Choosing to be a newbie in a genre

I was thinking about how to think outside the box, and I wondered what would happen if someone with no experience in a particular genre chose to make a game for that genre. ie instead of making your favorite type of game, maybe make a game that you would normally have little interest in ..... I wonder if that would allow you to leverage your naivety and green-ness to actually give you a 'fresh take' on it, and maybe come up with something less cookie-cutter and more original? Like I never play RPGs or FPSs, so I imagine if I were to make one of these kind of games it would be very... unlike the rest. I guess this could turn out to be a bad thing if the genre is very entrenched and people don't like change, or a really good thing if it has become stale?

 

I think if you don't feel passionate about something you won't enjoy it as much. So unless it is a paid job for a client, most folks would be better off making a game that they really want to make. That said, it helps to look at things through the eyes of others rather than become entrenched in your own desires for the game, especially if you want other people to play it.

 

I have mixed feelings about this. If you come to a genre without experience in it, you're likely to both (a) repeat a lot of mistakes the genre has already committed and solved, and (b) needlessly ignore useful conventions. On the latter point, for example, there are probably control schemes that work great, and most players already know them, and you're not really being innovative by swapping the attack and jump buttons (or whatever).

But on the other hand, genres do often become entrenched and stop innovating. My favorite example is fighting games, which went through a cycle of: hard-core players demanded more complexity; developers made games with more complexity, which drove away all but the hard-core players; remaining players demanded even more complexity; developers came to believe that only a complex fighting game could sell at all. Then Nintendo came along with Super Smash Bros, which all the hard-core fighter players sneered at, and it made more money than all the other fighting games combined. They made the fighting game fresh, fun, and accessible again.

But I doubt they did this by being ignorant of the conventions of the genre. I suspect they understood fighting games very well, and broke conventions deliberately, quite mindful of what they were doing.

So, in the end, I suspect that's the answer... ignorance gives you a small chance of innovating successfully, but you get a much better chance by knowing the genre well, understanding what ruts it is stuck in, and breaking out of them intentionally.

 

I think a lot of people don't realize how much trial and error has gone into many existing conventions.

One of the first things I did with unity was build a prototype turn based tactical that didn't run off of hitpoints. Instead it had a kind of wound system with bleeding and stuff.

Experimenting with this kind of 'novel' system really taught me a lot about why we end up using friggin hitpoints for everything. There were so many problems in how it's presented, so many additional elements that need to be communicated and often for a really inferior experience overall.

It's not so much that "nobody has thought of making non-hp based systems" its really more that breaking convention is often times a lot of additional work for very little actual reward. After building that prototype, I sort of imagined that the same mess I was looking at, at that moment, was probably pretty similar to what hundreds of other failed prototypes before it looked like.

 

First thing to consider is what is genre? For the most part it's the expectations people have about collection of works. The next question is are those expectations actually inherent?

Part of the problem is that what defines genre in gaming is kind of weird. Sometimes they are a collection of mechanics that have been heavily vetted over the years, like with FPS, but sometimes it's a vague expectation of what the genre delivers, like story and character progression in an RPG. Saying you're going to reinvent the RPG is vapid, because what an RPG is has no real form. The flip side is saying you're going to reinvent the FPS and you're going to hear cries of

because what defines FPS are a collection of mechanics that have been built up over time to deal with the issues of those mechanics.

 

My fear isn't that you'd have trouble making a game in the genre that you'd end up enjoying. My fear is you'd have a complete lack of understanding of the business of that genre of games.

Let's use the most overt example: A freemium mobile time-gated game. Unless you have a HUGE quantity of experience with the metrics of creating a game of that nature you're almost certain to fail. That particular genre (if we can actually call it that) is entirely based around proper ARPU, engagement, and literally fractions of pennies separate winners from losers (as paid for traffic acquisition in a positive ROI settings IS the way to profit).

There's simply no way as a green entrant to really nail these factors down into a formulaic system... so you'd be relying on blind luck.

Other genres may actually be easier, so it will depend on your overall business experience and the genre you plan on inserting yourself into.

 

I think this is more about the degree of saturation and competition. The reason the margins are so small in this field is due to the massive oversaturation in the market.

Comparing a game to its competition is relevant for every genre, but f2p is pretty extreme. If you're looking at a large scale f2p like hearthstone, the calculations are also extremely different.

I think the OP is really talking about about enjoyable experience though rather than ARPU.

 

Wow Joe - You pretty much eloquently wrote what my brain was saying to me.

But to support OP I believe there is a lot of room for innovation in the super small, simple ultra casual game (I don't like that term) - with MVP like game controls. These games which are essentially one button click control games - that get old fast - imo.
With an experienced developer performing proper research up front and finding areas to improve - adding in subtle innovation to these type games to increase the desire to continue playing, I think this is where innovation is desired at this time in - space.

 

i say don't go for a genre you don't like coz you ll be bad.
keep focused on a genre you love and just think about all those sweet things you'd want in it...
cherish your dream and make it happen...
unless you're a 3d vet that cant take on every style, every genre

 

If you aren't particularly well versed in a genre, but are clearly trying to make something in that genre, you might be on a collision course for failure. Now if you are just playing around and find that what you made is sort of like X genre, you might be in good territory.

If you have a game that is sort of like an RTS game, congrats, because you've made either sim city or dwarf fortress.
If you made a game, vaguely aware of what an FPS is, "congrats," you made Turok.

 

I'd pretty much get bored, making yourself create or play a game you're obviously not interested in doesn't bode well for motivation. Neither does it bode well for making a game with care and passion, you'd try to get through it as quickly as possible.

The reason for stale? Well most idea's have been done in most genre's, AAA's stick to a formula. As much as we like to believe games are an artform, there are certain formula's guaranteed for success just like pop music. They don't call it "popular music" for no reason, whether a minority of people dislike it is irrelevant as long as it makes lots of money.

I'm personally not a fan of pop, but every now and again something comes on that I do actually like. So of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but a rarity or fluke in some cases.

One of the biggest things that happened which was really cool over the last decade was the loss of boundary between genre's. Like Fallout mixing RPG elements with an FPS game, might not sound exciting now but there was a lot of buzz a while back ago.

The only teams that will make an RPG / FPS with new ideas / interesting concepts is mid sized indies and besides CD Projekt Red (who can most definitely now be classed as AAA) they have all disappeared into a black hole. So I gather it's the small indies with big ideas who might shape the scope at some point. Tools are better, but it only gets you so far....

I've heard of some very interesting "bigish" stuff coming from small(ish) indies over the next couple of years, it'll be interesting if they get it out the door.

 

How about calling it the "Art of Repetition"?

 

So imagine you said hey I dont like roguelikes they are just too difficult, I cant beat them, any of them. Now people that like roguelikes seem to like it rock hard, but I dont, maybe there are people like me - so Im going to add in a difficulty select. So instead of making the game for that particular type of gamer your like Im going to make a game in this genre for people who dont like it.

I dont like football games, Im going to give them bazookas instead (and maybe appeal to non-football fans). Maybe you'll end up with something like rocketleague.

 

This can also happen by taking innovation too far. With Tap Happy, my innovations included a pre-defined ending, simplifying the upgrade path, and stories. People liked the stories, and the other two were a disaster. I innovated too far - ending up with a product, that even I can now see was a bad idea. And, I was definitely, definitely NOT new to the genre.

And at the same time, I learned from my mistake.

Before starting my podcast, I spent weeks researching what was already working for others - timing, style, and the balance of stories vs content. Then, my core innovation was my own personal content centered around game design. It's one of the best products I've ever produced. I leveled up!

Gigi

 

Perhaps this wasn't an issue of innovating too much, but not giving those innovations enough time, attention and care to really polish and execute well enough to offer a compelling alternative to convention.

I don't think that innovation itself is ever bad, and I think most gamers love it when they encounter something really novel. But they expect the level of execution to match a more conventional mechanic/approach. Getting novel ideas to the same level of polish and excellence can easily take somewhere in the range of 10 to 100x more time and effort. We're talking potentially exponential amounts of additional work.

We can definitely choose to 'attempt to innovate' too many things and build a workload that's impossible to execute on well, but I don't think that there are many instances of games that are simply too innovative (where the innovations are executed to the same polish as an old standby mechanic would have been).

 

Yeah but if your making a game that uses the standard approach then your already going to be competing with the games that do it the same (and its going to have better then the best anyway). Look at superhot rather than trying to compete against all the AAA FPS games out there, they added a novel mechanic (time moves when you move) and it took the gaming scene by storm. Say you were making a topdown shooter, then you got to compete with binding of issac, hotline miami etc etc, but if your like Im going to add the ability to reflect all my shots back at the enemies (now you've got something thats unique).

 

@Aiursrage2k - May I offer unsolicited advice? When you start a reply with "yeah but", you alienate half the readers. When you end with 'But if", you alienate half of the remaining folks. You might enjoy the "Yes And" story in Ep4, at 08:00.

Gigi

 

I don't think this is really the case. You don't generally compete with other games based on mechanical differences. Most of the time games are compared on a more aesthetic basis.

You take Hotline Miami which has really extreme mechanics and mechanical feel, you make the theme Die Hard (the original of course), where you're fighting eastern european terrorists that have taken your building hostage... totally different game, even though the mechanics could be almost identical. And that's the case of Hotline Miami where the mechanics are actually a bit of an extreme in terms of pacing and stuff. Speaking of pacing, you could also just slow down the movement speed and create an entirely different feel for the game as well.

People generally pick a genre because they like the mechanics at play already, often they're just looking for the same kinds of interaction with a different narrative/theme/level design/upgrade choices... the same but slightly different.

It's worth noting that this is the same in almost all entertainment genre as well, take sitcoms for great example. Almost all sitcoms are mechanically identical, they just reskin the characters, add a different thematic element. The same could be said for almost any genre of tv or film. People like the familiar presented to them in a way that feels different.

 

@frosted - Too true. Sense8 is Lost, with a new theme. WoW was EQ with better questing. Hearthstone is MagicTG appealing to a broader audience.

Gigi

 

Hearthstone vs MTG is a great example.

Hearthstone = "Well, MTG is a cool game with cards, but if you want to play it on a computer there's too much waiting for the other person - how can we make MTG play faster?" - they took out instants, made the combat less interactive (defender doesn't do anything, so the attacker doesn't have to wait for them to do anything), and finished up with a AAA visual treatment.

Thematically it's quite different, but I guess this is more of an example of iterating on mechanics. Seemingly small changes producing something that feels entirely different.

 

Very true, even from me as a gamers perspective not a dev. I'm not really fussed about originality, I'd be happy with more decent games. The market seems pretty dry at the moment, especially on console..

 

You guys - make me think about things I never even considered. STOP IT!

I've never played Hearthstone, but doesn't that game kind of represent @imaginaryhuman 's original thought?
Though for totally different motivations (follow the $$$) Blizzard never had any experience with card games (did they?)
They took a chance on a prototype - though with only 5 people to begin with (if memory is correct). I'm sure there were more than a couple employees who weren't excited initially about working on a card game.

 

If you have time, both of these talks about the design of hearthstone are really interesting with good pointers.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224101/Video_Building_the_AI_for_Hearthstone.php

This ones almost an hour but worth listening to
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/219821/Video_10_pieces_of_Hearthstone_design_wisdom.php#comments


For the OP, instead of going straight into a genre/style you are unfamiliar with merge one with what you are familiar with. What don't you like about a specific genre? What do you like about a specific genre? Can you swap out bits & get something new that works?

 

@tedthebug - Good find, thanks for sharing.

 

I was watching total biscuits video on the game "xenoside" and the last 2 minutes or so he pretty much sum up my opinion.

To paraphrase...

 

He reviewed a game that doesn't have an adequate feature set and says that he wishes they did a better job copying the game in genre that he likes the most.

"If I were to suggest how to improve it I'd say look at nation red, do what that game did only either better or do something a little bit different, just put a a little bit of spin on the formula because this is this is the bare bones of a game that really doesnt have anything to write home about..."

He basically suggests they do exactly what I said:
"People generally pick a genre because they like the mechanics at play already, often they're just looking for the same kinds of interaction with a different narrative/theme/level design/upgrade choices... the same but slightly different."

 

My guess is the trick is to get the elements the most people find fun and drop or do something different with the rest.

I do think it is important to get a grip on what people find fun or not fun and understand the type of player you are including or excluding with your design.

WoW actually threw out a bunch of things MMOs traditionally had and just kept the things they liked.