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I think the fundamental principles behind release early, release often are sound. I doubt Minecraft would've been as big a success if it'd been released as a fa

I think the fundamental principles behind release early, release often are sound. I doubt Minecraft would've been as big a success if it'd been released as a fait accompli. The continuous addition of new content is certainly what kept me coming back. In fact, the main reason I stopped playing was that my RSS feed stopped working, which made it seem like they'd halted development. That said, I can imagine that Minecraft has set dauntingly high expectations for him. He wouldn't be the first to suffer under that pressure. Albert Einstein famously said that his years at the patent office were the happiest of his life, because no one expected him to lay golden eggs.

skore 13y ago
> That said, I can imagine that Minecraft has set dauntingly high expectations for him. High expectations coupled with basically unlimited funding really is a problem. I see Notch as a highly creative (if unstructured) programmer and people like that usually do their best work when facing constraints.
tetha 13y ago
"Release early and release often" is not connected to "(iteratively) fleshing features out", though. I'm currently learning this, and while feeling weird, it's a very powerful way to release features very early, check back with users and then extend from there. This happens in some areas of minecraft, but on the other hand, there's vast areas where it doesn't happen and people aren't happy about it.