Image from Stanchieri Family Law

Once upon a time, you shipped a game and you were done.  Your team was in development on the next title before your game even hit the shelves and if you made any serious mistakes, well, you were pretty much f*cked.  You could (and sometimes did) release a patch or two, but those were regarded as bad-form and best practices dictated that you polished your particular gem until it shone before you let the Gold copy out the door.

Since the advent of reliable broadband, however, this is no longer the case.  Small studios race to release an MVP (minimum viable product) and then keep polishing it with updates once it’s in the hands of their users.  This offers a unique opportunity, it turns what was once a monologue (much like a novel or a film) into a dialogue between the developer and the consumers.

But how do you gracefully close that dialog?  Do you ever want to?  It depends on the size of your team and the resources you have available.  If you’re a small indie team, with everybody working on the game in their odd hours, then an open and shut product may be what you need to focus on developing.  If you have the resources (say, you game starts getting the downloads needed to let everyone quit their day-jobs, or bring in additional personnel) then opening an maintaining a dialog with your games fans is going to help keep your game alive and viable for a much longer period of time.

But until you hit critical mass, you’re tied to that game.