[Indies] Bandwagons

I've had quite an interesting chat with somebody about the indie games market recently.

I'm not at liberty to say who I've been talking to, but I have it on very good authority that the best selling genres at the moment are Match 3's and the "Find random objects in a busy screen" games, eg Abra Academy or Big City Adventure: San Francisco.

I'm really not fancying doing either.

I'm also told that a good Match 3 game is no longer enough to be a hit. It needs a twist, a la Cradle of Rome, to hold the player's interest.

Way I see it, I have two choices.

1. Swallow my pride and adopt a tried-and-tested formula.
2. Take a risk and do something else.

Bearing in mind that I don't want to invest a load of time in a game that won't sell, I'm not sure what to do. Jumping on the match 3 bandwagon doesn't exactly fill me with joy, either.

I'll take a new "arcadey" golf game, if you're up to it. Not exactly innovation city, I realize that, but I want one in the worst way.

O_O

Arcadey?

Talk to me.

I think he might mean more fun than realism.

Not golf.... Crazy Golf! I think you could do something nice with that in 3D. I started one myself, but my Gfx guy pulled out on me. Crazy golf gives you plenty of opportunity for eye candy, too.

Arcadey Golf = Albatross 18?

http://www.albatross18.com/season2/downloads/downloads.asp?sid=30

My brother plays this a lot, and it seems to have a big following. Payment model is neat in that it's completely free to play, but you pay for extras. I played it a bit, but never paid a penny, not a bad golf game really...

Hey I had an idea a week ago to remake the old Worldclass Leaderboard type games where the screens are drawn but not 3D animated like modern games and doing it all in a casual style.

Anyway, the other major seller is those management type games e.g Diner Dash, Nanny Mania, Cake Mania etc.

Other sim games do OK like the virtual villager games.

Oh and card games always sell.

Oh and Zuma clones, but you don't see many these days since Luxor pretty much cornered the market.

And some word games.

So guess what I'm making at the moment? Actually don't bother cos I can't tell you.

Apart from that lot you'll have a job making any real money from say a platformer, shooter, or a "unique" puzzle game. I see lots of "innovative" "never been done before" puzzle games, but they don't sell, not really. And forget making money from a whacky "arty" Indie game unless you are one in oooh 10,000. Look at gish, didn't make that much money.

The point is whatever you make, you have to make it fantasically polished and with a "story/cartoon strip" and a "map" and probably a meta game (like Cradle of Rome). This is on top of all the usual stuff like profiles, Vista support, options screen, stats/high scores, fancy intro and animated title screen, blah blah. Oh and a Mac version.

Say did you ever read this?

http://greyaliengames.com/blog/why-i-made-a-match-3-clone/

With the right mindset, making a clone can be seen as an exercise in making a really well polished game which has only the best bits from the clone genre. You'll learn a lot and maybe can apply it in the future to more "interesting" games...

Babies? :D

Sorry, couldnt resist!

Anyway, looks like indie dev is going the same way as big ass commercial dev. Knock out countless clones of the same genre, make it look prettier than the last one... and sell!

Absolute cack when you think about it.

Dabz

@GfK I've just played your BizzyBee spelling game (demo)... Nice game BTW

no, been there done that. Mind you practicing is fun. But we digress and GfK can get angry sometimes ;-)

/nod

GFK- I'm in it to make new things- not same old things.

Greys' match-3s have done pretty well from what I can see- But there are 1000's of Match-3s

They are a hit because moms and bored people at work can take 5 mins to play. These games seem to have more appeal for that situation!

(My mom bgecame hooked on bejeweled.)

Thx :)

Yeah but new stuff is a big gamble. I have plenty of ideas for something 'different' but the question is, am I wasting my time by doing it?

For the indie market, people largely seem happy to play one match three after another etc. How do you persuade them to change their way of thinking? How many people would instantly dismiss a new game because it isn't match three?

Is this what it's come to? One of my aspirations is to become and Indie and develop interesting, different games... but the reality seems to be that you have to churn out the same old thing to make a living.

options:


with comment:



My thoughts are that option 1 would take less time to develop to completion than option 2.
My second thought, which is just a guess really, is that if you take a risk and do something else (option 2) then if it is successful that it may not be as successful as if you were the '2nd' person to come up with that idea. I'm not sure if I'm being clear, what I'm trying to say is perhaps take a new genre/gameplay mechanic which has not been fully explored but which is on the verge of being 'the next big thing' and look into how it could be improved. Not as difficult or time consuming as coming up with a 'new' idea yourself but not as dull as doing something for which the market may now be saturated?

None of this is based on any facts or learned knowledge, just some random thoughts..

Would it take you long to knock up a prototype? If not then you could do that and get it play tested.

Play testing and market testing are completely different things. ;)

So basically you're saying don't try anything new, just make clones of popular games and saturate the market. I guess BFG and other casual game sites need people like that to fill their "A New Game Everyday" motto.

Personally, I'd go with something original. Go out on a limb. Unless your sole income is games, then make clones?

EDIT:
I don't see anything wrong with making a match 3 as long as it's different from the norm...something outrageous.

What if you blend the idea of a match 3 with your other original idea and make a cross-breed? Then you can sort of partially satisfy both, get a chance for more market share/sales, and do something partially original.

I think if you have the vision and business sense you can make something different and original and make plenty of money from it. It all depends what type of audience you want to target and how many of them there are.

When it comes to systems where you vote for your favorite, be it a president or a song or a blooper, it really has barely nothing at all to do with what the thing is you're voting for, and everything to do with how many people relate to it. The popular vote is what you're dealing with when you're marketing your game or choosing an audience. You don't have much control over coercing or `selling` something to someone who wasn't already interested in it.
People pretty much know what they like and what they believe and wont step very far outside those boundaries. That's why it seems like you have to therefore base everything around catering to what their needs are, regardless of what seems to be in it for you. You can make plenty of money giving people what they want. That's the EASY way to do it. It gets harder when you start trying to convince people to be more open minded, to entertain your idea, to listen to your suggestions or to `buy into` what you've created. Why do you think stores and shops the world over go to such lengths to try to *persuade* you to buy their stuff? They have to, because if it were just a case of giving people exactly what they want you'd only sell what the people tell you they want. We all know, therefore, that your sales get increased when you can persuade OTHER people, who may not have initially wanted your product, to open up to it and buy it. Then it's a matter of you `selling it` to them, presenting some dream to them that they find appealing enough or pulls the wool over their eyes enough to make them think they're buying something they want. Then it becomes pretty easy to start trying to present your product as something that it isn't, to make a whole load of fanfare and hype about it, to bring out advertising that doesn't even show the product and that you wouldn't guess has anything to do with it, so that then it's the hype and the drama and the dream that you're buying, not the actual thing. You can take this to an extreme and go to enormous lengths to sell a lie.

The better path, perhaps, would be to give the customer what they want and what they like, at the same time as blending it with getting them to gently open up to something new. And remember they can't change overnight so you have to gently coerce them through the game and educate them and let them practice. This puts a `softer face` on your product, rather than just expecting them to be hardcore gamers that just dive in and hit the ground running. You have to START with where the are at, welcoming them in and helping them to be comfortable, and then gradually work to broaden their horizons.

So, maybe, make a game that starts out as a match 3, and then gradually morphs into your super-wonder-original game?

got the T-shirt already?

If you want to take risks then ask yourself these two questions: am I wealthy enough to release an unprofitable game and write off the loss of time and money? Is artistic and creative value more important to me than financial gain? If your answer to both these questions is "yes" then take a risk and make something different. If your answer to both these questions is "no" then make something relatively risk free like a Match 3 game.

It seems to me that you have had more success than most, and consistently too. Would I be right in guessing that many of your past games were not, ideally speaking, games that you would have choosen to create in a perfect world? Perhaps assessing your own history of success and failures will provide the clearest pointers as to your future course of action.

It is absurd to think that making a video game of any genre is a safe bet. Whatever game you're making there's going to be a degree of risk involved:
* Match-3 games: Market penetration in an already oversaturated market.
* Original game: Market penetration in a market dominated by a different genre and developers that aren't you.

Personally I think the idea of making another Match-3 game at this point is suicide. Before Puzzle Quest maybe, not now. Anyone who wants a Match-3 game has one (likely more than one) by now, and coming up with new and more interesting concepts in a Match-3 game (never mind getting these across as unique selling points) is probably going to be much more difficult than making a entirely different game.

I might be getting off-topic, but I wanted to give my input to this thread.
For my part, developing games is not about trying to make money by milking what the indie market seems to be about. I wouldn't enjoy doing that, it would just feel like production to me. I would much enjoy working on a project that I designed, something unique, interesting. Something like an RTS, a turn-based strategy, an FPS, an RPG... but not a match-3 clones.
Now, the money problem arise - "but I have to make match-3's to make the money to be able to live". Agreed. But instead, I took another route. I work in the video games industry, but for someone else, hired as a programmer. For those who don't know, I work at Artificial Mind & Movement (http://www.a2m.com/). I can hear people telling me: bah, you work on games that you have not designed and that are not thrilling to develop. Sorry, but I rather work on the projects I did: Scaler and Scooby-Doo Unmasked than a lowsy match-3 clone. And then, on the evenings and week-ends, I work on my personal projects. I work something like 10 hours a week on those. It's not much, development is quite slow, but hell, I work on something I REALLY want to.