Hey, ive spent the last few months before and during my first year of university, working on some small simple mobile games (at long last), but this has me wondering… do mobile games need to be original to be successful in a saturated market?
Ive always felt like mobile games have to be original or at least changable in some dynamic, but alot of games on the mobile platform seem to me copies of successful titles (flappy bird > flappy fish, candy crush & bejelwed, crossyroad and jurrassic hopper etc).
Alot of companies also often reskin thier successful titles instead of making something new, is this a good train of thought to follow down or an easy way to make money, what are your thoughts?
Having a succeful game depends on many things. If you are just putting a game in the store with no community, none will ever find the game. If you have a community but the game is bad, they will stop playing it and you won’t gain downloads anymore.
For me personally I play a lot of indiegames on my phone because they are original, like Monument Vally.
The reason why big companies just reskin their successful games is because they can spend less money on advertising. Same goes for movies. If you think Battlefield 3 was great, and you know Battlefield 4 is coming, you’ll get it. If they named it something else you wouldnt know what’s “in the game”.
Let’s take another example: Candy Crush works with a limited amount of lives. If you can’t beat the level you’ll wait 20 minutes to play again. Or invite ALL your friends so you get free lives. So you basically let your players do the marketing for you, and eventually you’ll play candy crush too because of all the notifications.
Originality, a more polished version of an existing concept, and saturation marketing are 3 ways to potential success. Originality is the cheapest of those, so the best option for indies.
Originality is a two edged sword. Often you get concepts that are awesome. But plenty of times you simply find out there is a reason no one has built this type of game before.
Its also worth mentioning that originality brings its own costs.
One of the key costs of originality is time to market. You need to spend more time and do more iterations to finish an original game. And that can be a problem in the mobile market, where high production value clones spring up around every successful product.
There is a definite school of thought that making many products with less originality is a better business plan then being super original.
I really found Cartoon Wars 2 and Goblin Sword fun games. And I say games instead of apps, because they provided an experience that satisfied me more than a casual gamer.
A lot of apps are cheap, like an experience I got out of a quarter slot machine. There’s no soul. It’s like “devs” want to win the lotto. Don’t be those guys.
I always wonder with these posts. Why is attempting to run making games like a business considered so evil? If people are enjoying a game, what’s wrong with making more of the same?
Don’t get me wrong, originality is definitely a good way far an indie to succeed. But I often feel like people take it too far, if every rock and tree and game mechanic is not hand crafted then you are ‘soulless’.
With that definition I’d rather be ‘soulless’ then ‘penniless’.
I’ve always stated that I’m staunchly against cloning.
I don’t see the point of just remaking a recent game and feel that it robs the original creator of their dues.
That said, I have nothing against doing something but with a twist or blending two concepts.
And even though I avoid it as a hobbyist, I understand that people don’t like new ideas. They like new things, but with old ideas. It’s the same reason re-runs are so fun to watch. There’s familiarity.
When new ideas are necessary to move forward, it’s usually best to do it with something familiar. Say you want to do a fighting game that no one has ever done before and the concept is too radical to do on its own. Well, throw Mario, Link, and Samus in it and you’ve got yourself a willing audience.
That’s how you introduce new ideas: Tie them to familiar ideas.
Thanks for the response guys, i guess ill try keep an open mind in regards to types of games i can make, any paticular techniques for thinking up a good game or catching that magicla fairy?
