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[Xaron]

Dear all,

as the mobile market gets saturated more and more and it gets harder for us indies to get even noticed with our games (heck I even don't talk about making money, but even free games get rarely more than a few hundred downloads nowadays!) I just want to discuss strategies and ideas how to enter niches and how to find them.

Personally I have now 7 games in the stores (Google Play, App Store, Windows Phone Market Place) so maybe I should just start sharing my experiences.

So my initial thought was to create something unique. I did this with my first game, even though not completely new but very unique and well received from those who accidently downloaded it. :D
The problem: Doing something unique makes it hard for the gamers to find as most games are found via the search function (not speaking about the top 20 charts which you simply can't enter). So how could a gamer find something he even doesn't know about and never would search for?

My second approach was to just look into the top charts and doing something similar. Mainly the way that copying something that works well should create some success. Look at games like Candy Crush and so on. Up to now I haven't done that because this casual market is totally saturated, even if you make a really nice clone there are already thousands of them.

What finally worked for me best was to look for localized niches. My best working game so far is a card game (called Mau Mau) which is almost only known in German speaking countries. The competition is very small there so people looking for it would immediately stumble across it. I did another one which is a battle ship clone. This worked excepionally well especially in the local German markets. The same international version has only 20% downloads of the german one. The competition is just much larger there.

I'd be interested how you would spot niches which are worth making games for?

Cheers!

[rj]

answer: make a game you like and make it as good as you can and then make another game and repeat and stop worrying

[erebusman]

I agree with rj 100%

[temp_56778]

I definitely think you're on to something with targeting foreign languages.

[RudyTheDev]

Thanks for sharing. Definitely interesting point about visibility in non-English stores.

To me, a niche is something focused and obscure with a small but dedicated player base. A niche is where you can charge 50$ for a 10$ game and people are happy to buy. This is why I wouldn't call unsaturated non-English stores niche -- people (presumably) won't spend more money than for the same English counterparts or different games, because that's not their niche. They are buying for convenience factor -- their phone is localized, their store is localized, their search is localized, their game ends up being localized.

[Müsta Klaki]

If you want your games to be noticed don't make mobile games.

[joe_eyemobi]

If you want your games to be noticed don't make mobile games.

Pc is going down a similar route with over saturation though - esp if things like Steam Greenlight get blown away

[VampireSquid]

I don't think it's just over saturation killing the mobile market.  It is just the nature of the type of games that people play on these things.  There are exceptions but generally people play casual games on mobile.  Someone playing a casual game couldn't be bothered to spend time on the discovery process.  It's just filler anyways to them.  At least that has been my experience.  When I get a new mobile device I just literally load a few apps on here and then when I have a minute, it's not something I want to spend time on.  I am not looking for the BEST mobile game I can find.  I just want something to entertain me for 5 or 10 minutes here and there.

With a PC game it's different.  If you are playing one of these it's because you want to, you're not just filling time.  So at least some of the players are willing to dig a bit deeper to find a game in the niche that they are interested in.  So discovery tends to work better for these more old school platforms.

Maybe as mobile and pc coalesce into 1 that will change, I don't know.  For now it just seems fundamental to the mobile experience.

[knifeySpoonie]

I don't think it's just over saturation killing the mobile market.  It is just the nature of the type of games that people play on these things.  There are exceptions but generally people play casual games on mobile.  Someone playing a casual game couldn't be bothered to spend time on the discovery process.  It's just filler anyways to them. 

I totally agree with that Sentiment... my games on my phone tend to be reccommended or editors choice games, I never pay more than £4 for a game on mobile, and so far have never bought a single micro transaction (excluding permenant upgrades like extra levels) I get games on mobile to fill time, when im on a bus, or waiting for a friend to turn up at the pub,

Ipad is a little different and I will occassionally look for games of specific genres.. but even then it's limited to price and quick play sort of titles.

If you want to make Niche games, make them on PC... Paradox have made a thriving company based off Niche... others are doing well too.. You just need a way to reach your audience directly rather than hoping for discovery...

[Xaron]

Thanks for that interesting discussion! I have no experience with the PC market so far... I can imagine you have to use a publisher then? Or use steam?

[knifeySpoonie]

Thanks for that interesting discussion! I have no experience with the PC market so far... I can imagine you have to use a publisher then? Or use steam?

Well it depends. Steam is obviously good, but for Niche DRM free sites like green man gaming for example can be a good source of traffic, or selling directly through your own website...

The main thing is connecting with your niche audience... If you want to make a WW2 tank simulator with perfectly made tanks with physics these guys dream about, you need to market/interact with the guys in these communitys. If you want to make a medieval diplomacy simulator you need to reach that audience directly... So research and getting into these communities tends to be key to success... Also a lot of these games start out as one sort of game and merge into the niche as the fan base grows..

Also somthing to consider when you think Niche, will be the scruitany you will come under just because all the fans are super passionate about their niche. On Total War our hardcore fans will bring up issues like missing buttons, or a sword being too long... If you make a tank with the wrong button layout these types of fans will tell you about it....

[Mittens]

If you want your games to be noticed don't make mobile games.

QFT

[Xaron]

If you want your games to be noticed don't make mobile games.

QFT

Oh well, had to lock for that. :D "Quoted for truth". Right?

[Julien]

answer: make a game you like and make it as good as you can and then make another game and repeat and stop worrying

Well, if he wants to make it fulltime, he will have to worry eventually

[Columbo]

If you want your games to be noticed don't make mobile games.

QFT

Oh well, had to lock for that. :D "Quoted for truth". Right?

Lol, you're right - I always assumed it stood for 'Quite f-ing true'. I got the gist of it, I suppose.

[hagbardgroup]

You could try a tool like http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Freespace%202 to see if people are interested in similar games.

Google Trends is similar. Checking keyword costs on using the Google Keyword Planner is a good proxy for how competitive a space might be. Look for keyword groups similar to "game like [similar product"]. Newer and more popular games will have thousands of global queries for those kinds of terms every month.

Older ones that are still popular might have ~1,000 queries/month that tend to be cheap (even penny clicks).

Popular games might be relatively expensive. [games like clash of clans for pc] have 1,600 avg global searches and cost roughly $3.45 per click, probably more if you're paying per download on a mobile campaign.

If you look at the enormous numbers of people searching for World of Tanks related terms each month, that demonstrates that may be a viable market for games that might be similar to it. I can see that [baldur's gate 2] has 9,900 monthly global searches per month, 14 years after it was released.

You can also compare interest by geography to do things like decide whether or not a localization might be worth doing.

I guess the sweet spot using these kinds of methods would be finding terms that:

1. show high purchase intent
2. have a good amount of volume (present addressable market)
3. that you can afford to compete in

Demand forecasting is usually voodoo, but this at least gives you some information that you can use to improve your decision making process.

For example, it can give you a rough idea of how many people will understand you if you say something like "my game is the spiritual successor to [old game]" and give you an idea of how to find those people who might be interested in that.

The Twitter Advanced Search Tool and similar things might also be useful, but it's a little less crunchy.

[Canned Turkey]

Make a game for a niche you're into. It makes it easier and more fun to come up with good ideas.
"well, I really like metroidvanias, but there isn't one that has this..."
That's what I did, and my first game is already pretty successful.

[King Kadelfek]

Crowdfunded projects (Kickstarter) are a good source of informations to see what games interest people, and how they succeed into that.
You have all the informations gathered in one place (video, pictures, gifs, descriptions) and you can see if people are interested (they spend money and upgrade the counter).
I'm not saying that you should make a crowdfunding project (not at all), I'm just saying that looking at crowdfunding project can be very helpful. You will see good looking project (sometimes lacking originality) and original projects (sometimes lacking a good look).

Kicktraq and their hotlist is a good place to find trending projects.
http://kicktraq.com
http://www.kicktraq.com/hotlist

As you can see it's not full of 6 figures project, there are $5k and $10k projects as well.

[theprint]

Regarding niches, and choosing them, I truly believe that quality goes hand in hand with passion. Make the kind of game you like to play. Then make another one, and another one until you're good at it. By all means, play around with different genres, but keep making stuff you yourself think is fun. Chances are others will find it fun too.

As for getting noticed: I am no expert, but my conclusion thus far is that regardless of platform (mobile/pc/whatever), you will need a marketing strategy. It's not enough to try and fill a gap in the app store, or on Steam, or launch a crowdfunding campaign and hope to get noticed. Instead, once you have a game and know which platform you are focusing on, you build a strategy around that. Such a strategy would include people to contact, sites you'll want to try and get featured on, and so on.

Also, yay - my first post here!

[RudyTheDev]

Make the kind of game you like to play.

This is definitely the take-away point. Games made with passion is a niche in itself.