Hi,

These are common issues of debate and misconceptions.

I believe you should make games you enjoy, if you don't enjoy them then how else will another player like it? I believe every game developer should make games they would enjoy playing and want to play.

Yes, developers should make games that they enjoy, but we must be realistic and practical, too. We all have several genre of games that we like. Some genre are very niche and appeal to only a tiny fraction of the market, in some cases less than 1%.

Therefore I recommend choosing a genre of games that has a reasonable opportunity for good sales, but of course one that you enjoy. Later after a game dev company has several profitable games published, then there may be a reasonable risk to make a tiny niche type game, having profits of previous games as support.

I feel that you were basically touching on this issue of being practical.

I completelly and totally disagree

Niches is the way to go (and 1% of market is INSANELY huge ). The number of games in a niche market is not the issue. Niche games typically require more game development and also business skills. Sure there are exceptions in every category, but look at the odds. An example of niche is Train Simulator. Now if you go and make another train simulator then you probably will have to deliver a superior product to keep from dropping the company into bankruptcy. The thing is, are you AAA studio? Unlikely. Do you have sufficient marketing budget? Unlikely. Do you have resources to compete with the part of the market saturated by AAA games? Unlikely. I happen to have made art assets for niche games, but the game developers and teams as a whole were very highly skilled, so the ship was sea worthy in the stormy ocean of niche games.

Actually, making non niche games is very risky, much more riskiy is making "popular games". Most of that risk is because of lack of business savvy, though game development skillset is crucial. Angry Birds, Minecraft and the like. These markets are already taken. Before those games were released, people thought exactly the same thing - market already taken. LOL

Besides, take a look at mobile market (typical casual non niche market), no one is able to earn any money there anymore, I'm keeping hearing about indie devs quitting that market over and over again. It's a suicide nowadys. Again, it is usually due to lack of business skills such as research and marketing more than the game itself.

The constant changes in the industry are increasing pressure to diversify. This means creating games across genre and also cross-platform.

Game developers with the innovative business thinking tend to find ways to connect with end-users. This takes depth and agility in development and deployment.

I don't really expect the feedback would be like this, but wow. Thanks very much guys. I really appreciate your words, despite there's a bit disagreement and agreement of this and that. It's helping though. Thanks again.