Recon phase – why, where and when to start market research

Outside of the design and marketing of your game a very important factor in how well it performs will be the competition it faces. If your game is derivative or even just similar to other games on the market, you are clearly going to have a harder time getting noticed, if not appearing to be a copycat/cloner.

While not the most enjoyable exercise, gaining a good understanding of your game’s competition will give you a higher chance to achieve standout. And it’s better to do it before you invest hours and hours in development! But with so many games and sites out there, where should you start?

Platform stars

The best place to start is the platforms on which you intend to publish. Having a look at the most popular/successful games on the relevant platform(s) will give you a nice intro to the big players in that marketplace. If you can, play some of these. The closest ones will give you an idea of what to stay away from, and the unrelated ones may give you some unexpected inspiration.

Reading the games’ reviews can also give you a good introduction to that platform’s audience. Reviewers tend to be the more vocal customers and generally more likely to spend money on games. It’s worth getting to know what they think!

Platform genre stars

This is similar to platform stars, but more specific to your game mechanics. Having a good understanding of the most popular title in the same genre as your game (strategy, puzzle, racing etc.) will let you know what the audience might expect, enjoy and already have access to.

Sadly, there are no clear guides in terms of what should be taken as inspiration, and what should be viewed as ‘already covered territory.’ You’ll have to see as you go and use your intuition. If all else fails ask yourself, would you want to buy another game with that feature, or would you be done with it?

Platform search engines

This is an important way to test the potency of your game’s name. Giving your game a name which includes a popular word may make it more difficult to stand out from the crowd.

For example, you can probably assume that there will be loads of games with the word ‘Pirates’ in the title and so having it in your name risks getting lost in a high number of search results. Don’t just search for your game name either. Try out similar and related words.

Press and social

Game marketplaces are increasingly crowded and so gamers may find it best to discover new games from game news/reviews sites. These usually have a search function, and sometimes genre categories. Have a look through these, applying the same thinking as the above.

The same applies to social media and other search engines (Google, YouTube, Facebook etc.). What comes up when you search for your name? There may be games currently in development that wouldn’t have shown up in your other searches, but will be released before yours is published.

Conclusion

Having a clear idea of the competition can potentially save you from wasting a huge amount of time and effort, so it’s very important to do as much research early on.

Having said that, we wouldn’t recommend this as the very first thing you should do. Starting your game design from the perspective of the competition can have a negative effect on your creativity.

Our recommendation is to spend a day or so doing this exercise after you have put down a good chunk/most of your initial ideas into your design doc, but before you charge into development. That way you can start from a fresh perspective, then compare those ideas with what’s already/soon to be out there.