ID:1514644
 
This post is going to be about the decision to invest in a Proof of Concept (POC) before investing full-force into a game design idea. Read more about a POC here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_concept

Let me start this post by explaining this difference between a BYOND development strategy, and my development strategy. I feel it is important to describe these two because they are radically different. I also feel, naturally, that my strategy is better and thus I will have a bias towards it.

The "BYOND development strategy" in my opinion is one where the developer is about 99% open with his decisions, and updates his small fan base (or lack thereof) about what he/they are doing as they develop the game. IMO, this puts the developer in a corner of people holding pitch forks demanding x, y, and z and prevents the developer from dreaming. Dreams shattered, the developer attempts to please the 80/20 in the wrong way (read about 80/20 here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle ). This development strategy doesn't work for me, and I think it hurts a lot of people here. It's sorta like choosing the paint for the interior of your house, but all you've done is look at some plots of land.

My development strategy is more similar to Blizzard games; create, experiment, test, blend until you've done something worthy internally before ever going public. Be secret about a lot of details and take your time to sit or sleep on a lot of questions you can't answer right away. Add an audience when you need one, but only after you've considered the cost of doing so.

How does the POC factor into these development strategies?

Well, in the BYOND development strategy, we can see that actually a POC might be able to solve almost all of the problems associated with that. But there must be a clear line defined between the POC and the actual game. I think a lot of developers might look at their work and define it as a POC until one day it becomes the actual game. There must be a clear difference, I believe. If not, you're simply risking too much.

In the Blizzard development strategy, a POC doesn't have much of a place. The moment you've created a POC, you've given the audience too much information which could cause you to develop your self into that same corner the other developers often sit in. On the other hand it would be possible to handle this in such a way that only the right secrets are revealed, and only certain levels of feedback are looked at... What about a private POC? Maybe these have benefits for the Blizzard development strategy!

Let's explore more

1. When are POC's appropriate?
2. Who should be doing POC's?
3. What do you do if a POC fails?
4. What to do if a POC succeeds?

When are POC's appropriate?
POC's are normally used by a developer to get investor interest, which could fund the team to create the game in whole. Now days, the investor developer relationship lines are blurring, and crowd funding is becoming more and more viable as a game funding resolution. But how can a developer know if something is worth crowd funding? Maybe this is when a POC is appropriate. Perhaps the POC will build hype, but this could put the team in a hype bind. Announcing a possible game in 2012 and releasing it in 2015 is something only Blizzard seems to get away with, and in many cases, this is a BAD idea for developers relying on crowd funding sources. As soon as your crowd knows about your idea, they probably already want to play it immediately.

Who should be doing POC's?
If you're not sure an idea is worth spending money on, maybe you need to create a POC to find out. If you've got no other means of drumming up the interest or cash flow, this might be something you should strongly consider. If you have not yet created a POC but you've begun some sort of development with a distant completion timeline, perhaps you should consider a pausing point and investing into a POC. If you don't, you may run into team members leaving, lack of funds, or ideas that you thought were good turn out to be terrible. Bigger companies can handle problems like these, but you most likely can't!

What do you do if a POC fails?
Take a look at the ways in which the POC failed and then make changes to improve upon it. This may allow you to tweak and re-release your POC several times until you work your way into something you can sit and develop on. The important thing to remember is to NOT allow this to become an ALPHA and keep a lot of your eggs in the basket hidden. You are simply trying to convey your game design IDEA, not the entirety of your game! Doing this improperly could kill your hype or your chance of gaining a hype!

What to do if a POC succeeds?
Find a way to fund your creation, either via investor or crowd funding, and come up with a business plan that allows the development process for your game to take place. Use the POC to explain your game to all types of people, non-gamers, casual-gamers, and veteran-gamers. Measure their feedback and use it to better direct your development process. If you lean towards the Blizzard strategy, remember to keep your findings and your decisions secret in order to protect yourself from becoming trapped.

These are all my own ideas and perspective, and I am by no means an expert in this field. I am mostly posting this to read and interact with others who might have similar or conflicting thoughts on the matter.

This is also my own way of realizing that I should probably build a POC for Legends because now that we are very deep into development, there are many many questions we're asking ourselves that a POC could easily answer!

Feel free to share your thoughts in a reply, and thanks for reading my non sense.
I didn't read everything but I have to agree with everything you said in your first 5 paragraphs. I think keeping most of the development process to yourself until you have an actual product is the way to go.
In response to Cubanbling
Cubanbling wrote:
I didn't read everything but I have to agree with everything you said in your first 5 paragraphs. I think keeping most of the development process to yourself until you have an actual product is the way to go.

Seconded. I think you nailed it with the Pareto principle, and being somewhat regularly involved in alpha and beta testing of MMOs in particular, I've kind of come to the conclusion that consumers are incapable of acting as responsible beta and alpha testers.

So often, I see alpha and beta testers complaining, rather than testing, and I also see a lot of people violating NDAs and the like just to get their opinion validated by the masses (usually an opinion that is completely irrelevant, owing to the status of testing, and/or their flawed understanding of the product.)

This is particularly problematic in MMOs, given that you hear a lot of people comparing new MMOs to established, 10+ year run products, and doing so is inherently difficult, because a 10+ year established MMO is going to have a lot more versatility in content compared to an MMO still trying to set the mechanics. Most often, you hear people complain about "X beta MMO doesn't offer much for the player to do." Frankly, it does hurt the reputation of the game, and hurts the product itself quite a bit when these complaints come about. But it does make sense that beta games don't have a lot to do, especially when those games are still attempting to find the right mechanics and formula to build content upon.
Well I am kinda right there with you guys. The marketing side of me says "do it! do it!" but the creative side says do not. For the moment I have decided not to release a beta of MiniShips and I don't plan on it. Although it is a MOBA which makes it easier on me because players understand things need to be balanced continuously as the game progresses so sometimes massive changes are tolerable.
But as far as game mechanics go, even in my dev logs I don't say half of what will actually be there and try to stick to general things but how those general things are different in MiniShips. Heck, the name "MiniShips" is actually a decoy at the moment as well all the released graphics.
In response to Ter13
When I see people complaining about MMOs (proper ones, not BYOND games), what I normally see is something along the lines of...

So this game is just WoW, with lower quality and without as much content. But at least the graphics are prettier!

And for the most part it's true. WoW effectively killed the MMO industry. There has not been an actual successful MMO released since WoW.
In response to The Magic Man
Not to derail this post but my gut feeling, going solely on my own experiences, is that mmorpgs were a trend. I think people love the story aspect of it, the ability to "build" their character's items and levels but the time sinking to grind away is no longer worth the novelty once you've been around the block once or so. That level of competition overtaking the sense of adventure normally found in the rpg format ends up draining the feeling like you are in some far off world living a different life - which - isn't that the point of a roleplaying game?
So with that aspect of it gone players feel that if they want to be competitive solely why sink 10,000 hours into a game that they will still be behind whoever sank more time. Why not fire up a League of Legends/Starcraft match and invest 30-40 mins to find out if you are the "winner"? And if not a simple new game levels the playing field and everyone starts from scratch. I think it is much the reason why even a re-release of Runescape 2007 had such an initial flurry of players which quickly died out - it felt less competition based when everyone was close in levels to each other allowing them to actually pay attention to, and this time enjoy, the game itself.
Honestly I havn't found an MMO that i've enjoyed since PSO!(Dreamcast fo' life!)

On a more serious note, I was originally plagued with this problem when I started BYOND. I guess I have learned the hard way and figured it out on my own. It's best to make sure a game is actually feasible and enjoyable, before telling the world that you're making it.

I've been seeing a trend of all these new games being "released" while still in the Alpha stage. While you can get great criticism from doing this, if a decent majority of people dislike the game; it destroys your motivation. And I personally don't think it is worth it. I'm also really despising these indie developers having you pay for an Alpha build of the game, when they never release anything further.
Guild wars was pretty succesful... Both 1 and 2
In response to The Magic Man
The Magic Man wrote:
When I see people complaining about MMOs (proper ones, not BYOND games), what I normally see is something along the lines of...

So this game is just WoW, with lower quality and without as much content. But at least the graphics are prettier!

And for the most part it's true. WoW effectively killed the MMO industry. There has not been an actual successful MMO released since WoW.

In personal opinion this is due to 99% of MMORPGs being made being WoW Clones. You can't overshadow and make Halo-The Second Halo more popular than Halo if it's just the same game with less players, and content. MMO's just need something new - not a new clone. That's all.
I would say that a proof of concept is more or less optional, depending on which path the developer wants to take.

There is a significant difference between software development and inventions in the "real world". The goal of most software in general is to effectively use the host machine (whether real or virtual) to create meaningful illusions that represent various forms of interactive knowledge and entertainment. This means that unlike in the real, physical world, anything is theoretically "possible", within the limitations of the hardware or virtual machine, since it's really all just an illusion.

Since almost anything is possible with software, you can be just about as creative as you want without having to "prove" it to anyone. Your imagination is the limit and the laws of physics that apply to the real world don't mean much when you are talking about an illusion. It's your own separate universe, so do whatever you want with it!

Now, I'm definitely not against having a proof of concept for software or games, but it is more useful for some things than others. Professional applications should probably always have a proof of concept, since the design is typically very rigid, but games can be much more flexible and organic.

Basically, if the developer doesn't want a proof of concept, then they shouldn't need to have one. This isn't totally accurate, but I do tend to notice that indie games are generally more creative, and less "rigid" than those made by professional video game development companies. Although, I'm sure that some of those companies have learned from the indie developers and vice versa. I think their respective development strategies are reflected by the games they develop, respectively.