I think my question probably seems overly naive or provocative (it's being down voted, after all). I'm really just trying to divine the source of your cynicism. Possibilities include:
1. There are too many games; it's as hard to get noticed in this sector as it is on the app store.
2. You don't stand a chance if you can't make a polished game, and a polished game is going to have a $100,000 budget (or let's just say, way more than "I think I'll download the free version of Unity" can afford).
3. Most games are mediocre at best, and yours probably will be too (because the designers of those hits really knew what they were doing, and you probably don't).
Am I getting this right? All of the above? Some of the above?
I've seen lots of indie games that I think are mediocre become hits. I've rarely seen a game that I think is a gem go completely unnoticed. Part of it, it seems to me, is that a really tight niche game can become a hit within that niche and make a surprising amount of money doing it.
Take "Battle of the Bulge" by Shenandoah (which is an iOS game). $20,000 ask on Kickstarter for a game that is going after people who are into hex wargames. I'm going to guess that that game did considerably better than $3000 a quarter. They're making more, after all.
Similarly, there are people out there who love side-scrollers and will basically buy any side-scroller that looks even remotely good. If it is good, is it really going to be a financial bust?
It's some of all of them, but it's mostly #1. There's a big indie gaming glut. Every week Steam gets more new games than I can watch the trailers for, much less buy and play. And those are the games that manage to make it through Steam's (admittedly far less selective than it once was) admissions process. Like squeaky-clean says, check out Greenlight some time. Even if all of the games on Greenlight were good (they're not), who the heck has time for all of them?
hex wargames are:
1) not so small of a niche
2) a great marketing decision - just like space sim, this genre has amazing potential revenue per customer. That's proven empirically, as for a reason - I would hypothesize that main market for that sort of thing are nostalgic middle-aged tech specialists, which is a market with amazing "size * disposable_income" potential.
That doesn't only make the whole pie larger, but also drives AAC (allowable acquisition cost) up, which makes marketing so much easier.
1. There are too many games; it's as hard to get noticed in this sector as it is on the app store.
2. You don't stand a chance if you can't make a polished game, and a polished game is going to have a $100,000 budget (or let's just say, way more than "I think I'll download the free version of Unity" can afford).
3. Most games are mediocre at best, and yours probably will be too (because the designers of those hits really knew what they were doing, and you probably don't).
Am I getting this right? All of the above? Some of the above?
I've seen lots of indie games that I think are mediocre become hits. I've rarely seen a game that I think is a gem go completely unnoticed. Part of it, it seems to me, is that a really tight niche game can become a hit within that niche and make a surprising amount of money doing it.
Take "Battle of the Bulge" by Shenandoah (which is an iOS game). $20,000 ask on Kickstarter for a game that is going after people who are into hex wargames. I'm going to guess that that game did considerably better than $3000 a quarter. They're making more, after all.
Similarly, there are people out there who love side-scrollers and will basically buy any side-scroller that looks even remotely good. If it is good, is it really going to be a financial bust?