[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.