[MFG] It’s alive
I haven’t posted in a while about the idea of making a game. It might be good to take a trip down memory lane and take a look what have I done in that week.
The motivation for my game production mainly comes from the personal goal of developing myself and learning what it takes to make games. The motivation is understandable and solid enough, but during this week I’ve decided to up it. You’ll learn why in future posts.
I had no idea what to start with so I started with the most important part. I made a page in Notion — now it’s alive!
I’m a huge fan of multiplayer video games, especially shooters. Apex Legends and Rainbow Six Siege are two games that I’ve played for a massive amount of hours. I won’t tell you the exact number, because I’m sick of seeing the numbers myself. Of course I would love to do something in the First Person Shooter, Action, Multiplayer genre, but I have a few ground rules for this experiment that have me locked in:
- The game does not have to be enormous and unfathomable. The fewer people involved, the better
- The game needs to be made within a 1–2 year period
- Always stick to the mindset: “start small, think big”
- Make the most of the cutting edge technologies and services on the market
- For the past few years, I and my closest people have been living under constant stress. The game should be non-violent and peaceful
- Of course I want to earn something from the game, which means thinking about the end user. I don’t want to make a game just for the sake of experimentation
Looking at the list above and checking my bank account and empty pocket at the same time, I conclude that I will be doing most of this project on my own. It will be an achievement if I reach a kickstarter or search for investment. This means that I am not aiming for AA, AAA projects, my project will be indie. Plus I’m a creative person, I like experiments, and AAA projects imply caution and are limited to patterns and clichés so as not to scare users and onboard potential players faster.
The first thing to do is to decide on a genre amongst the vast number of out there, so that you can make your plans from there. There’s no use looking for your own unique niche in the gaming world, as there are already hundreds of thousands of games in different genres, sub-genres and symbioses of these combinations. In case you are not aware of it, you can have a look on wikipedia
Having studied the genre stats on marketer, statista and a couple of other websites, I realise that the big money is made in action / shooter / multiplayer genres. Which of course is very tempting, but back to reality.
And the reality is that I really like indie projects with beautiful visuals and engaging storytelling. It doesn’t matter if there are unusual mechanics, if there are these two components, it’s enough to keep me near the screen. So I’ll be aiming for the same. This is where my vision for the game took shape: storytelling in a game should be kind, touching, with a nostalgic aftertaste. And just like in cinema, it should try to reveal a story, to show the transformation of a character or a plot. And since I have such a vision, that narrows our genres even further. Looking at the next available statistics on genres, I realise that most fit the description above Adventure / Puzzle, rather than Strategy, Sport, Music, Action or Platform.
Of course any genre can be tailored to such requirements, but I’m not going to reinvent genres and make a revolution. Thinking back to recent games that have left me with similar emotions, almost all of them were in my chosen genres: The Gone Home, Kentucky Route Zero, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Journey, Life is Strange.
That’s all for today. Next time I’ll describe what interesting insights I encountered while researching the gameplay stats and which platforms I’ll consider to be key.
*MFG = My First Game
