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Creating the concept of mobile f2p games. Part 1



Hola Chicos!

The first step in creating a design for mobile F2P games will be a concept. The concept should include basic information about the game, the reasons for creating just such a game and an analysis of the market situation. The result of the work should look like this:
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Genre

Subject and target audience

The definition of “Emulation target” is a game or several games on which the concept is built.

Brief description of the game

Description of the main components of the game

The main features of the game

Game economics

Core Loop - a sequence of basic player actions in the game.

Social components of the game

Additional details

Game support after release


Not to be unfounded, I will create the concept of a particular game right in my materials, analyzing in detail the possible and selected options.

Choosing a game genre




Before choosing a genre, let's look at the choice we have.
Considering the Top 200 Grossing USA iOS, you can make a list of the main genres (examples include the brightest representatives):

Strategy Resource Management

Crafting Resource Management

Breeding Resource Management

Other Resource Management

Sports

Racing

Puzzle

Casino / Gambling

RPG

Simulation

Shooter

Runner


There are definitely other genres, such as trivia, word games, clickers, my favorite “cats feed & play simulator (Neko Atsume), but their representatives are much smaller and often they don’t go up to the first 50k.

Choosing a genre for your game will be optimal to choose from those that have a chance to be in the top 50. Of course, there is a chance to make a breakthrough, as Kim Kardashian Hollywood did, bringing the new Simulation / Celebrities game genre into the top iOS, but it is much more difficult to do and without the franchise, this chance has recently tends to zero.

Do not forget about competitors and, for example, choosing Strategy Resource Management, you should consider whether you can offer something to the market that is not there yet. Having made another clash of Clash of Clans, and there were a lot of them - your game is unlikely to come to success.

It is worth thinking about the fact that you or the team with which you plan to work know how to work best — which one is closer to you. If you’ve only done shooters before, then creating a resource management game will be much more difficult.

And the last but not the least important point will be - the resources you have. For example, if the chosen genre is Racing, then the team should be able to create at least 40 different cars, at least 5-10 tracks, etc. Each genre has its own minimum content requirements.

Therefore, when choosing a genre, you should be guided by these variables:


Choice for our game




Let's try to rotate all of the above example. Suppose I have at my disposal a large company that can provide unlimited resources within reason. The main expertise of the company lies in Resource Management games, or rather, Breeding RM and Crafting RM.

The company has two strong representatives of Breeding RM - Dragon City and Monster Legends, who themselves hold a strong position. Trying to create a competitor in this area is to harm yourself.

The Crafting RM genre, in spite of the strong competition, still allows to hold strong players. For a long time, Hay Day was in the lead here, having an absolute advantage in this genre. However, about a year ago, SimCity pressed it, and after: FarmVille, Paradise City, World Chef and others. With each new game, the total profit of the Crafting RM genre grew, but Hay Day was losing ground in the market share, as well as in net money, because part of the audience went to other representatives of the genre.

By the way, Crafting Resource Management is a game where a player turns grown or purchased goods into other products by following certain recipes. The number of layers and the length of the product chains is unlimited. On the example of Hay Day:




Crafting RM in numbers (data are shown monthly): the total amount of the genre in January 2014 was $ 6.5 million, where $ 5.5 million of them accounted for Hay Day. By the end of 2015, the total increased to $ 7.2 million, but Hay Day dropped to $ 3 million.

If you analyze the genre relative to other genres, it develops more slowly, as it gradually loses a share in the total profit among all mobile genres. This means that there will be a place for our game there and will help develop the genre and win a new audience.

Do not forget that in addition to the choice of the genre, you need to think whether our game will be able to bring something new or will we just have to copy one of the representatives? Taking as a basis the standard mechanics of the genre with multiple layers of extraction of ingredients and chains of products - we can make a good game, but no more interesting than the existing ones.

The weakness of representatives in the market is that despite all the attempts, social interaction and competitive elements were not performed at a high level in any of them. Due to these components, we will try to highlight our game.

Answer the questions asked above:


The choice of the subject of the game and the definition of the target audience - in the following materials.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/276923/

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