I think the notion that "games are art" is one of the main reasons of failure for indie developers. People just don''t seem to understand that there are business aspects to game development. They have this idea that "if you build it they will come." I too was once in the "games are art" camp, until I decided I want to make my own games for a living. Shortly thereafter I realized 1) how naive I was, and 2) how much I need to learn about the BUSINESS side of making games.

Many indie developers are talented programmers but most of them don''t know squat when it comes to the business of game development. I''m not very experienced in the business side myself yet, but I finally understand just how important it is. When I first started learning about it, thought the business side accounted for about 50% of the game''s success. The more I learn however, the more the numbers swing in the business direction. I can see now why publishers usually take so much of the profits. Publishing not an easy thing to do, definitely not easier than the actual development.

Well as I am one of the few persons here that actually have success, I cannot be very far off the road, can I?

There are a few sentences in which I can describe why games MUST be art: Why cannot you say to a highly talented and educated programmer: "Go and make a XY game."? You would get back something that looks great and actually does what you wanted it to do. But it will be no fun and nobody will buy it. So where is the difference between this technically perfect game that nobody buys and a small crappy game that sells like...whatever?

You seem to misunderstand the "art" concept. The wrong approach would be to say: "Hey, my game is art, it MUST be good, you NEED to buy it." If nobody buys it, that''s your problem (as always with art).

Hell and it doesn''t mean to leave the business part off.

I don''t know I feel completetly misunderstood.

Of course I don''t create a RPG, because it wouldn''t pay out. But I wouldn''t make a solitaire game, just because they (maybe) sell well.

Steve, please don''t tell me you made Dweeps just because you thought: "Yes, well a puzzle game with little fuzzy creatures, would sell well.", but of course because you really enjoyed to make such a game.

Of course he made it because he thought it would sell well. Why would you make something that you don''t think will sell?

I think the point Jester is making is that many of the best games come about because the people making them believed in them, not believed in a set of demographic statistics. On the one hand you can look at the market and decide that this kind of game will sell better and therefore concentrate on that, but the big success stories often come from people bucking the trend and doing what they believe in.
Sim city and the Sims are good examples, everyone kept telling Will Wright that nobody would buy a game you couldnt win, there was no genre for this, no precedent, yet he went ahead and did it and made a few bucks
Although it is true to say that a lot of people currently play puzzle games, and that therefore, taregting that market might be very sensible, its also (surely) true to say that if there is a genre that is underrepresented (or even non existent) its not possible to detect it by looking at what people are downloading, the only way to find that new market is to make the game and see who buys it.
Also, I think that a truly good game can suck people into your genre. Championship manager sucked people into games who play no other PC games at all, ditto Tomb Raider. For me personally, Age Of Empires hooked me into RTS games, even though Id tried others and dismissed the genre for many years until that game came along and turned me around on it.

I make games that I think are cool. Sometimes they sell well, often they don''t, but for me personally, I find it easier to do this, than to deliberately set out to exploit a specific market. In financial terms, I wish I found it easier to do that, but motivation wise, I just don''t

http://www.positech.co.uk

Chuckles to himself,

Why do people insist on seeing everything in black and white?

Me and my artist friend were talking last night about the different "strengths" we each brought to Dreamstars.

First there is my strength as a game designer and programmer. The basics of any game seems to be a logical system that the user can interact with that brings enjoyment. That said there seems to be heaps of scope for this process to be artistic (original). However when designing a game that is aimed to be commercially viable there are many real world factors that come into play and I think this is what Steve is getting at.

Firstly you need to know that you can actually create such a game with the existing resources available to you. If you are a one man team with no story writing ability then creating a story based game is obviously ludicrous no matter how well you can envisage it working

Next you need to think about demand. I think this is what Steve is talking about, and demand is a funny thing. Again there are many elements to demand that range from how saturated the market is in that area of game mechanics, to if a totally new type of game mechanic will even appeal to anybody.

I like Steve''s point about puzzle games being of higher demand because they essentially have a shorter play life but this brings up a whole new issue of replayability. Replayability is a pretty important factor to any game. It adds value to your game if it is more repayable than the competition. And this includes puzzle games! If your puzzle game has 10 levels and your competition has 100 levels then people are going to buy the competitions game because it is better value for their money!

Thirdly there is the art of the game, the look and feel, the ability the game has to immerse you in another world. Some game mechanics, like RPGs rely heavily on this artistic factor making a good storyline a vital part of the game itself. Others like chess rely very little as the mechanics of the game are what is most important.

Fourthly there seems to be a quality aspect to any commercial quality game. People just won''t buy a 4bit colour 64 pixel res game anymore no matter how original and interesting the game play is. Nor will they buy a game with 0 artistic integrity or 0 game mechanics.

Me and my friend agreed that I was able to bring a certain type of art to the game, the mathematical art that relies on the balance of mechanics ect. While he was able to bring the immersion quality. The look and feel that sucks a player into the mechanics and keeps them there.

A game isn''t just artistic or market based, it''s a blend of those two factors and many others, like technical competence and system limitations.

Ideally you want a beautiful artistic and original game design that is easy to implement with your given resources and is in high demand by the consumers and it should also be filled with artistic integrity that draws users in and captivates them, ehancing your mecanics and making the whole much more that it''s parts.

Simple right?




--------------------------
Jai Shaw
Dreamstars 3: A space combat game with depth?!
Coming in August
http://icarusindie.com/Dreamstars

That''s what I meant.

I think you misunderstood my point. I''m not saying all that''s important is to find an unexploited market (like puzzle games) and then just make any crappy puzzle game hoping it will sell. What I''m saying is it''s not enough to just make a good game. It has to have a market, otherwise no matter how good it is nobody will buy it. You might think it''s great and fun to play but that doesn''t mean everyone else will.

A problem I see with indie developers is they''re often hardcore players. As such, they often say that they can''t make a certain type of game because it''s not interesting to them, or it''s not the kind of game they''d want to play. I used to be kind of like this too, though I''m not really a hardcore player, more of a casual player. I realized recently that I just love games regardless of whether they''re WarCraft III or Dweep. I really don''t mind writing puzzle games if that''s what sells. I can get into it just as much as writing an action game.

So yes, I agree that a game does require a lot of thought, good design, etc. But I''m not very picky about what kind of game to make. If you think of it as a hobby, then obviously there''s no pressing need to do market research, or trying to make a game that will sell. If however you think of this as a job (if you are your own boss it''s still a job even though you''re the boss ) then you have to be a bit more objective in terms of what you''re going to make. In the real world you don''t get to choose what you want to do at ALL. You have to do what your boss tells you. Here at least, you get to tell yourself what to do.

quote: Original post by Jester101
Steve, please don''t tell me you made Dweeps just because you thought: "Yes, well a puzzle game with little fuzzy creatures, would sell well.", but of course because you really enjoyed to make such a game.

Actually, that''s pretty close to the truth.

Before deciding to do Dweep, I did about a week of market research, downloading and playing dozens of other games (in the same vein as I mentioned in the article in the first post of this thread). I wanted/needed the game to make money because I was broke -- at the time that was a lot more important to me than expressing myself as an artist. Before I did this research, I didn''t know if I would be doing a puzzle game or an action game.

This research led me to the conclusion that a creative character-based puzzle game was my best chance for success. I was thinking that a game similar to Lemmings would probably be very marketable as shareware and would sell well. I saw games like Sokoban getting lots of downloads, and I believed I could compete well with the current offerings in that category. I also felt I could create such a product in a reasonable amount of time and with the resources I already had. I opted for 2D art because I wanted the game to run well on low-end systems, and I didn''t want the game to look terribly dated in 5 years (old 3D art seems to look worse to me than old 2D art).

After figuring out what kind of game to make, I then set about designing the game, and subject to the constraints of the business goals, that''s where I poured my creative energy. So while the game looks like art on the surface, the intent behind the design was to create a passive-income generator. Even the free hints and solutions on the web site were pre-planned as a way to keep bringing traffic back to the site. Although the game is over 3 years old, it''s still selling well today... even better than it did in its first year.

I''m not a huge puzzle-game player myself. Presently the game I play most is Warcraft III (I''m about 2/3 of the way through the campaigns). Before Dweep I had never designed or programmed a level-based logic puzzle game.

What about motivation? Motivation can be created, and when necessary, you can overcome a lack of motivation with self-discipline (although this isn''t such a good long-term solution). There are many great books written on motivation... how to get yourself to want to do something you wouldn''t ordinarily want to do. Some of them are lousy, but if you read enough of them, you can acquire a great number of tools to motivate yourself to do just about anything. I don''t decide on new projects based on what would be most fun for me. Instead I decide what I should be doing based on what will help me achieve my goals, and then I psychologically condition myself to want to do it. That''s how I moved from programming to publishing.

So I''m not saying that games aren''t art. I think games are an art form even more expressive than movies and music. My point was that if you make the artistic concerns secondary to the business concerns, you''re more likely to build a successful business. That''s all.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

Logic-based puzzle games are one, but from what i''ve noticed, the sim games are the biggest sellers. When gamasutra.com sends out it''s monthly newsletter (or bi-monthly i can''t remember), several months in a row was showing the highest selling pc games were simulations of some sort, and some were even 3-5 years old, and yet, I still have no interest in making such a game. My view is if you make a game YOU want to play, then you''ll work alot harder on it because it would be fun to you, which could translate into more sales if you''re doing your best work.

An interesting side-note, my tetris clone does get alot more play than my current action game, IMO, action games are more fun for me, but because my tetris clone was my first complete game I tried harder on it. Which kind of goes to show, if you put your best into something it will usually get more play simply because people can see it. (BTW my action game I put alot into also, but I put more into the gameplay than my tetris clone, since tetris'' gameplay was already worked out, i just added a few features, with my action game i had to really work on it to make it fun).

Keith

We target a completely different market than retail publishers, so the types of games we look for are very different. Games that seem to sell best in our channels are card games, board games, puzzle games, and small action/arcade games. Games that sell worst through to this market would probably be sports games.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com