itch is such an excellent place to post in-progress work - the community and dev tools are just amazing. However something that I'm missing is that I find it hard to create a page for an in-progress game that will later have an actual release.
It seems that my 3 options right now are:
- Create a public page for my in-progress game. Most of the organic views from itch.io are going to be on whatever iteration I decide to go public on, and I won't see any other placement when the game goes 1.0
- Keep my game as restricted until it's ready, which allows me to share it through my own networks but requires that I either get people to use a password or mess around with a private download key.
- Have a game page for the in-progress version that I can release, try to form a bit of a community around, and then later release a "deluxe" or final version on its own page. It feels like this would work, but it feels dirty to spin up multiple games and it would split any community that you'd formed on the in-progress page.
I've also attempted keeping the game public but unlisted until it was ready, but when I made it publicly available it appeared way way down any recent titles lists, so I don't think that's a good option either.
I have 2 ideas to help combat this. The first is fairly simple, mark a game's 'release date' as the first time it's been public & listed, so that the page can be 'public' but not be listed yet, and let us decide when we want it listed and fully available.
The second would be to include something along the lines of an early access classification that would be in-between restricted and public. Games marked as this for release would be publicly available via their link but wouldn't appear in the released sections until moved from early access to public. This difference would allow for a different browsable section though, for people looking for games that are still in active development that they could potentially join a new community around and/or provide feedback when it matters most.
If there's something that I'm missing I would be happy to hear it, I have no problem changing my workflow if there are better ways to accomplish something. After writing this out I'm thinking that creating 2 pages probably isn't the end of the world, as it wouldn't be too spammy if only done for long-term projects, and would easily allow you to send claimable download keys to the players of the first if the final product has a price associated with it.