Creating a Minimum Viable Product
I am currently doing last minute changes to the first game my hobby startup will publish. The game is functional but it is nowhere close to what I envision as the final product. My todo list currently has more than 150 outstanding items from minor art updates to major structural changes in the game engine. Even so I still expect to release the game this weekend.
Simply put: I am a strong believer in releasing early and relying on future updates for product improvement. This makes my games more of a service than a sellable product and doing so have some major advantages:
- Motivation 6 months is the absolutely longest I have worked on a project before getting bored and have started to wonder if it is worth the effort. Having something live, with active users, radically changes this for me -- positive feedback makes me happy and negative feedback makes me want to do better.
- Sanity check While the game I am currently building was chosen based on a high chance of success, releasing early allows me to sanity check my idea before I invest too many resources. It hurts, but a playable demo that is not growing organically should be abandoned for other projects.
- Core fan base Building a fan base is hard, takes time, and the users who followed the progressive improvement of the game from the start are likeley to become the biggest social advocates.
- Marketing Incremental releases creates more chances to interact with news outlets rather than having to focus all efforts on a single big release.
- SEO Web based SEO takes time and how long the games has been online plays a major factor in the Google page rank. The earlier the game is released the faster SEO efforts will pay off.
When creating my todo lists I try to sort items into two categories - nice to have and required for a Minimum Viable Product. Doing so helps me narrow down the scope of the project and actually get something live.
While I have been successful in releasing and building upon simple tech demoes here is what I believe should be included in a MVP:
- Basic mechanic The MVP should contain all components that makes up the basic gameplay. Just enough to make the game playable.
- Bug free Do not release with known bugs, if a part of a game has a known bug either fix the bug or remove that part. If removing the part breaks the basic mechanic, the game is not ready to be released.
- Monetization Do not add monetization after the fact, users hate it and the integration is more likely to be successful if monetization was considered at all steps in the design process.
- Analytics Measure as much as possible. Analytics is the most powerful tool have to make a game better. I find it scary how many developers never add analytics to their games.
- Feedback mechanic Give the users a way to submit feedback so they can tell you if something fundamental is broken.
Big mobile studios test their new games by exclusivly releasing them in test markets such as the UK and the Netherlands allowing them to sort out potential bugs and do game balancing before going live globally.
Here HTML5 gives me a unique opportunity to do fast product iterations in the browser without having to worry about pushing updates to App stores. For about a month the first game will therefore only be released on web while I bring it closer to the final product.