Hi, I was wondering if any independent game developers (maybe even someone from a big name company that works in marketting) would be able to tell me the process a person would go through in determining whether or not a game is marketable. I don't have a particular game in mind here, so I'm not looking for anything to the effect of "There's no market for X game". What I'm mostly looking for is a set method a person can go through with their game to determine it's marketability. If anyone could help me, or refer me to a good source, I would be greatly appreciative!

I think most developers, like us, would outsource such researches to external marketing offices (i.e. agencies that specialize in determining market needs and possibilities on demand; I'm not sure what the English/American term for it is). Although this is relatively expensive, it gets you a better picture than you would get with your own research (unless you are trained in market-research).

Greetz,

Illco

indiegamer archive will give some idea of the research you'll have to go through also Gamasutra has a feature somewhere about marketability, but you'll have to search for it.

Thanks a lot for your links! I'm checking it out now. I'll also look into talking to some marketting agencies, however I doubt they'd give me too much info as I'm hoping to make this a do it yourself approach (as much as possible, anyway).

Market research agencies make sure that they try to sample a balanced spread of potential customers to get a realistic response. As someone earlier said, if you don't have training your do it yourself research will likely be flawed and as such useless. You can't just ask all your friends and the kids at the local school.

I think there are agencies that collect game revenue data and sell it to you. I'm not sure if that should be your only indication of games to make as things have a strange way of working out. For example, when the business guy that IDSoftware hired asked JC how they knew what games to make JC answered that as long as the game is fun that it will sell well or something to that effect. So make fun games. Fun game is simply a game where player isn't frustrated by the experience and where things aren't stale. I've been talking a lot about GTA3 lately because that game is a perfect example where it could have been so much better only if the devs could have made the missions easier or less frustrating. Fixing those stutters would also help from technical viewpoint.

I never finished the last 6 missions of GTA3 because I got frustrated with gameplay. I'm not buying any more GTA games ever. I keep hearing they're making the same errors as before ie. long missions that you drive for 5 minutes then get promptly killed and have to redo them zillion times over. The same with the spying fps games where they take realizm to extreme and you get killed with single bullet and have to redo the long mission again. Sure it's fun for the first three tries but then you get mad. Also, stay away from making simulator games or any games that take one element and take it to the extreme because it just gets repetitious and thus boring. Make games where the gameplay varies and don't make too long or too short games. Replayability is something to look into as well.

Half-life handled the shooting well and I liked its weapons but it needed something more than that, not to mention that I get stuck on the elevator and in zen levels and I always dread those points. That in itself ruins the game for me. I think there is a need for single player games as well as multiplayer ones. The multiplayer MMORPG games are popular because they filled long missing need that of people interaction that the paper and pen games were about back in the old times. I'm primarily a single player gamer who wants just to experience new plots or things to do in a game. Say rather than walking about how about sliding down the tube or going across buildings on a rope crashing thru windows, etc. Perhaps parachuting down onto rooftops.

We've seen bits and pieces of these in various games and I wish one game could contain them all. For example, in GTA3 driving was fun but long driving was boring. So if you're thinking about making an engine in which you can drive for ever don't bother. Don't take real life experiences and impose them onto the game world. Instead take the fun elements out of them and then make a fun game out of them. That's just my take on things.