What to consider once your first game has launched

"So many people are focusing on just getting a game out, they don't think what to do afterwards," warned Ben Murch of Rodeo Games as part of a Develop conference panel today. The entire panel, which included Tak Fung of MiniSquadron developer Supermono, agreed that before your first game is complete, you should be considering what comes next. When Murch and his company finished work on iOS title Hunters, they went on to create DLC for the game, as that's what they believed comsumers would want. However, when the DLC failed to ignite excitement in players and didn't bring in as many sales as the studio had hoped, it left Murch in a period where he ended up messing around for a few months, with not much idea of where to go next. He warned that studios should be always considering what comes next, so they aren't stuck in this kind of position. Fung added that indie devs often fail to realize that once you've shipped your game, you haven't crossed the finish line - not by a long shot. "Don't expect it to be glorious afterwards," he said. "You've spent all this time making this game, but don't expect to just sit around and that's it." PR is the biggest factor, he noted, while updates for the game should also be on your mind. Supermono developed updates for MiniSquadron immediately after the initial launch, but these took longer to get out than expected, leaving the team feeling very burnt out afterwards. At this point in development, Fund took stock of the situation, admitting that he was "essentially bored of the game", and that he felt like the updates were "a chore" and "frankly boring." Therefore, rather than continuing on with MiniSquadron content, he moved on and developed Fox vs Duck -- an iOS game that didn't do as well commercially, but "was an itch that we had to scratch."