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Distribution When should people post their in-development process games?

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Edwin

Guest
Hello, people.

When someone is making a game, it doesn't matter if is developer started to make it recently, is game is almost done, or is development didn't even start... nevertheless, when is it better time to publish your games that are only in the process of development?
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
The best time to publish your game is when you no longer need to ask others if it's the best time.

These kinds of "should I make an X game" and "should I market/release/KS the game now" are getting out of hand, and 99% of the time they're pointless and self-refuting. People who ask these questions always know the answer, they ask anyways only because they don't like what their idea/product is telling them.
 
S

Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
another answer could be when the forum rules suggest you are allowed to share. You need a demo, screenshots and/or gameplay footage at some level otherwise, you are just throwing around ideas and prototypes and have no concrete thing to show anyone yet, but honestly, I like frostycat's answer a bit better. It's a broken record here.
 
The best time to publish your game is when you no longer need to ask others if it's the best time.

These kinds of "should I make an X game" and "should I market/release/KS the game now" are getting out of hand, and 99% of the time they're pointless and self-refuting. People who ask these questions always know the answer, they ask anyways only because they don't like what their idea/product is telling them.
I concur. Folks asking these questions should be doing research, not looking for external validation on a forum.

Experienced Developers:


Ask yourself this: "Would I be excited about this game, if someone else posted it?" If the answer is not a loud bellowing "YAS!" the game is not ready.​

Beginners:

Ignore the elitist advice above, and just make sure that you aren't breaking any forum rules. You're working on an original video game, how cool is that? :cool: If have done your best, the game is ready. Put it out there, get feedback, and feel accomplished.​
 
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pixeltroid

Member
"when is it better time to publish your games that are only in the process of development?"

the best time to publish a game is when the process of development has ended.
 

JackTurbo

Member
Depends on what you mean by publish. If you mean get the actual game out there for players then you should at least have a demo that is a reasonable representation of the finished product. Like a decent sized vertical slice basically.

If you mean go public showing things off and trying to build an audience, then as soon as it starts to look cool. How early this is depends on you audience and your game. You can show stuff off to other devs (like on here) much earlier than you can show stuff off to consumers for example. Other devs will appreciate interesting mechanics and overlook programming art for instance. The average gamer on the other hand probably wouldn't...
 

Lumenflower

Yellow Dog
I've always found that showing an unfinished game makes me feel like I've reached a milestone that doesn't exist; it gives me a false sense of achievement that ends up slowing down development. Rather than pushing to get the project finished, I instead begin to lose interest since I feel like I've already put something out and can therefore drop the project without feeling like it was a waste of time. It's also tempting to sit back and wait for feedback rather than just carrying on working. When you post online there's no hard cutoff where you can say "that's all the feedback I'm going to receive now, better get back to work." It's a shoddy thought process and I may well be the only person to have it, but I think it's worth being careful of. Nowadays if I need feedback or advice, I either provide very limited information (in the form of screenshots at most) here on the forum, or I show the game to a small handful of real-life friends. That way I don't allow myself to get complacent.
 
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