Question Game market and monetization today. How is the game market now?

The smartest way is to predict the market. Somehow somewhere people get insight and take a risk that blow. How many smart people have failed until a hit is recognised?

 

Not sure about the people, but Rovio is a great example, considering that they've kinda got their insight from Crush the Castle.

 

I remember Angry Birds got ridiculous amounts of press coverage for multiple years. The game was probably a hit on its own but Rovio must have had some serious contacts and they knew how to make the most of it.

 

Do you think that is valid for most games at all?
I.e. minecraft, flappybirds, factorio, forthinight, or even LoL?

They didn't happen because market was predicted. They happened, because people thought it is cool to make them at that time. Or in case of forthnight, they had to do something interesting, to get from the bottom.

 

Actually, it is said that Angry Birds was based off flash game called "Crush the Castle". Which never reached the same level of popularity.

This is spot on.
minecraft was an accident, and there were several possible contenders, like infinieminer. flappybird was an accident. Factorio was iterative design, almost valve style. Forthnight was an accident - they quickly reused assets to convert their game into battle royale.

As they say "the right man at the wrong place..."

 

You are right for some games! successful lightsaber game on quest was a vr hit. That was a surprise!

Blizzard releasing a RPG (Diablo) on mobile is no accident. Can be said for many similar strategic releases.

 

Eh, i wouldn't call that a conversion. They had the "original" Fortnite (Save the World) and then they just introduced another playmode.

 

They "just" added multi-player up to 99 vs 4, in an open world vs small level. The "just" is not wrong, but it's a bit stretched by the massive retooling needed.

 

That is a conversion, since the original was a survival zombie game.

 

Was it truly a surprise though? Star Wars and lightsabers are both insanely popular.

 

It isn't a conversion by any means. Outside of "Save the World", Fortnite also has "Fortnite Creative", which was released after the introduction of the Battle Royale game mode, which i doubt that anyone would call "a conversion from "Save the World"". Both BR and FC are immensely popular, and AFAIK you can play all three of them (StW, BR, FC), which doesn't sound like a project that was converted but rather a basegame with three game modes.

 

the work of experts who are experts because they have a long history of "doing" appears simple to those who've never done.

 

It was. I think there were a number of similar games made for different platforms before Angry Birds. But Angry Birds did make it to the front page of Appstore somehow and it was the game many new iphone users downloaded first.

 

The game genre is artillery, crush the castle and angry bird are in a sub genre of that. It's quite old.