Normally I’d be pretty pissed at a game like this that’s been “coming soon!” for a decade, but I’m not, and here’s why: The developer has not taken people’s money. Unlike things like Star Citizen, whatever decisions are leading to this project’s extended timeline aren’t putting backers at risk of receiving nothing if things go pear shaped. Miegakure’s developer doesn’t seem to have sought to monetize the crap out of the hype he generated in the early 2010s, and as a result I’m cool with him taking as long as he wants (or even walking away, though it would make me quite sad).
[EDIT] I know Star Citizen has started “delivering” recently. I still think the way they raised money and built the game was not a good model for others to follow.
They haven't taken consumer's money, but they're not without funding. I know they've had investment from the Indie Fund ( https://indie-fund.com/games ) Though I don't know if they've had other funding sources, eg the extent of self funding.
I do expect that the nature of the Indie Fund (successful artists funding other artists) has put the pressure in the correct place: Take your time and make something great. I expect other types of investment would want you to staff a larger team, not spend so much time reworking things to perfection, and get that return on investment as quickly as possible...
On another note, I get that the “take as long as it takes! Don’t rush!” thing is a response to companies with short-term thinking who rush unfinished buggy products, but I worry that when applied to indie creators it can lead to a kind of perfectionism that can make it difficult to release things at all.
My preferred way for developers to deal with this (speaking as a consumer here) is the Early Access method: Release a stripped down MVP, people who like the idea and want more will pay money to fund development, even if development halts they at least walk away with something (so there’s risk, but it’s lower), people with suggestions will offer them and possibly buy if you implement them, you quickly figure out what the big problems are, and you can keep building steam with iterative progress.
I’m sure this has backfired on some devs (perhaps a game makes a big splash at first but the iterative updates don’t bring new customers) but a lot of my favorite games of the past 10 years have been developed using this strategy or a variant of it that focuses on iteration: Factorio, Kerbal Space Program, Elite Dangerous, Dyson Sphere Program and Industries of Titan to name a bunch. (Btw, if you’re into one of these games but haven’t heard of the others, check them out. Dyson Sphere Program and Industries of Titan are a couple that are particularly slept on)
I think the early access model lends itself better to some kinds of games than others.
Survival games, such as RUST, lend themselves quite naturally to early access because it's more straightforward to create a 'complete-feeling' and compelling demonstration of the core concept, and then to expand that with further content and further systems.
In something like Miegekure or the Witness a lot of the 'work' being done isn't in content creation or additional systems, but with work to the engine and other underlying tech that permeates all areas of the game.
Also, a survival game or a rogue-lite game has a lot of replayability that only gets more replayable as more content and options for a single playthrough are added. A puzzle game, or a game that is very narrative intensive, has a lot of the appeal being in the first run of the game. As such, if you experience a puzzle or an encounter when the game is only in the early stages of development then a lot of the intended impact of that content is lost, never to be recovered.
Yes, I bought Industries of Titan day 1 on epic games store because the game director is an old acquaintance ;)
Agreeing with sibling comment. This works for some games, but not others. The examples you mention are based around a core gameplay loop that was refined and expanded over years. Specifically, there isn't anything lost by playing it early.
Some of my favorite games took a long time, weren't early access, but I'm really glad for it. Fez took 5 years, The Witness took 7, The Outer Wilds took 7 (with caveats, started as a student project that was released, but wasn't iterated on in public afterwords). They're all giant puzzle boxes that are intricately assembled into something that requires the whole to be present to really work. Plus it's all about understanding the game, so there's no reason to go back and play it again if, eg, they did a final art pass.
There are plenty of other games that take forever in early access. So early access or not doesn't really change whether people get things done quickly, and often can lead to the opposite problem where they utterly fail to make meaningful progress to something that's "complete". (Yes, I'm looking at you, Star Citizen) It's totally fine if that works for the game and they get it done. My general rule these days is only buy it in early access if what you get today is enough to make you happy.
I think your snipes at Star Citizen are unwarranted. I’m not a backer, but I do follow its development, and they’ve been delivering work-in-progress builds to backers for years now, and doing so quarterly for nearly four years.
People complain about bugs and development speed, but I don’t think it’s fair to say they aren’t making progress. Each quarter’s release adds substantial new things, and people are having fun playing the game. E.g. https://m.youtube.com/c/GameDevByrneGaming/videos.
Miegakure was first shown at GDC in 2009. The first blog entry is also April 2009, so not as early as 2003, but it definitely began development in the late 2000s. It's been at least 12 years in development
I can't recall where I first saw it, I think it was linked by this Linux gaming site (happy penguin?), or maybe it was some gamedev site. Anyway it might have been 2009, both years seem equally forever ago to me.
To add insult to injury, writing a press release like this (even including a screenshot with the very latest stuff) can feel just as good as actually shipping.
At this point, eclipsing the story of "the cool game that never shipped" with an actual game is a very high bar indeed.
Exactly - you are robbing your dopamine reward loop by "stealing" the dopamine hit usually reserved for accomplishment or achievement with the comparatively easy and low-effort social reward of stating your aspirations.
I'm not sure where this thread of psychologising is coming from. It feels very peculiar.
I think you have to be pretty motivated to work on an unreleased game for a decade (and make consistent progress over that period). I think doubting the team's motivations, intrinsic or otherwise, is misplaced here.
Working on a project essentially in private for a long time can be really draining to the motivations. Being able to be a bit open about parts of it can help a lot with motivation for development.
Yes there are possible second-order effects of games getting warped depending on external factors, but I don't see any evidence of that here. The team is making progress towards making a game they want to make.
There was a post on HN a few years ago that I believe linked to scientific evidence of this, but unfortunately I cannot find that post, nor do I remember the specific terminology that the paper(s) used.
I look forward to being able to play the game. It's in an unusual position of being on my list of games I've been following for about a decade now, but without being released, cancelled, experiencing notable delays (as far as 'dead time' is concerned) or having a significant change in purpose or scope.
Marc has just been working away, methodically, patiently, making the game that he wants to make.
Just curious: are there other games people (who are reading this) have been waiting for for like 10 years that show a lot of promise and people are excited about? It used to be The Witness for me but then that released and now there's not much to replace it (other than this game maybe). It's kind of a nice delayed gratification exercise.
Taiji [1] springs to mind. It's very Witness-like in its mechanics and methods of conveying information. It's only been a short time (3-4 years) compared to the Witness (7 years) and Miegekure (12 years), but it looks like it might not be out for a while. The developer does post a lot of updates, though, so it's clear development is ongoing.
Jonathan Blow also has his untitled Sokoban game which he shows on Twitch [2] (5 years).
I was also waiting for Infinity: The Quest for Earth [3] for about 12 years before they pivoted to being a battle arena rather than an open-world game like Elite Dangerous or No-Man's Sky.
I remember Memory of a Broken Dimension piquing my interest many years ago, and I believe it's still in development. I see the creator streaming development on Twitch pretty regularly.
Back in the day, Team Fortress 2 and Duke Nukem Forever were the butts of many vapourware jokes, but they were both eventually released. The prolonged development seemed to help one of them more than the other, though.
[EDIT] I know Star Citizen has started “delivering” recently. I still think the way they raised money and built the game was not a good model for others to follow.