

Is releasing early ever a bad idea? - jbgh2

The current advice for a web start up seems to be: Get something up and running ASAP, listen to your customers, iterate, profit.
However, if you are making games an early release it usually death as a game that is 90% complete is often on 10% fun.
So, if your startup is games based should you still release early?<p>EDIT: Several commenter have pointed out that I shouldn't have said 'Get something up and running ASAP', instead it should be the 'minimum value adding set of features at good quality'. It's a bit less pithy though.
======
noodle
working on a startup is like working on a recipe for cake. bake your cakes,
let people try them, adjust and add to the recipe, and then bake another cake.
the point isn't the cake itself, the point is the recipe.

so, get your recipe together and bake a cake. maybe to start its just a plain,
vanilla, one-layer, only bread cake. you bake it and give it to people to try.
if you give it to people to try before you bake it, they're eating raw batter
and will get salmonella poisoning and die. if the people like the plain cake,
now add some frosting or some berries or another layer. if they don't like it,
fix it.

i'm hungry

~~~
jbgh2
Great metaphor!

------
webwright
Releasing early doesn't mean releasing crappy software-- it means trimming
your feature-set down to be as lean as possible while still offering some
value.

That's a starting point that can help you learn about what makes your users
tick.

For a game, I don't know how this applies. If you know your game isn't fun, I
don't think you should release it. If you aren't sure if your game is fun
ENOUGH, I think you should.

FWIW, "releasing" isn't all-or-nothing. Start by releasing to 10 friends. Then
100 strangers. Then 1000 strangers.

~~~
jbgh2
For a game, the fundamentals have to be right, and you can usually tell that
early on, but the 'fun' can take a long to get right. I'm going to polish to a
point where I can take feedback from friends and iterate from there.

------
iuguy
We're launching a slinkset site next week, thought I'd post to HN and ask
people the important question: amidoinitrite?

We looked at just putting it out but thought we'd try and build up a community
first through a beta programme. We've had some good feedback but to be fair
our choice of beta users wasn't very good. We could've easily have ditched 25
of our 30 beta users and had the same amount of activity.

What we did get from those remaining 5 was all the delicious feedback we could
lay our hands on, some of which we've passed on to slinkset.

I've also written to a number of key bloggers in the niche we're working in to
promote the site, hopefully you'll see some noise. Slinkset have also been
very supportive.

I think if we'd have just thrown it out then it'd have been stillborn. I think
the fundamental thing is to have something functional 'enough' and to have
some users when you start, then go for the launch. What do others think?

------
orib
In one word: Cuil.

How would you rate their chances now that they established themselves as a
high-profile failure?

~~~
awt
I think it was a good idea. Now they can move on to more productive
enterprises instead of working longer on a bad idea.

~~~
orib
The idea isn't a bad idea; Google isn't going to be the best search engine
forever. (there are friends who swear that Yahoo has better results for them);
Eventually they'll be unseated. just not by Cuil, because they did it so
badly, and then killed themselves with bad publicity

------
nickb
Absolutely. First looks do matter and people will be less inclined to check
your site out again if their first experience was awful.

An even bigger issue is that if you're entering a crowded market, you'll be
signaling to your competition what your approach and features will be. If
you've developed something that's not magnitude better, you will be copied and
if they have resources, they will outmaneuver you.

I'd suggest people read some of the Michael Porter books on this.

~~~
jbgh2
Good point, thanks for the reference.

------
mechanical_fish
Releasing early needn't be the same thing as _promoting_ early.

But every case is a special case. In the case of a game, you might want to get
it in front of _someone_ who isn't a developer as early as you can, but that
doesn't mean you want to spoil your big marketing splash with a long, slow
public beta. This is what roommates are for!

------
mattjung
The idea of "release early" is to get early feedback from a customer. In the
context of games, you may want to present the idea of the game or some
screenshots to a small circle of gamers to get their feedback about if the
idea is funny enough. It probably does not make sense to release more than one
version of a game, except your game is evolving permantently with new levels,
new creatures, new ideas.

~~~
alex_c
I agree. Games tend to be much less malleable than web applications. For one,
web apps are much easier to change after release than other products because
there is no distribution problem - just push the code and you're done. And in
general, users have a more well-defined set of expectations from a game than
from a web app - if you miss those expectations, you can be toast.

I guess one way to push the release date up would be to cut some of the
content and pack it in an expansion pack or later update. But the 1.0 version
has to be solid, otherwise no one will stick around long enough for the
expansion.

~~~
jbgh2
I'm making web based games so it is very easy to tweak and re-release (people
don't even have to know you've changed it) but there has to be a minimum level
of quality and fun to begin with. Starting with a single, well polished level,
and going from there sounds like the best strategy. I can add more or change
it based on feedback.

------
ilamont
Whether you're a startup or established company, I would say "no" for games-
related products, but that hasn't seemed to stop Microsoft.

~~~
hhm
Game-related services are a different subject btw. Developing games for
advertising, doing consulting for game dev companies, etc, is a much more
safer bet than making game-based products. However, the game industry doesn't
pay as much as other industries, whatever you do in there (at least that was
my experience).

------
kennyroo
If it's a web site, I'd suggest that you launch the smallest high-quality
product you can, and then tweak or add something every day until it's where
you want it to be. You'll change track along the way, but that's OK because
you'll do it based on real user behavior.

I launched Planaroo.com on June 30, and I wish I had launched it two months
earlier. Many of my assumptions about how people would use the site were just
plain wrong. I spent a long time working on features that few people use, and
not enough time on features that a lot of people use.

If your site involves user-generated content, you have no idea how long it
will take to ramp up. If your has lots of text, you just won't know how it
will do in search for weeks after launch. Planaroo did very well in Google
search almost immediately, but it still doesn't show up in Yahoo Search after
10 weeks.

------
josefresco
The "release early" people are advising a black/white solution to something
that is very 'gray'. What they mean is don't spend years on your app and then
only release it when it's 100% perfect.

My advice? Don't let perfect ruin good (see DNF).

------
MoeDrippins
> So, if your startup is games based should you still release early?

No. DAOC had a great launch and continues to be fairly popular. Vanguard had
an _AWFUL_ launch and will likely never really recover.

------
maxklein
Don't release early unless the features you release are really polished. I
never used Flock because it crashed when I tried it first.

------
theashworld
Google didn't release Chrome till it was good enough to be released. This,
from a company which completely believes in releasing early! Of course Chrome
is still beta, but there's a world of difference between "Google releases
another mediocre product" and "Chrome is amazing!"

------
kajecounterhack
One less cool feature doesn't mattter. Take it from Chrome: "we want this
product to be ROCK SOLID"

