Indie Game Magazine Article

In case you haven’t seen it, Indie Game Magazine (http://www.indiegamemag.com/) has published an article that we wrote. Mike Gnade, the editor over at IGM, has graciously given us permission to post the first half of it here, and invite you to read through and see more, over at IGM’s website.

Who are you making this for anyways?

About a year ago, my Indie team decided to build a game idea we liked. We thought we had a great idea, but it turned out that we didn’t put enough emphasis on a variety of basic marketing concepts that could have potentially saved our design for the better. Not that it was bad – just could have been better.

Since then, I’ve observed various Indie teams follow the same general process we followed: they come up with an idea they like, they think it will work, and they go for it. While some are perfectly fine with doing it that way, and surely some make big bucks doing it that way, my team no longer considers that a viable plan of attack.

Two sides of the coin

There are really two sides of the argument that I’ve confronted. On the one hand, if a team builds a game they themselves really like, it is conceivable that they will put every ounce of effort into making it good. On the other hand, if a team is tasked with building a game they themselves may not care for, it is conceivable that they may not put out that same level of effort, and the final product could suffer.

Maybe of course that is an over simplification though; just because one doesn’t care for the concept doesn’t necessarily correlate to output. But, and this is the important lesson we learned, chances are that regardless of how much effort you do or do not put in, the end product is ultimately judged by the consumer, not the developer. Aim your guns wisely; take care of your customers first – profit will come later.

Are you the consumer?

If the developer is themselves a consumer, and their interests are shared amongst fellow consumers, perhaps their personal interest and ambitions are well suited to sticking to just what they like. Perhaps those who are lucky to have that overlap have the same luck to be successful. Personally, I don’t like taking risks I can’t control.

The closer reality I’ve seen is that many developers have an interest that I would term as atypical of the general gaming population, or have an idea that is nothing more than an existing successful game with a slightly different interface and/or mechanic. Forgoing the later, which is a different article entirely (but all too common), when intelligent, skilled, and gifted people get together to make something, I’m not convinced that they are going to push something that a general audience is going to care for – not unless they really aim for exactly that. For example, my love would be for a super in depth WWII tank combat simulator, accurate to a degree unseen by any other, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to a marketable product. I’d love it, though.

But I’m not very profitable to market to by myself alone. Perhaps another way to see it is by looking at the opposite end of the spectrum: when developers are pushed to do things that make their games appeal to a wider audience via dumbing down and/or removal of intricacies that define such genres to begin with. What effects do a wider audience appeal bring?

Read the rest of the article over at Indie Game Magazine!

RPNi Developer Blog

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