[brucethemoose2]

The point about making modest games as a educational experience/alternative to paid classes is pretty good.

What some successful devs seems to do is make a "mid game" Early Access prototype, learn as they go, and if it seems to work, grow it into a bigger game.

I really like this approach, as its like having your cake and eating it. The dev gets an "excuse" for barebones features in a release and free alpha testing. Escape bridges are not burnt. The game builds up a following and a small revenue stream. And then it gets a free 2nd launch, with all the algo/pr benefits of a full launch, at any arbitrary date, which is impossible for non-EA games.

[TylerE]

Except it seems like most EA games these days never actually get built much beyond the EA launch, and then after 6-18 months of radio silence, some random version gets tagged as “1.0” and the dev then disappears.

Early access is, at least for me, starting to a signal of poor quality. Certainly when the EA release is barely beyond a tech demo.