I read Dexterity's article on basic market research. I want my next game to sell well, and I know I need to make a game that appeals to a large enough user base. The problem is, I don't have a clue what kind of games sell well, what markets have too much competition, or what kind of game I should try to make. I don't know where to find or deduct such information, either. What do you guys think? Any suggestions would be appreciated! :)

- Chris

Well,.....Puzzle games sell really well here at Dexterity Software....so i suggest you make some sort of puzzle game....an original one of course.....

I've read that most of Dexterity's customers like puzzle games and dont really care much for action/reflexes-testing kind of games...they prefer to use their brains for solving puzzles ;)

Just to show that you don't have to go down the puzzle route, check out www.mking.com
Their games sell very well, and are all action/shooting/strategy games. I think they even have an RPG!

Also, www.spiderwebsoftware.com seems to be doing pretty well. And ALL they have is RPGs.

Lots of possibilities.... There are loads of puzzle games lovers out there, but there's also a lot more competition than there used to be. One of the advantages you have when you focus on a particular genre for a while is that you have a good chance of selling your new releases to your previous customers -- that's harder to do if every game you release is in a different genre.

So today I don't tend to think in terms of the one-hit strategy. I think it's really hard to make a brand new game a hit regardless of the genre, if you don't already have a mailing list of people who are likely to be interested in it. For instance, if we release Dweep 2, we're going to have an easy time selling it initially. But if we release an RPG, that's going to be really hard to sell until we get 3 or more of them and begin adding thousands of RPG lovers to our customer base.

So our strategy is focused more on building suites of compatible games that will give players great value within a particular genre. In the puzzle game area, we have over 1000 levels between all games, so that's enough puzzles to keep someone entertained for months. People who enjoy one puzzle game commonly return to buy another.

What we're looking to do now is to start seeding other genres where we see some good long-term potential. In particular, we're looking for some light RPG and adventure games that would appeal to casual gamers. A good example of the type of game we'd be interested in would be the freeware game Dink Smallwood. It's light-hearted, includes lots of humor elements, it's pretty easy to learn, and it's relatively fun in the first few minutes. Gameplay is similar to Zelda... putting more emphasis on adventuring than on character development and story. The downside is that it's over 20 megs.

I think there's a lot of long-term potential for some good Zelda-like games. I'd really love to build a suite of such games, but we've had a hard time finding ones that would work for us. Such games can require much more QA, and they're often way too big and way too complicated for the audience we're trying to target. Most of them seem to require a few hours of "work" before you actually feel you're beginning to have fun.

Just in case you guys haven't played it Dink Smallwood (http://www.rtsoft.com/dink/) really is a blast. It's also one of the few high quality, polished, freeware action rpg's out there. If you havn't played it your missing out!

Originally posted by Dexterity

What we're looking to do now is to start seeding other genres where we see some good long-term potential. In particular, we're looking for some light RPG and adventure games that would appeal to casual gamers. A good example of the type of game we'd be interested in would be the freeware game Dink Smallwood. It's light-hearted, includes lots of humor elements, it's pretty easy to learn, and it's relatively fun in the first few minutes. Gameplay is similar to Zelda... putting more emphasis on adventuring than on character development and story. The downside is that it's over 20 megs.

Have you ever considered selling the games on cd ??? Or is that totally not what you were intended to do in the first place?? :)

We sell every game on CD as an option for $5 extra (and if you order the CD, you can also download the game right away), but most people prefer to just have the download link. A bigger problem though is the size of the demo. If the demo is too big, far fewer people will download it.

Originally posted by Dexterity
We sell every game on CD as an option for $5 extra (and if you order the CD, you can also download the game right away), but most people prefer to just have the download link. A bigger problem though is the size of the demo. If the demo is too big, far fewer people will download it.

ok....but isnt this where the CD comes into play ???? ;) ......i mean...paying an extra $5 for a "big" game isnt that much in my opinion......and gives developers the chance to create bigger games....better gfx because you dont need to worry about the filesizes that much....and therefore being able to use higher resolution gfx....:)

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. :)

IMO a 20 MB shareware demo is way too big. Did the developer use MP3s, hundreds of individual BMPs, CD-quality WAVs? There are plenty of ways to reduce the file sizes of most game data without compromising quality. I'm not sure if Steve meant the demo or the full version is 20 MB. You can't expect a user to download a 20 MB shareware demo. :eek:

- Chris

I'm not sure if you track any of this type of data, Steve, but I assume the number of people who buy your games without first downloading them is very low.

The demo is the greatest selling tool for your game. Your website should be able to attract customers and get them to download your game, but the demo has to sell them on the game so that they are motivated to buy it. Thus you want to make it brutally easy for your customers to get the demo and start playing. If the customer has to enter their home address and email to get a CD of a game demo they’re not even sure they'll like, then the chances of them going through the effort of getting the demo are reduced significantly. However if all they have to do is anonymously click a link on a web page, the promise of instant (or close to instant) gratification is indeed a temptation that i sure to result in more customers playing your demo.

20 MB is of course way too much for a demo......but not for the full-version that i was talking about...:) :cool:

Keep in mind also that in some parts of the world, people still pay per-minute connection charges. So a 20MB file costs more to download than a 2MB file. It would be interesting to see a 2MB demo for a 20MB full version, but commonly you don't see this type of ratio. Also, people are more likely to encounter download problems with larger files. You'd be surprised how many people don't know to turn off call-waiting before dialing into to their internet connection.

We may ship some CD-only games in the future where there's a 5MB demo and a 50MB full version, but for right now we're not focused on those types of games. Most of the time when we see a 50MB full version, the demo is well over 10MB anyway. Plus those larger games are rarely designed with our market in mind.

As broadband becomes more prevalent, we'll gradually begin incorporating larger games, but for right now, smaller is still better.

There is a reasonable number of people out there prepared to download large files. But it does depend on your target market.

The game Lightweight Ninja is similar to the game I am working on at the moment only it has a 27Meg download (I'm targeting 4). That hasn't stopped 130,000 people from downloading it from download.com (Although their own site does direct downloaders to download.com)

I do think if I can come up with a similar demo in 4 meg I'll be able to do better though :-).

One interesting aside, A couple of friends have actually commented that a larger game increases their chances of downloading it because they feel it could be better. It really does depend on getting into the mind of the type of person who would play your game.

I think I have to agree with Lerc's friends when they say that they'd be more likely to download a larger sized demo. I do think that I am getting more out of it. It makes me think that no corners were cut and that any content it has may be of higher quality. Then again, I'm not the average downloader. For budget markets, perhaps the smaller downloads are prefered overall. Is this true?

You also have to consider the market you're targeting. For a fan of indie puzzle/arcade games, bigger isn't necessarily better. For an RPG-, FPS-, or RTS-fan, however, a larger file size might often be interpreted as being higher quality. I for one would be pretty suspicious of an RPG that was only 3 megs. Plus players in the latter group probably have a significantly higher chance of having a broadband connection.