff to try." That community outreach was extremely effective for Amplitude, but in the years since, the nature of Early Access has changed massively.

"The first early access we did, players really had in mind that it's not a finished game," de Waubert de Genlis explains. "All the game elements we had were of final quality, but maybe half the game was missing, and that was fine. No negative reviews or bad feedback. People understood it, and they understood that the concept was to participate in building the game with you." But since Early Access became established as a meaningful tool for developers, in around 2015, studios now have more players coming in before 1.0, "with a lot more expectations."

"It should be a finished game that you update very often to take into account players' feedback on balancing or polishing the game," de Waubert de Genlis says of modern early access expectations.

"It's not about finishing the game or redoing entire pieces of the game. Because if you have a piece of the game that players don't like, they'll give you a negative review right away, and maybe not even change it if you fix [the problem] later. So it's really tough to try things, because if you get a negative review, they will never change."

Too many negative reviews, of course, and you spill out of Steam's 'Very Positive' threshold, at which point "you're in real trouble." It's a combination that means "to still be creative in early access, still taking risks, is a very difficult thing to do."

That inflexibility within a community is something that's been found in the 4X community's biggest name. Civilization 7 is still sitting at Mixed reviews, with an almost 50/50 split between positive and negative responses. That's an opportunity for Amplitude, but it's not something the team is relishing in: "We all benefit from great games. The more players who come to the competition, the more players will come to us. We want and need [Firaxis] to succeed for the whole 4X space."

"Personally, I love that they take risks," de Waubert de Genlis says. "They want to do things differently and change the recipe." That, however, is easier said than done, because Civilization's community has wanted so many different things over the decades. "Imagine [working] on Civilization, chatting with players who have been around for 30 years, and them telling you 'I want something new, but don't change anything'. And they're not the same players. Some really want innovation, others want a patch."

Regardless of how inflexible the community can sometimes seem, the Amplitude team knows that there's still room to continue pushing the genre's boundaries. Game director Benoît Humbert says that "no matter if Civ is performing or not, there's still space for improvement or innovation. There are so many things to do in the genre. I'm sad for Civ because I've been a huge fan since the first one, but I'm not worried for them. There's space for improvements but it's also an opportunity for us to see what went wrong. How can we be inspired? Because that's what matters."

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