Dragon Commander - Last Minute Changes and Media

Swen has created a new blog on enduring pain, Dragon Commander boxes, the changes they are still making to Dragon Commander and what a good moment in time is to send out review code.

All of the changes that we agreed on were implemented or being implemented, and a number of new crashes had been found and solved. If you’re wondering why we are still changing things, well, you needn’t look further than our forums, youtube, the steam community hub, facebook , twitter and what have you. There’s a continuous feedback loop going on there and we’re seeing some very well formed opinions appearing.

Our code of conduct is that whenever somebody posts a bright idea it gets on our list, and then put it in, as long as it remains feasible for us.

I can guarantee you that there’s a lot of people in the development trade (that actually includes guys in my office ) that will tell you that this is the way to ruin, but my experience has been such that you’re better of with a game that’s fun and maybe not polished than you are with a game that’s polished but not fun. Fixing the polish is an easy enough thing and almost always a matter of money. Fixing the fun otoh is still somewhat of an arcane art coveted by many but mastered by few and money will not necessarily make the difference. Because my interest and joy in making games comes from stumbling upon ways of making them fun, I tend to sin more than often against the rules of maintaining the outwards production values that are so important these days, preferring a message box if need be over not putting something in that clearly improves the game mechanics

I joke, but I really do believe that whenever you realize a certain change will make your game more fun, you should do it, no matter how late in the development process you are. You should actually count yourself lucky that you had the insight prior to release. The only reason I can see why you shouldn’t embark on making the change is when you can’t implement the change properly for whatever reason. But you shouldn’t let that be an excuse for not making the change.