Say you have an idea for a game, and at the time of conception no truly similar game exists.

Then, as you're in the middle of development, a Big Name announces that they are making a similar game - and will probably beat you to the punch.

Is this a good thing (people might be more interested in the field, and then try your game out for being much cheaper than the big name version) or a bad thing (everyone with any interest will buy the big name version and ignore you)?

Tough one... it happened to us. We had the idea of making a remake of Stunts, and then Crashday appeared. We were in the planning phase, so we just abandoned the idea.

I don't know if I made a good decision. We weren't planning to have the last per-quantum-pixel-virtual-shader technology but we could have done a fun game. We could even finish the game before them (their game is still under development). I don't know, it may have worked.

My point is, maybe you can beat the Big Guy With A Similar Idea. If you can ship the "shareware version" of their big game before they do, you could be taking advantage of their advertising!

Guerrilla marketing idea : Advertise your game in the gaming forums where the equivalent Big Name game is being talked about ("Hey! We have a very similar game! And it is finished!")

I have little fear of the really big guys (AAA and such). My primary goals are simplicity, ease of use, low learning curve, quick playing times, accessability on low-end computers. Theirs are complexity, 40 hours of play time and using up as much clock cycles as the latest hardware has to offer. We are at opposite corners of the galaxy - let them build whatever technological terror they desire, it will still be irrelevant next to the power of the force. Uhm... something like that :)

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Keep in mind that retail games seldom last for more than a few months on the shelves. You'll have years of sales to look forward to. In addition, you can tweak your game based on what didn't work in theirs.

Well, if the "big guy" are anything like what I've met, they'll make sure that you either get push to the side or not talk about.

And I would try the guerilla idea, it could end up looking more bad for you and your company.

Now what to do is to ignore them and keep pushing to present your product from your own side.

Guerilla strategy is not something I recommand.

Nick

I am a former "Pro" working with a couple of "Big Names" myself, but my experience is a little out-of-date and limited (I was an engineer, so I had more of a mouse-eye view of things. But considering jumping back into the games industry as an indie, I have been trying to figure an answer to this question myself.

Bear in mind the Big Names deal with this same worry. Especially when you hear a rumor of a product in development that MIGHT be very similar to what you are working on. They rarely are, but based on a screenshot and a brief description, things always sound dangerously similar. And whether it's by another major developer or some small shareware house, you worry that the other guys is doing something very similar to you, but bigger, prettier, cheaper, and better.

As an indie with a limited budget, you MUST realize that unless the major developer makes a COLLOSSAL blunder (which happens, remember "Tresspasser?") or gets their title canceled, you are NOT going to be able to compete with them head-to-head in terms of scope - or, in all likelihood, quality of content. And definitely not on marketing budget. At best, you might be able to ride the coattails of the competing game, picking up the scraps and leftovers of people who think of your game as a cheap alternative.

So... what do you got that they don't got? Give up on the illusions that you've got more talent or skill. While it's certainly possible, the pros are typically no slouches either. The size of their studio and the overhead involved may reduce their efficiency - but what they lose in efficiency they make up for in budget and numbers. However, that budget is also a limitation - due to the money involved, they HAVE to be conservative. You don't.

You can exploit markets that the big guys don't want to touch. You can create content for platforms that are not "economically viable" yet, and get a foothold there. And you can explore new game concepts that the big publishers will rarely attempt, because the risk is so large. There are also increasingly large niche areas and genres that the big publishers are abandoning, because they aren't lucrative enough. Wargames are one major example - once a staple of computer gaming, these are almost entirely published by indies now because they rarely sell over 50,000 copies (the Panzer General series being a rather phenominal exception that comes to mind). I think the guys who did Combat Mission were able to exploit that area quite nicely (and created a fabulous game that I highly recommend even for non-wargamers).

The thing that's killing the games industry today is a lack of innovation. For every "The Sims" there's a thousand derivative clones of last year's hits. As an independent without quite so much to lose, you have all kinds of room to experiement with new ideas and breathe new life and creativity into the medium. That's your competitive advantage.

I see this as a good thing.

Big companies have marketing research budgets...if they are financing this kind of game, it is because they think there is a market for it. And when a Big Name looks for a market, they are thinking Big Market, or they wouldn't waste $2 million on a game.

Second, a lot of announced projects get cancelled or never arrive. In this case, the company has stirred up interest for your game, because it's now the only one of this type.

Finally, game players are rarely satisfied with a single game. When they find a genre they like, they play everything they can find in that genre. The Big Names can't crank out the sequels fast enough to suit the fans, so they're going to look for similar games by other companies.

Coyote mention a big point that everybody seems to forget.

Although certain big company do lack a lot when it comes to efficiency, they made it up in budget.

And it's not true that customer will look for other game. People who look for game won't usually go with the big product in the first place.

I think I mention this in the Experiment thread, we're seeing more and more big companies making sure that Indie get pushed to the side while they take the front spot and with their Huge Marketing budget, you can be sure that it will probably be hard to be heard on most of the big game website which is where most of the gamer are hanging.

And I don't think that hoping they'll cancel the project is a realistic idea.

Same thing goes for saying that if a big company make a game like yours, it's because they think there's a market because we all know that there's less than 5% of all Commerical titles that are successful.

So the big question is should this stop you from making your game ? Like I said, no. Just push stuff on your side because unless you had in mind a marketing budget that goes in the million, you will probably not compete with them anyway.

Beside, it's very very rare that 2 games actually are exactly alike.
Even if in concept they look similar, the way they are presented certainly won't be.

Nick

Originally posted by Stargamer_Nick
And I don't think that hoping they'll cancel the project is a realistic idea.
Why not? As it is, 2 out of 3 games get cancelled at some point. That alone seems like pretty decent odds.

A good idea remains a good idea even if someone else has it too.

Also, no two people will take the same idea and come up with more than "vaguely similar" implementations. You could write a near-complete design document, hand it to two different teams to implement and the end results would be very different. (Unless the teams have 0 creative ability, of course.)

As an example, look at "Antz" vs "A Bugs Life". "Antz" was a deliberate attempt to trump "A Bugs Life", and even involved some personell "lifted and carried" from Disney/Pixar. Yet the two movies, both about ant hills in trouble and rescued by a misfit, bear almost no other similarities.

South Park had a funny episode about this, with a character trying to do something that hadn't been done in a Simpsons episode. Ultimately, we're all copying and borrowing from a variety of cultural influences. The trick is to do it in a new and interesting way. A new twist or wrinkle that turns it into something unique.

-David

Originally posted by LordKronos
Why not? As it is, 2 out of 3 games get cancelled at some point. That alone seems like pretty decent odds.


Well, I'm not sure these odds are still true for the big companies. More and more Big company prefers to delay the release of a game rather than cancel it (unless they realise the game has no real market value).

Second, most of the games that get cancel are those created by Indie company who manage to get a deal with a Publisher and either

A) They run out of money so they can't continue the game.
B) The Publisher pulls the plug on the project and the Developper ends up having to spend money to find another publisher and doens't manage to do so which ends.

Still, starting a project with the ideal that the bigger competition will just cancel their project is a very dangerous way to succeed because if you end up being wrong, regardless of the odds, it will end up playing against you because you might even loose some of your potentiel players since most people will prefer to spend their 50$ (or more) on the bigger product which you can't really compete against marketing wise (regardless of it's actual quality).

Like I said, it doens't mean you should stop development because very rare are the occasion where you'll end up seing 2 game that are totally similar so you should just keep pushing on your own side. Beside, once the competitor as release it's product, there's nothing stopping you from releasing your and trying to add features the other doesn't in an add-on or an expansion.

But if your project is just starting, going with something totally different will be a lot better. Beside, any good game designer can come up with more than one great idea.

Nick

I'm pretty confident that no other devteam, be they big studios or indies, are making games like mine. Not that I'm some kind of original-game-design-producing wunderkind - far from it! - but as far as implementation goes, I think I have a style that's identifiably my own. So for me, even if I heard that another company was making a game that sounded just like mine on paper, I'm pretty sure it would come out completely different. And the chances are that your game will too, unless of course you're both "borrowing" ideas from the same source...

Originally posted by Stargamer_Nick
Still, starting a project with the ideal that the bigger competition will just cancel their project is a very dangerous way to succeed because if you end up being wrong, regardless of the odds, it will end up playing against you because you might even loose some of your potentiel players since most people will prefer to spend their 50$ (or more) on the bigger product which you can't really compete against marketing wise (regardless of it's actual quality).

I was not saying that indies should launch a project based on a big company announcing a title, in the hopes that they cancel. This is a terrible way to run a business. An indie should launch and continue projects because they have an excellent vision of what the game will be, and believe there is a suitably large market out there for the product.

In general, an indie should focus on their own efforts, not on what the other guy is doing, regardless of their size. Spending time worrying about what someone else might do is a waste of effort that could be better applied.

As far as the $50 for a bigger product, that cuts both ways. Some of the market is simply not going to be able to afford $50, and will look for cheaper alternatives. Another part of the market is well-heeled, and can easily afford both games. In any case, it is important to determine that there is sufficient interest out there to warrant making the game.

IRT to Milieu:

By Starting, I meant, if you're still very early in the Design Phase, and you hear about another big company starting a similar project, it would be better to start with something totally different.


Second, as I said somewhere else, I think that if in the middle of production, you hear that another company is making a similar project, you'll have to adjust your design a little and not count on the fact that the other production will get cancel. That's what dangerous, because in the long run, if you don't adjust to the competition, you'll loose your market.

Of course, there is a market for player who don't want to pay 50$ for a game, but it's getting harder to reach them as big company overfilled the market with game of low quality and low price, along with making good Indi loose some of their potential customer, it gives low price games a bad reputation because when a big company sell a game 20$, you can bet that an Indi game at that price will be at least 3 time as fun.

Now, the question is, how to make that understand to the gaming world.

Nick

The budget sector is ALSO dominated by the big names, too --- that's where last year's hits go to die. I just picked up Aliens vs. Predator 2 for less than $10 at my local MediaPlay. I'm going to have a tough time buying the expansion at that price.

So you aren't just competing with the first-run, top-end games... you are also competing with all those games sitting prominently in the bargain bin at the local games store. Your game had BETTER have something unique and exciting going for it to differentiate it from anything that is coming down the pipe now, or anything that has been released in the last 5 years. That's why you CAN'T just make a cheap "me-too" knock-off (not that anybody here would do that... :D ) and think you can beat 'em at price... it's unlikely to work.

So once again - I believe the low-budget indies must compete by being different - advancing the state-of-the-art of gameplay rather than technology.

Well, you must realise that not all great hit goes to the bargain bin.

I worked at a store where we selling computer games (among other thing) and bargain was filled with games we didn't manage to sell period and we're stuck. (Not all store sign a product return deal).

If you look at The Sims for example, the original games will never be put in the bargain bin, regardless that it was publish almost 3 years ago. Same things goes for WarCraft III.

In anycase, when it comes to selling your product, I doubt most idea manage to make most of their sale at retail stores (except medium or big size Indi).

Nick