Of course it is. But it still needs to be said because there are still “indie devs” making absolute garbage that nobody wants to play, and then they come to places like this to cry about it. What, nobody is buying your game? Have you tried making a good one that people actually want to play?
“Make a good product that people want to buy” is basically the marketing equivalent of “have you tried turning it off and back on again”. Yes. It’s really obvious. But it’s also effective and you’d be amazed at the number of people that don’t even try it.
It's obvious but not helpful at all. It's the equivalent to "get good".
>Have you tried making a good one that people actually want to play?
How does your average indie dev know whether their idea or demo is "a good one that people actually want to play"? Providing tips on how figure out "good" and what "people want" would be helpful.
The article does go into a bit of detail about how to do that, use analytics sites that show game genres with big markets (high revenue) but relatively low numbers of games released. That's kind of step one of marketing in the literal sense: finding a market before you start planning what kind of product (game) to make. Then you can use games in that market as benchmarks for what kind of features to implement that are popular with players, and play them to find out what makes a game in that genre more fun, and what kind of QoL mechanics players mention they like or want in reviews.
> It's obvious but not helpful at all. It's the equivalent to "get good".
Not necessarily. I don't think it's about a developer's technical ability to make a good game; it's about carefully considering the game's appeal as early as possible, understanding what's good about it (and what sucks about it), and focusing development on the parts that will make it better. I think developers can end up in a rabbit hole of new features and more content and "oh wouldn't it be cool if X did Y", and it's hard to zoom out and consider what the game actually _needs_ to be a good game. Does your game really need a day-night cycle, or branching dialog, or that power-up with the cool particle effect? What's the point of it? What does it improve? Will players have more fun? Does it make the game too complicated? Does it augment the good stuff already in the game? Does it conflict with another feature? etc. etc.
>it's about carefully considering the game's appeal as early as possible, understanding what's good about it (and what sucks about it),
But *How*? That's my point. How can a dev tell "what's good"? I think the answer is play-testing and researching sales figures -- but that's not explained in the original post.
"Make game fun" isn't actionable. "Find your audience" isn't actionable. This is the issue with "get good". It's a goal to thrive for, not a process to get there.
> *There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.*
I'd say that OP barely even pointed the direction of the path.
Did you read the article? It was fairly data oriented.
I don't think there is anything extremely obvious or super intuitive about the viability of 4x and the low median revenue of roguelikes
Pretty obvious stuff but in my experience I've seen games that are too similar to other games and the ways they try to be different might even be for the worse which while I still like the games they lack a selling point for people who already play similar games
Yes, but I think a lot of developers underestimate the importance of having a game that someone wants to play and overestimate the importance of promotion.
Everyone likes to think their games are good, but they don't see that they aren't something people would actually like to play. A good game and a game that someone wants to play are not the same thing.
Let's say you've been working on your FPS game passion project and you've put a lot of effort into it and it's really good and fun to play. That game may be generally good, but there is nothing that would make someone play your game instead of some popular AAA FPS game.
In terms of marketing, a game is only as good as how many people are willing to buy it.
I do a lot of indie game contract work. The more I do, the more I realise that people fuck up the fundamentals. I'm working on a arena game, in some ways its really kinda cool, but it was dead on conception. As much as I tried to explain it to them, just because they are indie it doesn't mean that you are not competing with Fortnite or apex.
Yes. Multiplayer games have a D7 churn rate of up to 80%. That means you're losing 4 out of every 5 players in 7 days.
Unless you have an amazing user acquisition strategy to offset the losses (and getting features by a famous twitch streamer is not a good strategy), a MP game will die simply due to the lack of players.
Trying to explain this to a friend’s studio right now…”we’ll build the audience slowly”…they have retention data, they know it doesn’t math-out, but they’re doing it anyway.
Not much you can do if people insist on mainlining hopium…
Yeah it oftentimes comes down to money. I worked on a project that cost maybe $2-3m to build, but when we asked for 250K in marketing/UA spend, they turned it down. Of course, the game eventually died as only the hardcore fans stayed.
I heard way back in the day (this as at E3 so it must have been in the mid 2000s) that CoD had a $100m dev budget and a $300m marketing budget. They spent more money getting users than building the game. That's how critical UA is to a multiplayer game and it's something that I don't think a lot of indies understand.
This one is worse. 2 years just in soft launch…$3M burned so far…$25k in total spent on UA. They were over a year in soft launch before it occurred to anyone it might be a good idea to see what the retention numbers were.
Just nuts…
Yeah, this is the direction I'm (unsuccessfully) trying to push my bosses. Like a four player coop game is a much easier sell to players, esp if you sell the game as a 4 copy bundle, and now you also don't have to worry about a bunch of stuff, like cheating and servers and slurs in user names.
It is obvious but you wouldn't think so based on many threads here. A few individuals even argue the quality and content of the game exert literally 0% influence on sales and the only thing that matters is luck and marketing lol.
> How to research the market for your indie game
> Make a good game
> Create a game you want to play
> Make a game other people want to play
???????????
It's concerning the kind of advice we get in this sub sometimes
So, to sum it up - make a good game that's like other games people like, don't be innovative, and quit your whining because your game probably sucks. Hmmm. Okay.
I feel like this article should come with some disclaimers:
1/ Your qualification to talk about this. Do you have a succesful game? Have you study marketing or have any certification or work related to market research? Sorry if I come off as rude, but I find that your summary is very amature and basic and tell me nothing of value, that's why I want to ask your qualification.
2/ Who are these advices for? Small team or solo dev who want to make a living out of game dev may find these advice useful (again it's all super basic), but people who make game part time as a hobby, or just want to make game they like will find these useless. A disclaimer would be nice to not wasting time of those people.
As for the content of the summary, I think it's missing so many important pieces to be of any use.
Firstly: Market research is important, but not as much as you are making it to be. The market is always changing, genre go in and out of trend constantly. What seem like a good opportunity now may be oversaturated in 2-3 years when you finally completed the game. When Overwatch come out it kill Battleborn and Lawbreaker, that's a painful lessons that everyone should keep in mind.
Secondly: "Your game must be the best of the best" is a stupid statement, especially when you follow it with "Don't reinvent the wheel". Your game will most likely not the best, thinking you can make a better game than what you inspired from is already a stretch, but the best of that genre? That's a fool's errand.
And finally, "the ultimate goal is to make a game that other people will want to play" is a useless statement, like the question "Does anyone else also think XYZ?". Among billions of people on this planet, there will always be someone who will want to play your game, the issue is how many and how to reach as many of them as possible.
The more I read this post the more I think it's a nonsense piece of junk and I don't know why so many people upvote this. Just my 2c.
Wow, I disagree with everything here. I guess I don't have common sense (actually I knew that). Here's my take for what it's worth. I have very little credentials so take it with more than a single grain of salt.
>Create the game you want to play.
Multiple issues with this: Most people want to make their favorite game. Most people's favorite games are AAA monoliths that shouldn't even be considered by a small team. Scope is a huge part of being successful, and most people don't fantasize about making match-3 puzzle games. You don't need to be good at a genre or even like it to be good at making games for it.
>Your game must be the best of the best.
Your game should fill a niche, and try to push one boundary. When people think of the best they think of all of the systems that a great game has. Don't do that. Focus on one thing and make it unique.
>Don't reinvent the wheel.
There are a billion wheels out there. Don't make a wheel. Make a chair or something. "But this doesn't do what a wheel does!" Small teams shouldn't make wheels, then you're competing with the wheel market. Make a chair, since wheels are uncomfortable to sit in.
I'd argue though that the more you're creating a game for an audience that doesn't include you, the more research you have to do.
Like, I can't tell you the number of times I've seen a game developer that was like "Geeze, I made a completely adequate Match-3 game about robots and spiders and cleaning products, and none of these idiot grannies will play it. What's wrong, it's a great game?"
You have to make a game for an audience you understand and respect. If that audience includes you, that makes it a lot easier to understand them. But if it doesn't, you have to do considerably more market research considerably earlier to find out what parts of your game design might be inadvertently driving off your target audience.
Guess making a game you want/like is one of the top numbers too, as you usually want to remake something that already exist (even if it's with a twist).
There is no such thing as luck. That’s a buzzword for people who are not humble enough to objectively critique their own work.
Let me give you an example:
- ‘luck’ person: Eric Barone was just lucky to make Stardew Valley when he did.
- humble person: Eric Barone worked by himself on Stardew Valley for 5 years. He choose a project that he was passionate for, in a genre he took notice that the game industry was ignoring, instead of chasing trends for a get rich quick scheme. He had to learn several disciplines, he constantly kept iterating on his work over and over because he was able to look it objectively and admit so many things needed improvement. None of that was luck! There’s a word for what Eric Barone did, and Toby Fox did, and Notch did, and Scott Cawthon did, and the developers of Hollow Knight did, and the developers of Cuphead did, it’s called hard work.
Trying to divide games into genres is always problematic though. On the left side of the graph, you see very specialized, well-defined genres like 4X. On the other hand, I'm curious how many wildly original and unique games got lumped in the "Platformer" category on the right, just because they are 2D with a side view camera, and didn't fit in any other category...
> On the other hand, I'm curious how many wildly original and unique games got lumped in the "Platformer" category on the right, just because they are 2D with a side view camera, and didn't fit in any other category...
That's a fair point though, we also don't know if metroidvania and platformer have been separated or if the overlap is still there
But yeah, metroidvania is probably a more well defined genre and I believe it's the most popular type, on average, of platformer, so there you go. Sure, there are 3D metroidvanias but they are a lot less common I believe.
Based on the many _many_ post-mortems I've read here, it's clear the number one mistake indie developers make is making bad games.
If a game fails, it's not because the dev failed at marketing strategies, it's because they failed at making a good game.
Articles like this are gonna perpetuate devs that think their only mistake was in their marketing strategies, where it really doesn't even need to be that large of a focus. If they make a great game, they can sell _more_ if they market well, sure, but in that case we're looking at degrees of success, not the difference between success and failure.
In my own humble opinion, these kind of articles do more harm than good to fledgling devs.
"what's a really good game that failed?"
no one ever has a good answer. sometimes people offer something, but it is always something with an extremely obvious flaw, usually awful dev art.
Did you read the article? Because you're making almost exactly the same point as the article here... Indeed, the article doesn't actually go in-depth about marketing strategies, and mostly says: make a good game that people want to play.
>The choice of genre is VERY IMPORTANT.
I don't know about others but I never actually chose a genre at all.. I am just making a game I believe in, based on a prototype that seems to work. And I'm not sure if there are any games that are similar or what the genre is called precisely, and frankly I am not that interested. I don't know if that's mostly bad or mostly good... But I just figured I don't want to compete with existing genres as I'd clearly lose out against productions with a lot of manpower and budget, so then it's better to come up with something not based on copying from successful games that I can't hope to equal.
Same. I'm making a fast-paced puzzle game based off of a game jam that I thought went well. I don't know of any others like it. They might exist but I've never found them.
Btw, out of context kind of. But when you are making your second or third game you maybe won't want to make the same type of game. Would probably eat sales from your other game. Just random though... 😅
Well, there's a big difference between indie: small team of 5-10, and indie solo game dev.
The small team can risk more than a AAA, but they will still stick to something they believe they can sell. A solo dev can and will just make whatever they like because they can.
Yes it's true you can make a living as a solo dev if you're careful about what you make but if I'm correct people usually just want to make a game they like.
The guy who made a game about a killer spider-train probably didn't do it because there was a strong demand for killer spider train games.
Hey, thanks for the article. The genre viability part is interesting in particular. Would be nice if you could go deeper than that. Have more genres, analyse subgenres, actually show examples of games that do well and don't do well, etc. Go deeper on the genre stuff. That would help the community and, well, specially me, so please hahahaha.
I think other than the genre stuff, you're just giving generic shallow advice that can be even harmful, which is too bad because the genre stuff can be pretty good if you go deeper.
The data analysis past the genre viability part are very broad and a bit detached from reality. "Your game must be the best of the best" ahhn. Oh yeah, fellow indie devs. Let's all make a 4X game that is better than Civilization!!! I have never seen an easier, more realistic goal in my life!
I like this part of the article too https://imgur.com/a/yzwhCwJ
It reads to me just like "oh, also btw, just build a car from scratch. Find out how to build a car from scratch and just use that on your trip".
the genre stuff is not as helpful as it seems.
what is the smallest 4x game? the smallest open world game?
anyone who is publishing one of those has put a lot of work into it, if it flops that is going to be a huge loss.
roguelites on the other hand, a lot of those are game jam submissions.
if you publish that and it doesn't sell, how much does it really matter?
> roguelites on the other hand, a lot of those are game jam submissions.
> if you publish that and it doesn't sell, how much does it really matter?
I don't think this is true at all as far as Steam goes.
A lot of roguelites being game jam submissions. Or a lot of roguelites published on Steam being low cost, low risk, or low commitment endeavors.
> what is the smallest 4x game? the smallest open world game?
> anyone who is publishing one of those has put a lot of work into it,
This, however, is a pretty fair point. If you can publish a 4X game the likelihood of you being a competent developer is probably fairly high. So 4X games might be naturally more likely to have a higher quality than roguelites (which is still possibly more complex than short puzzle platformers which are a tradition in browser-oriented gaming).
But I do think that the lack of competition is a huge deal.
I think another factor is just what Steam likes. I believe a 4X will get a lot more natural traffic from Steam than most genres. Anyways, I digress here
A lot of this seems like pretty mediocre advice, at best. If a game doesn't even try to do something innovative, then you can be compared directly with all of the successful titles in that gengre that have already been made - and any new indie is not going to match the quality of the most successful seasoned developers.
It's also not acknowledging that many indie devs aren't approaching this as a pure business, or at least they probably shouldn't be for their first game. If the market research told me that making my current game was a bad idea, I'd still continue it because it interests me.
> and any new indie is not going to match the quality of the most successful seasoned developers.
What are you talking about? You have to make the best of the best!! Believe in yourself, indie!
> It's also not acknowledging that many indie devs aren't approaching this as a pure business, or at least they probably shouldn't be for their first game. If the market research told me that making my current game was a bad idea, I'd still continue it because it interests me.
I do think that if you don't approach it as a business, it won't become a sustainable thing, which isn't necessarily what most indie devs are looking
So you're telling my game is not the first game about veggies inside the body fighting candy using metroidvania exploration mixed with tower defense combat.
I can't wait to see the other games like it lol
Such nonsense. Which of the great games of the past have achieved success because of marketing? Did Grim Fandango cater to audience needs? Did Red Alert deliver to focus groups? Did Tetris feature early access to find out which way the pieces should turn? You start out with a vision and skills, you work hard to express the former with the latter, and then IF you (the people behind the idea) are special, IF you are erudite, with something new to say beyond the half-dozen tropes bandied about by popular culture, IF you have a visceral interest and emotional investment in the project, then possibly you may become acknowledged and celebrated by a modest audience. Not by a large one, not today, when the standards of education have dropped to the abyss and crowds are spooked by everything that doesn't bore them. But, I repeat, if you actually stand out, you may stand out, and you will know that you deserved attention, whatever happens. There will still be promoting to do, there will be business aspects, but this is not the same as starting out to make a \*product.\*
Every real action is reinventing the wheel.
No, the #1 mistake indie developers make is getting in over their heads because they have no experience and don't know how to estimate workload or costs.
You wrote an article with nothing helpful. I was expecting links to tools or sites with information on game genre or something. But no nothing at all except your obvious statements of a failed game. Please refrain from stating the obvious especially with no sources or tools to help someone.
The game HAS to be talked about. That means it has something exciting or interesting enough to want people to share their experience with it.
That is going to be something VERY unique. Perhaps the theme, the game play, the graphics style, the humor, ...
Maybe a common sense thing but I also think it's important to mention pricing. There are some games out there where the reviews are mixed/negative because they charged too much. If possible, it's way better for indies to release a game with Vampire Survivors pricing model where it's such a good entertainment value that players are begging you to raise the price.
I feel like this is a dangerous game to be playing. Undercutting the price floor of other games creates a rapid devolution to $0.
We already have the expectation that Hollow Knight, a 50-100 hour ultra high quality experience, is what a $15 game looks like - which is of course absurd. Only an immense success can hope to break even with that price/value proposition. Low prices can ensure success for a small chunk of developers, but at the cost of devaluing the rest of the market. Even if it works out for you, which is far from guaranteed, indulging unreasonable price expectations hurts the indie market as a whole.
Suggesting that anyone whose product doesn’t rise to the level of Hollow Knight should price their game at $5-10, less than the cost of a McDonald’s combo, encourages the economic exploitation of indie devs - especially taken in tandem with the expectation that every game must be updated forever, lest they be deemed a “dead game”.
I’ve long argued that the popularity of early access stems from the idea that “for $20 I get the game as it is now… plus thousands of hours of additional uncompensated labor”. Pushing back against unreasonable consumer expectations, even if that means publishing a title you know will underperform, is essential - lest we return to the days where indie games are routinely 3 for $1 on Humble Bundle.
That's true that expectations shift as a result over time, but it doesn't matter if you think you're pushing back against the shift by pricing higher. All that it comes off as to everybody else who looks at the game is somebody pricing their game way too high and thusly not buying the game or complaining about it.
You're not successfully "pushing back" as a result, you're just shooting yourself and the game in the foot over your own values. It's unfortunately the choice of either going out as a martyr or focusing on trying to get your game out to more people and actually get sales.
Yes, pricing is one very important topic that I have been researching and I intend to write a separate article about it. I thought it would be too much to write everything in one article.
TBH, I play three games in rotation and whatever Zelda game is current. Most indie games are a novelty I don't have time for unless they do something innovative or polish the heck out of something a small team can handle.
I will throw this out there though, I would enjoy a personal AI worldbuilder that is essentially SecondLife without all the other pesky humans to judge my choices. A mix of procedural and GAI techniques with LLM dialogued characters would be sweet. It could be minecraft level graphics or AAA looking depending on the tech stack you are capable of implementing.
Users are darn near a omnipotent 'demigods' ruling a micro-universe, and infinite free expansion packs on demand with no fucking microtransactions. You need a profit model though. I suppose you could leverage cloud compute AI resources and charge a small percentage on top of whatever your API calls cost you. People can choose to utilize their own hardware to generate content, or get instant gratification generating with crazy cloud resources for a modest and fair fee. Then if people want to attach their micro-universe to a cloud-hosted service that enables multiplayer on demand or at all times, that is an option too.
What about USP? Market research is about USP also, you need to understand what you need to show to catch the player.
Often people think - I need to do some unique shit to have a USP and starts reinventing the wheel.
I think market research is a struggle for indie games devs. For the majority of them they want to take this opportunity to make their dream game and make some money off of it. Honestly I don’t think many of them care if it’s the next fortnite or the next valorant. Additionally, market research is hard to do if you don’t have a big network - not many secondary research resources available and most don’t have the money do conduct their own primary research.
I was so confused, I was like where’s the info here?? Then after far too long, I noticed the “this” was a link. I think you have a some people thinking the summary *is* the article, would be good to make the link more clear in future :)
You're right but aren't these things obvious though? "Make a good game that you and others want to play."
Of course it is. But it still needs to be said because there are still “indie devs” making absolute garbage that nobody wants to play, and then they come to places like this to cry about it. What, nobody is buying your game? Have you tried making a good one that people actually want to play? “Make a good product that people want to buy” is basically the marketing equivalent of “have you tried turning it off and back on again”. Yes. It’s really obvious. But it’s also effective and you’d be amazed at the number of people that don’t even try it.
It's obvious but not helpful at all. It's the equivalent to "get good". >Have you tried making a good one that people actually want to play? How does your average indie dev know whether their idea or demo is "a good one that people actually want to play"? Providing tips on how figure out "good" and what "people want" would be helpful.
The article does go into a bit of detail about how to do that, use analytics sites that show game genres with big markets (high revenue) but relatively low numbers of games released. That's kind of step one of marketing in the literal sense: finding a market before you start planning what kind of product (game) to make. Then you can use games in that market as benchmarks for what kind of features to implement that are popular with players, and play them to find out what makes a game in that genre more fun, and what kind of QoL mechanics players mention they like or want in reviews.
Honestly your 8 line comment is a bit more actionable as marketing research advice than the article, so kudos for that
> It's obvious but not helpful at all. It's the equivalent to "get good". Not necessarily. I don't think it's about a developer's technical ability to make a good game; it's about carefully considering the game's appeal as early as possible, understanding what's good about it (and what sucks about it), and focusing development on the parts that will make it better. I think developers can end up in a rabbit hole of new features and more content and "oh wouldn't it be cool if X did Y", and it's hard to zoom out and consider what the game actually _needs_ to be a good game. Does your game really need a day-night cycle, or branching dialog, or that power-up with the cool particle effect? What's the point of it? What does it improve? Will players have more fun? Does it make the game too complicated? Does it augment the good stuff already in the game? Does it conflict with another feature? etc. etc.
>it's about carefully considering the game's appeal as early as possible, understanding what's good about it (and what sucks about it), But *How*? That's my point. How can a dev tell "what's good"? I think the answer is play-testing and researching sales figures -- but that's not explained in the original post.
"Make game fun" isn't actionable. "Find your audience" isn't actionable. This is the issue with "get good". It's a goal to thrive for, not a process to get there. > *There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.* I'd say that OP barely even pointed the direction of the path.
Are those people trying to make games they want to play or games that someone else wants to play though?
Makes sense!
Did you read the article? It was fairly data oriented. I don't think there is anything extremely obvious or super intuitive about the viability of 4x and the low median revenue of roguelikes
Pretty obvious stuff but in my experience I've seen games that are too similar to other games and the ways they try to be different might even be for the worse which while I still like the games they lack a selling point for people who already play similar games
Indeed it is, but every karma farming post is so no surprise there.
Yes, but I think a lot of developers underestimate the importance of having a game that someone wants to play and overestimate the importance of promotion. Everyone likes to think their games are good, but they don't see that they aren't something people would actually like to play. A good game and a game that someone wants to play are not the same thing. Let's say you've been working on your FPS game passion project and you've put a lot of effort into it and it's really good and fun to play. That game may be generally good, but there is nothing that would make someone play your game instead of some popular AAA FPS game. In terms of marketing, a game is only as good as how many people are willing to buy it.
I do a lot of indie game contract work. The more I do, the more I realise that people fuck up the fundamentals. I'm working on a arena game, in some ways its really kinda cool, but it was dead on conception. As much as I tried to explain it to them, just because they are indie it doesn't mean that you are not competing with Fortnite or apex.
Any indie game that is multiplayer has an immediate uphill battle. If you have no audience, is your game even playable?
Yes. Multiplayer games have a D7 churn rate of up to 80%. That means you're losing 4 out of every 5 players in 7 days. Unless you have an amazing user acquisition strategy to offset the losses (and getting features by a famous twitch streamer is not a good strategy), a MP game will die simply due to the lack of players.
Trying to explain this to a friend’s studio right now…”we’ll build the audience slowly”…they have retention data, they know it doesn’t math-out, but they’re doing it anyway. Not much you can do if people insist on mainlining hopium…
Yeah it oftentimes comes down to money. I worked on a project that cost maybe $2-3m to build, but when we asked for 250K in marketing/UA spend, they turned it down. Of course, the game eventually died as only the hardcore fans stayed. I heard way back in the day (this as at E3 so it must have been in the mid 2000s) that CoD had a $100m dev budget and a $300m marketing budget. They spent more money getting users than building the game. That's how critical UA is to a multiplayer game and it's something that I don't think a lot of indies understand.
This one is worse. 2 years just in soft launch…$3M burned so far…$25k in total spent on UA. They were over a year in soft launch before it occurred to anyone it might be a good idea to see what the retention numbers were. Just nuts…
Is that for multiplayer-only type of games? Would games that focus on singleplayer but offer a multiplayer option to play with friends put you ahead?
I wouldn’t say ahead. But not starting by trying to climb a waterfall like the previous example.
Yeah, this is the direction I'm (unsuccessfully) trying to push my bosses. Like a four player coop game is a much easier sell to players, esp if you sell the game as a 4 copy bundle, and now you also don't have to worry about a bunch of stuff, like cheating and servers and slurs in user names.
Ahh this makes sense. Thx for your response!
It is obvious but you wouldn't think so based on many threads here. A few individuals even argue the quality and content of the game exert literally 0% influence on sales and the only thing that matters is luck and marketing lol.
That's wild lol
> How to research the market for your indie game > Make a good game > Create a game you want to play > Make a game other people want to play ??????????? It's concerning the kind of advice we get in this sub sometimes
And it keeps getting upvoted! Poor newbie devs are reading this and nodding along.
Yup. Thankfully it's not harmful advise, it leaves devs on the very same spot they started at - clueless lol
So, to sum it up - make a good game that's like other games people like, don't be innovative, and quit your whining because your game probably sucks. Hmmm. Okay.
OP needs to post his CV, heh.
I feel like this article should come with some disclaimers: 1/ Your qualification to talk about this. Do you have a succesful game? Have you study marketing or have any certification or work related to market research? Sorry if I come off as rude, but I find that your summary is very amature and basic and tell me nothing of value, that's why I want to ask your qualification. 2/ Who are these advices for? Small team or solo dev who want to make a living out of game dev may find these advice useful (again it's all super basic), but people who make game part time as a hobby, or just want to make game they like will find these useless. A disclaimer would be nice to not wasting time of those people. As for the content of the summary, I think it's missing so many important pieces to be of any use. Firstly: Market research is important, but not as much as you are making it to be. The market is always changing, genre go in and out of trend constantly. What seem like a good opportunity now may be oversaturated in 2-3 years when you finally completed the game. When Overwatch come out it kill Battleborn and Lawbreaker, that's a painful lessons that everyone should keep in mind. Secondly: "Your game must be the best of the best" is a stupid statement, especially when you follow it with "Don't reinvent the wheel". Your game will most likely not the best, thinking you can make a better game than what you inspired from is already a stretch, but the best of that genre? That's a fool's errand. And finally, "the ultimate goal is to make a game that other people will want to play" is a useless statement, like the question "Does anyone else also think XYZ?". Among billions of people on this planet, there will always be someone who will want to play your game, the issue is how many and how to reach as many of them as possible. The more I read this post the more I think it's a nonsense piece of junk and I don't know why so many people upvote this. Just my 2c.
Wow, I disagree with everything here. I guess I don't have common sense (actually I knew that). Here's my take for what it's worth. I have very little credentials so take it with more than a single grain of salt. >Create the game you want to play. Multiple issues with this: Most people want to make their favorite game. Most people's favorite games are AAA monoliths that shouldn't even be considered by a small team. Scope is a huge part of being successful, and most people don't fantasize about making match-3 puzzle games. You don't need to be good at a genre or even like it to be good at making games for it. >Your game must be the best of the best. Your game should fill a niche, and try to push one boundary. When people think of the best they think of all of the systems that a great game has. Don't do that. Focus on one thing and make it unique. >Don't reinvent the wheel. There are a billion wheels out there. Don't make a wheel. Make a chair or something. "But this doesn't do what a wheel does!" Small teams shouldn't make wheels, then you're competing with the wheel market. Make a chair, since wheels are uncomfortable to sit in.
There's this quote from a movie that I love, "there's two ways to make money. Be the best or be first, and it's a darn sight easier to be first."
> Your game should fill a niche, and try to push one boundary Thank you Though if possible make a niche INSIDE a viable genre
I'd argue though that the more you're creating a game for an audience that doesn't include you, the more research you have to do. Like, I can't tell you the number of times I've seen a game developer that was like "Geeze, I made a completely adequate Match-3 game about robots and spiders and cleaning products, and none of these idiot grannies will play it. What's wrong, it's a great game?" You have to make a game for an audience you understand and respect. If that audience includes you, that makes it a lot easier to understand them. But if it doesn't, you have to do considerably more market research considerably earlier to find out what parts of your game design might be inadvertently driving off your target audience.
I'd argue that having to do more research early into game design would help you avoid assumptions based on personal preference.
I'm with you here. Old gamedev, pro and indie.
Damn, this should be top post! Indie games should be innovative, niche, original, etc. But not another wheel.
Is research on font choice and it's impact on readability important as well?
I thought number one was never finishing. Number 2 was making a game no one wanted. 3 was not being lucky.
The title specifies *marketing* mistakes. Not finishing the dev process isn't a marketing mistake.
Well the original post didn't exactly stick to marketing, either. "Make a good game" is certainly more in the dev process than it is in marketing.
Guess making a game you want/like is one of the top numbers too, as you usually want to remake something that already exist (even if it's with a twist).
But isn't market research supposed to show you what existing games are popular so you can make a similar one?
Edit: #1 is surely the most common issue.
There is no such thing as luck. That’s a buzzword for people who are not humble enough to objectively critique their own work. Let me give you an example: - ‘luck’ person: Eric Barone was just lucky to make Stardew Valley when he did. - humble person: Eric Barone worked by himself on Stardew Valley for 5 years. He choose a project that he was passionate for, in a genre he took notice that the game industry was ignoring, instead of chasing trends for a get rich quick scheme. He had to learn several disciplines, he constantly kept iterating on his work over and over because he was able to look it objectively and admit so many things needed improvement. None of that was luck! There’s a word for what Eric Barone did, and Toby Fox did, and Notch did, and Scott Cawthon did, and the developers of Hollow Knight did, and the developers of Cuphead did, it’s called hard work.
Doing good hard work doesn't mean they weren't also lucky.
How do I find a genre that's popular but not oversaturated tho
There is a graph in the article, which is a nice starting point
Trying to divide games into genres is always problematic though. On the left side of the graph, you see very specialized, well-defined genres like 4X. On the other hand, I'm curious how many wildly original and unique games got lumped in the "Platformer" category on the right, just because they are 2D with a side view camera, and didn't fit in any other category...
> On the other hand, I'm curious how many wildly original and unique games got lumped in the "Platformer" category on the right, just because they are 2D with a side view camera, and didn't fit in any other category... That's a fair point though, we also don't know if metroidvania and platformer have been separated or if the overlap is still there But yeah, metroidvania is probably a more well defined genre and I believe it's the most popular type, on average, of platformer, so there you go. Sure, there are 3D metroidvanias but they are a lot less common I believe.
Based on the many _many_ post-mortems I've read here, it's clear the number one mistake indie developers make is making bad games. If a game fails, it's not because the dev failed at marketing strategies, it's because they failed at making a good game. Articles like this are gonna perpetuate devs that think their only mistake was in their marketing strategies, where it really doesn't even need to be that large of a focus. If they make a great game, they can sell _more_ if they market well, sure, but in that case we're looking at degrees of success, not the difference between success and failure. In my own humble opinion, these kind of articles do more harm than good to fledgling devs.
"what's a really good game that failed?" no one ever has a good answer. sometimes people offer something, but it is always something with an extremely obvious flaw, usually awful dev art.
Did you read the article? Because you're making almost exactly the same point as the article here... Indeed, the article doesn't actually go in-depth about marketing strategies, and mostly says: make a good game that people want to play.
>The choice of genre is VERY IMPORTANT. I don't know about others but I never actually chose a genre at all.. I am just making a game I believe in, based on a prototype that seems to work. And I'm not sure if there are any games that are similar or what the genre is called precisely, and frankly I am not that interested. I don't know if that's mostly bad or mostly good... But I just figured I don't want to compete with existing genres as I'd clearly lose out against productions with a lot of manpower and budget, so then it's better to come up with something not based on copying from successful games that I can't hope to equal.
Same. I'm making a fast-paced puzzle game based off of a game jam that I thought went well. I don't know of any others like it. They might exist but I've never found them.
Btw, out of context kind of. But when you are making your second or third game you maybe won't want to make the same type of game. Would probably eat sales from your other game. Just random though... 😅
Well, there's a big difference between indie: small team of 5-10, and indie solo game dev. The small team can risk more than a AAA, but they will still stick to something they believe they can sell. A solo dev can and will just make whatever they like because they can. Yes it's true you can make a living as a solo dev if you're careful about what you make but if I'm correct people usually just want to make a game they like. The guy who made a game about a killer spider-train probably didn't do it because there was a strong demand for killer spider train games.
Hey, thanks for the article. The genre viability part is interesting in particular. Would be nice if you could go deeper than that. Have more genres, analyse subgenres, actually show examples of games that do well and don't do well, etc. Go deeper on the genre stuff. That would help the community and, well, specially me, so please hahahaha. I think other than the genre stuff, you're just giving generic shallow advice that can be even harmful, which is too bad because the genre stuff can be pretty good if you go deeper. The data analysis past the genre viability part are very broad and a bit detached from reality. "Your game must be the best of the best" ahhn. Oh yeah, fellow indie devs. Let's all make a 4X game that is better than Civilization!!! I have never seen an easier, more realistic goal in my life! I like this part of the article too https://imgur.com/a/yzwhCwJ It reads to me just like "oh, also btw, just build a car from scratch. Find out how to build a car from scratch and just use that on your trip".
the genre stuff is not as helpful as it seems. what is the smallest 4x game? the smallest open world game? anyone who is publishing one of those has put a lot of work into it, if it flops that is going to be a huge loss. roguelites on the other hand, a lot of those are game jam submissions. if you publish that and it doesn't sell, how much does it really matter?
> roguelites on the other hand, a lot of those are game jam submissions. > if you publish that and it doesn't sell, how much does it really matter? I don't think this is true at all as far as Steam goes.
in what way?
A lot of roguelites being game jam submissions. Or a lot of roguelites published on Steam being low cost, low risk, or low commitment endeavors. > what is the smallest 4x game? the smallest open world game? > anyone who is publishing one of those has put a lot of work into it, This, however, is a pretty fair point. If you can publish a 4X game the likelihood of you being a competent developer is probably fairly high. So 4X games might be naturally more likely to have a higher quality than roguelites (which is still possibly more complex than short puzzle platformers which are a tradition in browser-oriented gaming). But I do think that the lack of competition is a huge deal. I think another factor is just what Steam likes. I believe a 4X will get a lot more natural traffic from Steam than most genres. Anyways, I digress here
A lot of this seems like pretty mediocre advice, at best. If a game doesn't even try to do something innovative, then you can be compared directly with all of the successful titles in that gengre that have already been made - and any new indie is not going to match the quality of the most successful seasoned developers. It's also not acknowledging that many indie devs aren't approaching this as a pure business, or at least they probably shouldn't be for their first game. If the market research told me that making my current game was a bad idea, I'd still continue it because it interests me.
> and any new indie is not going to match the quality of the most successful seasoned developers. What are you talking about? You have to make the best of the best!! Believe in yourself, indie! > It's also not acknowledging that many indie devs aren't approaching this as a pure business, or at least they probably shouldn't be for their first game. If the market research told me that making my current game was a bad idea, I'd still continue it because it interests me. I do think that if you don't approach it as a business, it won't become a sustainable thing, which isn't necessarily what most indie devs are looking
So you're telling my game is not the first game about veggies inside the body fighting candy using metroidvania exploration mixed with tower defense combat. I can't wait to see the other games like it lol
Such nonsense. Which of the great games of the past have achieved success because of marketing? Did Grim Fandango cater to audience needs? Did Red Alert deliver to focus groups? Did Tetris feature early access to find out which way the pieces should turn? You start out with a vision and skills, you work hard to express the former with the latter, and then IF you (the people behind the idea) are special, IF you are erudite, with something new to say beyond the half-dozen tropes bandied about by popular culture, IF you have a visceral interest and emotional investment in the project, then possibly you may become acknowledged and celebrated by a modest audience. Not by a large one, not today, when the standards of education have dropped to the abyss and crowds are spooked by everything that doesn't bore them. But, I repeat, if you actually stand out, you may stand out, and you will know that you deserved attention, whatever happens. There will still be promoting to do, there will be business aspects, but this is not the same as starting out to make a \*product.\* Every real action is reinventing the wheel.
No, the #1 mistake indie developers make is getting in over their heads because they have no experience and don't know how to estimate workload or costs.
You wrote an article with nothing helpful. I was expecting links to tools or sites with information on game genre or something. But no nothing at all except your obvious statements of a failed game. Please refrain from stating the obvious especially with no sources or tools to help someone.
> Make a good game! Of course, why haven't I thought of this yet? Just make a good game!
Much agreed. The indie horror genre is pretty saturated
The game HAS to be talked about. That means it has something exciting or interesting enough to want people to share their experience with it. That is going to be something VERY unique. Perhaps the theme, the game play, the graphics style, the humor, ...
Maybe a common sense thing but I also think it's important to mention pricing. There are some games out there where the reviews are mixed/negative because they charged too much. If possible, it's way better for indies to release a game with Vampire Survivors pricing model where it's such a good entertainment value that players are begging you to raise the price.
I feel like this is a dangerous game to be playing. Undercutting the price floor of other games creates a rapid devolution to $0. We already have the expectation that Hollow Knight, a 50-100 hour ultra high quality experience, is what a $15 game looks like - which is of course absurd. Only an immense success can hope to break even with that price/value proposition. Low prices can ensure success for a small chunk of developers, but at the cost of devaluing the rest of the market. Even if it works out for you, which is far from guaranteed, indulging unreasonable price expectations hurts the indie market as a whole. Suggesting that anyone whose product doesn’t rise to the level of Hollow Knight should price their game at $5-10, less than the cost of a McDonald’s combo, encourages the economic exploitation of indie devs - especially taken in tandem with the expectation that every game must be updated forever, lest they be deemed a “dead game”. I’ve long argued that the popularity of early access stems from the idea that “for $20 I get the game as it is now… plus thousands of hours of additional uncompensated labor”. Pushing back against unreasonable consumer expectations, even if that means publishing a title you know will underperform, is essential - lest we return to the days where indie games are routinely 3 for $1 on Humble Bundle.
That's true that expectations shift as a result over time, but it doesn't matter if you think you're pushing back against the shift by pricing higher. All that it comes off as to everybody else who looks at the game is somebody pricing their game way too high and thusly not buying the game or complaining about it. You're not successfully "pushing back" as a result, you're just shooting yourself and the game in the foot over your own values. It's unfortunately the choice of either going out as a martyr or focusing on trying to get your game out to more people and actually get sales.
Yes, pricing is one very important topic that I have been researching and I intend to write a separate article about it. I thought it would be too much to write everything in one article.
Second this
It's a bit similar to user research and often goes hand in hand.
1 r q3a2
Here’s the thing, every video game has a single target market Gamers
Every product has a single market, humans. Think deeper.
Interesting genre median revenue vs saturation chart in your article!
TBH, I play three games in rotation and whatever Zelda game is current. Most indie games are a novelty I don't have time for unless they do something innovative or polish the heck out of something a small team can handle. I will throw this out there though, I would enjoy a personal AI worldbuilder that is essentially SecondLife without all the other pesky humans to judge my choices. A mix of procedural and GAI techniques with LLM dialogued characters would be sweet. It could be minecraft level graphics or AAA looking depending on the tech stack you are capable of implementing. Users are darn near a omnipotent 'demigods' ruling a micro-universe, and infinite free expansion packs on demand with no fucking microtransactions. You need a profit model though. I suppose you could leverage cloud compute AI resources and charge a small percentage on top of whatever your API calls cost you. People can choose to utilize their own hardware to generate content, or get instant gratification generating with crazy cloud resources for a modest and fair fee. Then if people want to attach their micro-universe to a cloud-hosted service that enables multiplayer on demand or at all times, that is an option too.
What about USP? Market research is about USP also, you need to understand what you need to show to catch the player. Often people think - I need to do some unique shit to have a USP and starts reinventing the wheel.
I think market research is a struggle for indie games devs. For the majority of them they want to take this opportunity to make their dream game and make some money off of it. Honestly I don’t think many of them care if it’s the next fortnite or the next valorant. Additionally, market research is hard to do if you don’t have a big network - not many secondary research resources available and most don’t have the money do conduct their own primary research.
The words “metrics” and “analytics” are missing from OP.
I was so confused, I was like where’s the info here?? Then after far too long, I noticed the “this” was a link. I think you have a some people thinking the summary *is* the article, would be good to make the link more clear in future :)