Where to start from? (Part 1)
-- This article was becoming too long, so I splitted it into two parts --
If you are an independent game developer or small company and you want to start making games, a tough decision is always what to do. What kind of game.
Indeed it's a very important choice. It's not easy like having an idea and shaping it to reality. Many aspects matter, like the genre, the graphics, the mechanics, the story, the caracters, the topic... etc. And precisely that's what I want to talk about in this article, always of course from my modest opinion.
When we start making games, often we feel excited: a lot of thrilling ideas come to our minds, and we start thinking about all of it: programming, modeling, animating, and we imagine our game already finished! Unfortunately that's not so beautiful as it sounds.
Some games can be very hard to make, needing a lot of time, money, resources and experience / knowledge. Things we may not have. And for what, if we won't be able to compete with professional games? When deciding about work, the thing we do to eat and live, we need to leave the child aside and think wisely, taking many strategies into account.
1 - Platforms
As a beginner, choose always phone or pc, forget about consoles unless you have a backup: investors, companies to support you, etc. Consoles are very strict and require many expenses (like paying a license).
So, phone or pc? Of course, phone is much cheaper and phone games are (usually) easier to make. Problems? A lot of competence, a lot of copies, a lot of "junk", and a lower income. Phone players are very... chaotic. The biggest stupidity can become viral and popular, while best masterpieces are ignored.
Don't misunderstand, you can make great games for phone, but it requires more than passion for art. Most of successful games for phone need good marketing and communication, investors, advertisement and a monetization system.
So just saying, if you're going to make a phone game, just don't stick just in making a game. You'll need more than that to differentiate from other ameteur developers.
And what about PC? More or less the same, but with some differences. If you're success, PC games can result more profitable. A basic error nowadays: make games for pc not looking for pc. I mean, a lot of developers make games for pc and try to sell them, for example, through steam. But they make games that could be perfectly played in a phone or a portable console like a Nintendo. What's the problem with those games? They aren't taken very seriously.
Why? Because there are a lot of developers making games like that. If you make a kind of game just because it's easy, you'll just be another among the crowd. Why is your game special if there are just 50 games more like yours.
So the key about this: differentiate. Always. Now, there are two ways to differentiate:
- Visually: through good graphics or mechanics, for example. Something people can see in pictures or videos. The good thing about this is that, players feel like playing your games easily, just by watching a trailer or a gameplay, which is a good market strategy. Problem: you need resources and potency. Good modeling, good animating, good texturing, good music... and this means, money.
- Arguably: most of indie developers choose this way. Making a game with a good story or message. These kind of games usually get renown and a good community of gamers. In the previous case, it was the media the one who attracted players. Now it will be our own players, through social networks or even through word of mouth, who will announce our game.
But, problems of this system: (1) at the beginning we'll need a good impulse to become known and gain players. As said before, we'll need marketing, investors, sharing through social networks, communicating..
(2) Five-Ten years ago, this system would be awesome. Nowadays, the problem is that everyone does that, and there's (in my opinion) a saturation of this little indie games. Most of them great, right, but too many. You can play a game, telling you a beautiful deep interesting message, but there are 50 more games doing the same, and that makes these games stop being so special.
You can still triumph, but you need to be much more original than before.
2 - Genre
What kind of genres should we consider as beginners, and which one we shouldn't?
Let's divide this section in three parts:
- What genres are used nowadays as starters?
- What genres do I advice to use as starters?
- What genres do I NOT recommend to use as starters?
So, what genres are used nowadays as starters? One of them is puzzles. You must know what it is, but just in case: games in which you must solve riddles, games or investigations to move on.
Puzzles can be a very interesting and poweful tool, I admit it's a good strategy. Nevertheless, they can also be a two sided sword. First of all I would recommend including them as a part of our game, to combine them with the story and the rest of the game. The grand master of puzzles games is and will always be "Professor Layton" (it was a game for Nintendo DS, search it if you don't know it).
One thing that Professor Layton did wonderfully was mixing the puzzles with the story, justifying them and making them comfortable, not unnecessary.
But I've seen some games which use odd silly senseless riddles. For example I played a game in which you found a box with a 4 number combination locker. In another place of the game you found a four lines poem. In each one of the lines of the poem there was written a color. The combination of the locker was the order of those numbers in the rainbow. W-T-F??
A lot of games make senseless mechanics, puzzles, games, riddles, or just make you walk from one side to the other of the game over and over again. You get to a door, you need a key. Guess where's the key: to the other extreme of the bloody map! And then you go back to the door, open it, and after that door there's: another bloody door!
Sincerely, if you're going to do that... just don't. Don't make senseless games just to keep the player busy going around in circles, to finally watch the solution in YouTube. Merging mechanics with narrative is something we've already talked about in this blog, and I still expect to write some more articles about it.
Another genre very used is adventure. Most of times in 2D and/or including RPG features. What can I say about these? Personally, I don't like them, because of what I mentioned before. They are games I would have played ten-fiveteen years ago or I'd play now on nintendo or phone, but not pc. Nonetheless, these games usually get a good appreciation.
These kind of games tend to choose one of these directions: RPG or story. I consider both of them very difficult to accomplish. Precisely this is a genre with real and astonishing masterpieces, and competing with that is... an impossible mission. You can make a good game to spend the afternoon, but if you want to make a good artwork, this genre requires a lot of effort, dedication and creativity.
Another genre: simple mechanics (generalizing). What's this? Games which are only about a specific mechanic. For example: racing, throwing, shooting, or a platform game without any argument, story, or anything, just levels and levels of jumping and... more jumping.
Sincerely... I don't like these either. For phone games it would be great, but on pc and by paying, I won't pay money just to be a spaceship shooting in the space. I need... more.
Another genre very famous lately are horror games. They are being ver successful, but I don't really like them. If people do, it's great, only two things to warn: (1) there a lot of horror games, too much, and they start to be tiring, (2) if you're gonna do an horror game, make it right. Because some are very very painful.
There are obviously more genres, but this article is already taking too long, so I prefer to pass onto the next section.
What genres do I advice to use as starters? Well, there are indeed some genres I think there aren't very popular between indie companies and beginner developers.
However, before continuing, we must understand two things: first, that we don't try to compete with professional games, so even when I comment a game genre, we must always try to find a different, original, interesting point of view for that game, a way to turn that genre into something innovative, if we want to make ourselves a place in the market. And (2), that we shouldn't make a game just about those mechanics. Don't stick only in that genre, join different genres, mix the mechanics with a good story, good characters and so.
So, for example, strategy games (RTS). There aren't many strategy indie games. The first thinking about these is: "they're very tough to make". They are if we think of a classic professional RTS. We don't need to make a classic RTS. Precisely strategy games are a genre that has barely changed. We can always find a new interesting way to see things.
For example... Chess battles, but with soldiers and monsters, or fighting wars with troops, but not necessarily with a full HD world map and high quality troop models. Maybe just with maps and icons.
It's just a way to say that we can always find amazing ideas about strategy games with a low cost.
Or fighting games (like street fighter, mortal combat...). We don't need complicated graphics and animations. We can compensate that with changes in the mechanics (since this genre hasn't suffered many changes either) or with a good story. For example, a game I loved was "Injustice: gods among us", not precisely because of the fighting (because I'm not a big fan of this genre), but because of the story and cinematics.
How to make a fighting indie game, if we can animate or model like a pro? For example, a 2D fighting game, by turns, where player must press a combination of buttons and the caused damage depends on that, or with cards (cards are attacks, and the player can prepare his own deck...). Who knows? We can always innovate.
Beat'em up, which is a genre we're losing and that's a pity. It's a good model to tell stories. I'd like to see it again.
Stealth games, also very interesting.
And finally, genres I think shouldn't be chosen as a starter.
Mostly, complex genres and the ones used by professional companies, such as sport games, shooters (FPS), RPG, complex adventure games, stories/novels in 3D, because they require good animations, dubbing, etc. Genres which are already very used and seen nowadays, as the mentioned horror games or chaotic puzzle games or spaceship games.
To sum up. I recommend those genres which don't try to compete with biggest companies and those which aren't so seen nowadays. By this, we can both differentiate and innovate. And always, of course, trying to find an interesting point of view, mixing things (genres, mechanics, techniques) and trying to give our game a new perspective.