ID:2018711
 
(See the best response by Ganite.)
So I am getting ready to release a game I have been working on for years. My company shut down for 3 weeks for holidays so with 3 weeks paid vacation I decided to finish my old game project.

So now I am finished and just running touch ups but not really sure what to do next. Should I just make it public? Should I open a closed beta for feedback? Press release? I am not really sure where to go from here..

Any advice would be awesome.
Best response
id say just throw it up and do some advertising and hope for the best.
I wouldn't make a game closed beta unless you have a high amount of people willing to play it & need a good chunk of feedback, if not all you'd be doing is limiting the amount of players playing.

Like Ganite said you should try to advertise your game and I suggest creating a forum of any kind to keep in touch with your player base & track issues/bugs with in your game easily with out having to be PM using the byond messager or any other forms of communication.

Other than that you should be set.
Personally you should see if you can find people who will actually give you constructive feedback and have them test it for a few days.

Fix as much as you can then release.
There's always tons of unexpected things you might have missed that others will spot right away.
Or you could go the way of Yut Put: Don't show anything off until you feel it's complete. However, I do disagree with his method; head over to the "Show Me What You Got" thread and post images of your game, you can certainly build up some hype for it through that, as it's still somewhat active.

Good luck :)
In response to Konlet
Konlet wrote:
Or you could go the way of Yut Put: Don't show anything off until you feel it's complete.


True, that method is also way slower when it comes to development. the more eyes you have on something the more likely someone is to find something you overlooked.
Or you could go the way of Yut Put: Don't show anything off until you feel it's complete.

Actually, that's inaccurate. He doesn't publicly show things off until they are ready for public consumption.

However, he does conduct private tests of things and gets feedback from developers he respects and close friends. When Epoch was under development, he did some limited playtesting and I was one of the (late stage) guinea pigs. His method of testing and analysis and surveying his target audience is actually really good. He also does a ton of research on what he's going to make in an attempt to figure out intuitively and intellectually what works and what doesn't.