With all due respect, this article is dead wrong. For several reasons.<p>Agile development only works in very niche development circles. You couldn't write an AGILE operating system, for example (or rather, shouldn't). Similarly, writing an AGILE game is equivalent to setting sail for fail.<p>Consider this: a potential customer can purchase an older AAA title on steam for 5-10 bucks. They can purchase a brand new AA title for about 15 bucks. They can purchase an extremely polished indie title for 5-10 bucks. As a developer, what's your bottom line here?<p>Games HAVE to be finished, debugged, and polished on day 1 of release. AGILE development works for incremental software development, not for games. I don't think you realize how many one-man development teams out there release extremely polished and innovative indie titles and STILL don't make it on Steam (or other marketing platforms). There is absolutely no way a half-assed AGILE-released game will make it on the Apple Store, let alone Steam.<p>Furthermore, gamers in general are a cynical bunch. Release a bad/unfinished game, and you're done. To reiterate, I completely agree with the prototyping idea - i.e. hey this seems like a fun mechanic lets make a quick prototype - but not releasing the prototype to the public (unless we're talking open source projects here).
Any feedback on the ideas I present in this article? I'm especially interested in the opinions of game developers, particularly the drawbacks associated with this kind of strategy