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:
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I prove to the world (and myself) that I’m actually releasing games, not vaporware,
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I continue working on the systems of my dream game most of the time: code can be reused and improved based on player feedback,
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Bugfixing the mini-games will probably help squash bugs in the main game, at least for the core shared code,
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I gain actual release experience, which will benefit the dream game,
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Players who bought the mini-games are likely future buyers of the full game thanks to the shared IP/brand,
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Hopefully, it generates a bit of revenue to help fund the dream game,
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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:
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Total dev time will increase,
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I might get sidetracked,
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My current following might hate the idea,
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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 don’t know how much experience you have [in developing games or software], but to me
sounds to me like it’ll more realistically take 8 to 12 years or more realistically end up with less than was planned and the original plan cancelled in one way or another.
I’m also skeptical about the shared synergy effects of individually released titles. Trading Game and Colony Management Game sound like very different things. While you can reuse and share some aspects to them, if the gameplay logic is separate, they will diverge and make it harder to keep a shared base, and gameplay specific stuff is separate anyway. If you go this route, be mindful of this and design for a shared base only to a degree where it makes sense.
As for your listing of plus and minus side, I find the plus side much more convincing, both in what they say and impact.
It’s better to reduce scope and risks, and gain experience. It’s better to develop a following. It’s better to learn about the whole process and expectations - towards yourself, how it will work out, success, etc.
“I might get sidetracked” will be a thing either way. I guess you mean by working on and improving the smaller titles instead of the summation title of all of them. This assessment is not convincing to me - specifically with the huge scope of the alternative in mind.
I don’t know about your current following, but increasing exposure and titles seems like it would have a higher chance of increasing your following and satisfying them to me.
If your mini-games turn out to be bad rather than seeing it as a downside, take it as a chance to improve and gain feedback, or cut costs and risks. If that’s the case and without those you’d have released a huge investment and title that is bad and nobody wants to play or buy. Sounds much worse to me.
Even with smaller titles released, once concluded, they could be bundled or iterated on into the bigger title you had originally planned. So I don’t think it’s one or the other, but a much less risky and more productive way of building towards that vision that has many uncertainties.
I don’t think it’s a very innovative or surprising or novel development or release strategy. It just makes sense.
I’ve been doing software for 6+ years so I know how projects balloon and get out of scope all the time and I do my best to constrain myself with proper project management to avoid it. But yeah it’s very probable that I miss the mark haha
It’s not like I’d make a puzzle using the small games as pieces, nor would those small games be exactly independent, more like I’d use what I made during the previous lapse of time to build a small game.
For example now I have an almost working full economy system with buildings that buy and produce goods, pops that buy it and consume it and work in the buildings, and I’m in the process of making a nice procedural planet generator. After that I’ll work on autonomous traders that go from one market to the other to profit of the arbitrage between goods. In the end I also need a way to set up specific player-defined trade routes. Well, if I do those two and modify them a bit, they make for a good basis off which making a trading game. Said game can enjoy the work I’ve made for the “big game” and I’ll obviously have to make specific features for it to be worth playing by itself, but half the game will simply be the core features of the “big game”, so I get to polish and improve them while working on the mini trading game.
It’s true that I have to be careful with modules management though.
Yep, I feel like you’re right in your last points. Thank you for your input :)