Releasing is hard for a perfectionist

It has been around 1 month since I first started working on Path of a Hero and made my first blog post. As you can imagine a lot of effort (and love) has been squeezed into that timeframe. All of the time spent has of course been on top of my normal 9-5 work requirements and I can assure you that World of Warcraft playtime has been at an all time minimum.

I will be the first to admit that I can be a real perfectionist when it comes to programming and design. This is quite often a great thing however it makes releasing something a difficult challenge. 37signals and other groups of people will tell you that in web 2.0 it is important to release early because it is relatively easy to constantly improve things dynamically. I have tried to force this into my head and forgo some of my more OCD tendencies.

I have come to the realization that being a perfectionist does not get you all the way to having a successful product. Sure it will give you something that has polish and few bugs but the problem is, it is not guaranteed to satisfy the needs of users. The only way to do this is to release an approximation of what you think users need and then iterate based on user feedback and demand.

At the end of the day the job of developers in general is to provide solutions to users who have a problem (which may not be well defined). It is analogous to mathematics and physics where it is sometimes better to use the power of rapid iteration to move from a rough approximation of a difficult problem to a likely solution rather than trying to solve it completely.

Anyways the moral of the story is that I am forcing myself to release Path of a Hero. I still have a lot of ideas of ways that it could be better but I am hoping that you do too. So enjoy the fruits of my labor and feel free to contact me.

Also be mindful that the rivalry part of Path of a Hero will only start to become interesting once there is a bit of a community. Therefore if you like the site and have some wow friends, get them to try it out.