Why should solo gamedevs stick to one genre?
Have you ever spent an evening writing down your ideas only to ask the question: can one person even make all of them come true?
I had. And I started wondering how many solo gamedevs create adventure games, first-person shooters, then real-time strategies, then full-blown role-playing games, only to end up with a god sim.
Not sure what would be easier. To find a solo gamedev who managed to do five different types of games, or to find the one who did five games.
My point is that ideas are plenty, life is short, and when you spend enough time at work, commuting, and with your family, you end up with a small block of time. (unless you work in gamedev, where at least you worked on a game, just not your own).
If you want to make the most of your ideas, you might want to stick to one, max three genres.
You might think limiting yourself this way can't benefit you, but hear me out!
Focusing on one genre lets you benefit from the wonderful process of iteration! It’s the programming equivalent of compound interest!
Let's say you want to make a 2D platformers.
The first game will require the most amount of work. And the result will be the most basic platformer.
But don't let that be discouraging, because in the next game, you will build on top of that, sequel or not. But this time, you don't have to start from the very beginning. You already have the basic game template you can build on.
How?
Add that feature every platformer these days has
Add that feature that’s supposed to be obvious but it’s still not in your game.
Add that one thing, you think every platformer should have
Remove something and check if it will still work as a platformer (or if it still can be fun)
This can bring you close to your dream game!
Every game will be an iteration of the same idea! Every game will make your previous ideas better!
From a bird’s perspective, it will look like how Hideo Kojima went from Metal Gear (the first one) to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The Metal Gear Solid series is a great example of iteration over the same ideas to deliver the same idea, yet with a better experience.
Unfortunately, this example is not about a solo gamedev kicking ass 😁
And thus you will become the platformer guy who builds on his ideas, an expert focused on this one genre!
And sure, this can become boring or uninspiring or something else.
Maybe you should pick a game of your dreams, that consists of multiple genres and break it down, master its elements, and build on that.
As I described here:
Deconstructing a Tactical J-RPG into multiple sellable mini-games!
Last time, I shared Conradical's knowledge on how to achieve success by making your dream game. In summary, you divide your dream game into sub-games and sell them separately. When making your dream game, you'll still use the tools you created. Today, I'll use this exercise to divide a game that I'd like to clone.
What do you think?
I was recently thinking about the same thing. I have a limited amount of productivity and it would be ideal if I can maximize its value when i have it.
One idea of mine you didn't mention, is getting more value out of your work by building systems that are easily extendable.
I'm speaking of things like episodic chapters, DLC, expansions, modability.
I suppose expansions are something you definitely mentioned. But my hope is that once my effort has resulted in gameplay, on the chance someone enjoys that, it will be much less effort for me to add new content that can be sold.
This hits home as I've been thinking about a game in my head for a while, not knowing where to start...but maybe designing and making the different components of the game-that-is-yet-to-be as separate mini games might make the final game a much more doable endeavour! Thank you!