3 ms·

They haven't taken consumer's money, but they're not without funding. I know they've had investment from the Indie Fund ( https://indie-fund.com/games https://

They haven't taken consumer's money, but they're not without funding. I know they've had investment from the Indie Fund ( https://indie-fund.com/games https://indie-fund.com/games ) Though I don't know if they've had other funding sources, eg the extent of self funding. I do expect that the nature of the Indie Fund (successful artists funding other artists) has put the pressure in the correct place: Take your time and make something great. I expect other types of investment would want you to staff a larger team, not spend so much time reworking things to perfection, and get that return on investment as quickly as possible...

Uehreka 5y ago
That sounds fine to me. On another note, I get that the “take as long as it takes! Don’t rush!” thing is a response to companies with short-term thinking who rush unfinished buggy products, but I worry that when applied to indie creators it can lead to a kind of perfectionism that can make it difficult to release things at all. My preferred way for developers to deal with this (speaking as a consumer here) is the Early Access method: Release a stripped down MVP, people who like the idea and want more will pay money to fund development, even if development halts they at least walk away with something (so there’s risk, but it’s lower), people with suggestions will offer them and possibly buy if you implement them, you quickly figure out what the big problems are, and you can keep building steam with iterative progress. I’m sure this has backfired on some devs (perhaps a game makes a big splash at first but the iterative updates don’t bring new customers) but a lot of my favorite games of the past 10 years have been developed using this strategy or a variant of it that focuses on iteration: Factorio, Kerbal Space Program, Elite Dangerous, Dyson Sphere Program and Industries of Titan to name a bunch. (Btw, if you’re into one of these games but haven’t heard of the others, check them out. Dyson Sphere Program and Industries of Titan are a couple that are particularly slept on)
- Zhyl 5y ago
  I think the early access model lends itself better to some kinds of games than others. Survival games, such as RUST, lend themselves quite naturally to early access because it's more straightforward to create a 'complete-feeling' and compelling demonstration of the core concept, and then to expand that with further content and further systems. In something like Miegekure or the Witness a lot of the 'work' being done isn't in content creation or additional systems, but with work to the engine and other underlying tech that permeates all areas of the game. Also, a survival game or a rogue-lite game has a lot of replayability that only gets more replayable as more content and options for a single playthrough are added. A puzzle game, or a game that is very narrative intensive, has a lot of the appeal being in the first run of the game. As such, if you experience a puzzle or an encounter when the game is only in the early stages of development then a lot of the intended impact of that content is lost, never to be recovered.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  > Release a stripped down MVP, people who like the idea and want more will pay money to fund development, In the case of Miegakure, the developer made a spinoff using some of the same technical infrastructure: 4D Toys, https://4dtoys.com https://4dtoys.com
- Laremere 5y ago
  Yes, I bought Industries of Titan day 1 on epic games store because the game director is an old acquaintance ;) Agreeing with sibling comment. This works for some games, but not others. The examples you mention are based around a core gameplay loop that was refined and expanded over years. Specifically, there isn't anything lost by playing it early. Some of my favorite games took a long time, weren't early access, but I'm really glad for it. Fez took 5 years, The Witness took 7, The Outer Wilds took 7 (with caveats, started as a student project that was released, but wasn't iterated on in public afterwords). They're all giant puzzle boxes that are intricately assembled into something that requires the whole to be present to really work. Plus it's all about understanding the game, so there's no reason to go back and play it again if, eg, they did a final art pass. There are plenty of other games that take forever in early access. So early access or not doesn't really change whether people get things done quickly, and often can lead to the opposite problem where they utterly fail to make meaningful progress to something that's "complete". (Yes, I'm looking at you, Star Citizen) It's totally fine if that works for the game and they get it done. My general rule these days is only buy it in early access if what you get today is enough to make you happy.
  - jdlshore 5y ago
    I think your snipes at Star Citizen are unwarranted. I’m not a backer, but I do follow its development, and they’ve been delivering work-in-progress builds to backers for years now, and doing so quarterly for nearly four years. People complain about bugs and development speed, but I don’t think it’s fair to say they aren’t making progress. Each quarter’s release adds substantial new things, and people are having fun playing the game. E.g. https://m.youtube.com/c/GameDevByrneGaming/videos https://m.youtube.com/c/GameDevByrneGaming/videos.

Uehreka 5y ago

That sounds fine to me. On another note, I get that the “take as long as it takes! Don’t rush!” thing is a response to companies with short-term thinking who rush unfinished buggy products, but I worry that when applied to indie creators it can lead to a kind of perfectionism that can make it difficult to release things at all. My preferred way for developers to deal with this (speaking as a consumer here) is the Early Access method: Release a stripped down MVP, people who like the idea and want more will pay money to fund development, even if development halts they at least walk away with something (so there’s risk, but it’s lower), people with suggestions will offer them and possibly buy if you implement them, you quickly figure out what the big problems are, and you can keep building steam with iterative progress. I’m sure this has backfired on some devs (perhaps a game makes a big splash at first but the iterative updates don’t bring new customers) but a lot of my favorite games of the past 10 years have been developed using this strategy or a variant of it that focuses on iteration: Factorio, Kerbal Space Program, Elite Dangerous, Dyson Sphere Program and Industries of Titan to name a bunch. (Btw, if you’re into one of these games but haven’t heard of the others, check them out. Dyson Sphere Program and Industries of Titan are a couple that are particularly slept on)

Zhyl 5y ago
I think the early access model lends itself better to some kinds of games than others. Survival games, such as RUST, lend themselves quite naturally to early access because it's more straightforward to create a 'complete-feeling' and compelling demonstration of the core concept, and then to expand that with further content and further systems. In something like Miegekure or the Witness a lot of the 'work' being done isn't in content creation or additional systems, but with work to the engine and other underlying tech that permeates all areas of the game. Also, a survival game or a rogue-lite game has a lot of replayability that only gets more replayable as more content and options for a single playthrough are added. A puzzle game, or a game that is very narrative intensive, has a lot of the appeal being in the first run of the game. As such, if you experience a puzzle or an encounter when the game is only in the early stages of development then a lot of the intended impact of that content is lost, never to be recovered.
jacobolus 5y ago
> Release a stripped down MVP, people who like the idea and want more will pay money to fund development, In the case of Miegakure, the developer made a spinoff using some of the same technical infrastructure: 4D Toys, https://4dtoys.com https://4dtoys.com
Laremere 5y ago
Yes, I bought Industries of Titan day 1 on epic games store because the game director is an old acquaintance ;) Agreeing with sibling comment. This works for some games, but not others. The examples you mention are based around a core gameplay loop that was refined and expanded over years. Specifically, there isn't anything lost by playing it early. Some of my favorite games took a long time, weren't early access, but I'm really glad for it. Fez took 5 years, The Witness took 7, The Outer Wilds took 7 (with caveats, started as a student project that was released, but wasn't iterated on in public afterwords). They're all giant puzzle boxes that are intricately assembled into something that requires the whole to be present to really work. Plus it's all about understanding the game, so there's no reason to go back and play it again if, eg, they did a final art pass. There are plenty of other games that take forever in early access. So early access or not doesn't really change whether people get things done quickly, and often can lead to the opposite problem where they utterly fail to make meaningful progress to something that's "complete". (Yes, I'm looking at you, Star Citizen) It's totally fine if that works for the game and they get it done. My general rule these days is only buy it in early access if what you get today is enough to make you happy.
- jdlshore 5y ago
  I think your snipes at Star Citizen are unwarranted. I’m not a backer, but I do follow its development, and they’ve been delivering work-in-progress builds to backers for years now, and doing so quarterly for nearly four years. People complain about bugs and development speed, but I don’t think it’s fair to say they aren’t making progress. Each quarter’s release adds substantial new things, and people are having fun playing the game. E.g. https://m.youtube.com/c/GameDevByrneGaming/videos https://m.youtube.com/c/GameDevByrneGaming/videos.