Making games for the other 90%

David Armor of Relentless Software gave a great talk at GDC today, highlighting the five ways to make games for the mainstream. The first thing he did well was pack the room, which is a testament to the power of a good title. Then he followed it up with a concise talk that was worth it for folks in and out of games. It might as well have been called called Five Lessons for Making Products for Late Adopters.

The short story is that Sony hired Relentless to make a music quiz show game. Based on the success of games like Singstar, they convinced Sony to ship Buzz!: The Music Quiz with four custom controllers with a big red button. After an early collective yawn from the games industry, word of mouth took off and the title has sold over 4 million units. The franchise was the top selling UK title two years in a row, and has stayed in the top 20 over two years later.

There are other examples of similar mainstream titles: Wii Sports, Brain Age, Nintendogs, Singstar, (and Guitar Hero - which he strangely left out until the Q&A). What do these games have in common that makes them crossover successes?

1. Familiar theme. It should be something they already know, which means that you can explain the entire game in one screenshot on the box. With Nintendogs you see a frisbee and a dog, and you pretty much know exactly what you are going to be doing.
   
   



2. Simple. This isn't rocket science, but it gets repeated so much because it is so hard. Singstar is about singing along with a top pop song, that's it. You don't have some economy to bet against other singers

 

or "level up." When a sequel came out the press wanted to know about all the new features -- but what the public wants is just to sing more to some new songs.

3. Approachable. This is where art style and the power of controllers come in. Sega Virtua Tennis looks like a high-tension big stage tennis tournament, while Wii Tennis looks like a Sunday knock around. Six-axis controllers are intimidating -- a big red button is not.
      
      
      
    
4. Entertainment is offscreen. Your friends know you a lot better than any game designer could, let them provide the entertainment.
      
   
5. An intuitive interface. The press lambasted the unique controller by saying, "it's nothing that can't be done on a dual-shock." But of course that misses the point. As Chris Anderson  has pointed out it is about providing immersion through the interface. The best part of a quiz show is hitting that big red button when you know the answer. Forget immersion from spending $20m on unbelievable high-def graphics, put it into a $4 controller a'la Singstar, Guitar Hero, Wii, DS, etc.
      
      
   

The other thing noted during Q&A was that another thing Nintendogs, Brain Age, Buzz! and similar successes have in common is a relatively small team. It's obviously easier to focus a vision and not over-design if you keep the team small.

One counter-point to the utopian vision of five guys in a basement creating the best product is that all of these were done with a publisher. I was talking with Dan Ogles (currently at Harmonix) just afterward about how both Guitar Hero and Buzz! had an external publisher that not only funded, but actually conceived of, pitched and pushed the project. The concepts were almost too simple for a set of really smart game developers to come up with.

Part of the reason is that the publisher was not thinking about what would be fun to build, but about what customers want. This has interesting implications as indy games, casual games, and self-publishing casual mmos grow. These companies need someone's who sole job it is to think about the customer and not be afraid to piss off their coworkers (don't worry, they'll come around when you've sold your 2 millionth unit).