The 10 Minutes Game Sales Potential Test
February 12th, 2007 by Pierre-Alexandre Garneau
An article I wrote for Gamasutra is now published. Here’s what it’s about:
Everybody in the gaming industry has a great idea for a game. The desire to see that idea become a reality is what brought many of us to this industry. Sadly, the quality of this idea – or even of the game itself – isn’t enough to guarantee a commercial success: critically acclaimed games like Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil have sold far fewer sales than they deserved.
How can you tell if a game has the potential to become a huge hit based only on its design? Marketing executives at major publishers have sophisticated tools to evaluate that kind of things, but you don’t need all that complexity to find the potential of your idea. With just a few questions, you can evaluate the marketability of your game. I compiled these questions in a simple test that you can use in 10 minutes.
Read it here. I’d love to hear what you think about the article!
I thought your article was well written and that your applied examples showed how The Test can be used as an effective tool for a designer. From reading the article I see that The Test seems to be applied specifically to console games. If The Test was instead used in the process of designing “casual games” would you modify any particular steps? Perhaps add or remove a few?
I found your article to be enlightening, and a necessary piece of practicality for designers entertaining experimental, or near any, ideas. It is a sad aspect of every market that quality does not necessarily lead to success, but being aware of it will only benefit the designers. Do you feel, as I do, that as the market shifts into more regular methods of development, smaller production studios will be able to turn good ideas into successful games even though they are not economical powerhouses? Thx much.
I think budgets for AAA games will keep going up, just like budgets for movies have kept going up. There’s just too much pressure to make the bigger thing for this not to happen (at least, as long as the video games market keeps expanding).
However, with improving technology and tools, it becomes much easier to make a good game without huge budgets. The success of casual games comes from this. I think the biggest hurdle for this kind of project is financing, however. Hopefully a method to finance medium-size projects will come up.