Finding a gaming niche worth it to develop for

Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/Finding a gaming niche worth it to develop for

Xaron(Posted 2014) [#1]
Dear all,

as the mobile market gets saturated more and more and it gets harder for us indies to get even noticed with our games (heck I even don't talk about making money, but even free games get rarely more than a few hundred downloads nowadays!) I just want to discuss strategies and ideas how to enter niches and how to find them.

Personally I have now 7 games in the stores (Google Play, App Store, Windows Phone Market Place) so maybe I should just start sharing my experiences.

So my initial thought was to create something unique. I did this with my first game, even though not completely new but very unique and well received from those who accidently downloaded it. :D
The problem: Doing something unique makes it hard for the gamers to find as most games are found via the search function (not speaking about the top 20 charts which you simply can't enter). So how could a gamer find something he even doesn't know about and never would search for? ;)

My second approach was to just look into the top charts and doing something similar. Mainly the way that copying something that works well should create some success. Look at games like Candy Crush and so on. Up to now I haven't done that because this casual market is totally saturated, even if you make a really nice clone there are already thousands of them.

What finally worked for me best was to look for localized niches. My best working game so far is a card game (called Mau Mau) which is almost only known in German speaking countries. The competition is very small there so people looking for it would immediately stumble across it. I did another one which is a battle ship clone. This worked excepionally well especially in the local German markets. The same international version has only 20% downloads of the german one. The competition is just much larger there.

I'd be interested how you would spot niches which are worth making games for?

Cheers!


tiresius(Posted 2014) [#2]
My views might not be most popular but I prefer making games I enjoy playing myself. Since I am a hobbyist programmer and have less time available to make games than a professional, I pick genres I am interested in. Currently that happens to be dungeon crawlers. :)
I have yet to go to market but I do enjoy hearing about your experiences, Xaron !

I have some decent ideas for other genres that are conducive to mobile platforms such as RTS (similar to our beloved trailer park zombies game), a simple Risk type game, something like the wizard war game put on monkey-x site, or even some word game variants.

I think the mobile craze from 5 years ago has ended, the market is too saturated, and we are back to making games for ourselves. From time to time we see a Flappy Bird and 2048 and other such things, but those are like hitting the lottery. I don't get excited about lottery winners.

If we make a really good game that gets good initial reviews then we have to find ways to promote the game everywhere (without breaking the bank if we can avoid it). Word of mouth doesn't always work unless it becomes an "internet phenomenon" and like I already mentioned, that is like hitting the lottery. Marketing games is something last on developer's minds. There are books and articles out there to help us, though.


MikeHart(Posted 2014) [#3]
I think the best niches in germany are Point'n'Click adventures, board game conversions or strategy games.

If I would find the time, I would work on the later ones. Or a dungeon crawler. A turn based strategy game attracts me the most right now.


Arabia(Posted 2014) [#4]
I remember reading previously that you did well within the German market. Just wondering, how do you specify (Android for example) if your game has language settings? Do people in Germany see a different app description when they use Google Play Store? For games which don't use a lot of text, which is probably most games, surely this is the easiest way to improve your market share.


dragon(Posted 2014) [#5]
each day, 50 new games come to the store
but most people install first time some apps
and then many of them are never used.

so the only solution is to do some marketing magic
(flappy bird)

and this is the hardest part

in fact, 99% have no success