Best genres to write games for?

[Fish-Guy]

Does anyone have any information/links on the best types of games to write? Would be nice if anyone had any links indicating the type of games people wanted to see written, so that programmers such as myself who are stuck for ideas can poke around and create something people may actually use and want to buy. Any ideas/suggestions welcome.

Fish-Guy
F1 Software
www.f1-software.com

[shoecake]

Hey Fishy,

(My first post on this forum... I used to post to the Dexterity forums a lot but took a break from Game Dev stuff and am now slowly getting back into it.. so joining this Forum is probably a good start!)

I'd say the best choice of genre to go for would be a combination of:

1. The one you enjoy and feel most passionately about yourself!
2. The one that is popular right now and is likely to give you good sales and rewards for your time.
3. The one that is within your development time frame (maybe you only have 2 months or 2 years to work on it?) So that could be a simple Action Puzzle or a Massively Multiplayer Online game?
4. Most important for "solo" Indie game devs is a game that is within your graphical/artistic powers. If you have the programming skills to do an Age of Empires killer, do you also have the ability to provide graphics for it?
5. Same as above.. do you have the skills that are needed for the particular genre (online games need networking skills etc.)
6. Avoid genres that are far too saturated, for example mahjongg puzzles ( ) or Solitaire card games.

Point number 1 is most important unless (like me) you enjoy discovering new genres and enjoy researching what's been done and what hasn't yet been done and (truly) improving on past developments. This is like a developers view of development rather than a true gamers view.

Can't really add any more to this without really understanding the meaning behind your question. However, it's been a fun way of braking in my first post and a good way of avoiding doing any "real work" myself

Cheers,

[GhostRik]

I was about to post this same question. My research has been inconclusive, everything seems over-saturated, but obviously there are new indies popping up so I'm overlooking something.

Are there any specific genres or titles that look good today for success like, for example, puzzle games did five years ago?

[Mark Fassett]

I think you're better off coming up with three or four game designs of things you want to do, and then doing your market research to discover which has the best chance. Looking for a market before figuring out what kinds of things you want to do, seems to me a recipe for a failed project - you will fail to choose something that sings to you and says "make me!" - then, you will either fail to complete it, or you will fail to market it properly.

[Bluecat]

You can look at an established genre that is doing well, and then do it in a way that no-one (or very few) have done before. For example, I did a bit of a thought experiment with a RPG in the style of Fallout, but set in the Old West using stereotypes and situations from the old western movies.

You could also take a game that was popular back-in-the-day, that has now been all but forgotten, and modernise it for todays audience.

[Kai Backman]

This is definetly a marketing question and one where your answer should differ from everyone elses (to give you an Unique Selling Proposition). The difference need not be big, but big enough to sustain the amount of revenue you want to generate .. By general market laws, the easy looking fruit has already been plucked because somone started plucking them when they weren't easy and obvious.

Do your research, all ideas so far mentioned have been good. I used the technique of 5 final ideas, small prototypes (sometimes just on paper) and asking potential customers which idea they liked best. If you are very technical by nature I recomend picking up some marketing materials (books etc.) to get you into the right mindset. The answer to your question defines the core of your business, and thus its success or failure. Take it with respect.

[Greg Squire]

First of all, I agree with shoecake's advice; especially #1 as long as that game is marketable. Don't worry if it's not the popular genre at the moment; sometimes it’s better not to “fish where everyone else is fishing”.

...You could also take a game that was popular back-in-the-day, that has now been all but forgotten, and modernize it for today’s audience.

Yeah, what ever happened to the good old text adventure, like Zork? Don't see many of those nowadays. Some older retro style games are popular again. I've seen tons of 3D remakes of old arcade classics. There might still be a niche to fill there.

[Coyote]

The way the big boys do it?
"What were the top-selling games last year? Okay, lets make games like that."

The naive approach?
"What game do I want to make?" (GUILTY!)

The ideal approach?
"Looking into my magical crystal ball, what will be THE hot genre next year that has little competition?"

My best advice comes from a "developer diary" I saw once by a head honcho of PopTop, regarding the development of Tropico. They were discussing game concepts for their next project following Railroad Tycoon 2. Doing another Railroad Tycoon game was the obvious choice. They chose it over this other cute idea about being a dictator of an obscure Carribean island. Who would buy that? But they kept coming back to that stupid island-dictator idea, and kept having more ideas for it. It obviously got the dev team excited. It just seemed to click, and had "The Right Thing" stamped on it.

Ultimately, you need to start with an idea that really does excite you. I don't think a game created by a bored team is going to be fun and exciting for a player.

The core idea should be able to be expressed in two to three sentences.

If that summary also excites other people you suggest it to, I think you have a winner. Of course, you still need flawless execution and the ability to complete it in a reasonable time. But that's a problem for another day.

[Gilzu]

My best advice for you is to start with a simple game and move your way forward. By simple I mean easy to implement and not RTS/RPG or any other graphically rich and programmatically complicated. Indies, even the experienced ones have a known disease of not finishing games, and it grows worse with a linear proportion to the scale of the game.

[DavidRM]

Is this the equivalent of "writers block", but for game developers?

I like shoecake's list. Except for #2 (if you're passionate about an idea, a) marketability really isn't that important to you, and b) you wouldn't listen to anyone who disagreed with you on it, anyway; passion has that effect). And, just to be "critically complete", #6 only repeats the original question of the thread, as a declarative.

There is no "best type of game" for indies. And even if there were, real indies would rebel and go do something else.

Do what you want. It is, after all, your game.

I've been pondering the Indie Dilemma lately, and I think the biggest hurdle for indie developers is: content creation. Whatever type of game you choose, you will be faced with the need to create the content for it. This content is art, storyline, sound, music, et al. Sometimes, even the required programming is content (e.g., multi-player support).

Indie film faces this same problem. And the way successful indie filmmakers manage to compete with the big-budget studio films is by tailoring their content to what they have available, or can easily acquire. And they don't all make the same type of films, or even avoid the typical Hollywood genres. Robert Rodriguez created "El Mariachi", an independent action film--a Hollywood genre if there ever was one--with only $7000 (if you haven't seen it, it's a real treat to watch; amazing, really).

So...how can you use this bit of trivia?

It boils down to this: Decide what you want to do. Then figure out how you can do it on your own, or with minimal assistance. The first thing you're almost certain to need to do is: throw out the traditional/standard way of making such a game. The "standard" way most computer games are made requires the "standard" budget of $2M-$5M (or more). You don't have a standard budget to work with, so why keep the other baggage?

Really think about your game idea. Boil it down to the essentials. Get rid of all the puffery like real-time 3D rendering (with or without vertex shading), seventeen alien/fantasy races, and so on. These are extras you can add when you have a budget. When it's just you, your compiler, and Paint Shop Pro...well...I remember that Walt Disney used to like to talk about how many centuries it would have taken for one person to animate a feature-length movie like "Sleeping Beauty."

Anyway, once you have the idea stripped down to the core, start thinking of ways you could get it all done. And don't be afraid that your finished game won't look like something on the shelf at Wal-mart. Quite the opposite: be proud of that fact. You might just be onto something new. Set a new trend in look-and-feel.

I feel like I'm rambling a bit, so I'll just wrap this up with a heartfelt:

Do what you want.

Best of luck!

-David

[Sirrus]

"My best advice for you is to start with a simple game and move your way forward. By simple I mean easy to implement and not RTS/RPG or any other graphically rich and programmatically complicated. Indies, even the experienced ones have a known disease of not finishing games, and it grows worse with a linear proportion to the scale of the game."

Judging from his website, this is not his first game so he shouldn't have a big problem

[shoecake]

I like shoecake's list. Except for #2 [...] #6 only repeats the original question of the thread, as a declarative.

yeah, #1 was my main advice and the others were just added as something else to keep in mind. #2 was more of a joke but still something to "weigh in" when deciding what to focus on. and #6 was even more of a joke since I know Fish-Guy already did a mahjongg puzzle game and I guess he became disillusioned enough to come here for advice on his next game

Cheers,

Paul

[Fish-Guy]

... and #6 was even more of a joke since I know Fish-Guy already did a mahjongg puzzle game and I guess he became disillusioned enough to come here for advice on his next game

Thank-you Paul. He made a lot of valid points in his suggestions, I think the point I was trying to get over was more specifically the type of game. I have been writing games for years, most of which never see the light of day as I either never finish them, or the testers hate them so much I just move along to the next one. My last couple of projects have been a complete bore to most people, so was looking for fresh ideas on where to go next. I would rather not spend three-four months developing another game that no-one will want to play .

Andy Kellett
F1 Software
www.f1-software.com

[Jack Norton]

Well original ideas for new games are the most difficult thing to find.
You can do well just making clones of existing games

But the idea is nothing, is HOW you implement it. I chosen a hard path, the one of strategy/simulation/rpg etc, so I guess I can't give you much of advice.

Coming up with a original casual game is quite difficult indeed...

[Rainer Deyke]

My approach is to look for desires that I have as a gamer which are currently not fulfilled. Then I write a game to fulfill that desire.

[DavidRM]

...and #6 was even more of a joke since I know Fish-Guy already did a mahjongg puzzle game and I guess he became disillusioned enough to come here for advice on his next game

That's funny. And I completely missed it. Which might make it even funnier.

My last couple of projects have been a complete bore to most people, so was looking for fresh ideas on where to go next. I would rather not spend three-four months developing another game that no-one will want to play .

Robert Rodriguez, in his book Rebel Without a Crew, has this to say: "I think that everyone has at least a dozen or so bad movies in them; the sooner you get them out the better off you are."

Frankly, a 3-4 month turnaround is pretty damn good. And every game you complete is that much more experience you have to draw from, in design as well as development.

As for fresh ideas...continuing my rambling from before: Look around your room, or your entire house. Look on your hard drive. What do you have at hand that you could use, either as the basis for a game idea, or as a resource in a game? Look beyond games. Look at your hobbies. Look at the photos on the wall. Look at the books and magazines on your shelves. Look at your spouse, and/or your children, and/or your friends and siblings and parents. Examine your emotions. What scares you? Makes you feel good? Makes you wanna take up needlepoint?

My point is: Anything is fodder for a game.

Writing teachers everywhere teach "write what you know". And even if you prefer Stephen King's take on that "write the truth you know", I think we all have a better chance of creating something new and interesting if it comes from within us.

-David

[serg3d]

Well original ideas for new games are the most difficult thing to find.

I disagree. They are not difficult to find at all. They are hellishly difficalt to implement.

[Rod Hyde]

Look beyond games. Look at your hobbies. Look at the photos on the wall. Look at the books and magazines on your shelves. Look at your spouse, and/or your children, and/or your friends and siblings and parents.

I second this. Some of my own ideas have come from seeing the simple games (old fashioned board games, not computer games) that my 3 year old plays. Not that I'm about to write something based on "Incey Wincey Spider", but sometimes I get one of those, "aha - what if I did X with a Y theme and did it in real-time!" moments. Then, once I have the seed of the idea, I play with it, either on paper, or using something like freemind, to flesh it out. If I think it is viable then I write an Elevator Pitch (see David's book) for it to see if any of my friends and colleagues like the idea.

Finding the time to turn those ideas into reality... that's a whole different topic.

--- Rod

[Anthony Flack]

I have a feeling that success varies far more, from game to game, and from developer to developer, than it does from genre to genre.

In other words, the choice of genre is not so important as what you manage to do with it...

[Coyote]

Agreed.

Sid Meier - at least in the past - has expressed the view that genre shouldn't even be considered when designing a game. His opinion on game design is that you should come up with a SUBJECT first, and then decide what would be fun to do in relation to that subject. Then decide how those activities would be translated to a computer game. After that, if they fit comfortably within a genre, okay. If not --- well, that's okay too.

I still believe that you should ruthlessly cull out activities that demand too many wildly different types of play... mixing twitch-factor arcade gameplay with turn-based strategy tends to limit your market to the intersection of those two audiences (although it HAS been done successfully in the past... look at Archon).

After all, the successful genres were CREATED by games that didn't think too much about genres. Wolfenstein was a really cool arcade-action game. Dune 2 was some funky strategy-action game, as was Siege. And who knows what genre "The Sims" fits into?

[terin]

The marketing philosophy (Other than, lets do what the most successful person is currently doing) is:

Design a game with a low competition, tight target market.

Since you are just one person, the most important thing is do a game you can finish, because a half finished game gets zero sales, no matter how perfect your target market is.

But if you can come up with a few things you believe you can finish: Remember that first part- Tight target market. Doesn't matter if your target market is a very small segment, if you can really nail them on what they want you will sell to them.

How many fans out there enjoy non-action adventure games? Not nearly as many as who like general adventure games, but man, selling non-action adventure games to the fans of the genre is (relatively) easy!

There's my 2 cents. Priority on a game you can finish, secondary on a game with the tightest, lowest competition, target market.

[GhostRik]

How many fans out there enjoy non-action adventure games? Not nearly as many as who like general adventure games, but man, selling non-action adventure games to the fans of the genre is (relatively) easy!

Someone (must have been another thread) mentioned that "exploration" games are difficult for indie development due to the extensive content demands.

Are there specific "general adventure" and "non-action adventure" indie games anyone can mention?

[Kai Backman]

Are there specific "general adventure" and "non-action adventure" indie games anyone can mention?

These might qualify?
Spiderweb Software - a lot of games here
Robinson Technologies - Dink Smallwood (originally published as shareware?)

I think Terin summed it up nicely!

[impossible]

Yeah, what ever happened to the good old text adventure, like Zork? Don't see many of those nowadays. Some older retro style games are popular again. I've seen tons of 3D remakes of old arcade classics. There might still be a niche to fill there.

They haven't gone anywhere and there is a niche, google "interactive fiction." I wouldn't say there is much of a market for these games (at least on PC) because there have been a lot of very good free IF games released over the years, and people who are into the genre know about them. As far as I know there aren't any for sale IF games, and all IF authors release them for free.

[papillon]

There is indeed an IF-for-sale guy - see malinche.net. He generally tries to pretend the rest of the IF scene does not exist (Which makes *some* sense, as it would distract his market) and therefore they hate him.

[impossible]

There is indeed an IF-for-sale guy

That doesn't surprise me. Any idea on how well he does? It seems like most casual gamers would be bored, confused or frustrated by IF and most IF fans would be unwilling to pay when they have tons of great free games available to them.

[Sunshine]

I am a big believer in the 'Fun Factor'

There were plenty of non-action adventure games, shumups, and RTS that were dam good. However there were also many that just sucked. It comes down to ...was it fun?

A game that is fun and entertaining will sell, and one that is not will not sell. (Expecially here, where you play the demo first.)

the successful genres were CREATED by games

Just invent your own genre. Then even if you don't sell any copies, you can say that all the rest copied you and at least get some satisfaction

[impossible]

Just invent your own genre.

At the risk of turning this into a "what is innovation" thread, this is a lot easier said than done.

[Greg Squire]

I am a big believer in the 'Fun Factor' ...

I think everyone here believes in this. A game definiately has to be "Fun". The problem is that "Fun" is very subjective. What's fun to one person might not be fun to another. You just have to find what's fun to the majority of your intended audience, and that isn't always easy. There's definiately more ART to this industry than SCIENCE.

[tentons]

The way the big boys do it?
"What were the top-selling games last year? Okay, lets make games like that."

Maybe there's merit to it. After all, they are the big boys.