Thanks for setting up this forum! This is my first post on the idle forums: I'm an indie dev in my spare time, living in London and I build server software for a living.
Anyway for a while it's bugged me that there are a few stages in the development of every game that could seriously use a fitting label. I find a lot of devs describe these same distinct stages in their games and I think it'd be fun to come up with some pithy appellations for them.
The stages I'd like words for are, in particular:
1) The long wandering period when the game is mechanically coming together but is just not fun.
Some tend to describe this period as 'Alpha' but borrowing terms from traditional development like this tends to lead to imprecision - most enterprise/consumer software have clear features set out before or during early development and games can still be a lot more fluid. Far more 'polished' game projects have been completely transformed during this period (or have never left it)
2) the point at which a game suddenly tips into being enjoyable.
Everyone recognizes this as one of the most sublime moments in development, yet we don't have a word for it. I'd love to hear what folks can come up with for it.
