How soon is too soon to open an in development game?

[Kesstryl]

Should an Alpha version be released so players can give feedback while a game is developing (assuming you have something that is playable, stable, and secure), or is it better to wait until something is more polished?  I've seen so many gamers complain and give bad reviews about games in an alpha or beta state as if they are expecting it to be finished and polished, but I can also see the benefit of having community feedback to give development direction.  I'm wondering what all your thoughts are on this.

[Dinocanid]

If feel like it depends. On one side, nobody should ever expect a finished and polished game because, well, it's alpha. It's sort of like buying an early access game on steam and wondering why it's unfinished, so I generally discredit those kinds of things from people like that. It's completely different if a game opens in the alpha/beta state and it's not functional/buggy beyond belief. At that point it should be developed more before opening the doors.

For me, I'm fine with opening my games in the alpha stage as long as they're functional without too many errors popping up all over the place. If users can have a somewhat enjoyable experience without too many problems (albeit not being feature-heavy in that state), then I consider it functional. However, the only reason I open my games for alpha is because I lack both a team and organised testers, nor do i have the money to get them. If you have the money to spend and you're uncomfortable releasing to the public in a game's current state, then using a testing team or patreons or somethings would be better than opening to the public, because that does open the doors to people who will join the game and assume it's finished for some reason.

Edited September 6, 2017 by Dinocanid

[Digital]

I agree with @Dinocanid, have something somewhat polished if not feature complete. If you have a basic set of features, the minimum, you can start to build your sites community while fleshing out the rest. Just be aware that you need to roll out features very carefully.

Pet or SIM sites are based around community, so building that is always good!

[Onyx]

I've been trying to decide when to open Aethria.  The basic framework of the site - forums, chat, private messages, inventory and all that should be good to go, and we have some game features implemented but not all that I had hoped to have before opening.  But, then I sometimes think it would be better to open so that we can get user feedback on things they like, things that we might want to change etc.  But then I don't want people to get bored because there isn't as much to do as they might like, either.  I mean, we opened Khimeros with nothing but the live chat finished and that worked out fine LOLOL.  But these days I think that people have been burned so often they might be leery of sites that are not almost completely finished, I don't know.  Khimeros users seemed to find it really fun to actually watch the site being built around them, but people seems to maybe have longer attention spans 8 years ago ^^;

[Design1online]

I think the game should be functionally complete before you open it to an extensive member base. If you want to do an alpha phase I would make it extremely limited (say 10-20 people). In my experience opening a game that isn't functionally complete just leads to complaining from members who were expecting more than they might initially have access to. That being said, I think it's okay to open a beta phase with the game functionality being complete but potentially some initial bugs to work out because you didn't account for them in your testing -- but again the game should be functionally complete.

That's just my $0.02 from my past experiences. I think having a good initial reaction when you first play a game is worth it's weight in gold rather than a buggy or super glitchy game play with nothing functional.

[Corsair]

This is just my opinion based on playing sites since like 2008. I personally think when opening to the public the players go in with a wrong mind set. People join, get bored quick and leave little feedback. I'd see 200ish people join and like maybe 10% are actively doing bug reporting or suggestions. Some people also put a frustrating importance on low account numbers. (Hell I had a person who wanted to buy my aywas account)

Also I'm going to be blunt, I do not believe in paying to get in early. Maybe because I've been burned a few times. Aside from a low number you run the risk of paying for nothing. While I did not pay for it, I do remember winning a alpha for a site that was charging $10 only to find it was a few coded pages and a forum. As for the two sims I did pay for one had hardly anyone playing( like 5 active people which left a lot of features unused) and the other just stopped updating for over a year. Honestly I'd rather have a donate option for a alpha/beta because the account bundles and cash shops really hard for me to justify buying. What am I going to do with 10,000 credits when the cash shop has 5 items or i paid $10 to test a site that is a few pages and a forum with like 8-12 active testers.

[volka]

I don't think it's ever too early to open a game to people, as long as there's something there. You should definitely be careful about the numbers that you are allowing, and the prices that you are charging for accounts; you might even consider having a small group number planned (like the 10-20 that was mentioned) and have people apply to be testers so that you know they want to be actively involved in your game development (with ideas and testing) instead of looking to play your game, these are definitely two different attitudes. Generally, when people are asked to purchase an account, they expect something to actually be there to play when they log in - not just chat rooms or message boards. I can think of a number of games that I've shelled out $5 for an account and found essentially nothing when I logged in - the thing about that is that those users will probably never return. It's important to understand that just because the sim community convention is to call it "Alpha", it's literally an early access game. Players are very wary of Alpha games - and with good reason. I always feel like this sums it up:

And that is what you should try to avoid. It's never too early, just make sure that what you have isn't underwhelming, and that the people you invite to join are aware of what point in development your game is.

Community development is very important, but I would say user input is even more valuable.  I have implemented many features that were suggested by users - ones that were good, useful, and I probably wouldn't have thought of myself. That said, a community where you are not terribly visible might lose faith in you - frequent updates, even small ones, make sure that your users know that you're still there and still working on it. If you aren't capable of this, I would suggest that you keep it in private development until it's more polished or you are. So many games are abandoned (or sold and then abandoned) that players are quick to lose faith and move onto another game; you rarely get them back after that, and if you do it will be much later in development.

I would suggest that if you are planning on letting other people into your Alpha, look into version management, like git, if you aren't already familiar (I suggest bitbucket). You shouldn't let players into your development environment, and you shouldn't be developing in your production environment. You should have another instance at some other web address (like a subdomain, dev.yourgame.com) where you're working. Version management with git allows you to develop cleanly, rollback if you make a mistake, work with a team more easily, and develop multiple features at once without having to release anything until the feature is complete. There shouldn't be anything on a live site with players that you ask them not to interact with because it's broken - that's on you. Things like that should be either not present or disabled on a live site while you're developing.

[Kesstryl]

You know, I haven't seriously thought about giving out accounts with low account numbers because the account number is something I was obscuring as part of my security process.  The only thing people will see is your character name and character stats and info.  Usernames and account numbers are not going to be visible.  I don't know how much that will help or hurt.  I honestly wasn't going to charge for accounts anyway, it's a completely free game which will have ads.  I do plan on implementing something like removing ads for a monthly donation of any amount (a dollar or more) and having character class change being a pay for item, but I wasn't planning on monetizing a text based RPG very heavily because it's now a retro genre that I don't see having a huge player base.  I'll eventually add a few cash shop fluff like appearance items, but that's further down the road.  The game itself is fully playable right now.  I mainly need more art and to flesh out the lore and add some more features. 

[Anoua]

I think it's generally better to wait until you have something more polished. If you are able to release a study stream of updates releasing earlier can work too. But it's hard to keep up that pace even if it's your full time job. 

It can be good to get feedback though, but I think it might be better served by getting a smaller group to play and test things for feedback than just publically opening as people may just get bored and leave. At least until you have SOMETHING worth playing. 

After getting that base down though then I think having more public with options for feedback and ideas is probably more useful. Doesn't have to be a full featured release then, but just at least a base level. That is what I essentially did for Eliyo. Would have been a lot longer wait if I had to wait until the game was 'complete' as I have a ton planned for it. And it has been nice to have players and get some feedback and being able to make updates for players is motivating as well.

For me though definitely wanted something more than just a login, chat, and forums. Still I do have trouble retaining people, because I haven't finished up features that give more long term goals. So that's something to keep in mind.

A note on the low account security comment. Obscuring the account number doesn't really help with security. I think it could help with immersiveness however. But if you want things to be secure, then validate ALL user input (this includes url data, anything that comes from the front end should be treated as suspect). 

I think you need to have at least something complete. If nothing is really polished or complete the feedback probably won't be super useful, since it'll likely revolve around finishing things you were already planning to finish. It could be useful if you are wanting to discuss those plans with more people, and get feedback before finishing

[Kesstryl]

@Anoua I definitely already have all that other security stuff in place like validating all user input, using form tokens, password hashing with salt, etc, and I added in obscuring too because I'm paranoid about stuff like that.  

[Anoua]

@Kesstryl

Good to hear. I do wonder though, what are you paranoid against exactly? Not a critique, just curious as to what exactly you are trying to prevent. 

Edited September 19, 2017 by Anoua

[Boltgreywing]

5 hours ago, Kesstryl said:

You know, I haven't seriously thought about giving out accounts with low account numbers because the account number is something I was obscuring as part of my security process.  The only thing people will see is your character name and character stats and info.  Usernames and account numbers are not going to be visible.  I don't know how much that will help or hurt.  I honestly wasn't going to charge for accounts anyway, it's a completely free game which will have ads.  I do plan on implementing something like removing ads for a monthly donation of any amount (a dollar or more) and having character class change being a pay for item, but I wasn't planning on monetizing a text based RPG very heavily because it's now a retro genre that I don't see having a huge player base.  I'll eventually add a few cash shop fluff like appearance items, but that's further down the road.  The game itself is fully playable right now.  I mainly need more art and to flesh out the lore and add some more features. 

@Kesstryl: Security through obscurity never really works and I have been told my security professors to never to use that approach. Obscurity doesn't make your site any safer. What makes a site safe is having multiple levels of protection. Instead of using a username and password as part of the login process you should use something else like some kind of id that only the user knows. This way your login process becomes instead of public information + private information it is private + private information this way no one other then the user who created the account can login.

That is good login security. If you want to make it more secure use capcha for only user's registering for an account not those logging in. What annoy users the most is having to go through capcha after the login information already verifies them. If they were a bot they should have not been able to register in the first place. Checking to see if it is a bot after the fact is a horribly bad idea. Account numbers should not be shown at all. Never ever show ids unless in your admin areas unless you have a purpose for them. You can never truly hide id's if they are used in the browser window.

Well I wouldn't say they are only able to see just the character name, stats, and info. There is much more you are probably going to show them. When dealing with ads you shouldn't have to many. Think of adding ads later. The most important thing is to have a limited sets of features that work really well then have many features that are incredibly broken.

Anoua brings up several really good points. She is quite knowledgeable.

3 hours ago, Anoua said:

I think it's generally better to wait until you have something more polished. If you are able to release a study stream of updates releasing earlier can work too. But it's hard to keep up that pace even if it's your full time job. 

It can be good to get feedback though, but I think it might be better served by getting a smaller group to play and test things for feedback than just publically opening as people may just get bored and leave. At least until you have SOMETHING worth playing. 

After getting that base down though then I think having more public with options for feedback and ideas is probably more useful. Doesn't have to be a full featured release then, but just at least a base level. That is what I essentially did for Eliyo. Would have been a lot longer wait if I had to wait until the game was 'complete' as I have a ton planned for it. And it has been nice to have players and get some feedback and being able to make updates for players is motivating as well.

For me though definitely wanted something more than just a login, chat, and forums. Still I do have trouble retaining people, because I haven't finished up features that give more long term goals. So that's something to keep in mind.

A note on the low account security comment. Obscuring the account number doesn't really help with security. I think it could help with immersiveness however. But if you want things to be secure, then validate ALL user input (this includes url data, anything that comes from the front end should be treated as suspect). 

I think you need to have at least something complete. If nothing is really polished or complete the feedback probably won't be super useful, since it'll likely revolve around finishing things you were already planning to finish. It could be useful if you are wanting to discuss those plans with more people, and get feedback before finishing

@Anoua: These are really good points to bring up in the development of a great game. I am probably going the opposite way in all this. I am only going have 4 big features for my petsite's Beta but they will be really polished. The four bread and butter features of my site will be the forum, videos, artwork, and music along with donations. Is that a very bad idea? Is that not a good way to develop things. How many features is too little?

[Kesstryl]

I think people are misinterpreting my having obscurity as part of my security to being the only form of security I have.  I have already implemented everything that I am receiving advice for about security.  I would like to stick to the original topic as I have gone far above and beyond the basics of security for my game.  While I'm sure there are always new things to learn about hardening up code and fixing holes to new security threats (something I keep up with as much as possible), the basics of security that a new coder would be learning is something I'm long past.  Using obscurity was one tiny part of the process, not the entirety of it.

Thank you very much for all of your input.  I still have a few things I want finished before any kind of Alpha or Beta release, but I asked because I do have a mostly finished and fully playable game.  You can already level up to max level just by killing mobs in the fully working battle system.  I'm working on quests and lore right now.  I have fully working forums, chat, battle system, pvp, bank, in-game mail, equipment shop, and clans.  What I don't have is a lot of art, but this is a text based game.  I have avatar art.  I would like monster mob art, but that's 151 images to draw for a text based game so I'm thinking of adding monster art after an alpha release as a novelty feature since it's not really needed for this genre of game.  So you can see that I have more than just a ribbon with an unfinished road dropping off to nowhere, LOL.  I'm just trying to figure out when I should start bringing in a community to help direct this.  I like the idea of limited alpha testers, and I thought about having an alpha test site apart from the production site.  You all have given me much to think about.

[hurricaneviolet]

I've done it both ways, and for me it has always worked better to release a more polished game. You should have a few testers who will play through everything and report bugs or make suggestions, but opening to the general public is just asking for trouble in my opinion.

A game like this is never "done", and when you're years in and look back on when you first opened it probably won't even look like the same game. But I think a game should be playable to it's fullest planned extent when it is open to the public.