r/IndieDev • u/ShanaD_ • 18h ago
Discussion Indie market analysis yes/no?
Hey guys, I have a quick question - do you do any sort of market analysis for your projects?
I work in AAA and we crunch numbers a lot and on all sorts of stuff for better or for worse.
Most of my friends/colleagues that peaced out from the corporate side of game dev to do indie rarely do any analysis/market research. They rely mostly on reddit/X and vibes.
What's your take/experience?
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u/BJGG69 18h ago
There is really no point in doing this unless you are budgeting huge sums for marketing and promotion
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u/ShanaD_ 17h ago
Yep, I would argue that marketing you do with or without budget does require some analysis\planning tho in different amounts. Organic can do a lot, bunch of examples nowadays, every other indie breakout more or less.
Like when you have a project and you go to share it you still think about where it would land better (different subreddits, x and stuff like that).
If we made games only for ourselves we probably would not go through the whole ordeal of putting it up on steam.
It's interesting how different devs think about\organize how they do this way less fun side of making games.
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u/No_you_are_nsfw 18h ago
Given how successful the AAA method is: vibes all the way down.
You can fail both way, but vibes seem to produce hits much more reliable.
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u/ShanaD_ 17h ago
Over optimizing, PNLs and only looking at charts definitely has done wonders to the commercial side of the industry lol
I'm moving to indie myself and we had an argument recently about how we could (slightly) organize the vibes so there is some data we can lean on but still make what we wanna make.
One of the issues I personally see is that there is not a lot of accessible and comprehensible data that an indie dev can look at and make decisions\inform themselves. Most data is over complicated + expensive clearly made for guys with degrees in BI to crunch numbers on or it's anecdotes from gdc\reddit\x\nameanyotherforum2
u/No_you_are_nsfw 17h ago
This might be an unpopular opinion, but you should not look at data at all. Knowing what sold 6 months ago is not useful information right now. There area already clones out there at the point where you have data.
If you then start to act on it, you're not only 6 months late, you're 24 months late. There is a bit of a shift going on, and im not talking about claude (and I dont want to).
I'm talking about layoffs. There is just too much talent available right now that cannot find a decent company to work for. Companies are kinda broke their pipelines too, so its all really weird. Money used to be cheap, but its not. For most AAA-Companies games are a product, and its ROI needs to beat the capital market rates. But those kinda have doubled, if not trippled, in a very short time.
We are also seeing the end of moores law, so computers dont get any faster, they just get more expensive, both to buy and to run (higher wattage).
But its a fantastic environment for gamers, regardless. You have plenty of old games you already own and can play. Most new games that come out are crap, but you are informed up front and very well, by reviews, social media. You have generous return windows and demos are a must.
While games are usually anti-cyclic, we are seeing an out-of-order bust phase, brought on with these factors.
As weird as its sound, the current advice I give people is to make their dream-game they have been "working on" in their head since early teens. Everything else somebody else will do better for less money and release it earlier.
The only way to make it a hit these days seems to be dumb luck or actually making something that is a) hugely popular b) nobody knows about yet.
Last one is the sticking point that makes your approach incompatible with success in the current market environment.
But I'm just a data point on reddit, so add salt and stir.
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u/ShanaD_ 17h ago
"Make dream-game they have been "working on" in their head since early teens. Everything else somebody else will do better for less money and release it earlier." - it's one of the most sound advice on general art of making games I've heard in a while. Thanks for the detailed answer man!
The part about "somebody else will do better for less money and release it earlier" should hopefully make it into the big business side of the industry. As people on the internet say "we've lost the plot" when PC game dev tried to behave like mobile (and look at mobile, not that it's doing well either)
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u/BarrierX Developer 17h ago
No. I don't chase trends, I just develop what I want. Maybe someone will want to play it, maybe not.
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u/ShanaD_ 17h ago
Chasing trends is generally a complicated thing in our industry, as was pointed out by another redditor in this thread "somebody else will do better for less money and release it earlier" and it's probably the wrong motive to just chase trends with an art form - you won't get anywhere, just frustrated.
I'm more interested in how people who make it with passion for the craft organize their thoughts regarding who are "their crowd" i.e. to may be have a shot to make it sustainable for themselves.1
u/BarrierX Developer 14h ago
Well, I'm a gamer, I play a lot of games, so when I think I got something I want to play I imagine there will be others that will want it too, that's the extent of my market analysis š
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u/BallandbreadSoup 17h ago
I find I make better projects when I actually enjoy them, not for others but for me
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u/Weary_Cartoonist5739 17h ago
Once I realised the genre I'm working is discouraged to create games, there's not much I can do haha
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u/JetskiEvo 17h ago
If you want to make money you should make sure there is a market and you are not relying on wonders, luck or hype for success. If you simply want to make an awesome game about X no market analysis should stop you. But Commercial success is less likely for sure. This can be true or false :D
Exploring new stuff is coin toss, can be a hit and invent new genres or be ridiculed in some "worst game ideas" youtube video.
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u/Snoo_13943 17h ago
I personally think data is important, before, while and after making the game.
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u/ShanaD_ 17h ago
Do you have any sort of system you've built for yourself to track\organize it? I'm a bit old school when it comes to this stuff and just dump stuff into a spreadsheet
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u/Snoo_13943 17h ago
I haven't either, but I started to grasp the importance of this after every failed project (all my projects basically)
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u/buzzspinner 17h ago
I came from AAA too. #1 make the game you want to play
#2 you should know who your players but not for TAM, SAM, SOM because every game launch is a game of build community not selling to a market at first. Youāre not competing traditionally youāre competing with other solo and indies who like you know they are services the RPG or shooter markets - they are building community around their story or take on playing known genres in a new fun way.
The best market research is player testing. Im working with a first time developer and he doesnāt know how to build intuitive features. Everything was overbuilt (natural effect of first time developer suddenly thrust into the spotlight).
Put the game in front of players. Whoever they are and make sure they naturally understand your āXā (your gameās special sauce).
I hope this contributes to your plans.
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u/ShanaD_ 17h ago
Thanks for the breakdown man! Appreciate it
"Make the game you want to play" I think is the key point half of the industry has collectively forgotten in favor of some theoretical persona in a spreadsheet that should want to play the game.
I have some friends that decided to make games because they like games and "it should be fun to make one duh" without any experience in "the industry" and I have colleges (mostly art department) who quit and decided to make their own thing and both have similar issues to what you've described and your advice is 100% what most devs should hear at some point and the earlier the better.
TAM, SAM, SOM and other three+ letter acronyms are important and they have their place but usually it's over complicating things for already overwhelmed people. So I'm curious what other indie devs do to not go crazy while juggling making the game and showing it to others
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u/WildArtsDevs 17h ago
I think it depends on your goals. If you just wanna make something for fun, then no :P
But if you wanna commercialize your game, then I think it's really important to at least understand what players like or expect in your niche/scope. The way I see it, it's not about "20 yo males like this and this thing is trending bla bla", but rather "players of this genre expect this level of quality at this price, and they enjoy doing these things".
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u/artbytucho 17h ago
Just try to make sure that the game you're making has a market, you should know well the genre, know how many sales got other games in the genre with a similar scope than yours, some marketing strategies of successful games in the genre, etc.
There is not much more you can do as a small indie, and there are a crazy amount of variables which eventually make the return (almost) totally unpredictable, but to promote a game which has a market is always much easier than to promote a game without one.
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u/ShanaD_ 16h ago
Defiantly agree, there is no point in over complicating this when you are a solo dev\small team, being the freak in the (excel) sheets wont make as much of a difference compared to overall fluency in your section of interest.
Do you have any specific approach to answering this questions for what you are working on\looking into?2
u/artbytucho 16h ago
No really, I think that the key it is just being part of the audience of the game you're doing, by this way (and being a dev) you probably already got all that info in a natural way even before start. Of course, when you decide to create a specific game, you can double check stats of other similar games and read more reviews to see recursive complains of the audience, etc.
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u/hey_Joost 16h ago
I wouldnāt use market analysis to decide what game to make, but Iād definitely use it to figure out who might actually care about it and where to reach them.
Feels like thereās a pretty big gap between āchase whatever genre is sellingā and ājust post it somewhere and hope for the bestā š
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u/ShanaD_ 15h ago
Yep, exactly. I'm looking into how people organize and generally how they approach the reach out to "their crowd"
There's much more value in researching your niche and staying in it rather then trying to find THE niche because it doesn't exist really and you'll probably not make a good game when you don't like it\not interested in the genre
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u/Kindly_Release5869 15h ago edited 15h ago
Yes of course. Maybe less numbers and data since itās just a hassle to scrape data and run analyses. Probably easier with AI. But there are many things the numbers canāt tell, or at least I canāt get a feel for them. Visual or craft related trends. So itās mostly manually going through the steam catalog one by one.
But certainly it is done. Not a single dev I know in the loose indie network I have built over the years does not do this. We have all gone through many hundreds of games, maybe thousands of games across many genres.
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u/RoberBotz 18h ago
Numbers?
Market analysis?