I set myself a deadline by the end of the year to decide which one of my game ideas I’m going to go with for my first commercial (Steam) game. Ideally, that will be the game that will “launch” my game studio which has been a dream of mine. I’ve been mostly researching and testing during the last few months and I came up with 3 ideas. I’d be very grateful for any advice that you can give me on the matter.
GAME #1: Multiplayer Turn-based Strategy
Pros:
Best ROI and commercial viability in the long run (according to my research)
I have the full game scope (GDD) ready and also have tons of ideas for future expansions/DLC/updates/new versions
I’ve been fine-tuning that idea for years and even tested a few mechanics/rules
Replayability
Cons:
Multiplayer (never done this before; I’m not concerned about server cost too much since it’s a turn-based game. I’m more concerned about lack of experience, learning curve and dev time).
If you thinking about studio, and making profit anytime soon, I would go first for something simpler (single player).
Try yourself first, if this indeed is, what you want to do. It will allow to explore all required aspects for publishing game.
For multiplier, you need players which are going to play. But who will play, if no one knows you yet?
How long you want take, for first release? Full time 3 months, halve year, year+?
Attractive small game might take you a year to develop.
If it is your first game and you want to gain experience + some money, than I would go for simple 3d game.
For example “escape room” first person perspective.
Such a simple game could be also released on different platforms without struggle.
Pick whichever one you think you can actually develop and start working on it. If you’ve never developed a complete game before (from zero to release) then I wouldn’t waste time thinking about market research, profitability, or any of that stuff right now. Personally I also think GDD’s are a waste of time. Just start working on one of the game ideas. Maybe work on all 3 and see which one takes off and go with that.
Making money in 2019 in game dev is really tough. Get a release under your belt (or two or three) then start to consider the market.
If you compare the ROI on any of those ideas against like working minimum wage (us), you are much better off flipping burgers. If you want to do it for fun - go for it. If you want to build towards being able to run a business, go for it. If you are going into this expecting to be able to make even $5/hr - I think you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
Realistically, until you are highly skilled and competent (in all aspects of dev, including pr), I would expect game dev to lose you money.
In terms of ROI estimates are mainly based on Steamspy data. I’ve been following several indie competitors since launch and several non-AAA big fishes. I’m making my calculations based on my promotion/marketing plan.
In terms of development, I feel confident that I can develop any of these 3. I must say that I don’t have any experience with multiplayer and that’s why #1 is the only one I can’t have realistic estimate on.
In terms of timeframes, I don’t plan on working full-time, although I am a freelancer and since I charge relatively high rate on my main job, I can afford to only work ~ 20 hours. I’m not in a rush, I’d rather spend 3 years developing a viable game, than waste 1 year on one that wasn’t the right choice (although I appreciate that risk of failure is involved no matter what I think is the right choice).
In terms of distribution, marketing and promotion, I have some experience in a similar market which I hope can be handy to a certain extend. I am always willing to learn, capture & analyze data and pay for consultancy when needed.
As arrogant as it may sound, I believe that most developers and studios who can’t make the cut are ones that lack creativity when it comes to marketing, or who don’t know their niche well enough. Of course, my sample is relatively small on this matter (based mainly on people who I know or follow), so I might be wrong.
Multiplayer makes a game much more complex and time consuming, and the testing required for the game is much greater than a single player game.
Of those choices I’d choose #3. It sounds like the type of game where you could choose an art style where you could use simple graphics you can make yourself (maybe even primatives done creatively) or 3rd party assets. Good luck!
Have you finished a game before? If not then I suggest picking the smallest non-trivial idea you’ve got and just doing that, for the reasons others have stated. Skill at creating games isn’t the only thing that matters, but it’s a pre-requisite for everything else.
This doesn’t mean you can’t get some practice in at the other stuff along the way. In fact, it’s great to see you researching this like a business, so thumbs up for that. It’s a creative industry, though, so your foundation has to be solid creative work.
Are you only looking at success cases in your research? Also, what do you consider to be a success?
Lets be clear here: they are all commercially uncertain. This is a risky business to be in. People who work in games generally don’t do it just for the money. The smart ones realise that money is also important and they make it a part of their priorities, but if you’re here just for money then I suggest broadening your research to other potential industries.
Just be aware that the majority of developers on Steam aren’t even making minimum wage with their games. I highly recommend watching the following video and setting your expectations to a realistic level rather than just reading the numbers off of an analytics website which can be misleading.
It is extremely difficult for most indie devs to release multiplayer games on Steam. Not just the technical challenges, either. I am actually talking about the marketing challenges. Steam players expect game developers to make sure there are plenty of online players, and that is really hard for indies. So my general advice is to focus on delivering single player experiences.
As for choosing which game idea to build, you should make a small prototype of each one and then release a YouTube video of each of them. See which idea generates the most excitement. This should give you a general idea how well the ideas might come across when influencers play them on YouTube or Twitch. If one of your ideas creates measurably more buzz in early prototype videos, it is likely it could do well in future videos as well.
For these early videos, make them short (maybe 30 seconds), and build them as quickly as possible. Don’t worry about building and polishing a working game. Just try to build some part of the idea to show it off, so you can get relative feedback regarding the ideas.
I would go with idea #3, though I don’t think any of these ideas are great from purely market perspective.
Idea #2
Worst idea. 2D platformers are everywhere, and every man and his dog has one on steam, each one more achingly beautiful and painfully unprofitable than the last. See this video:
Idea #1:
Multiplayer is a bad idea. You’ll be listening to the crickets on your servers, fielding negative reviews saying that servers are dead (which makes people steer clear and the servers get even deader), and frantically trying to put together a single player version before your game is completely old news, so you can scrape together a deposit for a loan to replace all the money you lost.
That said, the niche (turn based strategy) is strong and small enough that you have a chance of building a community of enthusiastic people, although I wouldn’t count on pulling it off.
Idea #3:
Best of the three, top-down is a better bet in my opinion than 2D platformer. I don’t think 2D is a good idea though at all. But the concept of exploring a large world is essentially a good one, though it might not sound like it. Let me explain.
My philosophy for making a successful game is very simple. You have to do something that not many people are doing. Forget clones of standard 2D games, runners, platformers and all that. If you really want to stand out, you have to choose something with a high barrier to entry.
Now, the barrier you choose has to fit in with your strongest skill set. You say you are into astrophysics, I’m going to guess you are good at mathematics and are either already a programmer or wouldn’t have a hard time learning to program if you wanted to. You also say you will ‘need an artist’ so I imagine that’s not your strong suit.
My suggestion would be to create a large-scale space exploration game that runs more along the lines of a simulation than a drama. These kinds of things are not easy at all to make from a technical perspective for the average developer, and they fit right into the sort of interests you say you have, so motivation shouldn’t be terribly difficult. There are also some very successful (despite being in my opinion quite artistically deficient) games in this space such as Avorion, and players tend to be more interested in being able to do a lot of things than in appearance, which fits your programming strengths.
My own game is more of a balance between art and programming (a space combat/trading game of the Rebel Galaxy sort) because I can do both reasonably well. Combined they definitely have a high barrier to entry (I’ve done a lot of research and haven’t found many well-made games of this type, and some relatively popular despite not being, in my opinion, very well made). In fact creating a technically demanding game with good visuals seems to be a very hard barrier in itself.
So that’s my perspective. I know many people will say “start off with an endless runner” or something similar, and the point definitely has merit from a purely statistical standpoint of your likelihood of being able to finish the game (motivation notwithstanding) but I assume you are looking for a bigger kind of success, so if you have a high pain threshold I say tackle the bigger beast and you’ll have a better chance of actual profitability.
I’d be curious to see what you’re using as a baseline comparison w/ steamspy.
My guess is that you’re being incredibly generous with your comparisons.
The genres of games you’re talking about are super easy to produce and relatively low effort. The genres are flooding at the moment on steam. For example, the market for platformers has pretty much been destroyed in the last two years by the steady influx. There are a crazy number of puzzle platformers being released. I wouldn’t be surprised if multiple are released per day at this point.
Steamspy is not going to produce good numbers for the scale of release you are likely to have and how you recalculate income based on steamspy units is probably wildly optimistic.
I could be mistaken, but if you had a more solid grasp on the subject I seriously doubt you’d be asking this kind of question here in the first place.
You’ve told us nothing at all about these games aside from the most barebones details. What differentiates these ideas from the loads of other games in these genres out there?
I disagree. I think that a first release is much more likely to make money with a close to pure clone of an existing game than otherwise.
Truth is, game design is very difficult, and if you’re also learning production skills - having to make so many difficult design choices while also learning the ropes on everything else is much more likely to result in a terrible product.
Using an existing game as a 1-1 template (with some degree of reskin) will probably make you like ~$10k on a first release if you do a borderline competent job. I would expect much less from something novel.
Like, if you can get a 75% positive, you’re ok - dropping into mixed you’re DOA. Much more likely to drop into mixed reviews if you’re taking on too much game design without core competency.
Ok, but how much skill does it require to get “a close to pure clone” of a good, polished game? You mention a 1:1 template… that’s a heck of a lot of work, and in the case of most successful games you’re going to have to replicate stuff made by a team of people far more experienced than you. That’s not easy for a first timer!
The alternative is to do all the stuff you mention while also tackling game design.
Despite what most people think, game design is extremely hard to do well. Especially without years of experience, and seeing the whole production cycle through multiple projects.
