Yeah, I'm torn on the whole subject. On the one hand, if it worked the way the developers always seem to think/hope it will, bringing in a good chunk of funding for a final big push right at release so they can do some shiny stretch stuff and make it super awesome when it launches... that would be sweet. Plenty of games have terrible launches and then clean up later, once the playerbase has had time to properly destroy it, unless they never financially recover from their terrible launch. Early access would theoretically allow those trashy early launches to be sort of swept under the rug.
On the other hand, all that usually happens is they don't actually get anywhere, people on both sides of the customer and provider line get incredibly angry at one another, and nothing productive is done at all about anything! And then the game fails and everyone is bitter and disappointed. Aaah industry.
My general approach is "how much is it and how does it compare to something else I could use that for." Thus whether or not I consider an early access worth it depends directly on how much they're charging for it, aha. I mean, I try to keep things in context... I blow more than $20 on a trip to Friendly's, and that's going to keep me entertained for like, an hour at most. Probably not even.
I don't even know what I'm talking about now it is 4 AM and this is super off topic. Sorry guuuuuys~