Prototypes and showing your work - How early is too early?
Earlier this week, I was at a conference here in Stockholm (Unreal Fest), and I brought with me an early gameplay prototype of what might one day end up becoming Decaying Games first released game title. It doesn’t have a proper name yet, but let’s go with “Vending Machine Game” for now. It’s nowhere near done, but in the spirit of sharing the development process, I wanted to write up some of my thoughts on why I’ve come to “bet my future” on this particular title so others can learn from my experiences. Also, I figured this could serve as a decent time capsule of how things stand, now somehow 14 months into the company’s life!
There are plenty of people that talk about the up- and downsides of showing your project to the world early. Many argue that it’s better to sweep people off their feet with a polished and masterfully crafted finished project; that you only have one opportunity to get someone’s attention. Others argue that if you show something too soon, maybe someone else will steal your idea, becoming successful instead of you! (which honestly is a silly thing to worry about, since people will copy your project no matter when you start showing it, especially in mobile markets)
Then there are others, myself included, who fall into the camp of “it’s never too early to start showing your project”. One reason being that if you show it early on when there are no bells or whistles, when there is little in terms explanation or guidance to what to do when interacting with your project, no one will have a clue of what to steal anyway! Better yet, if you’re a fledgling studio like Decaying Games is, you’re likely to have a very limited reach of maybe dozens of people at best. No one will care that it looks bad, because there aren’t a lot of people caring about it overall.
If you are a fellow developer reading this, especially one with an interest in getting your own projects off the ground and showing them to the world, you have likely already come across the work of Chris Zukowski, most often known for running HowToMarketAGame(.com). In many of his seemingly never-ending fountain of posts and talks, he often presents the case that the best way to draw attention to a game for a newcomer in the field is to simply start sharing. Share often. Share early. Share whenever you have an opportunity to, because “little by little” is the only foolproof way to build an audience from scratch (unless you just so happen to go viral, but that’s not exactly easy to do and even harder to plan for).
(If you want to dive deeper into the theory of why sharing often is important, looking up more on the concept of a Purchase Funnel is a start.)
And so, I’m writing about my prototype, despite it being very early on in its project life cycle. So early on in fact, that it’s still possible that it might not even become the project I end up releasing first! Maybe I’ll discover that some part of the game makes it unfeasible for me to create in a reasonable amount of time, or that it has some fundamental part that just isn’t good or fun to play. That said, I’m increasingly confident in the idea, and I’ll talk about why in a bit.
“What if a game… where you ARE a Vending Machine?”
I don’t remember exactly when it was that the idea first formed. But I know when it became more than just a nagging thought in my head. While the premise always sounded like a fun concept to explore, and that it would obviously involve something around buying and selling things from a vending machine as a core part of the experience, I was still lacking a big puzzle piece; what do you as a Player do besides that?
In February this year, while I was looking around for some inspiration not just creatively but as an entity trying to do this solo-game-making thing long-term, I was looking around at what other small indies were doing when I came across Minami Lane. It’s a small, cozy street-builder game, where you have a small economy system going while also trying to spruce up the neighbourhood and keep the residents happy.
A lightbulb activated in my head, and as in the words of the great Dr. Ian Malcolm:
”Well.. there it is.”
I’d found my inspiration for a way to make the Vendine Machine Game game loop work.
But it was around that time during a call that the idea really took off. I was in a Discord call with friend and former colleague Dave, and I was just trying to rig up a small scene for the game when we both ended up not being able to stop coming up ideas for what the game could be. We started a google doc and just kept on adding more and more and more ideas, not only during that call, but over the coming weeks and months.
Despite the cascade of things that was now written about what could be done with the game, it took a while longer for me to come to a point where a proper plan was formed on what to actually include in an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Before this game idea came about, I had after all already started two other game prototypes, both of which I ultimately paused as I saw the scope of those ballooning to something I wouldn’t be able to make within the amount of development time I have in mind for a first game release. I even posted publicly about one of them! So before I fully committed to this Vending Machine Game idea, I needed to make as sure as I could that I wouldn’t end up in the same place with this project.
And a little over a month ago, Dave and I once again got into a call to plan ahead, and I saw two things in particular looming on the horizon:
My current consultant gig, though I will stay on it for as long as I can, will eventually run out. I want something to be ready to at least start generating wishlists on Steam whenever that happens, and for that to happen that game need to have a proven game loop and enough visual identity to make someone go “huh, that looks cool!”.
An upcoming big event was coming up, giving me an excuse to light a fire under myself; if I could get something - anything - playable in time, that would be a big opportunity to get some good early feedback to prove or disprove that there’s something to this game idea.
But I also can’t exactly go full-time making this prototype; my obligations to my client can’t be affected by this, so prototyping has to be restricted to weeknights and weekends (I’m single and childless, so it’s a luxury I can afford despite being in my mid-30’s).
With all of that in mind, I decided to focus on building the parts of the game that I had done the least before. Having been a technical designer for almost 12 years at this point, working on a myriad of genres and in several different team structures, I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands dirty in several different areas: Game Design, Level Design, Puzzle Design, NPC Behaviours, Programming, Writing, Producing, and more. Despite all that, to me there were two key parts I hadn’t spent any time with professionally that were vital to the Vending Machine Game; Game Economy and UI, both of those being fundamental to setting up something like an inventory system which I also hadn’t made before but would be needed for the game.
If I couldn’t prove to myself that I can make those things, there was no reason to continue pursuing this particular game.
So I just made it after that, basically? At least once or twice every week, I brought whatever state the extremely crude prototype was in to a new friend to try out, so I could see which parts were the most unclear, or what they were missing the most about whatever small new interaction I had managed to get in at that point. For most of those weeks, the game wasn’t any good; it was just barely doing anything at all. But the small amount I feedback I managed to get helped me focus on things that actually improved the experience, rather than getting into my own head about what could or couldn’t work in theory. I also decided to start regularly update my progress on BlueSky, providing me with yet another small trickling into the product funnel.
And so, a few weeks later I had a game loop set up, with items for NPCs to buy, upgrades for the players to acquire, and each slot in the vending machine could be swapped out for different things, with some options locked behind the upgrades. Still nowhere near a GOOD game, but enough of one to create a game loop that changes and provides more options as a player plays more, resulting in around 5 minutes of “gameplay” before a player is able to unlock everything and “complete” the game.
It was time to put this into people’s hands, and see what the response was. I made a build for both PC and my phone; I could show the game on my laptop for a meetup, but the phone was easier to bring with and put into folks hands for the bigger conference. And people did play it! A few even got through all of what was available in the prototype. Two people ended up playing less than half a minute, but I chalk that up to 1. the conference grabbing their attention elsewhere, and 2. the game not being their kind of game (which should happen! No game is for everyone).
After 20-or-so people testing the prototype overall, with a mix of both biased friends excited to try anything a friend makes, and complete strangers trying something they know absolutely nothing about, what’s my verdict of it all?
..I think we have something here!
The concept itself had always at least intreagued people that I’ve talked to, but as I was still figuring out the constraints of the game myself, it’s obviously been hard to people to really get a grasp of the full idea. Not all mechanics are in this first prototype either, but given that 1. some people playtesting had to ask others to “hold on a sec” because they were busy playing the game (which indicates that it’s at least on some level interesting enough to keep their attention), and 2. 90% of people that playtest bring up their own ideas to what could be added after they’re done, which more often than not were the same or similar ideas to ones that we’ve already detailed in our “Ideas” document.
I should mention that I’ve deliberately held back on trying to explain the full game concept here, so it’s understandable if you don’t get the same grasp of it after reading this as the people I’ve talked to did; this post is meant to talk about prototypes in general after all. I’ll get to explaining this game in particular more in other posts down the line!
(however, here’s a link to video of the start of the prototype for anyone curious)
Back to the question at hand: How early is too early?
I argue that there indeed is a “too early”, but that what too early means differs depending on what your goal is. It is way too early for me to put up a Steam page for the Vending Machine Game, since I don’t have the visual flare in place to not only attract potential buyers, but also to even properly convey the game’s selling points or gameplay to anyone that would be interested in the full game.
Was it too early for me to talk about my project? No. In fact, talking to people about it before the prototype was made allowed me to gauge interest in the concept itself. If no one grabs on to even that at all, that would’ve indicated that I might’ve been better off pursuing another idea.
Was it too early for me to test my prototype with people? No, because I set out make a prototype to validate some of the core concepts of the game, and to prove my own ability to make those concepts a reality, and the prototype succeeded in doing both. It would have probably been a waste to go display the current prototype at a consumer expo like a PAX or a Gamescom, but if I were to pursue potential funding for it I likely could have started putting it into the hands of potential publishers etc.
Just to be clear here - I’m not looking for funding for the game! Planning on bootstrapping the game myself using the funds I’ve been able to make from my consulting work.
Like I wrote near the start of this, I still believe that it’s never too early to start showing your project. It’s is however important for you to figure out in advance who you’re showing it to, and why you’re showing it. Go share your own vision or project with someone, so that it can have a better chance to one day reach the world.
All the best,
DK
