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by npinsker 751 days ago
> It’s better to spend more time on a game to ensure everything is feature complete, rather than releasing something sooner and iterating on it over time. This element differentiates the work of Technical Artists and Software Engineers, and it seems to apply to games as well.

Every part of this is completely opposite my experience. I’m totally baffled how this was a take-away lesson.
2 comments
cialowicz 751 days ago
I think it’s a good takeaway for something that’s sold once on an app store. If it’s junk, the rankings will tank it, and it may never recover from that. There are a few instances of games that have turned things around after the initial launch, like “No Man’s Sky”, but that’s quite rare.

Take Half-Life as an example. The team realized it wasn’t great after multiple years of development, and ended up essentially rebuilding it over the course of another year or two. To quote Gabe Newell, “Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever.”

Your take is spot on for SaaS apps and enterprise software that’s subscription based: ship early, ship often, and iterate fast.

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KronisLV 751 days ago
> "Late is just for a little while."

Or until corporate pulls the plug since it didn't meet the expectations that they had, or you just run out of money if you're on your own, since neither money nor patience are infinite. At least in part, that seemed to happen to: StarCraft: Ghost, Prey 2 (we did get the 2017 release), Half-Life 2: Episode Three, Duke Nukem Forever (the original version), Silent Hills, TimeSplitters 4 and some others.

Edit: to some degree, it seems like the recent KSP2 situation was a case where being late would have definitely been preferable, if not for corporate: https://youtu.be/NtMA594am4M

Also, sometimes you'll do good development work, just for things to go wrong anyways in ways you didn't anticipate, as happened to the launch of Brigador: https://youtu.be/qUsuusNLxik

On the opposite end, since we have early access, many will release the first presentable version of whatever it is that they're working on. The good news is that sometimes customer feedback will shape the final product (as long as the developers actually care). The bad news is that many will buy into the "promise" of the final product, as opposed to what they're actually getting at the time of making the payment and then be disappointed if it doesn't pan out.

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deliveryboyman 749 days ago
What experience do you have creating games on Roblox?
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