Too Soon?!? - The Challenges of Early Builds and Game Demos - Extra Credits

Most of the time in game development, the game isn't actually in a polished and/or playable state until very close to the release date, which is why many studios are reluctant to release early builds or demos even at major marketing events like E3. Learn about the role of the build engineer!
Thanks to guest writer Curtis Hartung for this episode!
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♪ Intro Music: "Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM

♪ Outro Music:
"Biohazard"
by: DjjD

[extrahistory]

The relationship between total transparency, and wanting to make the best possible first impressions on potential players, is a complex one that can vary dramatically between studios, or even between different titles produced by the same studio. What other challenges of the development process did you find yourself seeing in a different light once you started working on your own game projects?

[Flopsos]

Everyone hates waiting, but waiting is better then an unfinished product.

[nashew]

And by "get to work on your Steam backlog" you mean "Play some more Enter the Gungeon", right?

[OninRuns]

I work in QA. A lot of my work is pretty much helping the build engineers fix the builds all week long. Everything said here is so accurate to my practical experience.

[DragoniteSpam]

Why do I feel like Zoey has the biggest steam backlog out of anyone else here

[zeroburn]

And a problem with having early access is that if you offer too much to the player before the game is released, the playerbase will burn themselves out on the incomplete game and by the time it's released nobody will care about the game anymore since the hype machine is fueled by absence and anticipation.

[PikaLink]

To quote a certain someone, "a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is bad forever".

[megaable]

Those drawings of devs working with mechanical tools are very sastisfying for me and I don't know why

[Wrathful_Scythe]

Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord will be an excellent game for my grandchildren. Well worth the wait.

[xxRobodragonxx]

Thank you I have spent months explaining this to my family and younger cousins. After they learn that I am a game designer I get bombarded with why aren't games out earlier, how come they aren't done faster and the best one DO YOU WORK ON FORTNITE.

[lancetrahanduckblockgames]

Great video! We've taken the "vertical slice" approach mentioned at 2:06 with our development of Forsaken Castle since day one using the intro area of the game as the staging ground and are close to getting things to the level of polish we're looking for to call it "complete". From there, we are creating additional skills/abilities and sections of the castle as we expand from that baseline of functionality.

Our development team may only consist of my brother and I, but we're dedicated to making a game we can be proud of and have long enjoyed watching Extra Credits as a source of knowledge and guidance for good design. Keep up the great work Extra Credits team!

EDIT: Extra thanks to Matt (and Zoey) for quite successfully picking up the reigns after Dan's departure from EC. Looking forward to many more videos in the future!

[rickpgriffin]

Personally I've always thought this was really obvious. But I think a lot of the "why don't they just release the game now because it's clearly finished" is a leftover from the late 80s early 90s market when it took forever to localize anything, 2-4 months to print the chips, and let's not forget the rumors surrounding the chip shortage that caused people to break out in conspiracy theories about deliberately straining the market with hype.

It's all stupid, honestly, because hype doesn't work like that. When you're at maximum hype the ideal situation is and always has been to get the game in as many hands of players as quickly as possible; drawing it out doesn't help any more than that, and in fact has often been a detriment as over-hype can force a game to not live up to expectations and sour the reception.

But you know, some people are more susceptible to hype than others. And those are probably the people who have a ridiculous tendency to take delays personally, like the company CEO themselves dropped the build in the toilet to offend them specifically.

[KhoaTran-mdou]

What i love most about this channel is it stand up for developer industry as a whole not just game. Thank you for being our voice.

[ethantaylor]

"Hecknomancer II: The Heckening" confirmed!

[pressarepeatedly]

Patience is one of the hardest virtues to adhere to, especially when you see That Game that you just wanna dive into and explore. But once it finally arrives, the wait is (almost always!) worth it. Good video!

[alvin_row]

I really love this video in particular!! I feel like it's the one where I've learned the most out of the last few ones. Kudos to the guy who helped making it!

[Thronberg]

While I agree with many points of this video, my experience is that many developers forget that while they might throw away the prototype - they don't throw away the knowledge gained from it. Furthermore, many developers fall into the trap of saying their game just needs to be polished or 'just one more iteration and it will be fun'. The only way to figure this out is to make an actual cohesive experience and put it in the hands on the players.

[prokischdani]

When I started working at a game company a few years back, they told me they release their games 70% finished and add new content and fixes later. It does seem to be true to most games today. Risky business releasing unfinished games but it worked for them. Great video:)

[XpancakesX]

2:43 I personally love seeing earlier builds of games when I can play them to see the differences between them and the final product. So yes. It is something I'd want to see.

[IndiBrony]

Makes me wonder how far away Silent Hills was from completion when they released PT...
We'll never know :(