Getting Down to Business
A couple months ago I sustained a repetitive strain injury in both my wrists, from spending too much time on technology, and too much time lifting my two small kids.
While resting, I spent a lot of time doing business research in the indie games space. Here are some of my findings:
It’s a really bad idea to go after multiplayer with your first game. You need a critical mass of players to support matchmaking, or else your game will be dead on arrival.
As of a year or so ago, rogue-like card games are a very good genre to publish on Steam. The demand is high and the supply is low. This may change slightly by the time Flaregate Network is done, as a lot of people seem to be jumping on this bandwagon, but even if it does I believe Flaregate Network takes the genre in a new direction that fans of the genre will find compelling.
Some games can build hype by posting screenshots and videos (relying on their unique art style or their meme-able high concept) while others build hype by letting players get their hands on a demo (relying on their deep and engaging gameplay). Flaregate Network is in the second category.
There are measurable indicators of whether your game is likely to be a commercial success: the demo’s median play time and Steam wishlists.
I also spent some time estimating the required time and money to build the game, with or without certain features and game modes.
Narrowing the Scope
Based on all of this, I realized I have to totally cut multiplayer from consideration.
I knew pretty early on that I would have to focus on singleplayer first, in order to release something to build a player base and start earning some revenue. But as I implemented features and started designing the game pieces, I made a bunch of choices aimed at accommodating multiplayer some day in the future, and I think that was a bad idea.
The biggest problems occur in card design. In a multiplayer game you try to keep every card at roughly the same power level. In a singleplayer game you specifically want certain cards to be more powerful than others, to create exciting progression moments.
If the main mode of a game is multiplayer, players might accept a singleplayer mode that’s held back slightly by the constraints of using multiplayer game pieces.
But if my plan is to launch with only singleplayer, and my only realistic path to multiplayer is for the singleplayer game to sell well, I cannot afford to water down the singleplayer experience to keep the door open for using it as an on-ramp for a purely theoretical multiplayer mode.
So my current plan is to go all-in on creating the best possible singleplayer experience, at the expense of being able to take all of the cards and put them directly into a reasonably balanced multiplayer game. If the game does extraordinarily well, a multiplayer expansion or sequel is one possible path forward, but I can figure that out when (or if) I get there.
Making a Plan
The plan is to make a Steam page and a publicly available demo with:
One playable faction.
A short preview of a story mode.
A preview of a rogue-like mode with just enough content that the target audience will want to replay it a few times to figure out how to beat what’s there with a few different strategies.
Finalized art and sound for all included content.
After this I will be able to track Steam wishlists, demo downloads, and median demo playtimes. With this data I will be able to figure out the best strategy for completing and launching the game, whether that’s crowdfunding, early access, or something else.