I disagree here. While making games can be fun, I think the focus should be on completing them. Don't you hate it when you play a wonderful game and realize you can't go further because no one developed it further, and not only yet but never because he/she quitted? You would miss the part you can't play ever. If this game would have never been released, you wouldn't miss anything. It's a bit like love. But personally, I would pass the joy for not having to miss it. The game I mean.
The second thing is, this is "Game Development" and not "Game Let's start one and never finish it". If one just wants to mess around a little bit / have fun with others, there is the
RPG-Section for that.
I may sound radical to you, but these are my thoughts.
No one here has an obligation to finish the game they are making. Like you said it's "Game Development", not "Game I must finish". You can put several different spins on the title, but I think that the constant pestering and asking of releases/dates from a developer is very dismissive of the hard work they are putting in, and quite discouraging. This is the exact attitude which isn't helping a community at all. Instead of thinking "when will they finish the game so that
I can play it", you could be thinking "how could
I help the game production" (if you really want to play it). I don't see anything wrong with taking one's time in producing a polished and better piece of work, rather than just spewing out complete yet unattractive
crap. I've gotten criticized a lot throughout the years, for never releasing the game, taking ages to finish, or suffering from the "Duke Nukem forever" syndrome, been called a "feature creep" on numerous occasions. I simply couldn't care less. I find Game-Devving fun, and do it for that: a hobby in my spare time, something to challenge myself and sharpen my skills. I don't have any production pressure on me as the game isn't commercial, neither does the rest of the community. It is all open to the developer. If they want to release a demo/beta/early-release they can, if they don't, they don't have to. No one is forcing you to follow any game, or stopping your life for it.
This was one of the reasons I closed my thread here, as getting nagged for a release 10-15 times daily wasn't helpful or constructive. I rarely receive helpful offers, but receive a ton of requests on a daily basis. Problem is that this "community" turned into a commercial competition, where most of the people just want attention/praise - but that is human nature. People will have no problem screwing you over just so that they can achieve a personal goal. You see that everywhere: school, internet, commerce, etc. There is also the segment of us getting more and more people starting to make games with the mindset of "who can help me" rather than "how can I help myself". Since it is a hobby, not too many really have the patience to do any real problem solving. I've seen some ridiculous threads being opened here where people post their error messages asking for help, where all you had to do is read the message and change what the message said was wrong (this is what they are for). I personally loose interest in a community like that. I had discussions on such topics with Maruno and Abnegation, and now another one here. I always keep asking myself, why do I even bother? This thread will probably become inactive soon, pushed into the archives, and then people will come again doing the same crap over and over again. I've been here for over 4 years, and I've seen it all happen again and again. I believe those are the reasons why the better gamedevs (like Neo-Dragon, Wichu, Flameguru, Poccil, etc) left this community. And with them gone, and not many to fill their shoes, the quality of the community is going down the drain.