Working in an agile environment I’ve been wondering if the iterative design principle could also work with games or would the scraping of features and additions of completely new game play throw players to much?

For instance I’m working on cyber punk game with planned gameplay for social engineering, hacking, career building, and high tech infiltration and gun play.

But now I’m thinking of including an old idea of mine to blend an rpg with city building by adding the ability build up your own faction and head quarters. Rather then just outfit yourself and your own living situation.

Now the faction building isn’t something I’m planning to do at the moment but would like to add after I’ve got the core gameplay finished and I’m happy with it. It would be very different from the lone runner style game play but still incorporate that same runner game play. With the player being able flip back and forth between the two as much as they wanted, as the faction building would be completely optional.

How would you as player react to a massive additional type of game play being added to a game after release?

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Original post by TechnoGoth I’ve been wondering if the iterative design principle could also work with [already released] games or would the scraping of features and additions of completely new game play throw players to much? How would you as player react to a massive additional type of game play being added to a game after release?

This is precisely the trend these days. The trick is knowing before you create the new feature if it would be welcomed by the player base. One way to find out is to ask them.

I struggle with the same issue. I want to get the game out to gather feedback as soon as possible, but I also want the players to see the full vision for the game and not judge it based on seeing just a snippet.

In single player games I think it's much easier to do. In MMO I think big changes are much riskier. In any competitive game (games with global leaderboards or MMORTS), any significant change could put off a entire group of players whose play style is negatively impacted by the change. Sure, you can argue that there will be others who's playstyle should be positively impacted, but those are probably prospective players, not existing players. And so they won't come in to replace the players who feel you just "ruined" their game.

When you mention flip back and forth how much will you need to do so? This is a catch-22, because if you don't need to do it and it's a pleasant diversion then you're faced with the problem of the gameplay being viewed as superficial; yet if you make the RPG city building reach into the other gameplay it becomes more meaningful but could alienate.

OTOH, with there being such a trend to cut and cut and cut when it comes to features I don't think you'd do much harm by giving players more for a change. If the two forms of gameplay are of a skill level that any player can get into them they may see the change as a welcome diversion. If they require very different skill sets you may attract two types of players-- although this could be a mixed blessing as each will want the form of gameplay they most desire to be the most developed.

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Original post by TechnoGoth Working in an agile environment I’ve been wondering if the iterative design principle could also work with games or would the scraping of features and additions of completely new game play throw players to much? For instance I’m working on cyber punk game with planned gameplay for social engineering, hacking, career building, and high tech infiltration and gun play. But now I’m thinking of including an old idea of mine to blend an rpg with city building by adding the ability build up your own faction and head quarters. Rather then just outfit yourself and your own living situation. Now the faction building isn’t something I’m planning to do at the moment but would like to add after I’ve got the core gameplay finished and I’m happy with it. It would be very different from the lone runner style game play but still incorporate that same runner game play. With the player being able flip back and forth between the two as much as they wanted, as the faction building would be completely optional. How would you as player react to a massive additional type of game play being added to a game after release?

There are atleast two kinds of features to be added after release: improvements and gap fillers.

Gap fillers are a no-go in my opinoins, because it only demostrates that you have released an unfinished game! I.e. take a look at Age of Conan, the missing auction house was a gap filler. As long as there wasn't a working auction house the players feels cheated cause of having only an unfinished games.

My opinions on gap fillers: never advertise features which will be missing at release.

The other kind of new features are improvements. In my opinion Valve is an expert in delivering improvements to their games. Take a look at TF2. A constant flow of improvements and new gameplay features. Even if it introduce other flaws (balancing discussions) it has always a positive effect on the player which will rejoin the game even after a longer break to take a look at the new features. The knowledge , that a game is improved all the time is one of the best binding to a game.

My suggestion: concentrate on the features which will be working at release and don't use placeholders (404 missing page gameplay :) ). Try to deliver a constant flow of improvements, even if you could release more with a single patch. Advertise and present only one feature at a time which will be included in the near future. This is what we should learn from valve :)

That is what i am doing with my rogoulike/ultima6 flash game.
I think this approach has some advantages.

Though i still have a fairly complete design first and
implement the core features as a complete game. After that I
will add other features.