SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Hello again,,

This is captain obvious speaking here but....

Not everyone want to eat a 10 course full meal with every gastronomical delight known to man every meal....sometimes people just want to walk down to the local fish and chippery and buy a hamburger and a few dim sims.

Analogy for video game development and 'what the market wants'.

I would see it differently:

You are a dude who talks a lot with others, you also read newspapers, surf websites.
You are doing this because you know a lot of things happen in the world and without reading and talking you won't know. Yeah you are interested in all this stuff but it is way easier for you to read and talk in a "varied manner" (and also while playing a game, having a beer, doing group sports, ... so "side distraction").

Now they begin to talk about a game ... and to gain your attraction:
- people need to talk about it (or papers write about it etc)
- something they talk about it must gain your attention (for some it is just the fact that the others talk about it -> the "I want to try that too" effect, to "belong to them")

So what makes people talk about it or newspapers/blogs write about things: if enough other people talk about it, if there is a "scandal"/"shitstorm possibility" (gain views! reads!) ...
A niché product might have people talk about it - but it won't be the majority, it will be a way smaller audience circle. And the smaller a circle, the harder it is for this circle to cross other circles with similar interests (or even the same, if the circles are "local limited").

You need to find ways to "increase that circle diameter" ...and this is by having more offered meals (to connect to your analogy) or to offer a scandalizing meal ("the only real Hot Dog in New York").

Of course a "wider circle" often comes with a shallowed "depth" of your product (quality of the meals decrease as the kitchen chiefs won't be able to create everything in perfection - in the sense of suiting YOUR taste). This is then the matter of "specialization" (you know ... experts in making "T-Shits" vs people who can saw cloth bags ... cut holes in it and it is also "wearable" ).



bye
Ron

It's not deep, Ron. What Matty's is that some people want massive triple A+ games that will take many hours to complete, have taken years to develop, and cost an absolute fortune.

And some of us just want to play Space Invaders, or match 3 games rather than all that shit.

All these games i have in my Steam library and for the last couple of weeks all I've been playing is Craft the World.

Reminds me: must cancel my WoW subscription.

Exactly Xerra, some of us want that exotic meal cooked with Amazonian Wilderbeest slow cooked with herbs acquired from all corners of the globe, others just want a plate of fish and chips.

There are plenty of people who not even dare to watch at "triple A+" games - because their hardware would not even support it.

Others just do not have the time to "dive deep into games". They have an hour or less at the evening, after "checking their mails" ...
These are the casual gamers, who play sudoku, match3, solitaire, mahjong, ...

As Matty is not targetting for this ..audience, games need to offer "enough" to be enjoyable for hours. If a game "looks" like it is having a certain "depth" or "learning curve" or "gameplay complexity", it should also offer this. The issue here is: if nobody tries, then nobody will find out.


And the "why does nobody try" has various reasons and we often discussed such things in the past: product visibility (you are the 100th plush teddy bear in the toy store shelf...).  First obvious reason is "looks" (if a game just looks meh, people won't try), Second is "word of mouth" (if somebody tells you about it...), Third probably might be "source of trust" (if eg a website you read often reports about the game ...).


What is important is: you might put efforts into certain aspects of the game - but depending on what players/users you attract you will have to adopt to their desires (so your game WILL change here and there). This is not what all developers do or enjoy (especially the intrinsic driven once like we dev guys here). The more you see your game as "product" the more you "sell your soul" so to say.

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New reply of matty .. .so replying to it too:

Yeah, some might want that exotic meat ... but world-wide you might be counting 1000 people with the same interest. This brings you to the "nobody plays my games" discussion (a too small "circle").
And for your meal analogy: if your buddies come along and say "no, I won't eat Amazonian Wilderbeest slow cooked with herbs" ... then you need to agree on a restaurant offering the least common denominator all can agree too. The bigger your group is, the lower this LCD can be ... 

Any new restaurant (aka "any new game") will have to check what will attract most (biggest circle, least common denominator) and then give some extra "spice" to be the one to talk about ("Next to our classics, we also offer Amazonian Wilderbeest, think we are first to be brave enough to do so").


bye
Ron

The funny thing about game development for me in my opinion is that a) I don't play games generally, neither my own nor commercial ones or any - although I enjoy real life physical board games.  b)The only time I ever play games is when I'm developing a game, I test what I make...and then I set it aside when I've completed development.  I find the process of developing a game far more fun than actually playing any of them. To me...my fun and games is the programming languages themselves...not he games I make with them.

I haven't played games regularly since the late 1990s.  I get my gaming fun primarily from the time I spend writing a game, and I never play games outside of that.

I feel with you - I think we are "fatigued" with our games when we develop them. We know the "inners" and think we know everything - but this also often mean we are far away from mastering our own games because we only play them "in pieces" with focus on specific elements, we do no longer see the big picture as regular players see them.

Assume we are not alone with that.


bye
Ron