Early last year I ran into the conundrum of releasing my game, Alley Avenger, early for the public to play. Should I wait for a polished product or should I go ahead, release something “kinda cool” and build from there. As it stands, I don’t seem to be the only one with this problem. Steam had, in recent years, began supporting developers by allowing them to advertise their partially-completed games as “Early Access”, and since then the practice of releasing barely playable games has gotten massively popular. Sure enough, many of these developers, after earning their money, lost all the incentive to finish their game, leaving many disappointed fans.
While the Android platform is a bit different than Steam, many of the same rules apply. I weighed the following pros and cons before deciding on whether to release my game or not:
PROS
- Get Visibility Sooner – If your game is good, people will notice and you will get a following.
- Testing Against a Wider Audience – Google Play allows for beta testing, but you have to require that every tester subscribe to your Google Group. There’s a large barrier there that many are unwilling to go through.
- Bragging Rights – As bad as it is, you have the ability to say “I have a game on Google Play”. Granted, there’s a LOT of crap out there, so it’s not hard to become published, but a half decent game will still be a cool little achievement which should, in turn, boost your enthusiasm.
- Motivation – Now that your game is out there and not in the final state you want it in (and people are playing it!), a fire is now lit under you. This can be good. It’s more than a pet project now.
CONS
- Bad Impressions – It’s important to note that a user’s initial impression of a game, if bad, can totally ruin it. Remember all those media outlets you advertised your partially finished game on? Well now advertising there won’t be as effective.
- Consumer Confidence – So now that you’ve done an early release, you will naturally be lumped into the category of “Developers Who Don’t Finish Their Games”. Many players are sour by previous experiences both on Steam’s Early Access and Google Play, and they don’t want to be your testers.
- No Turning Back – Your core game mechanic becomes locked in. Assuming you’re like me and don’t quit on projects, this is a huge milestone that is incredibly hard to turn back from. Changing a mechanic in the game that is heavily used can really annoy your existing user-base.
So in the end, as many of you know, I decided to release Alley Avenger early. Having no financial incentive in doing so, I wanted to simply release my first game for all my friends and family to see. As a first game and a small-time developer, it made sense. If I were a bit larger, or had a more highly anticipated game on the drawing board, then I may consider waiting.
Anomaly Arts 