Today at the Live Mobile Congress! Game Insight General Producer Leonid Sirotin made a presentation on “Mobile Games 2014”. Comprehensive slides of the report are in our publication.
The central theme of the speech was “The way to the top grossing in seven steps”. However, Leonid started with an “introduction”, in which he explained what is necessary for the success of the game.
Next, it is necessary to answer questions related to the future project. The “steps” are sorted by the order in which the developer should set them for himself.
Before answering these questions, it is important to answer the zero question:
Many people adhere to the practice of “saw a hit, inclined”. However, here it is necessary to understand that it is very difficult to incline success itself.
Why? The answers are just below:
In other words: it is better not to clone, but to guess the future trend and make the corresponding original game.
To do this, you need to understand the market. To do this, you need to play games. However, even after understanding the market, there is a risk that several dozen studios have understood it together with you. As a result, a wave of similar projects can “cover”.
The second question that needs to be answered is: what genre of game are you going to work on.
Leonid also advised: not to let the developer make a game of his favorite genre. Because of strong love, he may lose his objectivity.The third question concerns the game world.
The world of the future project also depends on which audience the developer is going to reach. Developers should understand that choosing a certain setting can significantly reduce the potential audience. If the setting, conditionally, of the real world interests everyone, then fantasy cuts off half of the users. Fiction interests even fewer players (the more complex the world, the less similar it is to the real one, the more people are cut off). By the way, a discussion on this issue can be found here.
The fourth question is gameplay. Unlike the genre, this is not a complex of game mechanics, but the basic, central mechanics of the project.
According to Leonid, people need a game today: “the player can’t hide behind the balls anymore, the cow is dead.”
The fifth question concerns the specific implementation of the project.
An important issue is the monetization of the future project.
Leonid believes that even a very cool gameplay no one will see without marketing and PR.
Answering the question about the development of games specifically for the eastern market, Leonid stated the following: “we will never make a game narrowly tailored to a particular market. However, it makes sense to make games for the Russian market in Russia. There are even successful examples. But there is no point in making games in Russia specifically for China or for any other market.”