Thinking of the game as a product

How important is it to think of a game as a product, created for other people or a specific audience? I was thinking about other industries and how it would differ. Like if I was someone like Canon/Nikon building a camera, I'd definitely be thinking of it in terms of a product, carefully considering the audience and market, with features intended to meet a very specific bracket of price ranges and types of customers, and most likely I wouldn't be creating said camera 'because I like making cameras'. Once a company is churning out many many individual products - like 50-100 skus at least, the focus is much different to 'because I like these kind' or 'i made this for myself and other people might like it'. Its a business.

So do you think it's important to think of a game as a specific product, designed for specific people, with marketing built in, with the careful intention at all steps of development to create something that people will want/use, or does this somehow take the personal joy out of development? Does our attitude about who the game is for change what kind of games are made? I mean, like AAA games are really big BUSINESS, for particular audiences, not making games with hobbyist-like interests or indie-level attitudes?

 

If you don't love games you have no business making them.

 

We are making a game targeted at a specific audience and our marketing will certainly focus on that audience. It does not take the joy of development for any of us. Actually, it is rather nice to have a focus and not have to worry about the masses of gamers out there and what they need.

 

In a sense a game is basically like any other product as far as inputs to design.

If you were going into your wood shop to build a table for your friends what you build really depends on what problems the table needs to solve and the wishes of the friend. Maybe their existing table is wobbly, doesn't seat enough people, and they really like the lightly varnished natural wood grain look. Then there are your personal design preferences. Maybe 400 year old reclaimed wood from a Mexican Hacienda would make an awesome top; can we afford that? Curiously a plain wood top with aged paint on the legs looks awesome.

Kind of abstract but you get the idea.

 

It would be influenced by why you are making the game. If you are making the product in order to make money then you need to pay attention to the market & what they want or would be willing to try (this therefore covers attracting people to try something they may not have otherwise considered). If you are making it purely for the fun, to get the idea out of your head so you can think about something else for a while, & don't care about making any money (though you wouldn't say no if people offered you some) then paying attention to what the market wants isn't of importance to you.

There will be people & situations where these extremes will mix & match & attain an equilibrium that the people making the product are still happy with.

 

I don't really follow. If you aren't thinking about your players... then who would you be thinking about?

 

If you sell it, of course it's a product like any other piece of software. Doesn't mean you don't care about it, even if it's created by big corporation still doesn't mean they don't care about it either.. Just takes more money to fill the pot and they have more money to make more of them.

Games can never be a multi-SKU type setup, because it's supposed to be an interactive entertainment setup. You don't see teams working on 150 films at a time do ya?

What's all this about anyway? After the last thread, something up?

 

Yourself of course, which is the case with many developers especially indies.

 

I am a bit in-between motivations at the moment and trying to decide whether I want to keep moving forward with game development or not, or in what form. I know that I want to focus more on the art side, but I am unclear in what way as yet. So I'm trying to look deeper at what the motivations are or what the purpose is.

 

Build it & they will come


There's a market for basically everything these days, it's just the size of the market that differs. Make what you want so you enjoy making it, playing it, & showing it to others.

 

No, build it and they will not come. Build it and it will sit there with nobody knowing about it. You have to market in order to get people to come.

Its all very well 'making what I want' but if that totally disregards what other people want, what business do I have expecting anyone else to like it or want it, except 'by accident'? You can't really run a business 'predictably' based on such a random chance of failure.

 

Well it depends on what you're looking to get out of it? I made a longer explanation in the other thread.

 

@imaginaryhuman - you should not make games unless they are also enjoyable for you. Your games will flop and you will waste your time. You cannot math a game together. It's something that takes genuine interest and enjoyment.

It's not something you can fake easily, and therefore isn't a good idea for business without the prerequisite enjoyment. I attempted to be succinct:

 

Imho it depends on what your game is about and what your goals are. Optimal strategies might differ if you want to advance social change with your game or just try to make money off of it.

I can relate. I've always been torn what I really would want to do as my job and I'm not entirely sure yet myself.
I'm also not sure the topic is the most helpful vector of approach to that question. What options do you have, what can you do, how big is the financial pressure on you and how much risk are you willing or able to take?

 

You really think King, Zynga and their ilk don't math their games together? You really think their overworked developers love making the next clone that is a slight variation on their (or someone else's) existing IP?

My take: it is unlikely, as a small indie, that you will be able to maintain the stamina to deliver good games if you aren't building something you love, or at least like.

 

To be honest, most of the time, a game IS a product. You said that a lot of indies make games for themselves. I quite disagree, everyone wants someone else to play theire game. No one wants to make a great game but never let it be played by anyone else. But if you aren't making money out of it, then tecnically it ain't a product.

The way you should be thinking about it is this : do you want to make game development your life? Do you want revenue from your game? If yes, then you should stop thinking that game development is merely self acomplishment, for it is not anymore. The minute you wish to make it into a buisiness is the same minute you should start considering a few questions, what is my target audience? What do these people like? What do they dislike? What game mechanics are less expensive to implement while still having the biggest fun? These are all buisiness related questions. While @hippocoder is right in regards to the part that you have to have joy and love for the development, you also can't forget that it's still a buisiness.

 

I agree with @JohnnyA, I certainly don't think it is impossible to 'math a game together', and I think it is dangerous for developers to be unaware of how much successful games are 'mathed' together. I think the difficulty lies in being a solo developer. You have to love what you do, but you have to be able to look at it coldly. In a small team of people, it is much easier as, only a couple of people need to be passionate to create the story/artwork (or none if the game is simple enough), and the rest could be stone-faced psychologists and accountants. So as a solo developer, it is obviously great to be doing it for enjoyment, but failure to understand the truths of game psychology and monetization economics, especially in the current state of game development, will leave you far, far behind your numerous competitors.

Whether or not the developers are aware of it, every single highly successful game is one whose success can be studied scientifically. I read an article once that analyzed Candy Crush (I think) in terms of gambling psychology, and there was a lot to read.

If you want your game to be a carefully constructed work of art, if you are a good artist, it could be very successful but I don't think I need to point out how much more work goes into the more artistically crafted games such as Machinarium or something, and you won't make anywhere near as much as those making addictive games whose mechanics are designed to touch psychological triggers in their players.

My advice is to create a story that you love with mechanics that are designed to work. That way you don't have to wait around (forever) for large numbers of people to find the beauty in all of your hours of work.

 

I believe that needs to be balance to both of these arguments. A game can be either a product of passion or a thought out business plan. A great game is a successful merger of the two.

 

My greatest (and most likely accurate) fear is that after building my game, I won't want to play it. I'm sure I will, but I know from experience that I won't enjoy it nearly as much as others. Once you peek behind the curtain, games tend to lose their magic.

So sadly, I will never get to truly enjoy my dream game.

 

I believe this very much depends on the type of game you're making.
If it's a story driven game then by the time you finished it you would have already went through the story like hundred times.
But if the accent is on multiplayer experience, like in fps or mmo games, then the only way for you to enjoy it is after you release the game.

 

The indie market isn't about convincing everybody to buy your product. Just enough people so that you can keep doing business.

You're carving a niche- building an audience of people that will buy games from you because they feel they have a connection with you and your works. That kind of personal connection is one of the edges we can leverage over AAA products.

If you can effectively communicate why you care so much about a project, and do it long enough, and in the right places, chances are you will connect with other people who care or are willing to care about the same thing. That's where working on something you love can be a huge benefit- your passion can be seen.

Putting out lots of small products in a short amount of time is just another way of building an audience- if each product brings a 50-100 more people into contact with you, you can leverage those connections later to sell more products to the same people, they are already familiar with your brand, so there is a higher chance they'll buy again. If you can't find your way to be passionate about the small projects with less investment, then you just have to take a longer route than that.

Build it and they will come is only true providing they've been there before and they have a relationship with you, or they have a reason to seek out what you're building.

 

@LMan

In two threads you've made a lot of sense, I'm not sure what to make of it.. Might get @hippocoder to ban you ...

(Joking of course).

 

Make what you want, but keep in the back of your mind that you'll show this to other people. That's all. Make what you want, in a way you want, but make it in a way that it's as easy as possible for other people to see why you like it.

Don't make what other people want. If you don't want it yourself, you won't *get* why people want it in the first place and you'll get it wrong.

 

While I agree with this, I think that there are so many indies that care a lot about their work that that reason alone is not enough to attract people. From what I've seen, the people who attract a lot of attention in the indie scene are the indie veterans who have been active on forums, game jamming, modding and developing stuff for a decade or more. These are the people who are interesting to the audience that one is trying to sell games to, because they can be depended upon to produce good quality work and draw from their experience to provide interesting information on game development to fellow budding game developers.

From what I've seen so far, I think that the correct approach to cultivating an audience is a fine line between good old fashioned marketing principles and connection through shared passion. People might be sick and tired of cold, hard-nosed publishers but they also want to see skilled devs who work hard, produce consistent high quality work and who have enough business sense to survive the overblown market.