I posted a rant about the state of the game market and why Niche is the way to go on our blog. However I wanted to get the community's thoughts as well. For the ADHD among you here's the TL;DR version: Casual game market is flooded in ever sense of word. Nobody wants to play your match 3, flying bird, puzzle game and even if they did they stand fat chance of finding you. Making game for the masses turns app development into a gamble where odds aren't in your favor unless you pull off AAA quality polish and marketing. Going niche is the solution. Developing for and getting niche communities involved solves discoverability, marketing, and advertising in one fell swoop. Rinse, wash, and repeat and get a liveable income. Anyway, that's our philosophy and business plan (one that is completely and unequivocally untested), and you may now disagree with it.
I definitely agree that aiming for mass appeal at all costs is a dead end street, creatively. It's pretty obvious that most of the app buying public aren't interested in a game that offers depth or challenge, they want simple, mindless fun. By catering to a particular niche, you might limit your audience, but you can potentially generate a lot more excitement and goodwill with your players. If there's a huge amount of appetite for a particular genre that's poorly represented in the app store (like turn-based strategy or metroidvania), you can strongly capitalize on that. I feel like I've been on both sides of this already... Zombieville was a dead simple game that appeals to a lot of people, and remains our best seller. Battleheart was firmly aimed at a narrower niche due to its relative complexity, higher price and fantasy theme. It hasn't sold as many copies as Zombieville, but it's easily our most beloved game with an enthusiastic fanbase. That said, I disagree that discoverability is still a battle even with triple-A visuals and addictive, clever gameplay. As everyone knows, getting featured in one of Apple's hand-picked lists is the "super bowl ad" of app marketing - it guarantees millions of eyeballs on your product. And in my experience, getting featured is simply inevitable if you can execute at a certain level of polish. That bar is fairly high (and getting higher all the time) but its an achievable goal. There's no way a game as slick and polished as, say, Cut the Rope wasn't going to get the midas touch from Apple. Whether you're making a steampunk-tactical-rpg-dating-sim, or launching birds through the air, execution is the name of the game.
You only have two choices: - Casual: high risk Investment (more competitor), but higher profit possible. - Niche kind of game (usually more hardcore): less Investment risk (no competitor), but lower income possible. If you are a good business man, you will do both (like MikaMobile).
A very timely thread. Somehow I came to the same conclusion earlier when I started to make my current game: find a theme which belongs to a special niche (poorly represented in the AppStore) and create such a game which is suitable for that niche and at the same time it is appealing to the avarage casual players, since its representation delivers a higly polished casual experience. So I will promote the game first and precisely among the people in that niche (forums, banners, specialised giveaways), and I hope it will create enough starting base. (Promoting of course at gaming sites at the same time as usual.) What I have found out, that the other games in that particulary niche are not promoted at all in those communities they should normally belong. But I will do. And than, as always, the pudding must be eaten to find out, whether it is good or bad...
In the long run, I would have thought that niche would ultimately be the way to go. The casual game, may have it's benefits, but as it's rightly been said .... it can be hit or miss. Niche, for me is more targeted but, as with most marketing can you get more hits and longer sustainability by aiming your products more selectively and growing your client base steadily over time. I think many of us would love the "quick" approach, who wouldn't but, with so much competition out there the tortoise might just win over the jet powered, power up fuelled hare. My thinking is, create a niche for yourself with a solid base and the where possible evolve into the other markets while making sure you don't alienate your core fans.
Well that's certainly encouraging! Unfortunately, judging from the majority of entries, I don't know how realistic that is for many indie developers. If a dev doesn't have the resources or experience to pull off that level of quality, I believe their best bet is to go very Niche to start. They've got a much better chance at making at least some money that way. Otherwise their generic Match 3 or Flying/Swimming/Jumping/Running "insert animal here" game is probably going to come and go without anybody noticing. This is exactly the strategy we are following with RoboArena. Glad to see others have come to the same conclusion. I'd say a really good example of this kind of approach would be the game Outwitters that One Man Left is doing right now. They are boiling Turn Based Strategy games down to the core fun principles, and leaving out any of the complications that would alienate non-fans of the genre. Also their style and polish are very inviting and accessible. It's a niche game with mass market appeal! We are following them closely to see how they market it. Exactly. Going niche turns game development into an investment instead of a gamble. It makes it much more predictable, and thus much more stable for building a business from. It's a much better approach in my eyes than throwing yet another casual game out there and hoping you hit the lottery.
well, how do you know this niche exists on this platform and how big this niche actualy is.. aiming for something you don't know about is pretty hard imho.. also niche does not mean you can be more successfull with a lesser quality product.. i think its actualy the opposite.. the casual market (which is attracted to general good looking games) do not really care about perfection of execution.. there can be flaws in alot aspects and still be successfull if it appeals to them.. whereas the niche guy.. like the round based strategy gamer is more likely to be alot more critic about your product because he is very deeply involved with this genre/style of games.. so delivering a mediocre product won't help anywhere.. i would rather question myself for the scope of my own products i'm planing.. if i can't pull off a certain quality why even bother with this special goal... even highly polished products like great little war , who would probably fit perfectly your description of niche product and casual friendly polish did not quite succeded on the appstore like it should.. not sure if the devs recouped their investment yet going niche does not turn a project into an investment, the "gamble" is the same.. thinking otherwise can fire back pretty hard , when the sales numbers come in.. and reality turns into a wall. there is no gurantee whatever you do.. and if going "niche" means to compete with projects like outwitters or any other round based strategie game then i think your definiton of "niche" is wrong.. having a plan is always good.. having a target too.. but please don't rely to much on one thing.. there are always enough devs out there who try to ride their dead project for years to come without any movement.. its dead.. so prepare for plan b, and c.. and probably also plan d.. i think every developer out there should ask the realistic question "what happens if my dream project does not fly but crash, what happens then ?" Hope for the best, expect the worst. Be prepared for both!
MikaMobile has demonstrated that achieving a high level of polish - the kind that sells lots of copies - is not a function of "bigness," massive budgets, or any of the other resources a larger-than-indie dev may have at their disposal: rather, it is a function of the developer's willingness to work, to niggle, to take pains, to take the time and the effort to produce the very best they are capable of. Jerry Della Femina was a small agency owner in the big-time ad world of 1960's and 70s Manahattan, going head to head with Doyle Dane Bernbach, Ogilvy & Mather, Y&R and FCB. He had this to say about his relative size (I'm paraphrasing from memory, here): "The big guys can't buy a better 4-color page in Time magazine than we can. They can't buy better photography or brighter ink. And when our ad is up against theirs, nobody has ever said, 'Well, I'm not going to buy a Corum watch because Della Femina isn't billing what Foote Cone & Belding are.'" What he meant was, great ideas and high quality are available to anybody, large or small, willing to put in the work. So, you could just as easily say that if a dev doesn't have the resources to pull off that kind of quality, then maybe they should think about putting their talents to use elsewhere. The App Store isn't a tinkerer's clubhouse: it's a global software marketplace serving the owners of some of the most sophisticated digital hardware available. Go big or go home.
Sorry but this doesn't make much sense at all. A triple-A title might have several years worth of man hours put into it. Smaller teams/Single devs cannot possibly achieve the same. Your ad example doesn't compare as it's referring to a business we're the money is apparently available and it's the guiding idea that's the big differentiator. Yes, one single person can obviously have an idea as great as anyone else...
A million times this. Try to make the best game you can, don't cater it to a specific group that may or may not even exist!
MikaMobile is a married couple working in their home. They do everything except the music. They have sold millions of copies of their games by achieving a very high level of polish and appeal. You don't have to be "AAA" or devote "hundreds of man/hours" to achieve big success, and if you think it's not possible, well... I guess you're right. Again, I say: it obviously doesn't take money. It takes talent, brains and dedication. When someone tries to dope out the foolproof formula for success in the App Store, they frequently leave these factors out of their equations.
Sorry but it does take money. At the very least need enough money to pay for food, shelter, and equipment. Not taking anything away from Mika Mobile as they’ve released some truly brilliant stuff. Even if I was 100% convinced that my next title would be a hit I don’t have enough money to pay the mortgage and provide for my family during the development face. (And I wouldn't even have to pay for the expensive music). Part of the problem is of course that if you lack in the brains department you might think you have the talent [looking into the mirror] and all the dedication in the world can’t help you. Don't think this is news to anyone, and is probably true even if you have a lot of money. You probably still need a bit of luck, or at least to avoid a spell of bad luck.
I tried for mass audience but it didn't pan out as i hoped. So i am going for niche audience this time around and see what happens
It's an interesting topic - whether to go niche or to go for broad appeal. In one respect I went for niche with Lead Wars, not to deliberately limit the audience but because I saw a gap in the market for a game that simulates old-skool do-it-yourself pencil and paper war games. I found that filling a gap and marketing the fact that a gap has been filled are two very different things.. It's strange because those who used to play similar pencil-flick games when they were kids absolutely love my game (just read its reviews), but many presumably younger players simply don't understand the play mechanic which the game is simulating (flicking a real-life pencil across the page with just one finger). Some players seem to just expect an easy path-drawing game because there are so many out there, when the whole point of my game is that it is unique and requires skill to get the pencil to skid where you want (just like real life!). So my thinking is the game isn't actually niche at all, as anyone can enjoy the real-life pencil+paper version, so why can't anyone enjoy an iOS sim of such a game? And despite it being a turn-based strategy it has no random dice rolling or pages of stats to look over so more accessible to a casual gamer. So in conclusion, I don't think it matters one bit whether you go for niche or broad, the ONLY thing that is matters is the game is fun to play. * (That, and of course a good marketing strategy.. )
Yes, the whole "niche" approach only works reliably if you *involve the niche community in designing and developing the product in the first place*. That way, you get a good feel for how big the demand is for that particular game, and they get to have their say in how it looks and is designed so they will be happy with the final product. It takes care of marketing, discoverability, and advertising because the community you are involving does all of that for you. You just make the game they want and get paid for it when they and their friends buy it. Otherwise, you are just doing it blind and hoping the niche exists, and is more than 10 people. That would be quite foolish. I completely agree with you guys, always have a plan b, c, d, and even e (my plan E is to sell hamburgers on the side of the street in Mexico and wash restaurant windows in exchange for food). And also, I agree with Gravity Jim, execution is the name of the game, and the more polished and professional you can make it the better it will do with the general audience. If you can't manage an extremely high level of polish on your own, then you need to take on an artist that can because otherwise you are shooting yourself in the foot insisting on being a "one man team" that consistently and historically can't pull off a hit.
Ok yes mikka mobile has gotten success selling millions with zombieville which is casual game. Thier niche product did not do so well , even though it is polished. Half-brick did well with fruit ninja , but thier next 2 games didnt even have half the success. Forsaken media did ok with thier zombie game , but made less money with thier 2nd effort. Which my final point is no matter the level of polish and shine and whatever buzz word you like to use at the moment , luck is a big factor. If you dont reconize this fact , your in for a harsh reality.
Actually, Battleheart is our fastest selling game ever, it's only behind Zombieville in total revenue because of a 2 year head start. It generated a third of Zombieville's lifetime revenue in under 3 months, and continues to outpace it on a daily basis. You can make your own luck with undeniably good execution. Or, you can whine about how the world is unfair and blame all of your failures on forces beyond your control.
It's always motivating to hear a success story. For our upcoming game I've been thinking in terms of both niche and mass appeal. The concept is very niche (colony collapse disorder - the thing that is wiping out millions of honey bees world wide). And that has given us a huge amount of material to play around with. But the gameplay should appeal to a wide audience. At least it seems that way from watching the reaction of kids as they play. I'll see if I'm right when we release, hopefully later this month.
I remember seeing Zombieville at a much higher chart position , for a longer period of time then battleheart. Time will tell if it sells more then Zombieville , good luck.
