Yes I’m not a fan of the trend to move things off-forum for WIPs. As soon as developers move their feedback cycle to tumblr or discord it becomes hard to track what feedback/bugs has already been given/reported.
Plus tumblr has microscopic fonts on most of the ones I see. I feel like I need a scanning electron microscope to read them
Edit: for perspective i currently have 9 wips open in tabs at the moment that I’m working through and providing feedback/bug reports as I spot them and remember to take a note of them somewhere.
In that case, there’s definitely a disconnect between the intended use of the WIP thread and how it’s actually being used in many cases (right down to the use of fandom language and philosophy in many of the threads.) But then you get into the thorny issue of whether, once you have released your product into the wild/opened your forum for public use, you get to tell your users they’re Doing It Wrong (full disclosure: I think you do not, unless things are happening that are explicitly against agreed-upon rules.)
One project. I know that there’s science out there that says it’s good to work on other projects and whatnot when you’re working on something, but I think it’s better to detach by taking a break and doing other things just for fun. For example, I watch a lot of YouTube and play The Sims 4 like I get paid for it, and then when I’m done, I come back inspired and ready to write more. Do I write slower? Sure. But I don’t wear myself out and I can see myself finishing the project as opposed to hopping to another project when my whims dictate it.
This is getting off topic, so I will give my reply and then if we decide to pursue this we should open our own thread…
A WiP thread’s main purpose is to gather feedback. Part of that gathering process is to direct your testers … in a public beta, there will be those that only desire to express their fan-girl support (or fan-guy?) but an author really should be pro-active in conducting a WiP beta test – open, closed, public or private.
This is not a release of a final product into the wild – that is only accomplished when you publish.
This is not even an “early-access” release like you see on Steam – Hosted Games does not have the tools or the set-up for this type of game release.
These are not even betas in the traditional gaming sense. I’ll find the quote from 5 or so years ago that emphasizes this… brb with it.
Edit 1 -
With these definitions, we see that staff consider most WiP threads now opened as Alpha threads… I’m not sure I’ve seen actual betas as defined here in a very long time (not even “official CoG” WiP threads were completed drafts yet) …
I feel I should clarify: When talked about releasing something into the wild in my previous post, I was talking about this forum and how it’s used, not WIPs.
But I agree that we’re getting off-topic, so back to business!
Most of the authors here are not fast writers, so I say one. I feel like the more WIPs an author has out there the less likely it is that any of them will ever be completed.
Not sure if it’s a fine comparison since drawing doesn’t take as much time as writing a book, but thats the thing I have experience with so… Anyway I’d say it’s better to finish one project first, if I start another one while the first one is still unfinished then it’s most likely that the first one would get abondoned. If I need time off then it’s better to read, watch a film or youtube videos, stuff like that then going back to what I started instead of jumping back and forth between different works.
Edit: About ideas popping up along the way: I don’t know maybe write it down in a notebook or something then get back to it once the current project is finished?
I’m not a fan of this either, tho I can see what merit an author could see in doing that: it might result in more feedbacks (even if it’s more likely that some would end up as the same as fans on different sites wouldn’t know if someone else on a different site already pointed out the same thing) if they make the WIP available on several sites.
I’m no expert, but I think I know a couple of reasons for this, at least for some people. The first is simply excitement. Sometimes an author will get an idea that they’re really excited about and will want to share it with everyone. So, they end up posting about it before their demo’s ready.
The second reason could be a desire for feedback. I’m making my first real effort to write a COG game and am pretty much lost on how to do it. And, well, there’s no real way for someone to ask people questions about or get feedback on their story without posting a topic about it, and naturally, you need to finish a demo before you can do that. Speaking personally, when trying to plan everything out, I have so many questions on what people would expect from the story like the one I’m writing, what choices I should include, ect. So, I can see why someone might rush out a demo for the sake of getting some feedback on what they’re working on.
PS I haven’t read through this whole topic yet, so, sorry if any of this was covered earlier.
In theory, the ideas thread is for that but it doesn’t work. Because if I want to have feedback on my idea I don’t want the same time other fifteen authors doing the same in the same thread, at the same time. It is not useful, so people just make a quick demo to make their own thread without thinking; most of the time, they are just trying to get feedback on a early idea and the wip never is continued.
Quite frankly, I have several WIPs sitting in google drive that exist simply because I thought they’d be fun to write. And I can’t help but just start a new one to see where it goes. They make for good warmup practice before I work on my main WIP too.
And to answer your first bit- I can’t speak for everyone, but personally I shared my WIP very early on because 1) I was simply really excited to post it, 2) I really wanted to hear feedback on how to improve my story, and I like to get that as soon as possible so I can incorporate what I hear as I write the next part of my story, and 3) hearing nice things helps motivate me. Of course, to each their own, and I fully understand that it’s frustrating to find a fun WIP that’s really short.
