Choosing the right type of game (in a commercial sense)

Uh, most projects go this way? At the beginning: "Ooooh, it is gonna be SOOO amazing!". Soon after beginning, this feeling will disappear, and you'll be dealing with large lists of "stuff that needs to be done" (tm). Which will be very unmotivating.

IMO, It is unreasonable to expect your people to be "motivated" all the time. I would just want want people that are content and can fullfill their contract obligations. If project requires motivation to be completed, it'll most likely just die unfinished.

 

First of all, I don't think creative fields are really any different from any other field, the ability to get yourself in and out of the zone is trainable, there's nothing about artistic ability that makes itself available only in special circumstances.

But what I'm saying is that you need to be working for something beyond simply the fact that you need to keep working in order to not fail. You need to be looking at something beyond the work itself, whether that's proving to yourself something, or sending a message through your game, or making other people happy or whatever makes you get up in the morning. Because whether you're working on some brilliant invention or in some boring industry, everything converges toward ... the long, boring grind of hard work.

So I'm not saying you have to wait for a spark every time you get out of bed, or wait until you've got enough chi flowing or whatever, you absolutely need to be able to do work because of sheer self-discipline. But you have to know that the work you're doing is taking you closer to that special something that really means something to you. If you're not, I don't see why you would bother to do it, I sure wouldn't. There's not enough time to waste it like that.

That's why I said that for a PC-scale project, that would probably take a few years, don't waste your time with a genre that you don't particularly like, but you think maybe the market wants it. The market wants a lot of things, and often doesn't know what it wants until somebody gives it to them, and is always ready to eat up a well-done game no matter what it is. Some thought the space sim genre was dead, and then Star citizen came along, because it was done right (in some ways at least). So I wouldn't worry too much about the market.

 

Motivation can come from a lot of places. Your co-workers and employees can be huge motivators. When you're going the 'lone wolf' route - it's way, way harder to keep your motivation up. It's also a lot easier to just let things slide. Having a team, or even just a guy to bounce ideas off who's invested in the project. Man, that stuff can be priceless. This was one of the harshest parts of the 'lone wolf' transition for me personally. I was used to at least having a brother down in the trenches.

If you run solo, I think the morale aspect becomes something that needs much more active managing. In most jobs I've had, the social aspects, the competitive aspects etc, all kept me pushing forward even when nothing else did.

 

I agree, but it's a fair bit different from being "motivated".. As long as you and your team are content and making progress, that's all that really matters. The bigger / more complex the project is the harder it becomes to even want to work on it, never mind motivation. If it's a commercial venture, again you started it and if you have any sense whatsoever if you're deep down the rabbit hole you'll finish it.

I've embarked on projects / worked at places that have been well.. Depressing, which if that ever happens it's a case of GTFO ASAP..

@frosted

Umm, none of us were particularily motivated but didn't mean we didn't enjoy working together ..

Anyway, wasn't we talking about flooded markets / complex games or something??

 

There's a huge spectrum between 5% of the time and "all" of the time.

Also, the fact that you want people who are content says something. That's not an employee who's dragging themselves out of bed due to sheer need of a paycheck.

 

Whatever it is, it's still motivation, and it's still very relevant IMO. Your question if I read it correctly was about whether to go with what you think the market wants, or you Great Big Dream Game. My point of view is that if you're talking PC-scale, forget about the market, it's going to be the least of your problems. By the time you finish the game it's probably going to be somewhere else entirely. But it's always ready to accept a well-made product.

If you're a team-member and you're getting paid hourly, everything I said isn't relevant, you just turn up every day and do your job, and put up with a few crunches.

But when it's your money, or money that people made you responsible for giving a return on ... that's when you need motivation, because there's no one else to keep things going, and if you fail it's probably going to be messy, for you alone. You need to be sure that what you're doing is going to be worth it, if not today or tomorrow, then at least sometime in the future, or otherwise it just ain't worth it.

 

Ohhh I give up HA!.. You just gotta do it and see for yourself.

 

So I will! But when I hear people talking, people like Elon Musk who made successful businesses in industries where the odds were highly stacked against them, they always had a reason why they were doing it, and it was always a simple, personal one. The market didn't dictate that it was a good idea to build rockets or electric cars, on the contrary ... but when something means a lot to you it probably also does to a lot of other people too, and it's actually a pretty good compass of what is a good idea or not as long as you're not off with the fairies.

I don't really believe in searching for what the market wants. I think that if you want to be successful, you make an opening and then fill it, and you make that opening by connecting with the people who like your genre and like your game, and build up interest and excitement, which attracts people who weren't even all that interested to begin with. Tesla did well because they made an opening by inventing the 'cool electric car' concept which never even existed before. In game dev, you don't need to invent some new concept if your genre is relatively well-known but you still need to work up that interest so you can satisfy it. Reading the market is just like trying to read the palm of your hand, there's nothing there, you just have to make it happen.

 

I smell potential for a huge semantic argument in those two sentences.

//opinion
It is not a good idea to use Elon Musk, Bill Gates and such for inspiration. There's one Elon Musk, one Bill Gates, etc. So your odds of being next elon musk is probably something between 1/318000000 to 1/7500000000. There's a limited place for those kind of people, one window of opportunity, once it is taken, it is gone. They had odds stacked against them and won. You'll try to do the same, expect to lose. You're free to give it a try, of course.

It is better to set realistic target. Instead of looking at Elon Musk, look at local restaurant owner or a small shop with 6 employees. That's realistic target that may take years to reach it.

 

They are simply the best example of what I'm trying to point out. And there was no such window of opportunity, they made the window and jumped through it, that's the whole point. There was literally no market for electric cars,Tesla made the market for it, by making an electric car that was cool, that everyone wanted to show off, not some plastic dumpster bin like most people are used to.

You can tell me all this stuff about who I should compare myself to, but I think the point is valid all the way from SpaceX down to indie game development. When someone is enthusiastic and knows how to communicate it, people flock to it. The games market, like any other market, doesn't have a need until someone makes something cool and fun. It's pointless trying to figure out what people want this year, it's unpredictable precisely because it depends on whoever is willing to create a need that year, and you won't know about it until it's happening and bam there's already a game there that's scooped up all the hype that it created itself.

You can analyse the market, I'll make the game I want to make, and I'll market it with the sort of energy that comes from knowing that it's something meaningful to me. And when I don't get the response I want, rather than running off to analyse the market, I'll polish the game a bit more, and I'll learn a bit more about marketing and communication and try again, and again, until I find a way to make people interested. And if I fail, it's probably because I made a crappy game, rather than missing some one-and-only window of opportunity.

 

No semantic arguments, please.

It is the same thing. There was one window of opportunity to make a market for electric cars. He took it.

And when said person has no business skill, project ends in disaster.
Have you seen how many people are there that are enthusiastic about "making a great game" or "making an mmo"?

When people look at the example like Bill Gates, they see the result of ONE person who succeeded. But what they don't see is many other people who tried hard and failed.

It is not. your point is "Elon Musk inspired me, so I want to do what I want to do because it feels good".
That's admirable approach (chasing the dream and all), but it is a questionable business strategy.

Also, consider this scenario:
=====
It is the year 200X. You're in the world where Tesla motors were never created. You feel motivated to create electric car manufacturing company. Your bank balance is empty. You're working a minimum wage job. You do not possess mechanical/programming skills worth mentioning, and you have never ran your own business.

What do you do to create "Billy Motors"?
=====

Because this is what reality is gonna be with any kind of idea people usually get motivated about.

 

@Billy4184: Either way what I meant to say is that when people look at someone successful and say "that person fought against odds and won" they do not imagine the "fighting" part well. See Historian's Fallacy. When you look at success, you see the result of the long road, and you don't get to see the road and obstacles the person in question had to overcome.

 

I was going to post something like this, except that they didn't even have the odds stacked against them. Tesla didn't make Elon Musk wealthy, he was already a multi-billionaire. More to the point, he and Gates succeeded because they got into industry segments very early when small efforts could scale hugely -- the window of opportunity neginfinity mentions is something that just doesn't exist in today's game market (in my opinion). And if you look at the facts of their stories there was still a whole bunch of sheer luck. Musk started with a company that made an online database of city data which somehow sold for hundreds of millions (and was then shut down by the new owner, Compaq, without ever making a dime of profit). We all know the Gates' story (plus Gates came from a wealthy family who gave him pretty significant support).

Their reasons for success are generally irrelevant to anybody's plan to put dinner on their table by selling video games. That's not something you can just up and decide to imitate.

This may be the most confused approach to business that I have ever read. By definition you are only going to ever sell what the market wants. When you say you don't believe in searching for that, it just tells me you're wishing it was easier to figure it out. In fact, you're saying you're going to ignore the market, then talk people into wanting whatever it is you feel like doing. It's ok to wish that, but don't quit your day job.

Tesla did well because the market wanted an electric car. People who can afford Teslas took one look at S***boxes like the Prius and said, "Nope, no thanks." Elon Musk identified what the market wanted and delivered it. In other words, he "read the market," which you claim is impossible.

Every successful businessman spends a whole bunch of time trying to read the market. I have three companies. My partner and I are constantly discussing where their various markets are heading. I spend hours each day reading articles trying to figure out what the market wants and how I fit into that picture. I lay awake at night planning around what the market is doing. We craft long emails proposing strategies for dealing with it. We invest money into things that we think match what the market is doing. We evolve to meet the needs of our market. That is how a real business works.

A good business has some differentiating factor to set itself apart from competitors. These can be simple and dull, like a good location or better pricing, or they can be more exciting, like Tesla's high-end approach. But they're still market driven.

Truly new ideas, market-defining ideas, are exceedingly rare, and it's virtually impossible to just up and decide, "I'm going to dream up a completely new concept and make it successful." It's simply naive to imagine this is a worthwhile business strategy.

 

There's a bit of a middle ground there though. The fact is, someone who is deeply and intimately familiar with their market segment is going to be better able to identify areas where supply is lacking.

I'd be willing to gamble on the fact that Tesla's high end approach most likely originated with the fact that he wanted a car like that and it didn't exist. In my own case, I remember, vividly searching through endless lists of games trying to find more 'turn based party based' rpgs and just not finding any. At the time, the genre was being woefully under serviced (this is changing week by week as others have also realized there's a market there, and the production costs are relatively low - by the time I release, I'll be late to the party).

If you're an avid consumer of a market, you will naturally be familiar with it. You'll be able to identify the soft spots or niches that aren't being serviced. If it's a personal interest you probably won't even call it research, you'll just think of it as "trying to find something you want".

At the end of the day, if you want to call it "market research" or you call it "a personal passion" is irrelevant, either can lead to a deep familiarity with existing products, demand, and the identification of opportunity.

 

Here's an example of deep familiarity leading to an opportunity...

Sid Meier's Pirates sat on "Top 10 Best Game's Ever" lists for decades. The game itself is quite simple and absolutely captivating. It's a really unique game that doesn't quite fit any established genre. It's a kind of open world sandbox, it's kind of an RPG, it's kind of a historical simulator. But it really doesn't approach the subject of RPG in the same way that any other game ever has. Until Mount and Blade came along and elaborated on it's ideas.

Pirates was published in 1987, Mount and Blade published in 2008. Both of these titles were pretty huge successes. M&B sits on the top of Steam's user reviews for it's category with something like a 96% positive review rate.

This sub-genre has two notable entries. That's it. One of them was a hall of fame, "best ever" title, the other has a 96% positive review rate - Mount and Blade: Warband sold 2.2 Million copies according to Steamspy. This was an indie game released in 2008 that has: Players in the last 2 weeks: 238,634 ± 12,177 (10.8%) - 238,000 players in the last two weeks, in 2016. It's crazy.
http://steamspy.com/app/48700

There's clearly a ton of demand for this genre, it's not being serviced. There are, as far as I know two other entries in the genre including the more recent: Expeditions: Conquistidor (imo a very poor game). Conquistidor sold 130k copies despite being a kinda mediocre title.

Lastly, the genre has lower production costs than most others.

There is a ton of opportunity waiting there for anyone who chooses to develop a solid entry there. Although, if you do, it would probably help to understand why it works so well.

 

No.

You're complicating things. The electric car industry or the rocket industry requires significant capital to start with in order to make it even possible to enter that in industry. The capital that was used to start Tesla and SpaceX was simply what was required to get both companies off the ground, not some superfluous amount that enabled them to create special windows of opportunity. Their actual success above and beyond any other company in that industry is almost totally due to how they marketed themselves (well, Tesla anyway, since they make consumer products).

Anyway, that was just a way of illustrating my argument.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be some amount of need already. I'm not saying you don't have to identify some kind of opportunity. But I'm assuming that you're not talking about inventing a genre, so that opportunity is a given. As I already said multiple times, one of the main factors that makes me think that it isn't worth looking at the market is that IMO the game market is always looking for a well-made game no matter what the genre. As long as you don't butcher the traditional gameplay with some horrible new gameplay invention, it's not going to fail - unless you do something badly wrong by your fans, or totally fail to market it.

But in terms of taking your game beyond that, it's all up to you, not the market. I think it's scapegoating to blame the market for exceptional success or failure. People want to be part of something fun, something big, something cool, something attractive. You attract people by giving them that feeling, and you send them away by destroying that feeling. You need to make your brand, you need to hype your brand, you need to give people that carnival feeling. Just look at all the people at the Star Citizen events? They get given exactly what they want, so they buy ships for thousands of dollars or whatever, and spread the word about your game. That's marketing done right, and that's why they get all the money they've got. People want to be part of that big, cool universe.

 

This is true of any mature industry. It's just sort of how supply and demand work.

If it's easy to produce, people will flood the industry with product: Mobile.
If the tools get easier and resources more plentiful, people will flood the other segments: A, AA.

AAA will eventually cease to exist once it's possible for smaller operations to achieve similar results. There just won't be a distinction anymore at that point. Until then, in order to compete at that level, there are very significant amounts of capital needed to enter that segment of the industry.

I think that I'm currently ahead of the curve on the AA efforts. My output is pretty solid quality, and the cost to value ratio is pretty insane (I think I am out producing at a 10-1 or 20-1 rate currently). But if I can do it, others can too, and they will (and I'm sure many others are right this minute). Then what it takes to be considered AA will be pushed up, competition gets more brutal. Companies like Ketchapp will realize they can just clone AA games as well, etc.

I think there is still opportunity because the resources are changing rapidly. Stuff like the asset store, access to contractors world wide (especially skilled practitioners in 2nd and 3rd world countries), there's a huge wealth of royalty free stuff being released rapidly. Tools are changing and evolving. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that there's more and more stuff out there, and that smaller efforts are capable of achieving more and more.

People will figure out how to better exploit it, tricks and secrets will become common place. The best resources and tools will be disseminated. The industry will mature and it'll take more and more capital to compete... just look at mobile.

 

We were talking about motivation and will before, not market.

Yeah, and in my experience they also often don't want to actually work on that thing. You'll also get a LOT of "idea guys" this way.

Which is why I spoke of "content employees" before. You attract people by paying them cash and send them away when you stop paying cash. The guys who are looking for "fun" can be quite fickle and hard to control. They can also fly away any time they find something cooler. Professional that honors contract won't do that, as long as you treat them adequately and pay for their services.

It is a very bad example. Star Citizen is marketing/development done wrong. The whole thing borders ponzi scheme/Tulip Mania, pretty much, and those guys have missed every deadline they had or promised. The project smells of incompetence.

 

I was referring to the players, not your team. Star Citizen is a shining example of marketing gone right, and the fact that they missed every deadline only strengthens my point. You don't have to miss the deadline, you can do things right, and give your players better value for money, but you do need to know how to make some of that Kool Aid and hand it out.

If @ShadowK wants to talk about the market, ok well there's some stuff to talk about, but IMO it is virtually irrelevant in the face of other factors such as the ability to make a high-quality game, the ability to motivate oneself for years on end when everything is riding on your shoulders, the ability to generate and hold interest and treat the player base the way they like it, and so on. Give me one example of a well-done game in any genre that was a catastrophic failure?

And frankly I just think that the market is always waiting to be told what to like, by people that are able to generate hype and attract people toward their ideas. PewDiePie makes a lot of trends, simply because he can attract people to his opinions and give them the feeling they want, so they play the games that he plays in order to be part of the new trend. You need to be able to tap into a bit of that skill, and hopefully harness the interest of a few people like him, rather than worrying about the perennial ups and downs of the market.

@frosted yeah things are changing and getting harder, like they always are, but there is still plenty of opportunity. Just go to Google Play and you can find tons of examples of games that me or you or anyone here could do better, that get a significant amount of downloads. But it takes work, it takes months or years of work, and that's something that is harder to pull of than it seems.

 

I don't think so. Tulip mania was also marketing done right, until it crashed. And so were many other bubbles.

It is against my moral values to (try to) sell people vapor and something that only "might" happen.

Planescape: Torment. Critical Acclaim, small profit.
Beyond good and Evil: commercial failure.
Psychonauts: Commercial Failure.
Shenmue: Commercial Failure.
Grim Fandango: Commercial Failure.
Okami: Commercial Failure

you can also always check out lists like this:
http://www.gamesradar.com/18-awesome-games-that-died-at-retail/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_failures_in_video_gaming

I can also add Bioshock Infinite to that list, because studio that made it was later closed.

Sigh. I can only say that with those kind of beliefs you're gonna need a lot of luck for your project.

 

Hehe, I'm not saying you have to rip off your players! I'm saying that good marketing is good marketing, that's all.

Planescape Torment:

"Planescape: Torment received widespread critical acclaim upon its release, but only made a small profit."
Not a catastrophic failure, but still not great. It also seems to be a pretty non-mainstream game for its time. What did they do to create the desire for their game?

Beyond good and evil:
Wiki "The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine staff further commented that the lack of marketing from Ubisoft and the game's odd premise naturally reserved it to obscurity. Part of the disappointing sales stemmed from Ubisoft not knowing how to market the title"

Psychonauts:
"With control of the game's rights, Double Fine was able to offer Psychonauts as part of a Humble Bundle in June 2012. As a result, the game sold well, with Schafer stating that they sold more copies of Psychonauts in the first few hours of the Bundle's start than they had since the release of the retail copy of the game."

"In August 2015, Steamspy assumes approx. 1,157,000 owners of the game on the digital distributor Steam alone."

"Schafer indicated that Psychonauts sold nearly 1.7 million copies, with more than 1.2 million occurring after Double Fine's acquisition of the rights."

Proof that marketing is what counts!

Shenmue:
According to wiki cost 47-70 million dollars (in 2001 dollars!) to develop - that's asking for trouble. It sold 1.2 million copes which would be a gigantic success for any of us.

Grim Fandango:
(Wiki)"The game is commonly considered a commercial failure, even though LucasArts stated that "Grim Fandango met domestic expectations and exceeded them worldwide". Tim Schafer has affirmed that the game was profitable."
"Total cumulative worldwide sales are estimated between 100,000 and 500,000 units."

Okami (Wiki):
"Total sales for the game remained under 600,000 total units by March 2009"
Still not too bad for what IMO is a pretty non-mainstream Japanese game.


The thing is that success is different for indies and big-budget studios. None of us are throwing down $50 million for a return of $100 million, we're throwing down a few thousand for a return of a few hundred thousand (or more!).

Virtually all of the examples you gave were huge games for their time which needed mainstream support and failed to get it. That doesn't really apply to us.

If you're Ubisoft, yes the market is more important, and no motivation is not an issue. I thought that was pretty obvious. But for us, it's not like that, it's totally different. If we put in $20k dollars and sell ten thousand copies we've made an insane return on investment, but 10 thousand copies sold is of course a total and utter failure for Ubisoft.

So I repeat, IMO if any of us knock out a decent game in any genre it will be a success for us.

 

I no longer understand what your point is supposed to be. You're jumping from "motivation/will" to "marketing", then start arguing about examples you were provided, saying "it doesn't apply to me!". It totally does. You can have the same kind of disaster at smaller scale.

The point of Shenmue is taht even though it sold many units, it landed in red. That's bad. And you can do the same as indie, if you get unrealistic expectations. When you are in red, the guy with the shotgun that is standing behind you will pull the trigger.

Here's what a disaster for an indie might be:
http://qz.com/94925/this-man-lost-his-house-because-his-kickstarter-was-too-successful/

^^ That's card game, not a video game, but you should get the picture.

Indie or no indie, it is the same thing. If it is your business, not a "fun side project", you'll have bills going your way every month. Profit from your project should at LEAST cover those bills for the time you spent developing it. If that doesn't happen, you shut down.

 

To put it simply, I'm trying to say that analysing the market in order to decide what game to make for commercial success is unimportant compared to the ability to make a well-done game, the ability to motivate oneself (especially as a lone wolf) for years on end through the long, long grind, and the ability to market your game once it's done.

I don't know if you saw that Shenmue's budget was $50 million in 2001 dollars, which makes it utterly irrelevant to us, unless I'm making a wrong assumption about your bank account. When you're dealing with that kind of money, you have a totally different definition of commercial success on a per-unit-sold basis.

It's like me or you turning up to the Olympic 50m sprint and worrying about whether we have the right shoes. Much more important is, can you run like hell?

 

What if you know you're a good runner, but you bought the wrong shoes, because you didn't think it was worth the time researching shoes. If you don't see the value in the thread, why are you posting in it?

 

Are you hiring? (that's a serious question by the way, could use a job).

 

Not in the forseeable future, maybe once this project is done.

 

if @ShadowK only wants to talk about something in particular, I'm certainly not going to try to take the thread in a different direction, I just thought I would reply to what I thought was the premise of the question.

 

Billy are you trolling us? I mean over the past couple of threads it would be one of the best trolls ever.

Walking into a market blind? Never the best idea in any industry, market research and finding out what your customers want is one of THE key elements to success. Because end of the day, they're the ones paying for your game..

It's one of many factors in making a good game, we're treating all these parts as seperate entities when they aren't really. It's all intertwined to create a hollistic product..

Motivation and moral etc. won't be exactly at an all time high when nobody buys anything you do.

 

I liked the first half page of this, it seemed to be going somewhere interesting.

 

I'm sorry you feel that way, but I'm not. It's not walking in blind if, as I said clearly, you're not inventing a new genre. Creative stuff is different from most products, the need is never satisfied, people always want more novels and more movies and more games. Authors this year didn't have to check if there was still a market for action novels or drama novels, since there has been a market ever since Homer wrote the Ilyad. So in some ways, your game is competing, but not really. It's not as if Call of Duty satisfied the FPS market, and so it's not worth making an FPS any more.

If you make a multiplayer-only game, as I said, it's different because you're competing for a regular piece of people's time over a long period of time. But a singleplayer game, one finishes and players need another to take its place.

I would be interested to know exactly what aspect of the games market that you think needs to be read properly in order to put out a successful singleplayer game? In my opinion it's more important to engage with your players and generate interest, rather than trying to analyse the market.

 

Engaging with your players is a part of "analysing" the market as you'll get feedback (that's what alphas and beta's are for), what do I think needs to be read properly? Well this is what this thread is all about. So as @tiggus said, lets keep it on topic and get to the bottom of it (if we can).

..............................................................................................................................................................................

It's always a catch 22, chances of being succesful is higher if you already have a reputation. Although to gain said reputation you have to release something successful (at least relatively) in the first place. One thing I noticed, games that have attempted to go past the realms of mere "indie" have mainly had a lot of coverage.. Take Allison Road for example, it's a silent hill based thing made in Unreal engine. It took seven months (apparently) to even make that small demo.

Although it's already recieving more attention / funding etc. than most indie games combined. It was plucked from a WIP post on the forums, there was no real "marketing".

I believe it's to do with a AAA drought, we get the odd games like Witcher 3 once in a blue moon but the release schedule has dived hard (you can tell by the amount of A / AA / AAA releases on Xbox 360 vs. Xbox one / PS4). Not saying AR looks bad or anything, but it'll never be a AAA game made by 700 staff but it seems that doesn't really matter at all..

Based on that I've always wondered when people say there is no gurantee if that's actually true? Is there really games that look better than silent hill and play just as well out there that got released and failed miserably? Is it because it failed and nobody knew about it or did it ever get made in the first place?

There's obviously a big risk with making larger / complex / super graphically awesome games. Like it can collapse under its own weight, I've seen Indie's to AAA's go under due to projects where they bit off more than they could chew.

If you go down this path, it could really bite you in the rear in so many ways.. Although, I still believe your chance of success is higher than generic indie that will fade into the void. I can seriously understand why most would avoid, because it's such a massive risk, it's a world of pain, it's hard beyond belief and an utter time sink.

 

I think the problem is nobody is actually talking about any realistic or specific stuff.

@Billy4184 just wants to talk about his ideals and dreams, and @ShadowK just wants to tell him he's being naive.

But nobody wants to really talk about numbers or material experience, actual research, detailed analysis, etc. I think it's just people blowing off steam or chatting. Or maybe it's that nobody in this thread has any eff'n idea what they're talking about (myself included).

Unless we're actually talking about numbers, about actual starting points, real examples, actual amounts of exposure, realistic costs, this is the best we can hope for.

 

I was going to suggest something similar as Azmar - though maybe from a slightly diverged direction. Then the thread decided to veer off the cliff about motivation and market research - so I became unmotivated.

Isn't there a middle ground not considered - a medium size scoped game that has highly polished, beautiful art. I don't want to get into AAA / indie stuff because it's just distracting, but one of the elements that denotes AAA games is length. (Shadow - you just mentioned something similar above)
The middle ground is the indie developing a medium length - high quality game that is neither white noise quick to market content, nor going large competing with games that really, really, really want to be considered AAA.

What can be accomplished realistically in 6 months or 1 year? I think 1 year is manageable though solo, it seems like it would feel like a long development time, though I'm not thoroughly experienced on the solo indie development process of doing EVERYTHING yourself.
Can a 6-8-10 hour game play experience be created with a high level of polished art in 1 year? If so I think that is really the spot very experienced sole indies should be shooting for.
This also puts the game in a middle area (price range). It could be a great place to be, as good as more expensive games for less price, or slightly more expensive than cheaper games but worth it because of high end gameplay and visuals.

 

Not to keep tooting my own horn, but I think my project is a nice entry almost exactly here. A solid AA game, with a production cycle in that range. Low costs in terms of overall production, a nice balance between game play / mechanical design and efforts in presentation.

It's something realistic to hit, while still being a real genre entry (a real game).

Just open Steam up, search for $35 releases within the last 2 or so years, or $20 titles released in the last 5 years. You'll find tons of stuff that's achievable.

 

It looks like my point went flying over your head. I'm saying that a 'detailed analysis' is a total and utter waste of time when the market has always and will always accept new games from traditional genres such as RPG, FPS, RTS whatever, and that it is much more important to focus on whether you know the genre, you know how to make games, and you know how to engage with your players.

I'm not going on about my 'dreams and ideals' ????? Am I talking in some other language?

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say, since it seems that @ShadowK is not interested in talking about anything except the market. I'm sort of interested to hear whatever he knows or wants to discuss about the market, but so far there's nothing specific, and this thread is nothing but the usual opinionated stuff that goes on in a million other threads around here.

 

@theANMATOR2b @frosted

Yes, it is all about the middle ground.. Gotta remember a lot of A / AA outfits went bust at the last credit cruch.. There's still a gaping hole in the segment and in / or around it.

I was trying to avoid specifics because it'd just be a long drawn out version about what I'm doing and why..

So for example, the plan is to break even (if at all possible) and I calculated I'd need roughly around 125K sales. Now if I was to fall flat on my face and for some reason only get 1K sales, that's fine I've accounted for it.. (it would be the end of those type's of projects though)..

I could alleviate a lot of fiscal risk by just doing something different, I could put a H&S together in six months and release it in beta to be vetted. Then I'd probably need around 10K sales? With the competition, is that even a reasonable number?

When researching the market, again the gaping hole seems to be A / AA market subsection to fill in between AAA releases but that still takes a lot of time and money.. For a small team you're looking three years (at least) full time, so I'm working on a Sci-Fi RPG.. What I class as "AA" now would be akin to the original mass effect and / or Dragon age (with a fresh coat of paint)..

So maybe come in somewhere below that, with 10 - 15 hours gameplay and cutting enough corners to get by. Most indie's still can't come anywhere near that..

Again @frosted, my definition of "AA" compared to yours is radically different. I see it as squarely small indie, but you've been smart picking a niche that could be just as succesful and will allow a follow up of a much larger scale / design.

If you want more specifics, you're going to have to tell me exactly what you're looking for?

 

Fair, again, my design should be a solid competitor of this title:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/276810/

At a $40 price point, I consider this a solid AA entry. I will never be able to compete with the Warhammer License, but in terms of the functionality and stuff - the vast majority of it is quite achievable. In some ways my design exceeds theirs in complexity, in other ways theirs is beyond my reach, but there's a lot of commonality. I do hope to fix some of the game play problems they had and improve on the design.

There's really a ton of stuff out there on Steam. You can break down games in this price range and below and see stuff that is very realistic for three guys, two guys, or even...possibly... one guy to do.

There's a huge difference between a solo effort and a two guy effort. If I had a skilled dedicated artist working with me, I'm absolutely certain my game could swim in the same waters. Wihtout one, we'll have to see how the freelancers work out

 

Edit:

Ultimatley I believe it comes down to this, you got to be honest with yourself and probably find the middle ground. I'm in no way trying to do the AA / AAA thing, been down that rabbit hole and it was a waste of time.

Now I don't even care about labels.. In the back of my mind I'll always have that niggling feeling, what if I just released the top down? How would things have gone?

But ultimatley, logic dictates if everyone else can do it then you're not going to stick out. This applies to more than games, you need something to differentiate yourself..

Now I've reflected through this thread, I believe I made the right choice.

 

Managing playtesting in a pre-alpha state with an under budgetted mid sized project is a really difficult thing to do. I think that I'm being quite honest and accurate in terms of where my project is/will be in comparison to it's genre. I've had some extremely positive feedback, including guys who've already made gameplay video. There's been some negative feedback as well, most of it very useful. At the 3 month point, this project is kicking ass.

Ultimately, we'll have to see where the game is in a few months. Time will tell if I can deliver, and how much I can deliver.

That said, even if I personally can't reach the goal for whatever reasons, I'm going to come close enough that it's absolutely possible for someone just a bit more experienced, just a bit more clever, just a bit more talented to close the gap. If I can come close, there's another guy out there, somewhere who can cross the finish line.

Here's the real point: I can build something very close to that game for around $30,000. My next title, I should be able to achieve similar results at around $15,000 or $20,000 in costs as my skills will improve. I'm also far from 'the best' - others will be able to beat my costs and my results.

 

As a side note, something that may seem like clever plan in retrospect, may in reality have just been a coincidence, rather than a well thought out plan. .

A good friend of mine was the character lead on torchlight, when I asked him about this giggled quite a bit, then explained how "planning" wasn't a feature of that project.

 

Yeah, but it almost seemed like the thread was going in the direction of more specifics(and thankfully now has again). I do my best to keep my mouth shut and just read when people start discussing the actual marketing and financial aspects of game making because I have no experience with it, but I like to learn from those who do.

I would love to release a financially viable game some day on my own but I have yet to see how it could support me so this is a topic I am always interested in. Billy's viewpoint is too simplistic when I have mouths to feed in my house, you have to stack the odds in your favor beyond simply making a good game.

 

The first suggestion is:
- Don't go solo.

I'm trying to do it, but I've put in enough work to understand that it's dumb.

The reality is that a well oiled two person effort is a 120% improvement in terms of productivity. Just in terms of being able to discuss issues, put 4 eyes on a problem, bounce ideas, divide work load... but most importantly to double check eachother and keep track of more stuff. Having another brain there to make sure things don't get overlooked or forgotten.

There can be time loss as well if there are disagreements and the like, but if you can get a smooth operating team of two (or even three) - your possibilities and the likelihood of success expand dramatically.

Going one man is for the foolish (says the guy who is one manning a project).

Also, feel free to chime in. This thread is just the blind bumbling around other blind guys as they bump into walls.

 

First, I wanted to say thanks, you're putting a lot of solid advice out there and have been for awhile. I find the accounts by you, JoeStrout, Shadow, and some others who are willing to share their journeys very valuable.

Now to your point, I think my main issue is finding that partner as I have thought for awhile I need one. I've spent probably around 10k on this as a hobby making various prototypes, mainly art(substance db, characters, animation packs, etc.) as well as some Unity assets. I even popped for some voice acting for one of them.

At first I thought I had it figured out as my best friend of 20+ years is super into gaming and we always talk about starting a business together. The problem is there are multiple warning signs that he has issues sticking with things and he doesn't really possess any particular skill that would help a project right now beyond ideas and playtesting. So my search continues for that yin to my yang - ideally it would be an awesome artist but the ones I know in that field are into more traditional art and not games.

 

I'm going to disagree with this slightly, I'd recommend not going solo if you're not a jack of all trades. I wouldn't say I'm particularily great at anything, just good at a lot of things.. I can do art / code / make music / do VFX and shaders etc.

Reason being, you'll find yourself between a rock and a hard place. I've contracted out before, recieved some art that looks fine in engine until you lightmap it and find all the UV mapping is messed up etc.

I've had "investors" give me contracts I just threw out the window, there's many parts to it.

I'm one of those who is more than happy to work by myself, even though I understand I simply can't produce enough content by myself to get this game out.

 

Listen to those warning signs, don't ruin a good friendship!

Locking down a partner is really hard, the odds on finding someone who wants to seriously dedicate to such a risky venture (especially when it's still risky and unproven and you need the help the most) is a long shot. Then mix in the fact that people's visions and goals differ and you could really have some major problems. Everyone needs to be 100% on board, and the vision needs to be 100% clear and shared.

I actually tried to bring my girlfriend on board for a while, but yeah... pretty bad idea if you want to keep your relationship or your project on track.

Although my case, I am definitely in an art deficit. The real problem is just not enough brain space to track everything.

There's also problems with play testing and the like - there's just a huge advantage to having someone else who has an understand of the goals and systems you can at least discuss details with or share responsibilities.

Let's say that I can keep track of 95% of the things I need to, but about 1 in 20 things gets lost. If I can find someone else who has a 95% chance of keeping track of stuff, the only time something is missed entirely is when both of us miss the same item at the same time. It sounds stupid, but I think it can be a really big deal.

As much as I'd love to have an artist partner, I could do with someone absolutely non productive who just handles some of the organizational workload. Or at the very least can be a consistent, up to date sounding board.

 

Well, I did offer ..

 

Yeah, but let's be honest - we both have different visions and I have a feeling we're both the kinds of guys who need to be at the steering wheel

If you want to come on board, the doors still open. But I gotta drive!

 

Yeah, I decided against it after coming real close. The deal I thought would work best would be if we both quit our jobs and dedicated our fulltime for about a year to making the game. No hassle with salaries, we would each be responsible for paying ourselves. Any expenses we would split evenly as long as we both agreed they were necessary.

In the end I trusted my gut and backed out, and I am pretty open to taking risks. I would like to find someone like him who is an artist and give it a shot but the likelihood is very small, I wouldn't even know how that could work without knowing them for years beforehand.

 

That's the thing, when you work in a team you have to bend alot.. Like the game I'm working on has been shaped and moulded not by just the gamers but the team itself to the point it's not really the game I started with and / or envisioned.. Which ain't a bad thing, I agree with 90% of what they say.

It'll be all the better for it it though, this is another scenario where being a solo dev is to your benefit. Although unless you pump a lot of money into it will invariably put restrictions on the scope of your project.

 

That is really hard to achieve though. At least in my experience.

I couldn't imagine either. Even with people that I've known for many years I'd be skeptical.
I'd have a lot less reservations against hiring people for specific clearly defined tasks. I think in a way it is a lot easier to hire and deal with a professional freelancer than find your "developer soulmate" that you will trust to stick with you and the project both in good and bad times.