Can a game startup be lean? • Hacker News Board

Post by xiaoma » Sat, Apr 09, 2011, 7:04 AM UTC

echan00 wrote: post #10

xiaoma wrote: post #8

It's an interesting question. One piece I recently read comes down clearly on the other side from the author of this post. The fact that it was written by a successful insider makes it more compelling: http://whatgamesare.com/2011/02/you-need-four-coders-product... I think the key element that makes it tough for games to be lean is that in many cases, the only real fanfare a game will get is on its release day. If yo…

I'm the author of the article of this post. I disagree with the idea that a game is all about the pop on the first day of release. Probably for console games, but definitely not for web games. Web games are services and can improve dramatically over time. You don't HAVE TO get the same users to try it again. There are always tonnes of new users on the internet :)

Would you mind sharing a few pointers? I have very limited experience with flash games. In a few small projects, I've gone with Kongregate and Mochi, either of which will send some traffic just for a game being new. Unfortunately, if the initial rating is poor, the game just disappears. In the case of my most recent game, I improved it dramatically over half a dozen patches, but over 95% of all the traffic it ever saw was in the first couple of days (version 1.00)

What's your general workflow for releasing games? What sites to you start with and where do you put them after making improvements?