[blululu]

While I appreciate that the author put in the time and effort to write this, I have to say that I disagree with pretty much all of this.

Beyond quibbling about specific points, the MVP and the Vertical Slice are functionally similar they totally different in their purpose. Video Games are generally competing for a slice of a large preexisting market. The test is whether it can compete against existing products. A new to the world software start up is trying to serve a need that is currently unserved. The test is whether there is any market at all for this product (PMF). The 80/20 rule is about getting some validation that the thing you are building is worth building in the first place - not that it can be done, but that it should be done.

There aren't a ton of specific examples listed, but the images might insinuate some products that the author has in mind. I would just point out that Magic Leap, Humane were both hardware products that spent >5 years in development. They cam out as completed fully finished products that were complete by any standard. The problem wasn't that these products shipped with missing features, it was that nobody wanted what they were selling (see also the Apple Vision Pro, which is technically phenomenal in terms of design/engineering/manufacturing, but not really very useful). These products did the opposite of the Lean Methodology and show the risk of trying something brand new and not validating the assumptions as quickly as possible.

[bruce511]

>> A new to the world software start up is trying to serve a need that is currently unserved.

Well, yes in some cases. In lots of others it's just another implementation of existing software. Oh, you're building another food delivery app, because the current one is missing feature xxx?

This doesn't make them bad, the world is full of different contexts, and providing a solution tailored to a specific context is valuable.

But most startups are not "novel". Even in a novel space (like self driving cars) there are a bunch of companies in that space (basically competing for VC money. )

I'm very much in the MVP camp - if anything I'm more extreme- I'm in the "show me a market and how to reach them before coding anything" camp.

[cjblomqvist]

There are other parts than the product that can the innovation for a startup. Very few things are novel product wise when they hit it big. Innovation can be bringing existing business model to a new market for example. Then you should most likely 80/20 that new thing.

[dartos]

To quibble a bit, I don’t think that magic leap one released as complete products.

Magic leap had like a 30 degree FOV and no software. It was a dev kit, literally. The consumer version was never released IIRC

Also, I don’t think you argued against the main thesis which is something like “startup land is too good at the first 80% of a product, but not the latter 20%”

That rings true for me. Our industry is not known for robustness and quality. There is robust and high quality software out there, but most of it is not.

[PaulHoule]

Magic leap is an atypical example. It wasn't a "lean startup", it spent billions of dollars and many years developing an El Dorado [1] [2] [3] technology. They would have liked to deliver the system they had promised but investors were right to pressure them to deliver something -- even a broadly available dev kit is an important milestone for a technology like that.

[1] For example, the liquid metal fast breeder reaxctor https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi...

[2] https://kguttag.com/ tells you just how hard it is

[3] Apple Vision Pro is a refined if overly expensive product that takes a different approach to the same end and consumers were indifferent

[cma]

> Magic leap had like a 30 degree FOV

So they released both a vertical slice and a horizontal slice then.

[globular-toast]

> Video Games are generally competing for a slice of a large preexisting market. The test is whether it can compete against existing products. A new to the world software start up is trying to serve a need that is currently unserved.

I feel like it's completely the opposite. A new game doesn't need to "replace" old games. People have played those games. It only needs to be new and good enough to get people's attention.

But tools usually are replacing something existing. Tech that actually creates new possibilities is few and far between. The internet is one example of that. Can you think of another? I think most new tech is aiming to replace older tech that is currently used for those problems.

[evv555]

I don't really disagree but if you look at the most played games on steam many of them are now old. There's a growing inventory of games that are turning into classics.

[philipwhiuk]

Not really. Prior classics age out at roughly the same rate.

[Xelbair]

>A new to the world software start up is trying to serve a need that is currently unserved.

man, really? 99% of software is basically glorified CRUD view for some DB. it's nothing novel.

If we venture outside of corporate software: most startups do not create anything novel - they just monetize existing businesses in a different(usually more predatory) way, or do X but digital. both usually go for 'virtual monopoly' by: offering service(never a product!) for free -> capture the market -> enshittify -> new startups repeats the cycle.

The actual novelty where you find a need that is unserved is sub 0.1% of them.

In reality you aim for product that fits current buzzword meta for funding.

I do 100% agree that product-market-fit is probably the thing you should try to get ASAP though.

[Gravityloss]

That's the point. It's not supposed to be technologically novel, at least at start. It's a new business. The innovation is in the business part.

When we were in Rome and exited the Colosseum, it started raining. Some random dude walked to us and sold us an umbrella. Great business, both of us were better off.

[Xelbair]

It's more akin to someone giving you an umbrella subscription(if it rains more than twice this year I'll save money!), killing our all the competition with dumping prices by running on loss for years, and then hiking up the prices, while also tracking you and telling every food vendor your favorite food so they can prepare a greeter for you.

if you think that's a sustainable model, and is good for society then you do you.

[Gravityloss]

I don't like those predatory businesses. I think many games are like that nowadays. But not all businesses are like that. I think a game like Factorio is honest and respectable. It doesn't have any subscription models, you buy it once and own it forever. Technologically, AFAIK, it's using old fashioned technology (Allegro was started in 1990). The innovation is in the gameplay part.

[Xelbair]

the issue is that Factorio sells you a product. outright.

and they are an outlier.

[riehwvfbk]

I bet there are some local thugs that control who exactly gets to sell umbrellas to tourists outside the Collosseum on rainy days. You can quickly find out buy getting some cheap umbrellas to resell and trying to get some business there the next time it rains.

[jjk166]

Which is precisely why the point of an MVP is not to demonstrate that something can be built but that someone would pay for it once it is built. Of course it can be built, it's technologically simple. It's not minimum viable tech demo, it's minimum viable product.

[HPsquared]

Sounds like the restaurant business.

[passwordoops]

Though I appreciate the effort you put into your response, I think you're quibbling and missed the point.

His qualm is with companies developing what amounts to a good demo (whether you call it MVP, prototype, Beta product, etc), validate their hypothesis but then call it a finished product. Validation is supposed to be just that, validation. Instead he's arguing companies call that initial validation market success, then relabel the demo a working product, warts and all.

And, you're correct in saying the Vision Pro didn't flop because it wasn't developed properly. It flopped because no one wants what it has to offer, and that's a different problem from what the author describes

[ljm]

I'm still not convinced on this though. These MVPs are usually a lot less minimal than you would expect for a prototype - far more than just wireframes and a basic POC that you expect to chuck out and rewrite. Might even have a handful of paying users as well.

Since the comparison was made to games development, I think the closer equivalent is an early access release where you're generally paying for a WIP game at a lower price. Money changes hands, you get access to product in return, but there's no guarantee that it would ever be 'finished' or even what 'finished' might mean.

[pflenker]

I think it’s also worth mentioning that the author fundamentally misunderstands a MVP. A vertical slice video game presentation _is_ a kind of MVP, and there are tons of anecdotes e.g. from the E3 that tell us just how minimal these can be. MVPs take different shapes and forms, a polished but limited video game level is no different than a polished landing page with functionality limited to e.g. sign up.

[caseyy]

The most equivalent milestone to MVP in games is first playable (FP) or prototype. This is done at first pass/L1/greybox quality.

Vertical slice (VS) is a type of beautiful corner — this is done at production quality.

The purpose of FP is to prove the game loop and that a game is worth producing — that it is viable, or you could say that it has reached the minimum viable state. The purpose of VS is to try out the entire production process and test burndowns, etc.

I can confirm, as someone who has worked in games for decades, that the author understands it correctly.

FP in automotive would be a prototype car, VS in automotive would be the first factory produced car. VS in games often marks the end of pre-production and a shift of priorities from iterating and experimenting to producing bulk content. MVP would be much earlier.

Then in another sense, MVP is already marketable and commercially viable. But a game is that neither at VS nor FP. So if you look at MVP from that perspective, it is not even close to either VS or FP. It would be like somewhere beyond around alpha. In any case, MVP != VS :)

The MVP concept doesn’t work with game production that well because it’s a hit driven industry where most of the costs go into producing the hit. Like in movies, music, TV and book publishing — there are many stages of green-lighting before a product is first made available to the market as going from zero to market is where the bulk of the costs are. Going zero to market MVP as the first green-light check would be quite expensive ($50M for market leading VR/handheld, $100M for market leading console and Windows games minimum spent by the time a game is shown to the players) and risky. So instead, we start green-lighting and reviewing the prototype when <$2M is spent in most cases.

[teamonkey]

Though I totally agree with this, the MVP model can be used for titles released as Early Access

[pflenker]

Thanks for these insights. I was not aware of this.

[the_mitsuhiko]

To deliver a vertical slice you also create hacks left and right and they quite often then later stand in the way of actually delivering a proper product. I remember the blog post by Ron Gilbert where he presented Da Vinci's Vertical Slice [1] and it still sits with me as one of the best way to present the issues.

A vertical slice is not an MVP because people would never consider it minimally viable. It's a tiny product but it's completely polished and it's for a consumer of one: the publisher.

[1]: https://grumpygamer.com/vertical_slice/

[TimK65]

The complete polish is the author's very point, alongside the fact that most software products never get that complete polish.

[Cthulhu_]

I'd argue that an MVP is a minimal game with limited features - say, a platform game where you can walk and jump and finish the game, whereas a vertical slice is the complete experience, walk, jump, collect items, fight, achievements, etc, but the story is just a concept and there's only one level.

In other software, MVP is what you can go live with to all of your customers (often replacing something existing and omitting half the existing features to much chagrin).

[scott_w]

I think this is a better comparison than what the article gives. I do think it's not quite necessary to go live to all customers to be an MVP, however. Functionality that requires manual input from the company to make it work might be a reasonable MVP but not viable to go to everyone. It lets you validate what you're doing works, the customer is none the wiser that there's smoke and mirrors, but nonetheless that smoke and mirrors is there.