Developing a live game that never truly left Early Access with Deep Rock Galactic

gamedeveloper.com:

In a talk from GDC 2023, Mikhail Akopyan, lead game designer at Ghost Ship Games ApS, discussed the evolution of Deep Rock Galactic, exploring how this Early Access game eventually became a live service title and how the community played a role in its development. His reflections are an insightful look at how to get the player feedback you need to center the needs and interest of your audience, and how to find and implement it as part of a regular development process. 

Deep Rock Galactic, which Akopyan describes as a mixture of Minecraft and Left 4 Dead, was launched in 2016 and sold 90,000 copies in its first week. Knowing that the team would need to sell an additional 10,000 copies per month to stay afloat, the team designed cosmetics as a major part of the game from the get-go, inspiring a strong and expressive fanbase that came to see the aesthetic as a large part of the appeal. The addition of cosmetics would also allow them to keep the game profitable without the lengthy pipeline of traditional DLC, opening up opportunities to continually engage with the fanbase and better retain their attention over time. This relationship with the community was nurtured by the studio's pursuit of quality feedback, wherein players became a part of the development cycle at key intervals. Below is an image of what that cycle looks like in their current routine, and it illustrates what role the community plays at each of those stages, including testing during the prototyping and release phases. 

The talk strongly demonstrated the success in building a game based on player feedback; Akopyan says that including the audience in the process allowed them to create meaningful content that they knew the players would genuinely be interested