Friday thoughts: In games, NOTHING is niche. It's a myth. In games, everything was niche until it wasn't... - MMO, Real Sport (Madden), Battle Royale, Extraction, TCG, SOC, MOBA, Shooter, Roguelike (lite), etc And what was once mainstream often becomes niche. - Pinball, Arcade Machines, Pen and Paper RPGs, RTS, Grand Strategy, City builders, Metroidvanias, CRPG's, etc And coming full circle, can become mainstream again. - RTS, CRPGs, Horror, PnPRPGs, Roguelikes, TCG's, etc There are new genres that aren't discovered yet that might use obscure connections between existing genres. These new designs benefit from this cycle of being at the point of the zeitgeist, and then not. My buddy Chris Whiteside were discussing this and used Manor Lords and Helldivers as great examples of this cycle. Co-op shooters were niche before Halo/Gears/Left4dead. Then that genre became stale, to the point where games weren't getting funded or built, and then throw in Helldivers 2 and boom! Meat's back on the menu! And for Manor Lords, the jury is still out on it's staying power, but it looks like it's is on pace to sell over a million copies in the first week. We had trouble getting any type of RTS approved and funded as an industry over the last 10 years - deemed, too niche. Yet Hooded Horse has built a fabulous business on top of games deemed "niche" by those on piles of money. Right now, RTS is on the come up again, with tons of interesting titles released in this year and arriving next year including our friends at Frost Giant making Stormgate. Bottom line, as an industry, we can pigeon hole ourselves into one line of thinking because RIGHT NOW, a particular genre isn't making a lot of money. But the video game industry isn't silicon valley, it isn't big Pharma....In games, a product becomes a hit because the audience says so.
Zach Bonaker
8mo
Needs more Toejam & Earl imo
Evan Taylor
7mo
Great call as usual, Mr. Robertson. I think we can't undersell the changing demographics of the playerbase as well. You have people who have been gaming for years and may or may not have the time available that they used to. Sometimes that 'niche' game will slot perfectly into their life, even if they aren't a prototypical power gamer.
Damien Yvray
8mo
I don't think Manor Lords is an RTS (actually even the dev wrote a note to clarify it). Yet, agreed with all the rest!
Combat Flight simulations are kinda niche(y), aren't they?
Olga Sheverieva
8mo
We are so frequently caught up in trying to reinvent the wheel. Why do we believe that we need to impose new business rules and our industry should operate differently from good ol' consumer goods? How are game genres any different from ice cream flavors? We wouldn't tell Dairy Queen that a new Blizzard flavor is too niche - they've built an ice cream empire on the abundance of flavors. Let people pay for what they want to play. Can we stop dictating trends and limiting players' choices? And yes, my rant was inspired by the conversation I had yesterday about Manor Lords being "very niche" while having a new Frosted Animal Cookie Blizzard.
I agree and would go a step further. Niche is not a bad thing (quite the opposite) nor an obstacle to outsized success. The internet and the media/entertainment it has enabled (podcasts, streaming services, blogs, etc) have transformed the business model away from safe, mass market products that reach many, but loved by few (driven by advertising incentives), and allow creators to reach connected, hyper-passionate and under-served communities that are much more willing to engage and spend on something that appeals to their interests. Moreover, these “niche” communities can often be HUGE; they are just not “mainstream” taste-wise.
John H.
8mo
The only caveats: 1. Adequate leadership. Most studios do not have this, but the bigger they are, the more it's needed. The result of the past year and a half of layoffs is a massive brain drain, unless somehow enough devs get put back to work in the next few months, which will take more entrepreneurial heft and cash flow -- both hard to find right now. 2. Adequate promotion. Developers ought not be the primary means to market what they make, but they damned well should know at least who their target market is, and be able to articulate in clear human-centric language why those would-be customers would want to buy their products before the fact. And then, they should have support enough to bring that sucker to that market. It's not enough to say there's no niche market. How is anyone going to address that right now, so much of the publishing and marketing muscle is being run by risk-averse people who don't want to try anything new, and more likely, don't want to aim at anything other than what they think a 'safe' demographic is, even when everyone knows that demo's too small a bucket to put all our hopes in?
Adad Morales
8mo
I’ll throw this tidbit, blame studio heads who listen to marketing teams who just look at numbers and don’t play games
Richard Browne
8mo
Technically isn’t Manor Lords an RTT (and builder)? Not that you’re wrong, nothing is niche, it just hasn’t exploded (again) yet.
Video games director & Tower Five CEO
8moYou are perfectly right, this niche marketing concept is bullshit. The mext day WoW comes and MMORPGs are mainstream… while the semi failure of Starcraft 2 means that instantly RTS have become niche. Soon enough battle royale will be “niche” and we are among the studios working on RTS being enjoyed by many anew. Craft great games, that’s all (but pretty difficult) and “strangely” defying any marketing predictions, you will find players. More than the copy of a copy of a copy of a great game that became “mainstream”…