My vote is the minimalist strategy game. I think it's important to go with your heart because it will motivate you when times are tough. But selfishly I just want us to be working in a similar genre so I can see how you do and extrapolate to my own situation. You're definitely going to ship sooner! Thanks for the detailed video and good luck!
Please be careful when using analytics to decide your games. Remember that AAA companies are doing the same and now we have Anthem, Concord, annual COD and dozens of AC clones. For the boat game, those tags showed you that the trend is going down, before making a game for this category I would research it a lot more. First I’d want to know if the downward slope is a linear trajectory and I would want to know why. If it’s a consistent downward trend where would that line end up when your game releases? Analytics is not about how to choose something that will sell well today, it’s about what will sell well next month or next year. Something to also think about is why are sales for these games lower when people should be making more money in November and December. One last thing I’ll mention is that one of quotes I often heard during classes was, “garbage in garbage out.” Meaning if you don’t use the right data or there is problems with the data you use for analysis then your results will also not be the ones you desire. Good luck.
Please be careful when using analytics to decide your next game. Keep in mind that AAA studios do the same thing and now we have Anthem, Concord, COD every year and dozens of AC clones. One thing I noticed when you were looking at tags for the boat game was you didn’t seem to acknowledge the genre’s sales are possible on a downward trend. You might want to figure out if this trend is linear and perhaps it could be predicted where that line will end up when your game launches. Remember that analytics isn’t about predicting sales today it’s about what will sales be next month or year. You will also want to keep major events in mind when doing this kind of analysis that can positively or negatively affect your future livelihood. The US president is switching up in January and since he’s been president before you can see how game sales and those genres of game sales were impacted. Make sure to take note of when Covid happened and don’t confuse its impact with Trump’s. Not sure there is a correlation with presidents and game sales but it’s possible, especially with game sales in general. One last thing I will mention is a quote that I often heard in class, “garbage in garbage out.” Meaning if you use bad or incorrect data to make your analysis your answers will be negatively affected and could end up giving you wrong answers. It’s probably worse than trying to make a game using bad art, sound and music. Good luck!
Few ideas I used when I was exploring Steam data: - Dynamics of the game: reviews per day, reviews in the first week, reviews in the first month, etc. These give an indication whether a game is a hit, or just accrued the reviews/revenue over long time (tail?). - Do not look at tags with low percentage of instances, i.e., not a lot of people tagged the game with a given tag in overall number of people tagging given game; this prevents an overall popular game from showing up in a niche genre because someone felt like tagging it this way. - Look for popular games that are outside of clusters, i.e., games that are popular AND combine tags no other games combine - these show potentially unexplored territories, that players find interesting enough to buy, these are also combinations of tags that do not have much competition around - Comparing games but cutting off the popular outliers (with tons of reviews/revenue) - this can help judge the scope and production value necessary to achive given revenue threshold. Also cut off the low end, i.e., games with less than 50, 100, 200 reviews. Overall I stopped looking at average or median, as these include tons of hobby games with small production values. I'd rather explore the neighbourhood of what I want to make. Disclaimer: I did not use VGInsights or similar services, I scrapped steam web pages and had the data in PostgreSQL to play with, so I'm not sure if it is possible to look at in VGI, or whether VGI conditions the data like with the number of tag instances. My future project is to read reviews of games using some local LLM and look for things people were asking for or what they did not like - as it might be an inspiration for making "somewhat similar, but improved" game.
I am not sure if I am correct by any means but I think the tags for your bow game were so vague you were comparing your game to absolutely everything from Firewatch, Original Doom, Rage 2 and basically any other first person game with puzzle elements. I'd personally suggest narrowing the tags to something way more specific.
As you mentioned, game quality is important to take into consideration. If you have a list of the top 100 games in a genre, I would cross out those above the quality level you're aiming for. Then you see what's left and where in the top 100 your peer competitors fall, their median revenue etc., and provide a revenue range estimate for your game.
Voted, but just wanted to say that I really dug that concept of the naval combat deckbuilder - interesting to see where the numbers place that concept amongst the others! Also! re: 4:39 A. How have you not heard of Balatro!?! B. How is NBA 2K a "turn-based deckbuilder" 😆
Not surprised the audience is liking minimalist strategy prototype. Of the 3 concepts it immediately stands out as the most polished, and has a most heart in it?
I see choosing a game in 3 steps. The first is understanding the market, including scoping out your competition, potential earnings, and customer expectations. outliers happen, but keep your expectations realistic. The second phase is understanding how to make a profit. This means looking at the games at your target revenue and estimating the time and expenses for you to match the execution. Doesn’t matter how much you “could” make if you don’t have the time or resources to do so. Finally, making sure people want to play it. Depending on the market in step one, being similar may be enough in a starved scenario. Other cases you need to distinguish yourself. Other times it’s just branding or marketing.
Have you considered costs when looking at those comparisons? I assume you’re comparing against personal costs but what about game specific costs? Art, music, assets, testers, marketing etc. As well as how long it will take to make. The deck builder, for example, likely needs a 100+ cards to provide variety and replayability. That’s a big art cost (in time if you do it yourself or £$ if you pay, best to avoid AI to prevent possible backlash). It’s also needs a bigger test effort due to number of combinations. The puzzle game needs a lot of time in level creation and playtest (see recent videos by Game Makers Toolkit on his magnet game). That may make the war game the easiest/quickest to develop?
The problem with this approach and please correct me if Im wrong, is that you are looking at past trends, you never know if your game will be succesful even when low chances if there is a new trend when you release it, I also agree and always check the numbers before creating a prototype just to play safe. But there is always that fad question about the future IMHO. In the end I think you should go with the deck builder, I've read an article some time ago about that audience craving for new titles no matter what they dig it.
You should factor into your analysis the fact, that the minimalist strategy has much more polished art than turn-based ship game. It might skew audience and playtest opinions in it's favor. None of these games is answer "what if" for me; they sound generic so far. I guess it makes sense at this stage of decision making?
The numbers regarding the strategy game were surprising, to say the least. I might have to look at the numbers myself. It also might be more useful to cherry-pick released games that resemble the polish level and gameplay to your prototype the most. With how many minimalist strategy games are supposedly released, I can't help but think that there are a lot at a much worse quality to even your prototype. At the same time, I can't say that those deckbuilder games resemble your prototype all that much at all. The minimalist strategy game is by far the most appealing, and I think is the only one worth investing time into out of those three.
Agreed. Where are these thousands of minimalist strategy games coming from? Are they polished? What do they look like? It is probably a better idea to look at games in the genre that are in your target earnings bracket - then analyze those as a group and determine if your game can compete with the level of polish, fun, marketing, etc
I've voted for the deckbuilder. I recently was hunting for a game on steam to scratch my itch for good deckbuilding games with board mechanics since Scrolls closed and I couldn't even find any. The closest I found was Kards and the board mechanics in that are narrow. Also Faeria. This has a full board. I just love games where you play cards to a board and control the units on the board. I think that is so so lacking on steam. I literally couldn't find a game like that which I was craving to play and this is exactly that. I think as long as you add unit cards to the basic concept it will be a winner. I think the minimalist strategy game has a great chance too but I personally am more likely to drop 200+ hours on a cool card game with board mechanics.
the falloff and the large number of STS clones makes me think the numbers are partially driven down by low quality games which are going after a hit without any innovation, when innovation is what made the hits. it’s quite possible that the appetite is still there just more so for games which innovate, which would favor the chess deckbuilder. i’m also hoping that’s the case since i’m working on a blokus duo deckbuilder sorta thing.
I think some of the best (My opinion, not a fact!) games out there came out because of how passionate the developer was about his dream game and not because he or she was studying the market.
It's almost impossible to compare there's so many factors at play. So when looking at the deck building game. Is that genre more difficult to make a finished product in general? Are the games that have been released polished and made with larger teams? Are you willing to invest in creating a team to compete? You talked about the median and being in the top 10% right? Is it easier to reach the top 10% of polish in those genres you picked? For example the 3d fps puzzle platformer? Is that easier to make with a small team or even solo? Does the quality of the released games reflect this? If so is it easier for you to reach that top 10% level of polish and publicity within that genre comparatively? You should look at what game speaks to you and what you would have to invest in that to get it to a level that is competitive. The last game seemingly has a pull for you and in my opinion would require less balancing and play testing than the deck building. Idk it's just my two cents. It feels like you already know the answer to what you specifically should be going forward with regardless of what a poll or market research says.
Why not take the best of both worlds and turn your minimalist, strategy game into a deckbuilder? Something like, you have cards that you use for building, terrain cards, bridge cards etc. Then you have cards for placing soldiers, archers etc. Having a deck where you draw cards from makes for very different play throughs every time
I think you will do okay with either of the two games you are debating. I voted for the war strategy game for one primary reason... you said it was "your heart" project. I think you can do all the analytics in the world (and I am a data analyst) and it won't override the fact, in my opinion, that if your heart is fully committed to the project, you will produce a better quality game than if you are making it solely for monetization. I realize you probably have some interest in developing them both, but that's my perspective. Enjoy vacation and good luck on the project(s)!
Interesting, My heart and intuition goes to your Third prototype, the war game. I believe it has huge potential, really regardless of which direction you take it. The one you should pick based on data is really the game I see the least potential in, your other two games are prototypes which triggers my brain into coming up with so many ideas!
I use game-stats for my market research(free version) and I personally look through the lists with usually 5 tags however my tags are a bit different than yours(your tags felt a bit too vague). For example if I look at a "city builder" with "survival" sub-genre , I also add tags such as "singleplayer" "management" "resource management" "strategy " -> But let's say that my city builder with survival doesn't have combat? Then I manually look through them till I find a decent level of quality(skipping asset flips) and start to filter the games in an spreadsheet until I reach a quality level of "We can't do that without tons of money" then there's where I only add the top games for visibility in the genre but not for cash data. (Of course I ignore free games and games older than 2-3 years). Also I wanna say thank you for making a video on market research!
5:00 bro you''re right. it's crazy that StS clone #1203 is what people go crazy for in deckbuilders. it's kind of demoralizing when you're making something unique in the genre :(. Also, I did my civic duty!
I did terrible on predicting my own games sales as a preamble warning^^ I would for research look at the games in your specific genre and evaluate them if they are actually like yours in gameplay and visuals. Then look at the stats for these games too. See how they compare to each other and try to see trends in those. Dont try to over do this though, because when looking at enough numbers seeing random patterns becomes easier and easier.
Please be careful when using analytics to decide your next game. Keep in mind that AAA studios do the same thing and now we have Anthem, Concord, COD every year and dozens of AC clones. One thing I noticed when you were looking at tags for the boat game was you didn’t seem to acknowledge the genre’s sales are possible on a downward trend. You might want to figure out if this trend is linear and perhaps it could be predicted where that line will end up when your game launches. Remember that analytics isn’t about predicting sales today it’s about what will sales be next month or year. You will also want to keep major events in mind when doing this kind of analysis that can positively or negatively affect your future livelihood. The US president is switching up in January and since he’s been president before you can see how game sales and those genres of game sales were impacted. Make sure to take note of when Covid happened and don’t confuse its impact with Trump’s. Not sure there is a correlation with presidents and game sales but it’s possible, especially with game sales in general. One last thing I will mention is a quote that I often heard in class, “garbage in garbage out.” Meaning if you use bad or incorrect data to make your analysis your answers will be negatively affected and could end up giving you wrong answers. It’s probably worse than trying to make a game using bad art, sound and music. Good luck!
Deckbuilder games are the most profitable, and its because its a genre that people just love, I also love it, but I'm not really sure if its a genre you personally seem to want to make a game for. I think your prototype is lacking the focus on the deckbuilding and you may end up struggling to build a good deckbuilder, especially if you perceive all modern deckbuilders as clones of StS. I would bet you'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out what makes StS or StarVaders tick, and then finding a unique edge for your game. I think you would probably end up in a better spot if you focus on the minimalist strategy game. You already have a decent foundation and the prototype already looks kind of pretty. I think you have a better chance of making something good in a shorter amount of time which IMO is more important. Strategy crafty games can be a very profitable genre, so you might want to explore tags more like 4x and lean into that
@4:48 thank god you came to the astute observation by yourself that if you can't even recognise Balatro, then you know nothing about deck building games because I was worried for you for a second there.
I recommend you work on the game you have passion for more than what is selling today. Which game do you think you can tribute the most interesting ideas to make the genre better? Also I heard from a few popular TH-camrs that a lot of rogue-like deck building games are being made lately. I think that might hurt sales with the boat game, possibly. Apparently publishers won’t even talk to people that are making them now.
i think it would be worth doing another pass on graphics for the first two so that it can be a closer comparison, since i’m sure that is affecting how many people feel.
I think you have to look st the quality and fun factor of the game within the tag. Deck builder may have higher payout, but the game you showed doesn't look like it would be top 20%. The minimalist game you showed looks like it'll be pretty easy for you to get to top 20$
You partially said it at the end, but you are not looking at the stats you are sharing the right way. Deckbuilding games are obviously way harder to make than first-person shooter games, so if someone is making one, it means they have the means and resources to develop that game, including marketing it. It's an obvious confounding factor. Moreover, if a lot of people are making a particular genre of games, it may not indicate that it is a saturated market; it may reveal that it’s a genre players really like and that has more chances to be successful. I think you should go with the one you like the most, the RTS obviously. (if you have an option to narrow the games you are seeing as being made from solo dev and not huge team, it would be much more insightfull)
I wouldn't buy/play any of these 3, but that's just me. I think if you are hesitant already saying "none of these deck builders are low quality" that you should pick based on which concept you can deliver the most fun and quality feel. When I started off in games I did word games because I could do the art easily and I knew how to build a quality feeling game (solo). Word games barely make a blip on Steam though so probably don't go there :). If you are going to do the work, do all of the work so that it does feel like a quality game.
Make a game you would want to play for hours. Make a game you wouldn't want to put down and you dont even realize hours have passed. Slay the spire wasnt successful because of its genre it was successful because its fun as fuck, the game feel is crunchy. I bet if the same people made a different game in another genre they would make it just as fun.
Your deckbuilding game doesn't seem to have the aesthetic or narrative hooks that are interesting to those players if you are just going for a craven market analysis
You should cut off the trash games or hobby games that polute the data. Explore the low sell data to find the number of sells or reviews where the quality that you seak start, and use it as a lower treshold. Do the same with the bigs hits that have the power of a team to make it very polished like you were showing for deckbuilding game and find the max quality that you can aim for as a solo dev without taking 5 years. By doing so you'll cut off a lot of aberation on your data. And I would say that the quality and polish of your prototypes are very heterogeneous, so it biased the testers's reviews. Test them with only the same type of shape to extract only opinion and feeling on pure gameplay
I dont want to answer the poll, with the actual results of your data analysis because of what i said and what @ahaczewski said to ^^. But i would be keen to vote to the game that the next analysis could make emerge ^^, just to see if analysing data and market place could make a potentially successfull game.
I feel mean while saying this but all three designs feel dated. like maybe they would have found success 3 years ago but now? not really, depending on your definition of success. I dunno they lack that something that makes them interesting tbh and their core concepts have been done to death by now so you need something spectacular in these genres to win
VOTE FOR THE GAME YOU WANT ME TO BUILD: docs.google.com/forms/d/1oVIVq2yJCr5_CKBJOuRTl11SdW8bTnYjZk-aD__CTyQ
My vote is the minimalist strategy game. I think it's important to go with your heart because it will motivate you when times are tough.
But selfishly I just want us to be working in a similar genre so I can see how you do and extrapolate to my own situation. You're definitely going to ship sooner!
Thanks for the detailed video and good luck!
Please be careful when using analytics to decide your games. Remember that AAA companies are doing the same and now we have Anthem, Concord, annual COD and dozens of AC clones. For the boat game, those tags showed you that the trend is going down, before making a game for this category I would research it a lot more. First I’d want to know if the downward slope is a linear trajectory and I would want to know why. If it’s a consistent downward trend where would that line end up when your game releases? Analytics is not about how to choose something that will sell well today, it’s about what will sell well next month or next year. Something to also think about is why are sales for these games lower when people should be making more money in November and December. One last thing I’ll mention is that one of quotes I often heard during classes was, “garbage in garbage out.” Meaning if you don’t use the right data or there is problems with the data you use for analysis then your results will also not be the ones you desire. Good luck.
Please be careful when using analytics to decide your next game. Keep in mind that AAA studios do the same thing and now we have Anthem, Concord, COD every year and dozens of AC clones. One thing I noticed when you were looking at tags for the boat game was you didn’t seem to acknowledge the genre’s sales are possible on a downward trend. You might want to figure out if this trend is linear and perhaps it could be predicted where that line will end up when your game launches. Remember that analytics isn’t about predicting sales today it’s about what will sales be next month or year. You will also want to keep major events in mind when doing this kind of analysis that can positively or negatively affect your future livelihood. The US president is switching up in January and since he’s been president before you can see how game sales and those genres of game sales were impacted. Make sure to take note of when Covid happened and don’t confuse its impact with Trump’s. Not sure there is a correlation with presidents and game sales but it’s possible, especially with game sales in general. One last thing I will mention is a quote that I often heard in class, “garbage in garbage out.” Meaning if you use bad or incorrect data to make your analysis your answers will be negatively affected and could end up giving you wrong answers. It’s probably worse than trying to make a game using bad art, sound and music. Good luck!
Few ideas I used when I was exploring Steam data:
- Dynamics of the game: reviews per day, reviews in the first week, reviews in the first month, etc. These give an indication whether a game is a hit, or just accrued the reviews/revenue over long time (tail?).
- Do not look at tags with low percentage of instances, i.e., not a lot of people tagged the game with a given tag in overall number of people tagging given game; this prevents an overall popular game from showing up in a niche genre because someone felt like tagging it this way.
- Look for popular games that are outside of clusters, i.e., games that are popular AND combine tags no other games combine - these show potentially unexplored territories, that players find interesting enough to buy, these are also combinations of tags that do not have much competition around
- Comparing games but cutting off the popular outliers (with tons of reviews/revenue) - this can help judge the scope and production value necessary to achive given revenue threshold. Also cut off the low end, i.e., games with less than 50, 100, 200 reviews.
Overall I stopped looking at average or median, as these include tons of hobby games with small production values. I'd rather explore the neighbourhood of what I want to make.
Disclaimer: I did not use VGInsights or similar services, I scrapped steam web pages and had the data in PostgreSQL to play with, so I'm not sure if it is possible to look at in VGI, or whether VGI conditions the data like with the number of tag instances.
My future project is to read reviews of games using some local LLM and look for things people were asking for or what they did not like - as it might be an inspiration for making "somewhat similar, but improved" game.
Great ideas! May I ask how you scraped Steam and what indicators you collected during the scraping process?
I am not sure if I am correct by any means but I think the tags for your bow game were so vague you were comparing your game to absolutely everything from Firewatch, Original Doom, Rage 2 and basically any other first person game with puzzle elements. I'd personally suggest narrowing the tags to something way more specific.
Does “minimalist strategy” include mobile sales? Very possible free to play games are skewing the data.
Fancy seeing you guys here!
As you mentioned, game quality is important to take into consideration. If you have a list of the top 100 games in a genre, I would cross out those above the quality level you're aiming for. Then you see what's left and where in the top 100 your peer competitors fall, their median revenue etc., and provide a revenue range estimate for your game.
Voted, but just wanted to say that I really dug that concept of the naval combat deckbuilder - interesting to see where the numbers place that concept amongst the others!
Also! re: 4:39
A. How have you not heard of Balatro!?!
B. How is NBA 2K a "turn-based deckbuilder" 😆
Add deck building to the Minimalist War Strategy Game and follow your heart & the money at the same time 🤣
Not surprised the audience is liking minimalist strategy prototype. Of the 3 concepts it immediately stands out as the most polished, and has a most heart in it?
I see choosing a game in 3 steps. The first is understanding the market, including scoping out your competition, potential earnings, and customer expectations. outliers happen, but keep your expectations realistic.
The second phase is understanding how to make a profit. This means looking at the games at your target revenue and estimating the time and expenses for you to match the execution. Doesn’t matter how much you “could” make if you don’t have the time or resources to do so.
Finally, making sure people want to play it. Depending on the market in step one, being similar may be enough in a starved scenario. Other cases you need to distinguish yourself. Other times it’s just branding or marketing.
Have you considered costs when looking at those comparisons? I assume you’re comparing against personal costs but what about game specific costs? Art, music, assets, testers, marketing etc. As well as how long it will take to make.
The deck builder, for example, likely needs a 100+ cards to provide variety and replayability. That’s a big art cost (in time if you do it yourself or £$ if you pay, best to avoid AI to prevent possible backlash). It’s also needs a bigger test effort due to number of combinations.
The puzzle game needs a lot of time in level creation and playtest (see recent videos by Game Makers Toolkit on his magnet game).
That may make the war game the easiest/quickest to develop?
The problem with this approach and please correct me if Im wrong, is that you are looking at past trends, you never know if your game will be succesful even when low chances if there is a new trend when you release it, I also agree and always check the numbers before creating a prototype just to play safe. But there is always that fad question about the future IMHO. In the end I think you should go with the deck builder, I've read an article some time ago about that audience craving for new titles no matter what they dig it.
You should factor into your analysis the fact, that the minimalist strategy has much more polished art than turn-based ship game. It might skew audience and playtest opinions in it's favor.
None of these games is answer "what if" for me; they sound generic so far. I guess it makes sense at this stage of decision making?
The numbers regarding the strategy game were surprising, to say the least. I might have to look at the numbers myself. It also might be more useful to cherry-pick released games that resemble the polish level and gameplay to your prototype the most. With how many minimalist strategy games are supposedly released, I can't help but think that there are a lot at a much worse quality to even your prototype. At the same time, I can't say that those deckbuilder games resemble your prototype all that much at all. The minimalist strategy game is by far the most appealing, and I think is the only one worth investing time into out of those three.
Agreed. Where are these thousands of minimalist strategy games coming from? Are they polished? What do they look like?
It is probably a better idea to look at games in the genre that are in your target earnings bracket - then analyze those as a group and determine if your game can compete with the level of polish, fun, marketing, etc
I've voted for the deckbuilder. I recently was hunting for a game on steam to scratch my itch for good deckbuilding games with board mechanics since Scrolls closed and I couldn't even find any. The closest I found was Kards and the board mechanics in that are narrow. Also Faeria. This has a full board. I just love games where you play cards to a board and control the units on the board. I think that is so so lacking on steam. I literally couldn't find a game like that which I was craving to play and this is exactly that. I think as long as you add unit cards to the basic concept it will be a winner. I think the minimalist strategy game has a great chance too but I personally am more likely to drop 200+ hours on a cool card game with board mechanics.
the falloff and the large number of STS clones makes me think the numbers are partially driven down by low quality games which are going after a hit without any innovation, when innovation is what made the hits. it’s quite possible that the appetite is still there just more so for games which innovate, which would favor the chess deckbuilder. i’m also hoping that’s the case since i’m working on a blokus duo deckbuilder sorta thing.
I think some of the best (My opinion, not a fact!) games out there came out because of how passionate the developer was about his dream game and not because he or she was studying the market.
Some, yes.
It's almost impossible to compare there's so many factors at play. So when looking at the deck building game. Is that genre more difficult to make a finished product in general? Are the games that have been released polished and made with larger teams? Are you willing to invest in creating a team to compete? You talked about the median and being in the top 10% right? Is it easier to reach the top 10% of polish in those genres you picked? For example the 3d fps puzzle platformer? Is that easier to make with a small team or even solo? Does the quality of the released games reflect this? If so is it easier for you to reach that top 10% level of polish and publicity within that genre comparatively? You should look at what game speaks to you and what you would have to invest in that to get it to a level that is competitive. The last game seemingly has a pull for you and in my opinion would require less balancing and play testing than the deck building. Idk it's just my two cents. It feels like you already know the answer to what you specifically should be going forward with regardless of what a poll or market research says.
Love to see some data analysis.
Why not take the best of both worlds and turn your minimalist, strategy game into a deckbuilder? Something like, you have cards that you use for building, terrain cards, bridge cards etc. Then you have cards for placing soldiers, archers etc. Having a deck where you draw cards from makes for very different play throughs every time
I think you will do okay with either of the two games you are debating. I voted for the war strategy game for one primary reason... you said it was "your heart" project. I think you can do all the analytics in the world (and I am a data analyst) and it won't override the fact, in my opinion, that if your heart is fully committed to the project, you will produce a better quality game than if you are making it solely for monetization. I realize you probably have some interest in developing them both, but that's my perspective. Enjoy vacation and good luck on the project(s)!
Interesting, My heart and intuition goes to your Third prototype, the war game.
I believe it has huge potential, really regardless of which direction you take it.
The one you should pick based on data is really the game I see the least potential in, your other two games are prototypes which triggers my brain into coming up with so many ideas!
I use game-stats for my market research(free version) and I personally look through the lists with usually 5 tags however my tags are a bit different than yours(your tags felt a bit too vague). For example if I look at a "city builder" with "survival" sub-genre , I also add tags such as "singleplayer" "management" "resource management" "strategy " -> But let's say that my city builder with survival doesn't have combat? Then I manually look through them till I find a decent level of quality(skipping asset flips) and start to filter the games in an spreadsheet until I reach a quality level of "We can't do that without tons of money" then there's where I only add the top games for visibility in the genre but not for cash data. (Of course I ignore free games and games older than 2-3 years). Also I wanna say thank you for making a video on market research!
I think instead of just a choice the survey should let you score each game from 1-10, would probably give a better idea of which to pursue.
5:00 bro you''re right. it's crazy that StS clone #1203 is what people go crazy for in deckbuilders. it's kind of demoralizing when you're making something unique in the genre :(.
Also, I did my civic duty!
I did terrible on predicting my own games sales as a preamble warning^^
I would for research look at the games in your specific genre and evaluate them if they are actually like yours in gameplay and visuals. Then look at the stats for these games too. See how they compare to each other and try to see trends in those. Dont try to over do this though, because when looking at enough numbers seeing random patterns becomes easier and easier.
Bad north is an inspiration for my game - was interesting to hear you call that out while driving to work
i also be struggling with deciding on my next game genre, thank you
Could you (when the voting stops) show the results because I just want to now what do people watching your channel like (i like statistics).
Yep! Results will be in my next devlog
Where did you get this data and the sources it would be very helpful to have
Please be careful when using analytics to decide your next game. Keep in mind that AAA studios do the same thing and now we have Anthem, Concord, COD every year and dozens of AC clones. One thing I noticed when you were looking at tags for the boat game was you didn’t seem to acknowledge the genre’s sales are possible on a downward trend. You might want to figure out if this trend is linear and perhaps it could be predicted where that line will end up when your game launches. Remember that analytics isn’t about predicting sales today it’s about what will sales be next month or year. You will also want to keep major events in mind when doing this kind of analysis that can positively or negatively affect your future livelihood. The US president is switching up in January and since he’s been president before you can see how game sales and those genres of game sales were impacted. Make sure to take note of when Covid happened and don’t confuse its impact with Trump’s. Not sure there is a correlation with presidents and game sales but it’s possible, especially with game sales in general. One last thing I will mention is a quote that I often heard in class, “garbage in garbage out.” Meaning if you use bad or incorrect data to make your analysis your answers will be negatively affected and could end up giving you wrong answers. It’s probably worse than trying to make a game using bad art, sound and music. Good luck!
Chris zukowski would agree with your analysis of data, see you on the other side of roguelike deck builders
Take the ships from the deck builder and put them in the RTS bada bing bada boom
Deckbuilder games are the most profitable, and its because its a genre that people just love, I also love it, but I'm not really sure if its a genre you personally seem to want to make a game for. I think your prototype is lacking the focus on the deckbuilding and you may end up struggling to build a good deckbuilder, especially if you perceive all modern deckbuilders as clones of StS. I would bet you'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out what makes StS or StarVaders tick, and then finding a unique edge for your game.
I think you would probably end up in a better spot if you focus on the minimalist strategy game. You already have a decent foundation and the prototype already looks kind of pretty. I think you have a better chance of making something good in a shorter amount of time which IMO is more important. Strategy crafty games can be a very profitable genre, so you might want to explore tags more like 4x and lean into that
@4:48 thank god you came to the astute observation by yourself that if you can't even recognise Balatro, then you know nothing about deck building games because I was worried for you for a second there.
I recommend you work on the game you have passion for more than what is selling today. Which game do you think you can tribute the most interesting ideas to make the genre better? Also I heard from a few popular TH-camrs that a lot of rogue-like deck building games are being made lately. I think that might hurt sales with the boat game, possibly. Apparently publishers won’t even talk to people that are making them now.
i think it would be worth doing another pass on graphics for the first two so that it can be a closer comparison, since i’m sure that is affecting how many people feel.
I think you have to look st the quality and fun factor of the game within the tag. Deck builder may have higher payout, but the game you showed doesn't look like it would be top 20%.
The minimalist game you showed looks like it'll be pretty easy for you to get to top 20$
Maybe add ships to your minimalist strategy game as well then ;)
You partially said it at the end, but you are not looking at the stats you are sharing the right way. Deckbuilding games are obviously way harder to make than first-person shooter games, so if someone is making one, it means they have the means and resources to develop that game, including marketing it. It's an obvious confounding factor. Moreover, if a lot of people are making a particular genre of games, it may not indicate that it is a saturated market; it may reveal that it’s a genre players really like and that has more chances to be successful. I think you should go with the one you like the most, the RTS obviously. (if you have an option to narrow the games you are seeing as being made from solo dev and not huge team, it would be much more insightfull)
Excellent video thanks for sharing this info.
I wouldn't buy/play any of these 3, but that's just me. I think if you are hesitant already saying "none of these deck builders are low quality" that you should pick based on which concept you can deliver the most fun and quality feel. When I started off in games I did word games because I could do the art easily and I knew how to build a quality feeling game (solo). Word games barely make a blip on Steam though so probably don't go there :). If you are going to do the work, do all of the work so that it does feel like a quality game.
What mess!? Where is the mess? I don’t see any mess!
I think balatro has dragged up the average revenue for the deck builder game substantially!
I will buy and play the micro rts. I can say the opposite for the other two. I loved Thronefall and still play it from time to time.
You dont need data - all you need is a tight white tshirt, dont you know 🤠
I just want to build one game to generate immense amount of money 😂
Make a game you would want to play for hours. Make a game you wouldn't want to put down and you dont even realize hours have passed. Slay the spire wasnt successful because of its genre it was successful because its fun as fuck, the game feel is crunchy. I bet if the same people made a different game in another genre they would make it just as fun.
Your deckbuilding game doesn't seem to have the aesthetic or narrative hooks that are interesting to those players if you are just going for a craven market analysis
You should cut off the trash games or hobby games that polute the data. Explore the low sell data to find the number of sells or reviews where the quality that you seak start, and use it as a lower treshold.
Do the same with the bigs hits that have the power of a team to make it very polished like you were showing for deckbuilding game and find the max quality that you can aim for as a solo dev without taking 5 years.
By doing so you'll cut off a lot of aberation on your data.
And I would say that the quality and polish of your prototypes are very heterogeneous, so it biased the testers's reviews. Test them with only the same type of shape to extract only opinion and feeling on pure gameplay
I dont want to answer the poll, with the actual results of your data analysis because of what i said and what @ahaczewski said to ^^.
But i would be keen to vote to the game that the next analysis could make emerge ^^, just to see if analysing data and market place could make a potentially successfull game.
I feel mean while saying this but all three designs feel dated. like maybe they would have found success 3 years ago but now? not really, depending on your definition of success.
I dunno they lack that something that makes them interesting tbh and their core concepts have been done to death by now so you need something spectacular in these genres to win