Hey everyone!
Excuse me for the slightly clickbaity title (is it, though?). I need all the advice I can get here.
About six months ago, I ignored all the common advice and started working on the Dream Game™ as my first commercial release. I expect it to be ready in about four years.
Since I had no real marketing experience, I’ve been learning by listening to GDC talks and Chris Z’s videos whenever I have “dumb chores” time or similar. More and more, I see proof of the great advantages of making small games: building on past releases, proving your ability to ship, and confronting yourself with the market as early as possible.
Obviously, that clashes pretty hard with a four-year first project. So I thought, and thought, and thought — and a few days ago, something clicked.
What if I were to release features of my game as standalone “mini”-games?
I’m working on a 4X grand strategy game, which is basically at least four games smashed into one. So if I’m working on the trading system, why not take a short detour and make a trading game in, say, 3 to 9 months, and release it for 10 bucks? Then do the same later for colony building, exploration, war…
I could even make a franchise out of it. The full game is called Uncharted Sectors, so the smaller ones could be titled Uncharted Sectors: [Trading Game Name], Uncharted Sectors: [Colony Management Game Name], and so on. It would build up the IP and help with brand recognition.
On the plus side:
-
I prove to the world (and myself) that I’m actually releasing games, not vaporware,
-
I continue working on the systems of my dream game most of the time: code can be reused and improved based on player feedback,
-
Bugfixing the mini-games will probably help squash bugs in the main game, at least for the core shared code,
-
I gain actual release experience, which will benefit the dream game,
-
Players who bought the mini-games are likely future buyers of the full game thanks to the shared IP/brand,
-
Hopefully, it generates a bit of revenue to help fund the dream game,
-
And if I’m making terrible products, it’s better to find out after 9 months than after dedicating 4 years of my life to it.
On the minus side:
-
Total dev time will increase,
-
I might get sidetracked,
-
My current following might hate the idea,
-
If one of the mini-games is bad, it could damage my reputation and deter people from checking out the full game.
As you can see, the downside seems pretty small compared to the upside. So either it’s a very good idea… or I’m missing something big. That’s why I’m here: please poke holes in this plan and find more reasons why it might be a bad idea!
Also, on a more general note: do you know of any games that have done something like this? What do you think of the idea? I’d love to hear anything relevant to the topic.
And of course the idea is free: feel free to copy it if you think it’s interesting. :)
I’m currently doing a subset of that, by writing a smaller game around the most difficult and complex feature of the game I started writing last year. So yeah, clearly I think it’s a good idea, go for it.
An alternative I did consider before is dialing up the concept of vertical slices. To use your example, you’d release just one game, but for V1 you’d focus on making sure trading is fun and technically solid enough to work as a game on its own, then for V2 you’d add colony management and mature it to the same level, etc. But that strategy would IMO make more sense for a small studio or a simpler game… for a solo 4X, separate games is probably better.
I also concur with @Jeffool@lemmy.world in that releasing anything is really good for various reasons. Self-esteem, motivation, branding, and getting experience in the release side of things (store pages, marketing, the works).
Finally, speaking of solo, here’s another strong argument: if you don’t want to do it solo, releasing anything is your way out of that. You release the first small game, start getting visibility and revenue, and then you can recruit someone else and start a small studio. Release the second one and you can grow the team. Rinse and repeat.
That’s a good point yes. It might even open publisher’s doors, I’ve read that it was way easier to sign if you proved that you could ship something before.
The vertical slice could be an idea too, but you’d loose the possibility of building visibility over multiple steam launches I guess.