8 CRUCIAL POINTS TO DEFINE BEFORE STARTING A COMMERCIAL GAME

IronEqual
IronEqual
Jul 28, 2017 · 5 min read

This blogpost is a humble share of our internal guideline at attempting to face the reality of keeping alive a company and 5 people along the way. This is not perfect and certainly not waterproof… your company can still sink.

We are currently in the process of deciding what game we will be making after REPULSE: Galactic Rivals at IronEqual. MAZE’s team is still working on MAZE, no worries.

As we must support all the company fees, needs to eat and pay for those private jets’ hangar fees, we obviously have commercial ambitions with our future games. In this idea, I will share with you guys our process and what we must think about before starting to heavily invest into a production.

It’s totally fine to make a game without commercial purpose, but please don’t fill my twitter feed with your whining about how broke you are or that there’s no money in the gaming industry.


1. Everything starts with the fun and the creative

If you’re happy with your first prototype, it’s time to define a lot of things that will allow you to keep a healthy & straight development and check if there’s some commercial potential.

Always keep in mind, what you wrote down at the very beginning of your design is meant to change.

Here is an example of a little prototype we made

2. Design + Story

Listing your references can help you be a lot more aware of them and share them with the team.

3. Art + Sound

We do make a split between art & design but only for presentation purposes. Always remember that in games, art serves design & design serves art.

A concept art of MAZE made by Mathieu Girard

4. Market Study

Defining and researching your audience is important to make design & art decisions. This is how you can put yourself in your players’ shoes.

Your core audience has to be a lot more precise than “Dota players”, “FPS players” or “Hardcore players”. Your core audience is an intersection of your game mechanics, your story and your art style.

Check out Sergey Galyonkin’s article about “Understanding your Game Through Data

Try not to be biased while you are researching your audience, you can make data say pretty much anything. It’s okay to make a niche game. Don’t do this.

5. Production

Content is probably the most scalable depending on your funding and schedule. But try to define a minimal content quantity that makes the game interesting.

For instance, on Subscribe & Punch (a 2D fighting game), we defined the minimal number of characters at 4 to keep the game interesting. With more time and/or funding, we can make 6, 8 or even 20 characters!

Content is also the easiest way to shove DLCs down your players’ throats BUT adding features is probably what is going to have a higher perceived value (or fix your core gameplay, but if you’re down to this point, you should not be fucking around on Medium).

With your scope and the planning, you can define your needs in term of team and budget. Please, if you don’t have enough money to make the game your envisioned don’t stupidly cut your game. Try to really see how you can make a full-fledge interesting game for the fund you have.

6. Challenges

It’s important to be optimistic most of the time. Not here.
Don’t lie to yourself and try to identify as rationally as possible what could go wrong.

7. Marketing & Communication

Try to communicate as soon and consistently as possible. Nobody is going to steal your game and if it does happen, just make a better one.

Don’t do like these guys (6 months without tweeting)

8. Business

Finish by the Unique Selling Points. Why does your game matter?


This is not a heavily-tested method, I’m just sharing what we kind of do here at IronEqual, feel free to give your opinion and advice. And feel free to take home what you love about it!

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Written by
Feno

IronEqual

French indie game studio. Bringing you awesome content weekly!

IronEqual

Written by

IronEqual

Indie gaming studio. Bringing you awesome content randomly!

IronEqual

IronEqual

French indie game studio. Bringing you awesome content weekly!

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