Vapourware What is the most commercially viable one-man-game genre?

[set]

It's not a genre, it's a recipe.

1. Waifus, they must be present
2. Instant gratification (but not with #1, just your gameplay mechanics)
3. At the end of the game, you should either reward the player with #1 or punish them with a loss of#1
4. Pitch the game as a social justice issue
5. Allow players to construct their own houses
6. Make the game easy
7. Make the game speed-runnable (consider enlisting the aid of a popular speed runner to promote your game)
8. Make many controversial comments while developing the game
9. Promise much, but don't worry about delivering. As long as it runs and has pretty packaging. Remember to include #1.
10. Sprites or voxels, don't worry about textures or animations or AI (keep it cheap and simple)
11. Front-load the game with content, release a demo and/or release a fake leaked alpha version
12. Promote users to discuss your game on their favorite web zone
13. Sell now, sell now, sell now. Don't start selling it until it's 'finished.' Start as soon as you have a menu screen.
14. It's never finished, but it's okay to stop working on it as long as you release token updates every six months.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

I'm very seriously considering going full retard and developing an indie game. A game of such worthless commercial viability than if ten people on the codex pirate it I'll consider it a success and if one codexer actually seeds it on bittorrent I'll open a bottle of champagne (and not drink it because wine is for fags).

At the turn of the century I did prototype a game. It was a very literal interpretation of medieval fantasy. And I mean very literal - even down to the visuals. All the graphics (not that I completed many) were to look exactly how a 12th to 14th century medieval artist would represent something. It was gamebook meets turn-based tactical combat meets resource management RPG. My inspirations were 80s gamebooks (particularly Fighting Fantasy), the Gold box games, the Dragon Warriors p'n'p RPG, some of Bullfrog's games, and Medieval art and culture. Of all the twenty years of my working life I never had so much fun (or pain) as the mere sixty or so hours I put into that game. Right now - considering I'm currently unemployed with no dependents - spending a year of my life on an indie seems almost reasonable. It's not even to make money (because it won't), it's just to do something I actually want to fucking do with my life that I can look back on years from now and say "FUCK YEAH I'm proud of than". God knows I can't look back on anything I did as a menial/kitchen porter/waiter/junior graphic artist/graphic artist/senior graphic artist/freelancer/web designer/web developer/Java Programmer/Senior Programmer/depressed drunk along for the ride/who the fuck made me a manager/I can't actually get sacked for some reason so I quit.

If anyone is considering going indie I'd look at it like this:

a) If it isn't for purely for the love of your own game concept than quit.
b) If you can't commit the time, effort and funding required to complete the project based on your own personal skills and capital then quit.
b.1) factor in your dependents.
c) What you're doing is important to you and that's important enough. So long as you observed 1) and 2) fuck everything and everyone else. A year or two on an indie project* is a very small slice of your lifespan when all is said and done. If the worse comes to the worse then you tried and that's a win in itself.


* your project may take longer but it's viability should be clear by then.

Actually, looking back on it, although the the combat was influenced primarily by Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay it had a lot in common with - the then - newfag Fallout 2. Lulz death animations for the the win. Lulz death animations from the Bayeux tapestry win x10. Gotta develop that shit. How can that not be cool?

 

[Alchemist]

muds_animal_friend I salute you - very inspirational and insightful post. I hope you make that game you describe as it sounds right up my alley. I think a medieval art style hasn't been utilized much before and it's a great idea.

I'm in a similar boat - I've had a passion game project brewing in my head for years but never followed through on it, due to the time / energy demands of my day job. I'm now forcing myself to put time into it, even though I can't quit my job. I've spent most of my adult life doing creative work for other people, according to their vision. With this project I will finally do something that is 100% my own vision.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

Words of wisdom, muds_animal_friend . Indie games are no dependable moneymaking method (unles you are famous, then you should develop a game, no matter how shitty). There are better ways to make living as a slave to the market's demand.

On the other hand, the fact that a handful of people can create an interactive world of fiction is amazing. Screw technology, select the best tech level you can realistically do well and stick with it, be it 16-color fist-sized pixels. I remember being amazed by Angband's visiblility light cones made just out of ASCII.

But you need to feel that thrill of a new world or a charming story being borns in your hands.
Just covering the current desired feature list cannot produce more than mediocrity.


You can of course help your creation with advertising and visibility, but that's a topic I know next to nothing about. But it's obviously the main part, look at Minecraft. The very idea of how it's coded is pure shit (and there is little substance to it beyond code), yet Notch can't be bothered to improve his product. Even if he's not up to the task, I'm sure he could afford coders for ten such projects. Well, why should he bother, it's not likely that another project of superior engine could steal his cult following.

 

[Johannes]

Something you can actually make yourself. What that is varies wildly depending on how talented, experienced, and hardworking you are.

For RPGs, see Vogel.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

I think a medieval art style hasn't been utilized much before and it's a great idea.

Definitely, and it's really a key point of what I'm trying to do. I want to live in a world where something like this could be a screenshot from a turn-based tactical RPG:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/magnoliasoft.imageweb/bridgeman/supersize/lal337194.jpg

And the only way that's going to happen is if I make that game. So I guess I'll have to make that game. I was in two minds depending on how business went in the new year, but I chanced upon the Robin of Sherwood soundtrack on youtube and that settled me
(for any UK and Irish codexers of a similar age http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYD1xy7zKR8). The wonder that show filled me with back in the mid '80s as a child is just something I've never experienced as an adult. And given I've been working full-time since I was eighteen with fuck all to show for it beyond some savings I think it's time I did something I want to do with my life. Twenty years of wage slavery has earned me at least a year off by any reasonable standards. And I really, really, really want to play a proper medieval RPG that's actually genuinely 100% medieval and not generic fantasy.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

But you need to feel that thrill of a new world or a charming story being borns in your hands.

This really. No point in doing indie as a job or a business. It's an art form even if the tasks involved in bringing it to life may not be traditionally artistic. And, as every artist knows, your life is largely going to entail being a starving scumbag with pretensions and empty pockets.

 

[Destroid]

But you need to feel that thrill of a new world or a charming story being borns in your hands.

This really. No point in doing indie as a job or a business. It's an art form even if the tasks involved in bringing it to life may not be traditionally artistic. And, as every artist knows, your life is largely going to entail being a starving scumbag with pretensions and empty pockets.

Almost every form of art entails learning a technical skill, be it Sculpture, painting, music etc.

 

[Visbhume]

Sorry if it already has been posted, but Jeff Vogel wrote some interesting posts about going indie:

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/the-joy-and-despair-of-writing-these.html
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/marketing-dumb-luck-and-popping-of.html

 

[Davaris]

Sorry if it already has been posted, but Jeff Vogel wrote some interesting posts about going indie:

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/the-joy-and-despair-of-writing-these.html
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/marketing-dumb-luck-and-popping-of.html

Can't argue with it except for him saying his success is down to luck, because he is so prolific. If you roll the dice enough times, eventually you're going to get lucky.

 

[Visbhume]

Can't argue with it except for him saying his success is down to luck, because he is so prolific. If you roll the dice enough times, eventually you're going to get lucky.

Maybe that's the only rational strategy.

 

[theSavant]

Nice quote from Vogel

When people start making a ton of money, they will attract competitors until nobody makes easy money anymore. It’s an iron law of capitalism.

 

[Johannes]

Sorry if it already has been posted, but Jeff Vogel wrote some interesting posts about going indie:

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/the-joy-and-despair-of-writing-these.html
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com.es/2013/11/marketing-dumb-luck-and-popping-of.html

Can't argue with it except for him saying his success is down to luck, because he is so prolific. If you roll the dice enough times, eventually you're going to get lucky.

I guess if he hadn't gotten off the ground with his early works, he would've never gotten to the point of being prolific. He has his own brand now, it's hardly rolling a totally new set of dice for each game of his.

 

[Davaris]

Nice quote from Vogel

When people start making a ton of money, they will attract competitors until nobody makes easy money anymore. It’s an iron law of capitalism.

I remember Steve Pavlina said years ago, if you want to make money you don't follow the ball, like the crowd does. You predict where the ball is headed and get out in front of it. That was his excuse for getting out of indie game development, to become a motivational guru. lol

I guess if he hadn't gotten off the ground with his early works, he would've never gotten to the point of being prolific. He has his own brand now, it's hardly rolling a totally new set of dice for each game of his.

I don't understand the point you are making. Are you saying it was easy when he started in 1994?

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Almost every form of art entails learning a technical skill, be it Sculpture, painting, music etc.

Just so. Art was a hobby of mine as a teen and what pissed me off no end was having my hard work described as 'talent'. I've no fucking 'talent' whatsoever as an artist. At very best I'm mediocre and achieving that mediocrity was an effort a decade in the making. This is one of the few surviving pieces I still have from that hobby era:

Subpar Ian Miller wannabe stuff dating from c.1995, or maybe earlier, when I finally scrapped my dreams of being an fantasy artist in favor of a paying job. Nearly twenty years later now and I'm kinda thinking I made a bad call. Not about the art maybe - but a bad fucking call none the less. Anyway, I have my indie game project now. My precious. I can finally marry my experience as a half-arsed artist to my experience as a half-hearted software engineer and make a half-functioning game.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Nice quote from Vogel

When people start making a ton of money, they will attract competitors until nobody makes easy money anymore. It’s an iron law of capitalism.

The story of my life...

Didn't Vogel drastically increase the amount of money he made lately, though?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Almost every form of art entails learning a technical skill, be it Sculpture, painting, music etc.

Just so. Art was a hobby of mine as a teen and what pissed me off no end was having my hard work described as 'talent'. I've no fucking 'talent' whatsoever as an artist. At very best I'm mediocre and achieving that mediocrity was an effort a decade in the making. This is one of the few surviving pieces I still have from that hobby era:

Subpar Ian Miller wannabe stuff dating from c.1995, or maybe earlier, when I finally scrapped my dreams of being an fantasy artist in favor of a paying job. Nearly twenty years later now and I'm kinda thinking I made a bad call. Not about the art maybe - but a bad fucking call none the less. Anyway, I have my indie game project now. My precious. I can finally marry my experience as a half-arsed artist to my experience as a half-hearted software engineer and make a half-functioning game.

Hey, at least you don't have disgraphy and can produce neat detailed art.

 

[Zed]

If you're a programmer: Puzzle

If you're an artist: Adventure/Hidden Objects Game

If you're both: Adventure with Puzzles!