[...] your way to a game dev fortune

I think there is reskinning and the practice of reskinning, that's not the same thing. Theoretically reskinning is what you say, in practice it's shoddy game flipping.

So even though you talk about a theorical idea, people only see the practice.

 

Yes, these are perfect examples. That is reskinning. It is the same game presented differently and released as a new game.

 

To pick popular example in our face: angry bird and temple run ... they had alternative version, more so for temple run than angry bird who kept the same base character.

 

Rovio is a fantastic example with things like angry birds star wars. They took a "already fun and successful" game and wrapped it up in an "already successful" IP to appeal to a semi-different audience as well as a huge existing audience. They really are doing it right.

 

So now I am interested in knowing what is this "bad reskinning" people mentioned?

What are the bad ones doing that is different from what the AAA companies and other game devs are doing that is not seen as bad?

 

I think you're about as far out as the moons of Jupiter, what we seem to be forgetting is there's shovelware in every genre which has ultimatley ended up capsizing the market..

I'll sum it up in a short, today if you're not a AAA / AA company (for most platforms) with a marketing budget the size of the sun you are well and truly screwed. So hey, just make whatever you want because just like the music industry it has gone the way of the dodo.!

(You can enter the fiscal game lottery if you like, but in terms of effort it's easier just to y'know play the lottery)..

Ironic, indie's with awesome games couldn't get into the market and AAA win.. Indies can get into the market, flood it and AAA wins.

Great time to be an engine developer though (so I've heard)..

 

Aint that the truth.

 

@ShadowK I definitely respect your view and you also gave me a good laugh with that opening about being far out there. lol

However, I just cannot agree with your post because I think there are many successful Indie game devs who are not making anywhere near what you call AA games. Well, I guess it depends on the definition of success, right? So that may well explain it.

If I go into this (which I am working on) I have to come up with a model that works for me as someone who will not be making AA/AAA games. I think the key is a niche and to be smart about the business side such as reskinning and sequels to gain as much ground as possible.

So while some folks are looking at the AA/AAA see I am never looking at that because I know they are never my competition. I am not in that league and will never be in that league. I just don't think that means there is no way to build a business in another area away from what those AA/AAA developers are doing.

 

In before procedural game generation apocalypse ... as soon as we find how to automate game design and story generation ...

 

It might feel wrong to like just reskin and upload new variants of an exact project - but to make it more acceptable you should create new feature or at least tweak existing ones to create a slightly different experience. If you try simple stuff like a complete redesign of graphics (like say, instead of voxel characters, actual 3d models?) and also make a new game mode or something to differentiate them somehow.

Really in reality, due to most consumers on the app stores just kinda browsing key words, and looking for anything interesting rather than a specific game or app, the most important part of any change has to be the title, and the graphics on the store listing. That literally makes such a dramatic difference in conversions it is crazy.

EDIT: another thought, and really once you figure out what the most appealing version of your app is, just tailor all future content to be mostly similar (if it ain't broke don't fix it, changing to a new store icon can screw over conversions) if not identical. Then remove any of the "failed' experiments and only keep updating the one that is most popular and focus on that.

 

I wasn't suggesting you did, sorry if it came across that way. The OP article is nothing to do with games. Reskining a failed game in order to try make it a hit, or pumping multiple skins of a crap base product is a contributing factor to what many people often complain about as saturation. And stuff like that S*** that publisher in the OP article is pumping out, only leads to people be more reluctant to download games from known sources.

My problem is with crap-pumping for ad revenue. I don't have a problem with people who make bad games or hit games, or anywhere inbetween. I have an active distaste for people like that who don't care about games at all and see it as way to trick people into viewing ads.

Reskinning (or updating) a successful game is a very different thing, (or more commonly "Plus One-ing") and it is a very common practice. (not only ours, but several of the top 10 games) Though it does have to be done very carefully. If you reskin a game, and only cannibalize the original, you are actually losing money. Several years back we did exactly that. Did a reskin of a hit game, and the second game was improved in many ways over the original. Nearly 70% of our new players, migrated over from the previous game. So once you count the dev cost, it was overall a negative impact on revenue. I will happily buy the Room 4 (and so on). Re-skinning successful games is smart. Improving games that didn't do well in an effort to make it successful is also smart.

 

Except not really. A good reskinning done by competent devs will often be welcomed by consumers. Just look at Crossy Road and Crossy Road: Disney. Or any of the other other examples.

If you make a good game, then pumping out 'more of the same' is often a good thing.

 

There's no bad reskinning. There are people that can't handle competition, though.

It is the same nonsense as with asset flipping. Some guys just have that internal measure of how much effort someone is "required" to put into their product, and if someone starts "cutting corners" people starts screaming "cheater".

In the end, it is just one more thing that is beyond developer's control. And as usual there are only two choices : adapt or give up. Because all the complaining in the world won't make people who use those practices disappear.

 

My problem is that every time I decide to quickly clone one of my successful games, reskin it, and sell it as a different one, the "artiste" side of me jumps in and I end up making so many "tiny" improvements and changing everything so much it ends up as a whole new system. My latest game started out as a reskin of a previous game that should have taken about two months and it ended up taking over a year. Can't help myself.

 

We still have people who call other people using engine to make game instead of rolling their own: lazy and cheater ...

 

I'll admit I would be totally fine with an "easy button" for game design. It just plugs directly into my spine, hijacks my thoughts, and makes the game that would be the best possible game I could ever play based on my uhhh... okay you get the idea haha.

Then I'd sell that %^&* like hot cakes.

 

I'm actually working on that at least trying to get as close as it as possible, lol, the hard part is building gameplay element that makes semantic sense ...

 

AAA / AA is nothing more than terminology for "money", they corner near enough every segment of all markets from the most basic 2D games to massive open world epics.

Are there "many" succesful indie dev's? I mean really? Relatively succesful is what I'd call being able to earn more than a three star position at Mcdonalds, but with the downturn and excessive stresses these "re-skins" plus crapware adds to the market it does nothing more than cause monetary downspiral, games will either not get downloaded / sell for $1.99 (in very limited amounts) or just be left in the mud.

You look at Steam stats / download stats etc. and I mean in terms of fiscal value per hour it's not even worth the time to re-skin them.. Go paint next doors kitchen, it'll earn a fair bit more.

 

Well that's the part that confuses me reading through this thread.

I think it is smart to make a game and then take advantage of that work to appeal to other gamers who didn't care for the theme of the first one. And it actually could be a great way to do market research as well. Maybe I make a game and it just sort of sits there despite marketing efforts. The very few reviews I get are favorable. This could be seen as a "crap game" because it failed hard. I think it is very possible just reskinning such a game may find a market that snatches it up. And then I'd know my future efforts are likely better off there.

On the other hand, if the first game does reasonably well it also seems like it would do well if reskinned to draw interest from other people.

Here's the thing. I am just a single person. I don't have some massive market research group at my disposal, established IPs, ability to make AA or AAA games and so forth. Yet I still feel I can make games that at least some people out there will enjoy. And if I was to do it as a business I'd need to maximize the ROI from everything I do.

At the same time I just don't have much drive to do it for money because I don't have a need for [more] money. It's much more just the fun of it all around. The fun of dabbling like I always do. And the fun of doing it as a business. I do experiments a lot in my life. Just tests like "if I do this what will happen?" So I'd be approaching it that way.

Like with the asset flipping I have no interest in that but if I could take an asset create something good from it then reskin that to make a line of games relatively cheaply I think that is just being smart about it not cheating.

 

Well, taking that douchebag out of the topic makes it a very different discussion.

Reskinning a successful game can be a very smart move (if done in a way that doesn't impact your original sales). And if you have a game that didn't hit, and believe that you can leverage the work done in slightly different way is a very good move. MAA was born out of failed game we had done. It was a new codebase, but we felt we had a solid game, but didn't tune and realize it in the best way. We took another shot at it with a different genre/theme and more solid game design. In fact many of our successful games were born out of the ashes failed games that we believed in. And had enough information on why it initially failed.

 

Those have a slightly different advantage in that they are a common mechanic, and driven by IP. Their delta is the IP. They are still hand tuned and successful based on being a solid game. The other side of that this something like Where's my water. That was successful because of the mechanic not the IP. Reskins of that didn't do well (or rather, they cannibalized the the original) because the driving factor was the game and not the IP. Angry birds faces a similar problem. New angry birds games don't bring new players, they just share or divert existing players. Or if the gameplay is the delta, it doesn't have the appeal.

 

It's hard to pin down succesful indies with that definition of AAA. A succesful indie quickly attracts money and publishers and employees and general AAishness.

There are certainly plenty of succesful small studios around.

 

When you don't have money you generally need charm (see undertale, minecraft, dayz, fnaf or even early angry bird)

 

I've never considered multi-million dollar outfits "indie's" really, still doesn't stop them making games in near enough every segment of the marketing taking all the gold.!

If you do make it rich, lend me $10.00 (or give me it tight pants)..!

 

also sturgeon's law

 

This is something we've purposely avoided in our sixteen years as a successful independent developer. There have been opportunities over the years, we've talked about them, and decided to stay how we are.

Adding more people to the mix beyond the two of us just seems like more headache than it's worth. We have no desire to compete with multi-million dollar "indie" studios. We just enjoy making a good living with a super tiny team, creating games we like to make, and having an audience that loves what we do.

 

Smart. It is always possible to get overconfident, bit off more than can chew and sink.

Staying small helps avoiding that.

 

Hitman go, laura croft go. People actually paid for that game and its a mobile game
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.squareenixmontreal.hitmango&hl=en
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.squareenixmontreal.lcgo&hl=en

 

I didn't play hitman, but I loved lara croft go. It was a really good take on the franchise on mobile. It was just visually slick as well.

 

If I'm being honest, up until Angry Birds 2, I would say I loved when they released more Angry Birds, SW2... meh... it was ok, but seasons, rio and space and the first star wars were great IMHO, it was just more of something I loved.

 

I think it sounds good in theory, but you are very likely to just keep failing and more importantly you won´t really be learning anything. In a year, your gamemaking skills will not have improved.

If I were to go that route, I would just keep doing game-jam type games every month and at least develop different skills and have 12 different games out there all giving me good feedback.

 

This is totally wrong. This is like saying people who steal other people´s articles, then use translators to spin the article are ´writers who have a business plan´. Being a good game developer who creates fun games that can be sold to players IS a good business plan. His business plan is bottom-feeding used car salesman type stuff.

 

but but but... this person with a totally dishonest business model said they are making a lot of money so it must be true, because you know... I read it on the internet.

 

Although I kind of don't like the idea of shovelware, I am totally opposed to this moralistic self-policing of the games market. It just leads to a ridiculous guilt complex among developers that does nothing but harm them. If the opportunity is there and someone takes it, it would be silly to hold it against them and I have little time for people who make it their job to bash those taking advantage. If someone thinks there's a problem with the market, they should fix it - and if it's unfixable then sorry but your morality is weak and unpopular and likely disfunctional.

I do think there's an answer though, I think eventually someone will open a shop for high-quality games because if it really does matter to players, they will have no trouble finding business.

And in the meantime, good games always get bought and played, and if they don't get bought and played, they simply weren't good enough, or weren't what people wanted, or weren't marketed well enough. Welcome to the world of business.

 

@Carve_Online I removed that article yesterday so the discussion could focus on the important stuff. Starting to feel like a broken record but here goes: I wanted to make a thread on this topic a while back and forgot. Yesterday I came across that article and it reminded me so I linked to that article in my original post. My interest is in the practice in general not the specifics of what that guy with 600 apps did.

With that being said now I'll have to read the article again to see what the difference is between what he is doing and what Disney is doing with the examples @BoredMormon posted as well as all of the other companies doing it. There has to be something I missed in my quick read yesterday that is ticking everyone off.

 

@Billy4184 that is exactly one of the angles I wanted to explore in this discussion (and I think we actually ended up covering both very well): "weren't what people wanted or weren't marketed well enough".

Maybe a person makes an Infinite Runner about a robot and folks were looking for a caveman or a vampire. Maybe the person wasn't able to effectively market the game to robot / sci fi audience but will find it much easier to reach the folks interested in a caveman or vampire theme. Reskinning seems like a perfect solution for both cases.

The other side of the coin is even if the robot game does well there still may be a market for the caveman and vampire themed "spins" so they can increase their overall marketshare fairly easy by doing the reskinning

 

That's what steam pretty much was, and people complained.

I don't hold a grudge if someone makes 600 reskinned games and get's rich. But imho it is a bullshit business model, because the market can't sustain everyone following it. All it does is accelerate the downwards spiral. This isn't about morality, it's about math. It's similar to how "I'll just sell my product cheaper than everybody else sell's their competing products, so everyone will buy my product." sounds good on paper, if you don't think about it for even a second. But it just can't work, they'll undercut each other until they've reached the limit and businesses start to become unprofitable.

 

Electronic Arts is a classic example of a company that uses this approach. Just check out all their sports games. Though at least they do make minor adjustments to the mechanics with each one rather than simply re-skinning it.

... you know normally a thread takes a few posts before it starts tangenting. You managed to do it with the first one.

 

If it is a bs business model because the market can't sustain everyone following it then I would say every single thing is a bs business model. Nothing can be sustained as a profitable business model when everyone is doing it. I think that is the core problem in game dev as a business today.

For some reason that I am not clear about people seem to think it is different with games. Probably because most of us here love games. But in the end the same things apply to them as everything else.

Some things to think about:

If every person started writing books (even fantastic books) and self-publishing or getting published would that be a way all future people could build a profitable business?

If every person in your town started a bakery would that be a way that all future people in your town could build a profitable business?

If every person started creating music and self-publishing or getting published would that be a way all future people could build a profitable business?

If every person in your town opened an auto repair shop at their house would that be a way that all future people in your town could build a profitable business?

In all of these cases let's just consider it from the perspective that every single one of them provided excellent service. All of the folks making music created superb masterpieces, same for the book authors, the auto repair shops did a fantastic job and all charged what we'd consider a very reasonable price, same for the bakeries.

The reason people turn to things such as price wars and other distinguishing factors and / or focus on maximizing the ROI on their efforts is simply due to a massive amount of competition. When everyone is doing something you need to stand out in some way or you need to do things in a smarter way.

 

Yes.

 

That's completely true, but that's in direct contrast to the business model you're advertising and statistics show that. I knew off the bat Pamela would get Greenlit no problems at all and gain top rankings, also I can gurantee it will sell well (even if I'm taking an educated guess), same goes for no man's sky (tm). Might get refunded to the high heavens if they suck, but if nothing else they have generated a lot of interest based on the games own merit.

Two examples of indie's outside A / AA / AAA domination, there's a quite obvious reason for this. Between asset flippers / re-skin's / copycats saturating the market at such a low fiscal rate (as in free / IAP) it's so saturated gamers don't seem to even give them the time of day (well unless they want to poke fun at you). I've read most of the fiscal reports dev's have posted here, I've analysed the mobile market to an extent and I've analysed Steam statistics.

Besides the one in a million "flukes", it still seems quality is the major factor. All I've gotten out of most "post-mortem's" is my basic generic game didn't sell well in a saturated market. No matter how well it is / isn't done it's not a massive surprise.

Engine's / frameworks allow us to do things today that was thought inconcievable ten years ago, to the point where decade old AAA games are relatively straight forward (like pillars of eternity) not underplaying the time and effort put into it but it's a viable venture at least today. Of course it sold well, again not exactly surprising because there's a gaping hole between bottom feeders and what feels like the odd "AAA" game that get's released once in a blue moon.

At one point AAA / AA / A games were innovative, risk taking and en mass (no matter the size / budget of the actual game). Today it's just a matter of least resistance, they can win in the 2D "bottom feeding" market due to budgets and earn a lot, they can win in the top end 3D market due to budgets and earn alot.. They have no interest in "risks", quality indie games will for the forseeable future sell very well but they are still a rarity within themselves.

 

Well lets look at some recent indie games that were success on steam from early access. I think you have to somehow get the youtubers engaged in your game at this point since it will drive traffic to your game. Which I guess would be adding multiplayer, and/or daily challenge (so they can play it over and over again -- giving you constant traffic hopefully)

http://steamspy.com/app/442210

http://steamspy.com/app/437220

http://steamspy.com/app/374040

http://steamspy.com/app/431240

http://steamspy.com/app/428690

 

Well to me, this isn't nessessarily the case. If you look at the FIFA games. Like, those started on Sega Genesis and have been on practically every console known to man since then. And while some of the core mechanics are similiar, just due to the nature of it simulating a real life game, there is a world of difference between FIFA 95 and FIFA 2k17, like in the new one they are gonna have cutscenes and a story and stuff. I heard that based on what stride you are in in your run cycle, it effects which foot you kick the ball with, which can effect your accuracy of your shot depending on if you use a player's dominant foot or not. Like....WHAT!?

I don't give a damn about sports, but the game designer in me thinks thats awesome. I mean yeah, it's easy to be like "Oh, EA is so evil!" but looking at it objectively, their games are usually good, and sometimes even great, with the exception of the WWE 2K games.....man....what happened there......

The point is, sequels aren't the same as reskinning. Clearly FIFA (And their other sports games as well) are games that change year to year, Sure these days the changes are more subtle, but at this point FIFA is the proverbal hatchet that has had it's head and it's handle replaced multiple times. It's not the same game as it was when it started

 

Okay, but how much of a difference is there between one released right after the other? Remember I stated that they do make minor adjustments to the mechanics. Given twenty-two years I would expect the titles to be vastly different.

 

@Aiursrage2k Yep there are a huge number of quality games out there for sure. I sometimes think folks confuse big game or kinda looks like a AAA game, or only games that sell more than 1 million (or maybe 100k) copies with being the only games that are quality games.

Quality games come in all different shapes and sizes in my mind.

I do wonder how accurate the SteamSpy thing is though. Because I read (somewhere... will need to find it again) where the author of Environmental Station Alpha said he was so shocked at the success of his game with over 40,000 sales so far. Yet SteamSpy shows about 8,000 sales. So either he greatly exaggerated, SteamSpy is way low or some combination of the two.

I am guessing he did well because he is working on multiple projects including a sequel to ESA. A big factor in his success I think has to do with being smart about it. He built the game out in public over a period of a few years and there was a lot of excitement and praise about how awesome the game was upon its release from within that community.

Bit off-topic but I do think there is a big gap between different people as far as what they consider to be a high quality game.

For example, my own goal as a developer is to create games with a scope along the lines of 80s games.

Something I think is reasonable to tackle for an experienced lonewolf programmer.
I just mean this basic presentation style and overall scope of the games. Something that can hit maybe 100,000 sales at the upper end.

That's a good place for someone like me to be. There definitely won't be any AAA or AA competing here. Only other lone devs like the creators of the games above. Of course, the idea is that it shouldn't take me 3 years to make the games. I guess it all depends on how long it takes the artists I outsource work to. lol But most of it I can do myself. Probably all of it if I just spent the time to do so.

Anyway, all of these are quality Indie games and successful Indie games in my opinion. I don't look at AA or AAA games at all when I think of entering into this to sell games. I'll be as far off their radar as they are off mine.

That part about community that I mentioned above I think is an important factor as well. It seems like we get a much higher percentage of AA/AAA striving (and even true AA/AAA) people around here. And they don't get excited about games like the above.

So for me to take this route it would make far more sense to switch over to another community such as TIG. I just don't think the dev of ESA would have received nearly the same level of enthusiasm and support had he built the game publicly in a WIP thread here. Just my opinion. And that is not bashing the community here. Different people simply like different things.

 

You need to check HumbleBundleSpy to get the full numbers.

This game had its crowdfunding campaign restarted with a lower goal, because the first one failed. It also took a team, not just one programmer working alone. Sometimes the things you expect to be simple don't go quite like that

(I'll be here all weekend, crushing your dreams!)

 

Like I said, the changes are more suble over time, but like, thats how sequels work. Besides, it seems like having that story mode is a pretty significant change, full cutscenes and such? I don't play the games, but they seemed to be advertising it like a new feature.

Really, the reason they have to release new ones every year instead of patching one game is because of the roster changes and such, especially with the way british football works, they have new teams coming into and leaving the "professional" tiers every year based on their performance in the league (Think like if minor league baseball teams could become major league baseball teams if they won their respective world series and the team that does the worst in the major league could get demoted to the minor leagues. I'm way oversimplifiying this of course, this is just my understanding of it)

But something to think about here is that this is how sequels work. small, sequential improvements, where maybe one or two mechanics are improved or added on. They aren't taking the exact same game and just changing out the graphics, the mechanics are fine tuned or improved, while trying to keep the same feel so that it doesn't feel like you have to relearn the entire game every year. It's a bit of a balancing act I would imagine. There would be massive outrage from the people who are super SUPER serious about FIFA and Madden if there was some huge change to the game one year over another. It's gradual so they can keep modifying and improving the game.

I'm betting if you even looked at the difference between the 2k12 series games and the 2k17 series games, it would feel like a huge jump mechanically. The kinds of people who play those games religiously would probably tell you that. Another example would be fighting games.

The jump between Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter 5 is huge in some ways, but if you started playing the series with like, Street Fighter IV, and go back to Street Fighter 2, Even though there were like a bajillion games between those two games, if you pick Ryu and put in the same combos that work today, about 90% of them still work. But if you went to Evo and asked what the difference between SF2 and SF4 was, You'd be there all day. Even though there were huge optimizations and changes to the mechanics that make a big difference in the highest level of play, to the average player, it doesn't feel that way at all, because they've done so much to make the changes feel gradual

It's kinda easy to think they are copying the same thing and effectively reskinning, but if you look at the design behind it, there actually is a difference

By comparison, look at some of the audacious and blatent reskinned shovelware on Wii, like theres an obvious difference between something like Madden and like, Ninjabread Man and Trixie in Toyland, In one there was an intentional effort to preserve the feel while making improvements, while the other is literally just making one game and publishing it twice.

 

Ha ha. It may have took a team but I am quite sure I could do it (okay yes I will outsource pixel art).

I'm still teetering on the fence at the moment. Thinking "do I really want to take the plunge?" or "do I just want to order a pizza, watch a movie and relax?" I am definitely much closer to "just do it" than I have been in a long long time. I guess I can see why money motivates people to get into this so much. I think if I had no job and only enough money to live for 6 months I'd probably just do it right now. Just because if it didn't work out I can always get another job.

All I know is if I am going to do it then I need to focus on games that are well within my skills. And I don't see much in any game that is beyond my programming experience except for things involving graphics FX, shaders and so forth. But I shouldn't need any of that anyway. And certainly don't see anything in the kind of games I am targeting that is beyond me. The majority of it is things I have already done countless times in game WIPs and fooling around.

I don't mean that in a derogatory way at all. These games definitely represent a good amount of work and finetuning and a good amount of content. I'm just saying if I do it... well it just doesn't make sense for me to target games with a scope of work beyond what is found in these games (which also happen to be the kind of games I enjoy). Especially when (as you mentioned) eve some of these games have multiple people working on them.

I'll decide sooner or later.

 

EA sports games are not a good example because Madden and FIFA are exactly what players are demanding. The players do not want drastic changes to gameplay, they just want players on their new teams, player stats to be updated based on injuries or aging or breakout years...and other statistical changes along with schedules to change. EA lucked out, because yes it mainly is a reskin, but it also what their players demand.

As to the OP. I think the problem is that some people just look at short-term interests rather than long-term interests. In the end, most of us know where this is going to lead. Stores ( Apple, Steam, whatever) are at some point going to have to curate again, and that means honest developers building good games are again going to go back to the point where we need to know someone ( or sleep with someone) to get our game even listed anywhere to be sold. The more people use methods to flood current stores with mass produced, low quality games, the quicker that day comes. The rise of Unity and other cheap but powerful engines lead the ´democratization´ of game development, but that was also only possible because of the rise of Steam and App stores.

 

Well from my experience (with my 1 game) steam spy was fairly accurate, although it wont tell you if you had a free weekend, if your game was free to play at some point, if it had a sale, if it sold it a 10 cent bundle, if it sold most of all its sales from 50 cent steam sales (or what).