I finally, somewhat belatedly, signed the publishing/distribution contract for my game (Bonnie’s Bookstore) today. I’ve actually been working with the other party for about a month now, though the contract was snagged for a bit due to some external entanglements.

I started this game on May 16, had an alpha good enough for my in-laws to be playing it in mid July, had a mini-public beta at the end of July, and broad betas from late August onwards. So, out of a roughly 6 month development cycle, the game has been testable for 4 months, and in pretty solid ‘beta’ shape for 3 months, or 2/3 and 1/2 of it’s development lifecycle, respectively.

I’ve never had a game in testable shape for that long on any previous project, including 2+ year projects. Tropico was the worst - the game couldn’t really be played as a ‘game’ until about 2-3 weeks before we GM’d. Call it, generously, a 3 week beta on a project that took 2 years. Anyways, although it was a bit rough around the edges when it shipped, Tropico turned out to be a pretty fun game that a lot of players had long-lasting affection for.

I think Bonnie’s Bookstore is a lot more polished, and perhaps more fun (though in a very different way), than Tropico or any of the other games I’ve done. We’ll find out what the public thinks soon…

What I’m reading…
Best blog post by a software developer that has almost nothing to do with software development…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2005 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Game Biz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.