Quote:13: Community Comes Lasthttp://bloodfrontier.com
This is not to say that the community should never be involved, but building a community is something that should happen at the end of a project, when it is finished or nearly finished. Creating a community too soon invites trouble that you definitely do not want.
Community members will want to make their opinions known, and since everyone wants to be liked there is a really high chance that these opinions will be taken seriously. This will lead to a lot of second guessing of the plan, implementing new things, tweaking other things, and generally wasting time that needs to be spent actually making progress and finishing the project. Some of these things might be great ideas, but DON'T DO IT.
Implementing community wishes and wants before the project is done is like the dark side of the force: Once you give in, it will forever dominate you. And it will also forever distract you from getting to the goal.
Community is one of those things that certain developers do right. Valve comes to mind immediately. Team Fortress 2 is updated constantly, and it continually involves community members and keeps them interested. But one thing to keep in mind is that before there was a community, there was a finished game, and that makes ALL the difference in the world. We did it backwards, and it contributed heavily to our demise.
Of course, AC is already finished but it still applies because AC is still being developed. Stop making devs second-guess themselves!