Comment by padobson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by padobson | Hacker News Reader

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Games are a business with a very old model. They are sold the same way movies and music and books have been sold for decades, and the initial release provides instant feedback on the games success.

That being said, I wonder if games might be prepped for disruption. A big part of any polished game is user testing. How do we know its fun? We watch people play and see if they have fun.

Well, with the advances made in web analytics and the possibilities that graphics acceleration offers in modern (or maybe future) browsers, I could see studios and publishers selling games around a more iterative process.

An approach that finds the minimum fun experience and iterates from there could work very well on the web. Games like Asteroids and Missile Command do not need the polish others describe to be engaging, and then hosts of new features can be added over time to make such games more engaging. Add in the fact that web-based business models for games have proven recurring revenue through micro transactions can be very viable, and I think there could be a lean approach to game development.

Might work partly for some games, for example mmorpg's sometimes go in that direction. For other games it will fail because people won't give a game a second chance if it wasn't good enough the first time. I see this regularly in a 3D engine forum, for the first announcement of a new project people are nice and try it and give feedback. But unless it's really great all further announcements about improvements are usually ignored by everyone.

agreed on the iteration point.

if we look at social games, they are iterating every single day. It's come to the point where Zynga can tell if a game will be a hit or not, purely based on the collective data that they've achieved, over the course of 4 years. Not one Zynga game has bombed since Mafia Wars.

You mean, some kind of closed beta approach?

The Minecraft example was a decent one. What I really mean is a game that is discovered more organically than through the hype process that most games go through when they launch. Sort of how like lean startups grow.

Some people will be turned off by the earliest form of the game, but there are always more clicks to be had and leans startups using MVPs have to deal with this too. The key is to be learning about how to improve the fun factor every release.

As the game continues to improve, the user base will continue to grow. I'm not totally convinced that this could only apply to mmorpg's, but I'm willing to concede that it seems like the best genre to attempt this and to apply the microtransactions model.

I'd be very surprised if ANY MMORPG didn't constantly iterate as you describe (all the current major ones do, at least), and virtually all multiplayer games allow for balancing at the very least.

The problem is that most single-player games are finite. Once people have completed them, they're done. Replayability is something comparatively few people can stand for any length of time, especially in a crowded market. Add the problem of an exceptionally short tail for most games (20-50% of total sales in the first month would not be atypical) and the value of updating the mechanics of your single-player game becomes much less valuable. Best to make another game in the series that improves all those flaws.

A few exceptions, all indie games: Minecraft, Eufloria and Darwinia. All of these have had major updates to gameplay over time.

I think they mean a Minecraft approach with open Alpha/Beta/Final release and perhaps corresponding discounts of 90%/50%/0% off the retail price. Another game that followed this model was the original "Mount & Blade" game.

Have a look at Project Zomboid.

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