On the crest of a wave, or “I want to go to the mainstream” - is it worth it?
- Tutorial
Remember the sharp peak of the development and release of MOBA games since the release of Dota 2, how many projects were there? How many similar games did in a similar genre?
Watching the relevance of pianos? What a huge peak began with PUBG and Fortnite, now everyone wants to make their royal battle. Now players need it, there is a demand for it.
Do we need it, the developers?
Let's understand
Before answering this question you need to understand two situations:
Let us drop the last option right away, there are marketing specialists, analysts and financiers, let them work out their bread and draw graphs and analyze figures, make forecasts.
You are your own captain, you can turn the development in any direction, but it will be incredibly difficult for you and cost much effort to make games at the speed of a small team and, all the more, a large studio, but this is real, but ... why?
The beauty of indie games - focus on a narrow audience. Indie game - an idea, raised to the absolute. As a rule, these are ideological projects. Want to make money fast and easy?
There will be a question of attracting traffic.
You are not so nimble as lonely developers, you are already more than one. Your game is only at the prototype stage, and here comes the game that deals with the tops of the charts and it is very similar to yours, ok, go ahead, you are lucky.
Or a game based on similar ideas comes out and breaks the bankruptcy, continue and develop your project.
In other cases, you should not deploy the development of 180 degrees. For example, the AC comes out and you can become attached to the release date and make a similar project on the phones, it will not be a trend, it will be a strategy.
Or a steep battle of a grand piano came out and hit the jackpot, you want the same, but you are doing a hardcore RPG, you should not change course.
Admissible changes for small teams (I mean really large and sharp turns) - only at the prototype stage in greyscales.
In other cases, move your course, changes are not worth it.
This raises another question, do what is in trend now, do your own thing or try to do what will be in trend later.
Now - the probability of time is small, if you meet the deadlines, the quality may suffer.
Your course - you know your audience, it's better than endlessly chasing trends.
Calculation for the future - you have a forecast and you develop the game according to your data.
If your project is at the prototype stage, you are no different in terms of changes from small teams.
Small studio - up to 15 people.
If you can add cool and relevant chips to your project, do the main thing that the project benefits from this.
It is better to save the face of your project, but try to add something, but do not betray your audience, choose a niche - this is the key to success. Remember the Dark Souls, absolutely not sparing kazualov project, no one thought that someone is ready to play this and suffer ...
Cool stuff for novice developers here .
ThousandsWho lived to date?
units
Watching the relevance of pianos? What a huge peak began with PUBG and Fortnite, now everyone wants to make their royal battle. Now players need it, there is a demand for it.
Do we need it, the developers?
Let's understand
Before answering this question you need to understand two situations:
- we are a small indie team or one developer
- we are a small development studio and successfully produce projects
- we are a huge game campaign and ready to stamp projects in dozens
Let us drop the last option right away, there are marketing specialists, analysts and financiers, let them work out their bread and draw graphs and analyze figures, make forecasts.
We are one man
You are your own captain, you can turn the development in any direction, but it will be incredibly difficult for you and cost much effort to make games at the speed of a small team and, all the more, a large studio, but this is real, but ... why?
The beauty of indie games - focus on a narrow audience. Indie game - an idea, raised to the absolute. As a rule, these are ideological projects. Want to make money fast and easy?
Do hyper-projectsThere you can monitor the market and follow the trends, provided that the development cycle of your game will not be more than 2 months, otherwise you will not have time for the trend in 85% of cases.
There will be a question of attracting traffic.
Bottom line, do indie and don't look back at anyone, stay yourself. Do you want fast money? - make hyperplaying games on phones and get traffic, be on a wave.
We are a small team
You are not so nimble as lonely developers, you are already more than one. Your game is only at the prototype stage, and here comes the game that deals with the tops of the charts and it is very similar to yours, ok, go ahead, you are lucky.
Or a game based on similar ideas comes out and breaks the bankruptcy, continue and develop your project.
In other cases, you should not deploy the development of 180 degrees. For example, the AC comes out and you can become attached to the release date and make a similar project on the phones, it will not be a trend, it will be a strategy.
Or a steep battle of a grand piano came out and hit the jackpot, you want the same, but you are doing a hardcore RPG, you should not change course.
Admissible changes for small teams (I mean really large and sharp turns) - only at the prototype stage in greyscales.
In other cases, move your course, changes are not worth it.
You can try to make a project for current trends, but this is risky and the probability of success is low, you want to take risks, take risks. But it’s better to stay in your niche and reach out to you.
We are a small studio
This raises another question, do what is in trend now, do your own thing or try to do what will be in trend later.
Now - the probability of time is small, if you meet the deadlines, the quality may suffer.
Your course - you know your audience, it's better than endlessly chasing trends.
Calculation for the future - you have a forecast and you develop the game according to your data.
If your project is at the prototype stage, you are no different in terms of changes from small teams.
Small studio - up to 15 people.
You should not chase the mainstream and get into trends, it's risky and often not worth it.
You can get into it by chance and this is good, but to turn a project into trends, having nothing in common with them, is a terrible idea.
Summarizing
If you can add cool and relevant chips to your project, do the main thing that the project benefits from this.
It is better to save the face of your project, but try to add something, but do not betray your audience, choose a niche - this is the key to success. Remember the Dark Souls, absolutely not sparing kazualov project, no one thought that someone is ready to play this and suffer ...
Or maybe it was a good calculation?
Cool stuff for novice developers here .