Open Game Development

Recently - I just watched a GDC talk by the developers behind Desktop Dungeons. If you're interested - the talk is listed below.

As the Marc Luck and Danny Day, the speakers of the presentation, put it - the approach they used for developing Desktop Dungeons was Open Development. This meant making your project available to be played - as soon as you had a playable prototype available; what this allows you to do is to begin gathering feedback, ideas, and start building a community for the game itself from day one. They also suggested it can be a good way to figure out which projects you might want to focus on - if you see that there is a strong interest for it.

This isn't something akin to Early Access on steam. The idea here is that you have your prototype available for people to play, preferably for free, and you're more or less willing to change direction heavily if you believe the project benefits from it - something that might be less appreciated if the game was in Early Access, people have paid for it, and is easier to do early on, rather than when you are at an Alpha/Beta stage. Once you get to a point where you feel you are confident the game is ready to be released to be paid for - you'll have a far easier time since people will know what they are going to be purchasing. Moreover, having the previous prototype versions be available for free can be an even better way to allow people to know what they will be purchasing, and might be a pretty effective way of helping people make the decision to buy the game.


Any thoughts on this approach to working on your project? 
Truth be told - I might consider giving this a try at some point - it does seem to be a pretty interesting way of approaching a project. 


Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dujojb2kxpQ&t=362s