Thank you for the video! I saw results on a steam festival a while ago and they had similar data, basicly they said platformers and puzzle game are the most released games and that strategy and rpg are the having lowest release rate but biggest demad
Really cool breakdown! I would have assumed survival-simulation and platformers to be the highest in terms of sheer numbers. But I guess casual games have an even lower barrier to entry. Love your videos, they're very helpful :)
Thanks, happy to hear that! I also would have imagined platformers to be at least in top 3 in numbers (they were at #5 iirc) but I guess the onslaught of puzzle games shouldn't be underestimated :D
I try to rotate the background tracks so every video doesn't sound the same :) So far they have all been from the RU-vid audio library. This one is called: "True Art Real Affection - Noir Et Blanc Vie"
While I'm finishing my current project and I'd like to think about the next one. I thought about RPG. But I don't like JRPG, turn-based games, or Medieval Fantasy RPGs. Still, to me, Disco Elysium seems super cool. A strong narrative game with choices and exploration is something cool (and a hell of a lot easier to make than my current project). I'm so glad for watching this video! It helped to decide my next project. Thanks again.
Happy to hear the video was helpful! :) With RPGs I think you need to be very careful and realistic with the scoping. Creating content for the story can take a lot of extra time on top of the other features. Especially so if there will be meaningful choices involved (= more content that will only be seen by a portion of players). But on the flip side, there is always room on the market for a good RPG :)
@@AuroDev Agreed! More content = more headaches with resources. But RPGs like Disco Elysium are huge in narrative choice, but small in real content. I'd say this kind of RPG is more like a Visual Novel than an RPG. :)
loved the market analysis. Would you suggest any source to study about this? I think the business side of things is often overlooked by new indie developers.
Happy to hear that! No direct sources come to my mind at the moment, but I would first try to look if Steam has said something recently about the genres or something related as they have the best overview of the business side also. Playing around with filters on vginsights might also reveal something interesting.
I thought “y’know, the AAA market isn’t making enough character action. Hopefully the indie scene would give me my fix” then I watched this video and it worsened my dread
I think one big issue with character action games made by indies is that creating all the models and animations is a ton of work. So it's going to be a long project or you will need a team.
@@AuroDev Coming "when it's ready" or more likely "when holiday season come and we spent all marketing budget already so ship what we have" :D. I meant my comment about upcoming mmo... as a joke, small indie shouldn't make project like. I think best genre is the one you like, because if you're small you probably won't even outgrow your genre in the first place, so I wouldn't chase the trends ... unless you're making 2D puzzle platformer if that's the case best of luck on that market.
@@simonmalicek Hehe yea, I understood your joke! It sounded like a game that a solo or even a small team couldn't get done in 20 years. So I was being generous and giving you 24 hours to finish it already! Although in that time I am also expecting it to have a cryptocurrency integration and VR support. I agree that usually it's best to go with what you like yourself!
Rip rhythm games I had a similar idea mixing rhythm with some other genre But never knew crypt of the necrodancer exists Thanks for the info Do sfx for rhythm games requires skilled musician?
It's probably a very rare combination! I don't normally play rhythm games, but since I like roguelikes, I still really enjoyed Crypt of the Necrodancer. I don't really much about the rhythm games, but I assume having experience as a musician would help, but not required (I'm not really musically talented though so I could be wrong).
The biggest problem with the main genre thoughts that most of these tags/genres are so generic and incorrectly used that it is just kind of pointless to think about them like that. CS:GO being a strategy game etc. etc. are good examples. The sub-genre part is better, but then there sometimes the "real pool" of ~quality indie games with proper marketing is just to small to make general statements from them. I find it more useful to handpick and analyze games instead of trying to making assumptions from pools. Another thing that could have been a point here is having multi-platform games. A given genre might have a smaller income, but multiple platforms would still make them more profitable than others bound to a single platform. For example, 4X space games or Grand strategy games - bound to the PC might have higher average/median income than given adventure games, but still, the multi-platform aspect of those makes them much more profitable. (I assume that in this video you are using steam data for income)
I 100% agree. Plus there is also a time to make a game to consider. For example you can make match 3 game in 3 months you can't make colony sim in 3 months. So even if match 3 makes less money you need to look at $/h not just at pure $ earned by game. There is many more considerations to making a game than just genre. In my opinion indie dev should work on a game they have skills and resources to make from a genre they understand well and actually enjoy so they know how to market it.
Fair points from both Andris & Feniks! I think it's interesting to look at this kind of aggregate level data and try to recognize some high-level trends. But as mentioned, there are many factors the data doesn't take into account so you should take it with a grain of salt and not base your decisions on it (or at least validate the decisions with other data points also).
@@AuroDev I agree here more data is better than not and genre for sure is one of the factors to consider. As always with things like this it's never as simple as "Do this one weird trick to sell your game" good video as always mate.
Hey! Could you send me an email about it (to the email in my channel's about section) with quick details about the game and I'll respond with more details
Average is always high because AAA games if GTA 5 made 6 billion dollars in revenu you can have 1000 games make zero and your average is still around 6 million dollars. That is why average is really rubbish stat to use.
@@AuroDev I first discovered the Zipf's law/zipfian distribution/Pareto Principle in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fCn8zs912OE.html I then saw it again as a discrete form of the principle of least action in one of my physics classes. It's a really interesting pattern to recognize because it makes our assumptions more easy to fit to the reality 😊
