As an indie, I'm always trying to think of untapped opportunities for my tiny little company. I've thought of doing PDA games (Palm, WinCE, symbian, etc.), mobile phone games, game boy games (although that's not really "untapped"..), games for certain markets (Korea), games which appeal to certain demographics (the elusive "casual" gamer), and so on and so forth.

What are other people's thoughts on this? Have people found success in niches which aren't being exploited? Did you encounter unexpected barriers? difficulties? Was it easier? Do you plan to continue doing the same thing or targeting the same market?

I see a lot of people say that the casual gamer market is now "flooded" and it's now harder than ever to enter the casual game market. Would you agree? or disagree?

Chaster

Maybe I'm being a little naive and look a little like a kid in a candy store but my untapped market is "The Whole Internet", of which I've managed to get about 0.003% according to various statistics. That seems so vastly untapped to me I've barely even begun to guess where to begin tapping it. The affiliation thing seems like a good move.

Cas :)

The older console market is one you might think about. The classic market is growing as baby boomers age, they are pulling out their older machines and wanting content for them. I hear some of the guys making old Atari 2600 games are getting more and more popular. The craze might flow into NES, SNES, and Genesis also. And there is alot of data out there on how to program these consoles. The good thing, is that graphics aren't as important as game play.

I think it's certainly true that the casual games market is seeing more and more action. Even the big developers and publishers are starting to get into it, and I see evidence that veteran game makers are starting up their own indie ventures nearly every day. I *really* wish I had finished my games a year ago. :(

As for other markets... my personally opinion is that the mobile phone games business is ALL HYPE at the moment. No one that I've talked to is actually making any money. It seems like a "big deal" because we are being barraged with marketing and promotional material from the likes of Nokia... anyone else get those stupid inserts in Game Developer magazine, or flyers in the mail about mobile game developer conventions? Bah... it's all BS right now. SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Now the PDA market... that's a whole nother story. I think the time is ripe to get in there. There's enough of a market to actually make some money, and it's possible to self-publish there as well, unlike the mobile phones (where Sprint AND your publisher is going to be getting 75-90% of all your action). I think the PDA market right now is similar to the PC games market of the late 80's... easy entry and a growing market that is not saturated... so a really good game will stand out well. For instance, there are only a handful of really well-known distribution sites, so people who are looking for PDA games know exactly where to look... as opposed to PC games, where there are literally thousands of sites (and retail stores) selling games.


Anyway.... just my $0.02.

Hey Chaster, I come to hijack this one too (kidding :))

This has some relevant stuff to the previous post of political correctness, but I think it may be more suited here. According to Develop of this month, China may in the future be a market to invest: "China recently became the world's biggest television market - finding buyers for 28 million sets per year - and the organisers (of ChinaJoy) say games will follow this trent, arguing that the issue of piracy will be overcome as a result of the Chinese government's tough line on IP rights following the country's admission into the World Trade Organisation. Online gaming is already growing in the country, with almost 20 percent of China's 50 million Internet users willing to pay for such services".

[http://www.chinajoy.net for more information about the expo.]

Now, I personally would like to see China crack down on piracy, but I don't know how the 'users' will feel about it. When you get used to have something for free for long, you begin to expect everything in the future to be the same. Hope it wont be the case, but its almost like the linux users saying (cloak of protection against flame - on) "It's hard to sell something to someone that believes everything should be free".

Even if China is going to crack down on piracy they're going to be an extremely difficult market to sell into for a Western indie for two reasons:

1. You need your game translated into Chinese. Probably surmountable given patience but...

2. ...you won't be able to charge more than $2 a copy, if you want to compete with the pirates. It is unfortunately tricky on the internet to do differential price zones because the internet truly is a leveller in this respect, as the RIAA have discovered to their cost.

Cas :)