What in your opinion is treading now when it comes to game category such as ROG, Platform, FPS…
But also in game style sci-fi, middle ages, high/low poly, high/low resolution, racing, sports etc
What is “traeding”?
Trending I think.
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these seems to be similar style and have good ratings, surely clones will follow soon…
- The Last Exterminator on Steam
- Ion Fury on Steam
- ULTRAKILL on Steam
- DUSK on Steam
- totally different style, MOUSE on Steam
#RemindMein2Years
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Take a look at the release dates of those games. Clones have followed. In fact, most of these came out at the pinnacle of this genre’s financial viability. In fact, trend chasing is always a bad idea for this reason; by the time you actually get a game people actually want to play out, the trend will have likely passed.
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Swimming, tank games, boot manufacturing simulators, horse riding and farriers, Gadsden flag slogans, …
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The most commonly released game type is “copycat game”, “clone” or “reskin”, usually mimicking another gimmick title. See “Vampire Survivors” or “Only Up”. Another common occurrence is a “primitive porn game”.
Now, there are big releases that stand out, but I don’ think they’re a trend. If anything, judging by my discovery queue, people are aiming low, and are trying to get lucky with many releases of many similar titles.
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flappy bird!
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The biggest trend I’ve seen in the AAA industry lately is making inexplicably horrible games that nobody wants and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
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Making horror games out of kids themed media to sell the game to adults (and kids ultimately) while selling merch to kids (and adults as well).
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Indie immersive simulators (imsims) with PS1/PS2 era 3D graphics. Albeit, it might be a bit late to jump on that ship.
The so called boomer shooters have also made a decent amount of cash in the past few years.
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here is latest big hit,
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And here’s why this is a trap.
Let’s say somebody goes “well then, I’ll make a Lethal Company clone!” Okay, fine, whatever. But that means they’re wasting their time right out the gate. Let’s assume, for a moment, that you can get the clone out the door by tomorrow somehow. Let’s just imagine that you put your hands together, concentrate really hard, and freeze time to make the game.
You’re still going to lose.
The thing about competing with Lethal Company is that you aren’t making a game where people are going “I wish I could play more games like this.” Instead, you’re going to have to try and find a way to make the people who are already playing it to play your game instead or you’re going to have to find a way to make people who aren’t already playing Lethal Company start playing your game. This only gets more difficult once you start factoring in the fact that it’s a predominantly multiplayer title. Yes, there is solo play, but a huge part of why this got as big as it is as fast as it did is because of the social aspect of it.
So now you’ve got the problem where not only are attempts to draw from this trend chasing, but there’s no telling what the lifespan of Lethal Company is going to be.
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yup!
although from personal experience,
i’m still waiting for a proper Vampire Survivors multiplayer clone.
Have tested many of those, but there’s always something that is “just wrong/broken/bad playabilty”…
so i can imagine being a potential customer for better clones,
even for Lethal Company (although haven’t played it yet).
*Dissonance-plugin is going to have a good time in asset store these days, has ready to use proximity voice chat : )
This is also a trap, but one people rarely think about.
When people play games, it’s not just a mechanical connection they have to them. Do you remember the distant past of around 2010? Back then, every MMO that was coming out was being presented as the “World of Warcraft Killer,” either through their own marketing or through the press. These games often offered dramatic improvements over WoW, from the ways they presented their narratives, to the gameplay itself, to the character customization, to the worlds you’d be exploring, all sorts of ways.
But the thing is, they never really managed to peel away more than a fraction of WoW’s userbase and that’s because those people had an emotional attachment to the game. They didn’t want a “better MMO” or an MMO with different/more features or anything like that enough to get over that emotional attachment. Now, I’m using WoW as an exaggerated example here because it’s easier to see these connections, but these things do have analogues in things like Vampire Survivors as well. It’s why one of the most popular Vampire Survivors clones is HoloCure.
Why HoloCure? Well, we’re back to that whole emotional connection thing, only in this case it’s more born out of an external emotional connection. I’m not going to get into a big deep explanation of vtubers or anything here, but a Vampire Survivors clone where you’re just playing as characters you’re already familiar with, usually on a somewhat different level because they’re streamers? That’s going to be a better sell that basically any feature change. If you completely removed all the vtuber elements from HoloCure, you’d have a fantastic Vampire Survivors clone, even one I’d say is better than Vampire Survivors itself!
And nobody would give a shit.
If you want to supplant an existing game, you don’t need to just be a better game. You need to be so much better that you can break those emotional bonds. Even a weak emotional bond will be a tough thing to break. Sometimes this is even more tricky because those emotional bonds are things like the experiences you had with the community surrounding a game. In a singleplayer title, this is almost entirely extrinsic. Maybe it’s not even the community, but nostalgia. Nostalgia doesn’t have to be some far away thing, you can be nostalgic for something that only happened a few months ago. You’re fighting against that as well.
You could genuinely write a book on why trend chasing isn’t a viable plan. There’s a reason that the place you see trend chasing the most is in the mobile space, where the turnaround times are super fast. You’ll also notice that games doing trend chasing in that space get real aggressive with their monetization real fast. They know they’re only ever going to be able to keep a small handful of people at best and they need to get as much as they can from them because it’s the only way they’re going to make enough money for that plan to be viable.
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Maybe combine Lethal Company with Among Us!
First time I saw a streamer playing it, I totally thought some other player was the murderer, not monsters xD
Isn’t Lethal Company a clone of Deep Rock Galactic?
Also, there are tons of asymmetrical horror coop games. Then there are 3d versions of amongus.
For example, there’s “Killer: Infected One of Us” which very amusing top negative review. Then there’s… “Town of Salem”, “TTT”, “Project Winter”, “Unfortunate Spacemen”
Yet Brotato, Halls of Torment, 20 Minutes Till Dawn among a dozen more similarly successful trend chasers exist. They might not be as successful as the trend starter, but chasing that 0.01% megahit game is arguably a less viable plan than jumping on a trend in a timely manner.
Also, Stumble Guys is a Fall Guys clone and managed to completely outcompete the original.
Lethal Company is a much riskier bet due to the multiplayer component, but there are plenty of success in singleplayer realm of roguelikes. The Survivors and Slay the Spire clones.
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I never said megahit. You’re making this an either-or thing, but I’ve never presented it as this. You mentioned a small amount of games and said “a dozen more.” Even your own wording shows the problem: those trend chasers that succeed? They’re vanishingly rare. There’s more reasons I haven’t touched on, and I’ll give a slant comparison for you here.
You’re watching a movie. It’s an okay movie. It’s fine. In the middle of the movie, the characters are sitting on a couch and watching Casablanca. If the movie is making the audience think of another, better movie? That’s a terrible idea. From that point, the movie have set a level of comparison that the audience is going to be thinking of on some level because they have been reminded them of something better.
Trend chasing does this by default. You will always be reminding people of their other experiences. In chasing a trend, you have the stacked the deck against your favour for that reason and all the other reasons I’ve outlined. You mention some games doing well? Okay. How many have completely bombed?
And if we’re talking about financial viability? Here’s the real shit. I hate how many times I have to keep saying this. If you want financial stability? Get a desk job, don’t chase game trends.
What does “lose” actually mean, here, though? What is the goal that defines “win” and “lose”? High (enough) revenue/profits? High (enough) player count? Convert (X amount of) players from that game to yours? Supplement that game or contribute to the community/trend with your game? Gain popularity amongst the genre/trend? Get your company’s name out there (i.e. get players familiar with your company)? Get game dev experience period by shipping a game in a style your familiar with and enjoy (i.e. get your feet wet)?
Who said anything about competing with it? “Game” and “Game Clone” are two separate games. People can play one, play the other, or play both. A majority of people do not tie themselves to only one, nor do they feel an obligation to be loyal to one over the other; those who do are often called “die-hard fans” or “fanboys”, with the latter usually having a negative connotation.
Yes, this is true. Ironically, though, it’s this exact emotional connection that makes them want more of it. When you get a “clone”, you get two versions of the thing you love instead of just one.
This idea you have that people need to “emotionally detach” themselves from a game just to play a similar “clone” game just sounds more anecdotal than factual; I know there are many people who this is true for, but for the majority, no. The only reason I’ve seen a playerbase not like a clone is because the clone sucked and/or was not worth the cost, not because they were too emotionally attached to the original to “cheat on it” with a clone.
For example, with mgear:
They want a clone, but the clones they have tried suck. So, as one can infer, if they get a clone that doesn’t suck, they will play it and like it, no problem; no breaking an “emotional attachment” with the original game required (in fact, they’ve already played clones, so technically, that’s already happened). After all, they are asking for more of what they like, not an alternative to something they don’t.
“Success” in general is vanishingly rare; an “original” creation is not promised to be any more “successful” than a “clone” creation. More ethical or admirable? Sure. More successful? No. In fact, clones can actually be more successful than their originals, hence, why clones can be controversial to begin with.