Small Games Make Big Waves

The game industry is doing “okay” in this bad economic time compared to other industries.  Primarily, Nintendo is rocking the house with their games, hand-held’s and consoles while mobile developers are showing some great successes in the industry. Many success stories in our industry are based on small titles, downloadable games of the more “casual” style while a few larger titles are experiencing slower than expected sales trends.

wiiwareWe’ve mentioned this in the past, but the tough economy gives many smaller developers great opportunities for success. While big publishers struggle to look good in the eyes of the investor, tiny developers can produce quality titles for minimal cash investment and time to market. Ten years ago, smaller developers tried to compete with the big boys making larger titles, cloning successful titles or simply asking investors to put it on the line for their game. Today, developers can create a small iphone app, a cute WiiWare title or exploit the XNA efforts of Microsoft for Xbox Live Arcade and actually have a chance.

There are still challenges with these smaller developers when working in the WiiWare and XBLA publishing channels, your game marketing and promotion becomes highly reliant on Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony for PSN. Tom Prata, senior director of Nintendo of America talked to Gamespot about this issue:

“Finally, there’s the problem of promotion. It’s not enough to make a great game if nobody notices it. Prata specifically said Nintendo will be devoting more resources to support the promotion and development of WiiWare games in the future.” (gamespot)

Of course, in the world of smaller game titles and downloadable casual games, you’re going to be at risk of finding a lot of “shovelware” — products that are only released to make a quick dime, often based on some license or popular theme/character. The great game titles will, hopefully, rise to the top and show themselves off amongst all the wanna-be money makers.

Those smaller developers putting a huge passion into their titles actually have a chance in this new industry trend. Game makers, internationally, now have a chance to grasp a small piece of the industry and make their dreams come true. The core audience may see this as a trend of noisly low quality titles, but I believe the industry needs this change to grow a new generation of developers based on niche interests.

While many can wait for their next release of Madden the rest of us will continue to spend a little money to see what the future innovators are going to be bringing to the table.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Gaming Flashback: Yo! NoidGaming Flashback: Yo! Noid

Yo! Noid was a commercial opportunity for Domino’s Pizza developed by Capcom. This retro style game revolved around Domino’s Pizza claymation style mascot, the Noid, as he adventures through fourteen stages of side scrolling action.

The game sound was much like any other 8-bit action platformer. It reminded me of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Nintendo Entertainment System, not the cool arcade one. Minus the turtles, Yo! Noid is a battle against Mr. Green, the Noids evil duplicate, a concept used in so many games; remember Shadow Link?

Unlike Link, Noid lost a life when he hit an enemy similar to the Super Mario Bros. style platformer but with a Yo Yo weapon. You could also gather smart-bomb type scrolls to clear the screen of all enemies, another classic side scroller arcade recipe. Yo! Noid brought nothing to the table in terms of uniqueness and relied on the standard recipe of side scrolling conflict.

This retro game may be one of the first true “total conversion mods.” Later we’d see Counter Strike born out of the Half-Life engine and way before that, Noah’s Ark 3D built out of the Wolfenstein 3D engine. Yo! Noid was a re-creation of the game Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru. Oddly enough, Yo! Noid was probably more well known than its forefather game because Capcom didn’t release Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru in the United States. Instead, we got Yo! Noid and a $1.00 off coupon on the back of the manual so we can get ourselives some Domino’s Pizza.

Although a few of us may recall Yo! Noid from our childhood, the title really didn’t create any huge waves in the game industry. Yo! Noid did show developers that a brand named product could be used as a marketing and brand awareness strategy, something we’d later see Burger King try on the Xbox 360 and find some success.

Can you tell the difference between Yo! Noid and Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru?