▲ 2 points

Ask HN: Does MVP apply to Games?

by EwanG·11y ago·6 comments·view on hn ↗

In most of the startup material I've read, there is a fairly constant drumbeat that you want to open your doors once you get your MVP (minimum viable product). I take a look at the current alpha version of my game (playable at http://nawegr.blogspot.com/p/project-gliese.html), and I wonder if I should setup a landing page to let folks preorder rather than continue to slave away and hope there will be enough buyers at the end to justify the time and investment. On the other hand, I have a hard time believing I could get $29.95 for what I have currently produced. Thoughts?

6 comments

The point of an MVP is to get the product in the hands of users as soon as possible to test viability and garner feedback before going down a rabbit trail that may not be successful. It isn't necessarily to start making money from customers before the product is ready—although being willing to pay for something in alpha is probably a good viability indicator its not the only one.

Many games aren't treated like products but more like hobby or art projects. This isn't a bad thing but it does mean an MVP isn't really necessary or helpful. Many games do things that achieve the same results of an MVP:

1. Screenshot Saturdays. This puts the idea in front of people even if the thing is buggy, broken or just unplayable.

2. Festivals. User testing during festivals was incredibly valuable and helped us determine what attracted players to the booth, what they enjoyed about the game, what was fun, what wasn't, etc. Here the game doesn't need to be finished.

3. Awards. Similar to festivals, an award can indicate that you're on the right track. The inverse isn't necessarily true. Winning an award does not equate to market viability.

4. General social media, spreading the word and press. If someone is willing to talk or write about your game that's a good sign.

5. Steam's Greenlight: Will people vote for this?

6. Steam's Early Access: Will people buy this before its finished?

7. Kickstarter. A very time consuming and potentially expensive endeavor that might work for MVP-like launches. Will people contribute money to the possibility of this game existing?

The point of all of these is to get out there with the game as soon as possible, even if its not ready, to test out the idea. Some require higher levels of investment than others and make sense at different points in the project.

Experience: we launched our first game earlier this year with success and followed these where they made sense.

EDIT: Formatting

I haven't seen any successful MVPs out of games. What I have seen is gaming studios developing very good products (Angry Birds, Kingdom Rush etc) and releasing them for free, and then building a fan base to monetize off of it via mobile sales, in-game sales and sponsorships. Even if you are a one-man team, there are still others in your shoes that have done this successfully in the past, such as Jay at zeebarf.com.

Bottom line is you will want people to know your work before they want to open their wallets. Think of building a series of games, with the first few installments as freebies. If your product is good enough, people will want more, and then you can recoup the costs once you get traction.

If you want to get into the unity/flash gaming business, go to sites like armorgames.com, kongregate, maxgames to see what the popular game producers are doing. Look at their blogs to see their journey.

Based on playing your game so far, I'd say it's not ready for MVP. There are too many high quality free games out there for free.

Good luck!

Feedback:

1: Consider adding a loader screen. Your unity is taking over two minutes to load which is VERY long by browser game standards. Add a progress screen, show something flashy to hold/keep people's attention.

2: It's unclear what the objective of the game is. There are no tutorials, no HUD (heads up display), no context menu.

In what market would you be charging $30 for an indie game?

A market that exists in some kind of historic utopia perhaps?

Jesting aside...

In part, I suspect that's why the OP has "a hard time believing [they] could get $29.95 for what [they] have currently produced" — unfortunately, since the race-to-the-bottom that occurred, mostly due to the app stores (and Steam), etc., the $30-for-a-non-AAA-game market has pretty much become history.

Now, even indie-devs who are experienced games-programmers are having to put out what amounts to weeks/months (or even years) of work, for just a buck or two, or, indeed, for free, and/or have to rely on IAP (in-app purchases) or adverts to generate any revenue in return.

There are few ways round this (such as getting 'Featured' / on front page of app-store, or getting a lucky viral hit), but as such, it's made Indie games high-risk low-return in most cases — a fact which is hurting a lot of decent, seasoned Indie devs / dev-shops.

Wish I had something more helpful to say... but apps/games have pretty much tanked to the bottom price-wise — and that's without even really considering how saturated most categories in the app-stores now are (because 'anyone can write an app' nowadays), and that 'discovery' in all the app stores just totally sucks (and, furthermore, in Apple's app store, many titles can't even be reached by searching their actual name! But I digress)

Disclosure: I'm no longer a games dev (but was for about a decade), though I still have partial involvement in that industry.

[Edit: but I certainly wish the OP good luck in their endeavour!]

Many indie games on Steam sell for that much, though not much higher: http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Indie/

Sure, 'many' do. Although it seems to be the exception rather than the norm — at a rough guess (I only looked at ~15 out of 89 result pages), about one in ten games have about that price, but it seems more than half of the games tagged as Indie actually sell for under £10.