Knowing your competition
Understanding similar games to the one you will be developing is crucial to the project’s success. It is very likely that the developers of those other games have already faced and solved (or maybe not!) many of the problems you will encounter at some point during development.
Communities of players already playing those games might be discussing them in depth. This is an invaluable resource for you, as you will be able to fix known problems or add features to your game, based on what real players are willing and hoping to play.
Tip
Other ways of gaining insight into the competition include game postmortems (first-hand reports on what went right and wrong on a particular game project), user research, analytics, and industry press. Some great starting points for you to find this kind of material are the Game Developers Conference archive at https://www.gdcvault.com/ and the following website: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/.
Your competition also defines the state of your game’s genre, giving you a clear direction regarding your design. Once you have analyzed your competition, you can ask yourself questions such as the following:
- Is my game too similar to what’s already out there?
- How is it different?
- Does it offer a better and more novel experience to its target audience?
- If I was a fan of my competitor’s game, would I be interested in trying out this new game?
Answering these questions with honesty will help you establish and test your USPs.
We have already explored defining and communicating game ideas to others through the game concept document; now, let’s pose a more fundamental question. How do we generate the game idea in the first place? How do we get to the point of having something to write down in the concept document?