5 Lessons I Learned from Market Research (From 5 Sim Games)

It seems like a lot of indie devs have a hard time when it comes to market research. Me? I’m neck deep in it right now, after having studied the subject for quite some time on how to approach it. It’s something I’m rather passionate about, and is probably one of my biggest focuses of game development. I’ve heard others talk about marketing, there’s even memes about it (see above). It’s safe to say there is a ton of room for indies to improve on this aspect of game development and I’m no exception. Today’s post is going to focus on the early stages of marketing, i.e. market research by looking at market data, selecting competitor games and playing/evaluating those games critically. It’s going to get a little long this week, so if you just want the juicy nuggets I picked up, scroll to the bottom for a TL;DR.

Most of what I know comes from a marketing perspective comes from Chris Zukowski. If you’re an indie developer and haven’t heard of him, then I suggest after reading this that you follow his newsletter and blog. You won’t be disappointed. He follows a theme of genre being the most important decision a developer can make regarding their games potential to sell. And since I want to sell games, I took his advice on this to heart rather quickly.

In one of his courses, Chris has a talk called “real talk”, where he lists out the game genres that do and don’t sell on steam. I’m not going to give his nuggets away for free, but Attack of the Karens was on the list of games that do NOT sell. In short, small arcade-style games where the player takes control of a “character” and moves through “levels” don’t hit the right chords with Steam shoppers and they do not want them. Games where the player has no “character” to control, but instead oversees or manages a world do much better. Think city builders, sim games, tycoon sims, strategy games, 4x, etc. These are classic PC mainstay genres that Steam loves.

So instead of making another arcade style roguelite, I decided to make something more in the vein of what a Steam shopper supposedly looks for - a tycoon sim that has some building elements.

The Importance of Market Research

The fact that indies don’t do more market research before jumping into a game astounds me - and yes, there is a way to do it, and no, it’s not hard to do. There is a fantastic video out there from Eastshade Studios about this very thing and finding the right genre and revenue bracket, and finding a target market to make a game in. Granted I haven’t yet made a game this way (Boardwalk Builders will be the first), but it’s a heck of a lot better than taking a shot in the dark at guessing how good a game might do.

If you look at marketing, one of the first things you’ll hear is about how oversaturated the indie game market it is (I think I’ve heard 30 YouTubers by now talk about how 14,000 games were released on Steam last year… If I hear it one more time I’m going to hurl.) and everyone treats this like it’s some kind of second indiepocalypse. They talk about how impossible it is to stand out in the market and make yourself known when there is so much competition out there for players dollars, painting a bleak picture of success for new developers trying to get into the scene.

I choose to believe that’s just not the case.

Most people who say that stuff really don’t have any idea what they are talking about. Nobody really does in the indie game market. Valve doesn’t even know. Their algorithm (and they have stated as much) is designed to basically give everyone a fair shot, because anything can hit at any time. That’s part of what’s exciting about making an indie game, besides the magic of actually creating an interactive experience straight from your own heart that is unique and you.

Now that we’ve reset the atmosphere here with something a bit more optimistic, I found that while researching games on the Steam market things start to seem smaller and smaller the more you divide out games you’re not competing with. Let me explain what I mean - mostly people stick to certain genres when making a purchasing decision. They cross over a bit overall in games in their library, but if someone is logging on looking for a good City Builder, they aren’t going to buy a shooter. They are going to look for city builders. The more you divide this down, the less competition you’re going to see. Those same YouTubers talking about the massive amounts of games released on Steam are also saying that 50 games launch per day. While that’s true, only 30 or so small-market, tycoon sim games with building elements and graphics I can compete with released last year. That doesn’t seem so bad. Once you realize you’re not competing with Hades 2 and other super-giants (no pun intended) things get a little more hopeful.

There are 132 million users on steam. That is an incredible amount of people. There is so much room in this market to grow and sell, I believe you just have to target and get smart about it. No, all hope is not lost for indie developers. There’s viability in this market and I hope to prove that I can grow by selling more copies of Boardwalk Builders than I did with Attack of the Karens.

My Genre Selection Process

To pick a genre you need to use a tool that can pull the data from Steam. These tools are easily available with a small subscription fee. I use vginsights. It was $25 for one month. With it, you can divide out the market by genre and tags (you can only look at high-level genre data without paying). I look for high median revenue with low number of games released in the last 365 days. It’s all done by selecting tags. Below is a screenshot of my exact spreadsheet I used when pulling the data out of vginsights:

My genre data pulled from vginsights and filtered down to the rev bracket and tags I’m competing with.

I limited the games to my revenue bracket to cut out outliers that I can’t compete with that offset the data. I targeted $10k to $50k, being hopeful that my game could compete in that range. Based on the tags I looked at, the median revenue was very healthy. Attack of the Karens tags came through at about $1.7k median revenue, and a higher number of total games and games in the last 365 days. This was enough data to get me excited about the genre direction.

So I started pulling games to compare mine to and dove into research. I looked at the entire list and ranked each game based on graphic style and how hard I thought it might be to recreate from a technical standpoint. I came away with a list of 5 top games I wanted to study. I didn’t go back further than 3 years, because anything beyond that I’ve heard tends to get a bit irrelevant in terms of marketing strategies and player tastes.

The list was: Disco Simulator, The Sushi Spinnery, The Final Earth 2, Game Store Simulator, and Mall Craze. None of these games I had really heard of before I did this exercise, and that was good. Most indie developers know the huge games in their genre (Manor Lords, Cities Skylines, Planet Coaster/Zoo), but not what they are actually competing with. Each of these games performed in the range I wanted to make in terms of revenue and were within what I feel I can do as a developer both graphically and technically. I wanted to know all I could about each of these titles. So I bought ‘em, then I got to work playing and analyzing their gameplay with the goal of guiding my decisions for Boardwalk Builders.

5 Games, 5 Lessons

Before I dive into these games I want to preface by saying that I’m going to get analytical with each of them. This means looking at where they fell short to know where I can improve on the work they did, but also looking at what they did well. This is not me being critical of the developers themselves, because I know how hard it is to make and release a game. The fact that these developers made these games at all is a feat of achievement for them. I’m not going to do a deep review of the games here on this blog, but instead overview the game, give a general review of steam user reviews and highlight one key thing I learned from analyzing each game from a design standpoint by evaluating them against last week’s idea of steps, milestones, and peaks. If you don’t yet understand that context, go read that blog post first. If you want to know more about the games themselves and buy them, I’ll leave a link to each steam page at the bottom of each section.

With that out of the way, on to the games.

Disco Simulator

This is a fun little sim game where you build and staff a nightclub, and unlock better and better stuff by spending money to level up between nights. You can hire bartenders, security, janitors, technicians, etc. to keep things running smooth. It’s a decent game but not without annoying bugs and some lackluster gameplay features. The game is fun for the first 2 hours or so, but once you’ve figured out how to balance your customer’s needs and keep the place running well, it gets really boring. You basically just find ways to spend money on the same stuff over and over again, and you start wondering why you’re playing the game. My biggest issue with the game, though, is that the peaks of the game don’t feel like peaks. You work really hard to make the patrons happy to just simply unlock a new level, and all of your upgrades from the last club are reset. There’s really no feeling of “Yes! I got this awesome thing!!” which needs to be there for a peak. Instead it comes off as “Oh.. I have so much work to do all over again.”

I recapped steam reviews this way: “Not very much depth, boring, do not like the hold click to fix issues feature. Buggy.”

Steps: You manage your disco, buy stuff, and solve problem that pop up in the disco by clicking on them.

Milestones: You unlock new features by spending money on upgrades to add new furniture, new staff members, and DJ’s.

Peaks: You unlock new, bigger clubs and new club managers.

Lesson: Reaching a peak need to be awesome, and give the player a feeling of true reward. Unlockables are very fun in a sim game.

Buy Disco Simulator on Steam

Game Store Simulator

This is an odd simulator tycoon game that has some charm, but rough edges. You basically run a video game store and start with nothing but bare floors and it’s up to you to buy stock, clean up after customers, buy shelves, decorate your store, cash out customers who want to buy product, and… hit crazy customers with a baseball bat? Then you drive your car after your store closes for the night, fill up with gas re-stock your store. It’s all fun and stuff, but the driving around town part feels very tedious. Even the loop of running the store feels like you’re just playing whack-a-mole and doing the same things over and over again to solve simple issues that pop up: answering customer questions, hitting thieves and crazy people with a bat, and cleaning up after customers. It just ends up not being very fun because it’s so much work to just gain a little bit of money. I think most of this is because the game is first person, and you have to walk everywhere and do everything manually. YOU fill the car with gas, YOU drive to the store to buy new games to stock the shelves, YOU get them out of the truck, YOU put them in the warehouse, YOU put them on the shelf and set the price, then you manage the store the entire shift the next day. Add the fact that furniture upgrades for your store don’t seem to do anything, and this game feels unrewarding for the amount of work you put into it. Even buying a new store seemed to feel like it was just going to be tons more work to do it all over again and keep the business going.

Steam review recap: “A lot to do, a ton of content for the price.”

Steps: Keep your store stocked, keep out bad customers, answer customer questions and sell product at the register.

Milestones: Buy new pieces of furniture and stuff for your store, buy a new car, and level up your skills using exp you earn.

Peaks: Move into a bigger game store.

Lesson: Don’t over-complicate gameplay “steps” with irrelevant tasks. Charm and unique concepts combined with value and a lot of depth sell.

Buy Game Store Simulator on Steam

The Sushi Spinnery

First off - this game made me want to go get sushi.

Second, Sushi Spinners is really good. It’s made by a studio called Kairosoft, they mainly stick to the mobile market (I think) but port their games to Steam. They make a ton of these little pixel art tycoon sim games across all kinds of themes. In this one, you run a conveyor sushi restaurant. You build conveyor sections, and set up amenities in your restaurant such as vending machines, salad bars, and… treadmills? (Maybe it’s a Japan thing…). You also hire staff, run marketing campaigns, unlock new sushi ingredients and create new recipes, and test your skills in sushi competitions. It’s all very engaging and rewarding, and you always feel like you’re making progress in one area or another. Add to the fact that this is a pixel art style game (yay!) and you’ve got a winner. The only downside is the UI and the sound design, the UI is very ugly and the sound design is awful. There are also some awkward controls, but the game just has so much good design and charm that you forgive it. My only complaint with the gameplay is the rate at which the difficulty of the competitions ramps up. It goes from easy to really hard all of a sudden, and that kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

Steam review recap: “UI is weird, controls are frustrating, music is annoying, but otherwise a fun sim.”

Steps: Build your sushi restaurant, and spend cash on building it and filling it with amenities.

Milestones: Unlock new sushi ingredients, recipes, and level up your staff with sushi coins.

Peaks: Compete and win competitions to get huge amounts of cash, a lot of sushi coins and unlock new abilities.

Lesson: Ramp up difficulty evenly without huge steps. UI, controls and sound design matters, but most peripheral game features are forgivable with really good game design.

Bonus Lesson: Pixel art can work with a sim game.

Buy the Sushi Spinnery on Steam

Mall Craze

Boardwalk Builders was originally intended to be a mall simulator game. When I stumbled across Mall Craze I got really excited to see how someone else was approaching designing a game about a shopping mall. One thing to note about Mall Craze, it’s still in Early Access, but these days an EA launch is expected to be a pretty fleshed out version of the game, so I’m holding it to a high standard. First off, the graphics here outdid any of the other games I played. The camera controls super well, and the level of customization for the buildings you create is deep. The basic gameplay is: build a mall, create shop spaces, set out products and a sales register, and hire someone to run the shop. Then do that over and over again. You can add decor like benches, garbage cans, etc. to the mall. To be quite honest, I didn’t get past a couple of hours with this game because it is very, very empty. Once you build a store, I couldn’t find anything else to do besides.. build more stores. There’s no way to “progress” in the game. At this point in it’s development cycle, it’s just a fancy building toy. There’s no goals, no way to “level up” your stores or employees (that I saw), only a few store types, no food court options or restaurants, and the UI has two options - build a store, or build your mall space. There are data readouts on what products are selling, etc. but I don’t know why I’m looking at the data - turning a profit is incredibly easy. I don’t know if I missed something, or started off in some kind of “baby tutorial mode” but the game didn’t tell me that either. Customers just seem to flock to your stores and buy stuff, so making money is no sweat. Like I said, this game didn’t hold my interest for more than a couple hours before I moved on.

Steam review recap: “Very little content and depth at the moment. Feels empty. Needs more time to bake.”

Steps: Build your mall and shop spaces.

Milestones: None?

Peaks: Also none, apparently.

Lesson: Milestones and Peaks are key to an engaging game. Also, don’t launch into EA with a half-baked game.

Buy Mall Craze on Steam

The Final Earth 2

The Final Earth 2 is like the unassuming guy that walks into the gym in a free t-shirt he got from a work fundraiser and ends up benching more than the weightlifters that are grunting as loud as they can in their Under Armor tanks. Screenshots do not do this game justice - in fact, it looks quite ugly. Once I booted this game up, however, I knew I was in for a good experience. This is the classic game style that Steam loves. The game puts you in a situation where mankind has left earth, and you have to rebuild on foreign planets full of floating islands. You do this by placing small buildings - all the same single-tile size - on the islands as houses, woodcutting shops, stone mines, etc. As you build, you unlock more and more house types, industries, construction materials, etc. and the game just seems to keep going and going with the unlockables. Every step along the way, you see your population grow and go to work each day in their assigned jobs (you have control over where they work) and then go to the pub after work, party hard, then go hit the hay for the night. It’s like watching a little ant farm.. that has bars. The whole goal here is to build out your city and keep your citizens happy with good jobs, good homes, healthcare, and the like. Some buildings can be upgraded for a resource cost, giving them a little more “oomph”. Eventually you get to the point where you can put down unique buildings that unlock a set of mini-objectives you have to complete. Once you do, these buildings permanently upgrade your city. For example, late in the game you can build a building that houses a bunch of hippies. They want you to do earthy, hippie things such as mark a grove of trees as protected, so your people don’t cut it down. Once you finish all their missions (and the last one is hard, it takes a TON of resources), you get the ability to throw music festivals for your city, which increases the cities happiness for a while. Overall, the game is super cool and fun to play, and never seems to stop giving. I absolutely love the game loops at work here and the unlockables are EVERYWHERE. I also love the fact that you can upgrade buildings you’ve built to have them provide a bit more service to the city.

Steam review recap: “Great game, simple mechanics and simple goals. Easy to sink a ton of time into. No bugs.” (also note that the game was a flash game on coolmathgames previously, and this is a much upgraded version of it.)

Steps: Build buildings in your city and manage the citizens jobs. Strive to keep your citizens happy.

Milestones: Unlock new buildings to place in your city by meeting their requirements.

Peaks: Satisfy end-game goals from unique buildings to permanently unlock new services and benefits.

Lesson: Simple graphics can still offer really satisfying gameplay through great game design. Unlockables make a sim game super fun and engaging.

Buy the Final Earh 2 on Steam

Recap (TL;DR)

Here’s what my process taught me about the direction I need to take for Boardwalk Builders:

Core gameplay matters more than almost anything else in a game.
Create “steps” that are relevant to milestones and peaks, and don’t feel like a grind.
“Milestones” should be engaging. They can work well as unlockables to keep players enticed.
“Peaks” should be exhilarating and feel like you’ve accomplished something huge, granting a big benefit.
Steam shoppers love charm, and this even helps sell a simple graphic style.
The game should be accessible, yet deep. Good tutorials and not over-feeding players is key here.
Ramp difficulty evenly without huge steps.
Don’t neglect the influence of good UI, smooth controls, sound design, and other peripheral systems.

If you’re making a game, you can feel free to use this same process to research your genre and whats working vs. not working. To recap my process really quick:

Pick a broad steam genre you want to work in. Remember what Steam shoppers like.
Play with tags to find a subgenre that has high median revenue and a low amount of competing games
Find comparables, buy them and play them.
Honestly evaluate the games and learn all you can to guide your game’s design.