I''ve found that one thing that consistently holds many indie developers back from reaching decent sales is the failure to do any basic market research before deciding on what kind of game to develop. I believe that targeting the wrong market is enough to doom a game to perpetually low sales, no matter how much effort you put into marketing. It takes the same effort to market a flop as it does to market a hit, but if you put your best efforts behind the flop, all that effort may net you only 1/10 or 1/100 of the sales you could otherwise achieve. I was inspired to write an article on this topic to share some ideas on how I believe indie developers can do some basic market research to significantly increase the chance of creating a hit instead of a flop: If You''ve Tried Everything Imaginable And Your Product Still Won''t Sell, Here''s What You''re Missing From my vantage point, there is still tremendous market demand for high quality logic puzzle games. I''m not referring to clones of Tetris or Columns or Bejeweled -- there are tons of those types of games available (and lots of competition). But creating interesting and unique level-based logic puzzles requires a good dose of design talent, and the demand for these types of games presently seems much greater than the supply. I think these types of games sell so well for us because they adapt extremely well to the shareware model -- you give away 5 or 10 levels for free, but since these are logic puzzles, the levels aren''t really replayable, so you don''t have a situation where people keep playing the demo indefinitely (as you sometimes find with arcade games). Once the player finishes the demo (which may take about an hour), they have to decide whether or not to buy the full version in order to continue playing. Another thing is that your most loyal players will eventually finish all the levels, so they''ll tend to come back to buy the next logic puzzle game, almost as a continuation of the same type of problem-solving gameplay. Another thing that helps these games do well is that they appeal to a broad audience. Many of our customers are age 50+ and love these types of games, and they tend to have a lot more money than teenagers. You don''t need fast reflexes to play, nor do you need to understand a huge network of complex commands, so almost anyone with a PC is a potential customer. Yet another advantage is that there''s a slightly educational element to these types of games (problem-solving, teamwork, analytic thinking, etc), so there''s an opportunity to sell site licenses to schools. We''ve sold a few school licenses for our logic puzzle games (one this week in fact), but we''ve never sold a school license for any of our arcade games. And once we sell a school license, we normally see several more sales from the same city (students buying copies to play at home). The last advantage I''ll mention is the social aspect. If someone plays a logic puzzle game and gets stuck, there''s a natural inclination to grab a friend, co-worker, or family member to get them hooked on the game (i.e. two minds are better than one). Even on a single computer where just one person controls the game, people can watch from behind and still have fun because much of the gameplay occurs in your head... from the challenge of solving the puzzles. This leads to more referral sales because people can enjoy a taste of the gameplay without even touching the PC. Watching someone play an action game is usually boring because you aren''t involved, but watching someone play a puzzle game can be nearly as entertaining as working the controls yourself. I started out doing arcade-style games -- I completed over half a dozen arcade games (some published retail, some shareware) before ever writing a puzzle game. Puzzle games seem to be easier to program but harder to design, but in the end I''d say that it takes about the same effort to make a game of equivalent quality in either genre. But in my experience the sales can be an order of magnitude better for a good puzzle game vs a good arcade game, given the same amount of marketing effort. Just some food for thought for those of you who are thinking about what kind of game to make next (especially if you have an arcade game or two that isn''t selling as well as you had hoped).... Steve Pavlina Dexterity Software www.dexterity.com

Thanks steve, I allways appreciate reading your posts and generaly learn something new each time I do. I''m still working hard on my puzzle game, I''m not even going to speculate on when it will be done but when it is.... . watch out!

I'll just jump in to mention I am done with my puzzle game. I'm working hard to get the web site (at least a rough enough version) squeezed out tonight). Miko & Molly is a real 3D puzzle/logic game. I'll spare you the press release hype for now, you can read all that stuff when I post about it in the Announcements forum in the next day or so, so keep your eyes open everyone.

Anyway I wanted to do mine in 3D because it was different from almost everything else out there. I know I'm taking a bit of a chance by going to 3D because it may exclude some portion of the market, but it is done elegantly so I am not too worried right now. In fact, my wife (who always gets sick from any sort of 3D game) has absolutely no problem playing the game. And I've done extensive testing on lots of old 3D cards and it runs on almost anything.

Steve seems to imply that there isn't much replay value in puzzle games. Thats true up to a point. You wont find many people playing the same levels 6 months after they win the whole game like you do with arcade shooters and such. However, there is some replay value in it. I can't count the number of times my wife has played through Miko & Molly. I only asked her to try it, and I expected her to win it then throw it aside. However, after she won it she played through it a few more times just because by the time she beat all 30 levels, she forgot how to beat half of them. Once she mastered everything a few times, she probably would have walked away, except for one thing. Basically, many of my levels have more than one solution (one of them has over a hundred solutions...but thats an extreme case). The different solutions take differing ammount of time. The idea is to challenge yourself to get the best time you can. Then, I have this feature I call the Miko & Molly All Stars. You can upload your best times to the web site and compete with all the other players of the game to see who can find the quickest way. This does in fact give my game a bigger degree of replay value. However, it probably isn't as valuable to them as playing new levels, so I am not afraid that it will cut into sales of expansion packs in any way.

About being tough to design...tell me about it. I had this grand scheme for the game, planned everything out a certain way, it looked good on paper, then when I got my first playable version done, I played it and realized "you know, this isn't any fun at all". I completely overdesigned things and made things too complicated. I ended up going with a much simpler system for everything and it worked so much better.

Finding that magic element to things is the TOUGHEST part. And some of it isnt even gameplay. One of the things about my game is the cuteness of the characters (go take a look at www.kronos-software.com
and tell me that they are not cute ). My wife laughs every now and then because she just loves the way Miko's tail wags while he walks, or the way they do tricks when they jump off a springboard. In trying to come up with a font sceme for the game, I must have drawn out 50 styles of fonts on paper and looked at about 3000 commercial fonts before I found a design I really liked. When I showed my mom the game for the first time she was intrigued by how cool the font was for the game. Its a lot of these little issues that can really make.

The social aspect is a definite side effect to the game. Not only is it fun to have people helping out each other or trying to figure out the solution in their head while the other person actually plays, but it is also fun to see what solutions other people come up with and how they approach things. This isn't so much applicable to games that only have one solution, but for my game even I (after working with the game for 18 months) still get intrigued watching my wife play the game and solve it in a way I never anticipated (what? why are you doing that? You cant do it that way, you are wasting your....whoah hold on a minute, how'd you figure that out?)

Thanks for the ideas about selling to schools. Im not sure how many schools have 3D capable computers, but its something to look into.

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Taking Puzzle Games to A Whole New Dimension

[edited by - LordKronos on July 31, 2002 8:28:59 AM]

That''s an interesting article you wrote Steve. I was thinking how about a cross between an arcade and a puzzle game? Two genres put together. That''s how my game turned out to be, you have to evade enemies, but can''t kill them, and each level presents a unique challenge. I know you don''t like to discuss game ideas, but I just had to ask, and it''s not an idea, my game is about 60% complete

Thank you.

Although I know that Steves right, I find it hard to work on a game I wouldnt be into myself. I like strategy games and arcade games so thats what I tend to write, even though i know puzzle games are more financially successfull. The difficulty is getting the balance right between working in a genre you know about (and are good at) and picking a genre where there are actually some customers.

http://www.positech.co.uk

Games are art and not the sum of their sourcecode. A modern arts artist could (and would) not draw a Rembrandt like picture, just because they sell better (if they do, I have no clue. ).

[edited by - Jester101 on July 31, 2002 11:43:26 AM]

When I first started working on my puzzle game it wasn''t too exciting from a design perspective. The most entertaining part was working on the framework code, D3D wrapper, etc. But as the design progressed it became exciting to refine the objects and items as well as their interactions in the game. The design is still far from finalized because most of it hasn''t been playtested. But even in it''s infant form I want to play the game because it seems fun to me now, the design seems to click and I can imagine full levels of the gameplay elements that have been decided on.

quote: Original post by Mman
That''s an interesting article you wrote Steve. I was thinking how about a cross between an arcade and a puzzle game? Two genres put together. That''s how my game turned out to be, you have to evade enemies, but can''t kill them, and each level presents a unique challenge. I know you don''t like to discuss game ideas, but I just had to ask, and it''s not an idea, my game is about 60% complete

The next two games we''ll be releasing are both puzzle/arcade hybrids, so I''m also curious to see how well this type of game sells compared to the more cerebral pure logic games. Over the next year we''ll be releasing a variety of different games to help map out the territory of what sells best for us.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

quote: Original post by Jester101
Games are art and not the sum of their sourcecode. A modern arts artist could (and would) not draw a Rembrandt like picture, just because they sell better (if they do, I have no clue. ).

At the 2001 GDC, I attended a really interesting lecture on this subject by Jason Rubin (President of Naughty Dog). He talked about how he and his partner went from selling 250,000 units total across all their games over an 8-year period to hitting a huge success with the Crash Bandicoot series and selling over 20,000,000 units. Perhaps his #1 point was that the concept of games as art is incompatible with the reality of the games business. If you want to make art, that''s a fine goal in itself. But if you want to build a successful business, work with publishers, and make a profit, then making art must be secondary to business concerns. Jason pointed out that those who put art before business ultimately go out of business and then produce no more art. But those who put business before art are more likely to survive and thrive, and people will still refer to their work as art.

Classical artists often needed a wealthy patron to fund their work. That patron was thus the artist''s customer, the person that had to be pleased if the artist was to stay in business. In the games business, the publisher is now that patron. Jason Rubin pointed out that publishers are going to be increasingly more concerned with each developer''s ability to put business before art, particularly when millions of dollars are at stake.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

Oh boy, "Games as Art", isn''t this a forbidden topic or something
I once belonged to the "Games are defiantly art" camp. If there are any trolls from the Game Design or Game Writing forums in hiding here, this is where they will likely fall.

This whole debate and how you feel about "Games as Art" really depends on how you define terms like "Game", "Fun", and "Entertainment". No one disputes that movies are art and rightly so. They are also entertainment, but there are some things that movies can do (and be successful) that games cannot. For instance, Schindlers List is a very dramatic and impacting movie, and quite successful as well. But you can also say that it is not a "fun" movie to watch.

If you were to attempt to make a game parallel to Schindlers list that had the same impact on the viewers it would likely not be very successful. This is typically because people play games to have fun. If they aren’t having fun most people aren’t going to buy your product.

To be a successful game you must limit your story/design/theme to certain acceptable areas. You can do a game like Resident Evil, but it has to be fun, the player has to be able to win. If the game was just an artistic expression where you watched the main character die over and over again without ever being able to succeed regardless of how you controlled the character the game would indeed be art, but a very poor game.

Because as game developers we must limit what we express in the game medium in order to be successful we cannot truly claim that everything in the medium is art. A true artistic medium is not limited to certain areas of approved expression.

That said the games medium CAN be used to create art, however these artistic expressions are typically not all that enjoyable to play and lack mass market appeal.

There are many artistic processes that go into creating a successful game. Design/writing/textures/sprites etc. are all artistic disciplines. However the resulting game cannot always be called art, just because it is a game.

It is this need to be successful that really causes us to limit our medium. The need to eat dictates that we must make some money off our endeavors and because of that we loose a lot of what makes the game medium an avenue for artistic expression.

...

There are some cool indie games that are freeware (Lost/Last rose in a desert garden) that attempt to create games that are artistic expressions and I say more power to them. If you keep making them I’ll keep checking them out. (but i probably wont be paying for it)