Is this idea plausible/is there a market for it?

SudoCat · March 2013

Hey there,

I'll cut to the chase, as I doubt anyone cares for a life story. I'm planning a game for the ouya with a group of friends (Artists, Musicians, Nerds, Gamers and the like) but before I throw every penny I have and all my free time into this, I wanted to ask the OUYA Dev community their thoughts.

Basically what I want to make will be a 3D 4 player RPG of sorts. Now then the development's all plausible, I've researched into that and we're fast learners. It will be heavily stylised, for several reasons, by our artists to produce what we hope to be a truly unique look. It will be reminiscent of the old Dungeon crawler RPGs with some fancy more modern elements chucked in. I want to make it very clear that we are doing all we can to avoid as many RPG cliches as possible, while still very clearly being an RPG. It wont be anything incredibly fancy to begin with, but it will have creativity and developers and designers with a passion for it (something lacking in a lot of games I feel).

I just wanted to pass it by some people:

1. Will the OUYA be able to cope with running 4 player split screen in a 3D environment? I figured it should be okay, but I haven't seen much but 2D games being made so far.

2. Will there still be a market for this sort of game? I haven't been keeping up with other development process, I've been busy researching how to join in. Because of this, I'm not aware of what there's already swarms of, or what the demands for?

Thanks for your time.

paulscode · March 2013

The OUYA can definitely handle 4 player split screen (I can do 4-player Mario Kart on my N64 emulator, for example). Exactly how much detail it can handle, well you'll probably want to test that before you put too much time into it. Get an idea of the level of detail you want to use in your game, and write a couple quick and dirt tests to make sure the OUYA can handle it at a decent speed. If not, then you can make the decision of reducing the level of detail to where it will run at a decent speed, or giving up on the idea. I suspect the OUYA can handle whatever you're planning to do, though (that's merely a subjective feeling on my part -- you really should run tests, if only to quell your own worries)

DoubleDracula · March 2013

There are definitely games like that, and there's a HUGE market for retro stuff. I can't wait to play it!

stolk · March 2013

I think the market will be small.

There are much much more gamers playing by themselves than there are gamers that game with three other friends in the same location.

If your game requires four players, very few opportunities exist for players to pick it up.

OUYA is already a small market, probably less than 100K users (wild guess based on very little.)

If 2% of these regularly play in groups of 4, then your pool of potential customers suddenly dropped to 2000. The ones that actually buy your game will be incredibly few. That means that to cover your cost your game will have to be $100,- or more. If you can provide the unique enthralling experience it may be possible, but I doubt it.

Bram

paulscode · March 2013

Good point. You'd have a much bigger market if you implemented some type of netplay, where folks get together over the internet vs. at a single console. It is a bigger technical challenge, though.

XxTIMOxX · March 2013

Or at least offer the opportunity of both. Split screen if your friends are over, or net play if they aren't. That way you're not limiting your potential clients by forcing them to play with other people locally if they have no one locally to play with all the time. Although I do love the option of having local play as well as net play, similar to what Castle Crashers did on xbox live, albeit it was not split screen.

Dreamwriter · March 2013

Wow, pessimistic much stolk? :) To me iit seems wildly crazily pessimistic to think that the OUYA won't even sell 40k units, when a game console that sells really poorly sells around 30 million in its lifetime. Especially considering 60,000 people were convinced to pay real money up front 8 months in advance for something that may never have shipped. If the system was going to be such a gigantic flop as to sell only 40k, it wouldn't be worth anyone's time to develop for.

Anyways, back to the point of the thread, while there isn't a large audience for dungeon-crawler RPG's these days, there are a dedicated few, enough that they just released "Etrian Odyssey 4" on Nintendo 3DS, which is the 4th in a series of hard core old-school dungeon-crawler RPG's. And they seem to be the type of people who would gravitate to the OUYA (clue: I'm one of them). It's really hard to say how well a new game would sell, especially if you add local multiplayer. I do agree with stolk in that you want to make sure the game can be played by a single player, but definitely keep the multiplayer functionality, as that could really be what attracts people to the game. The OUYA is making a great comback to the local multiplayer scene.

Technology-wise you're safe, the OUYA is plenty powerful for that type of game. Enclosed passageways are great for keeping 3D hardware from stressing, and the Tegra 3 in the OUYA is capable of quite a lot of polygons worth of detail. Where you may have performance issues is if you use a lot of realtime lighting using per-pixel lights. Here's a picture of Etrian Odyssey 4 on the 3DS - OUYA should be capable of doing that quality graphics on 4 windows I would think.

SudoCat · March 2013

Thanks for the responses. Sorry I didn't quite clarify, single player will of course be a possibility, it was just 4 player orientated. The classes are all being designed to be just as efficient in solo play as they will be in a team. This is all a big learning curve, so the game has been designed from the ground up to be very 'modular', making it possible for us to release what would seem to be quite a small game, but providing regular free updates and expansions. We plan on being very community orientated, the websites are all currently being designed so that we can let our players tell us what they want in the game, and what they think of what we're doing next. We have a ton of ideas for different zones, so we figured we'll let the community pick which will be added next.

The combat will be hack'n'slash combo based with spells, evading and usable items. These are the aims at least. I don't want to say a lot of things which will never be done.

Now it will not be any easy task, but we do have the dedication and the ability to do it, it's just a matter of determination. If people are interested, I will post more information later once we have something to show for ourselves. And of course, anyone who really thinks 'This is exactly what I want to be doing!' feel free to get in touch if you like.

Also, here's a preview of the Melee heavy character. It's the first character sheet draft, drawn by our lead artist and 'Creative Director', Christopher Neal.
http://i581.photobucket.com/albums/ss255/DinosaurVoodoo/WarriorStyleSheet_zps10f45c54.jpg

EDIT: Oh also, I noticed people mentioning costs... Yeah, I really don't care about profit. I'm making a game because it's what I've wanted to do since I was like 10, I've finally got all the means here. I've got a team of volunteers - mostly students and the like - who share the same passion, and I spur them on with cash out of my paychecks.

Floppy · March 2013

what Ouya is capable highly depends of the 3d engine also.. you might be able to go for "everything normal mapped+lightmapped" if you use unity pro , or a custom 3d engine.

otherwise , either it takes too much time to make , either it's too slow with big levels

i personally had to scrap lightmapped levels because of too important latency...

when using unity standard/not having a lot of time,

focusing on colors and textures is indeed the way to go

SudoCat · March 2013

Okay I'll remember that when it comes down to it, hopefully we shouldn't be too dependant on such features anyway.

Rezex · March 2013

I would buy it...but nobody wants to buy and play a game they have seen and played before so use everything original and nothing previously developed

SudoCat · March 2013

Don't worry, I'm fully aware of that. A large purpose of this game is to give something different, mostly through style and story, while maintaining the RPG feel. While I agree, people don't want to keep playing the same game, there's also only so many ways you can create a game. I think it's okay if a game has similar elements to other games, as long as it feels like a new game in it's own right. Also I intend on releasing it as free to play if possible, but with some paid for content (NOT pay to win).

Floppy · March 2013

did you checked egoboo ? that's a great game!

taking -some- game design inspirations fom this game could be interesting;

now for the interesting question: if egoboo devs would make an Ouya port,

how could your game be "complementary" to their,

in order for both games to reasonably succeed ? .. tricky question

perhaps using more turn based stuff ? :)

it would be great to have a ( not too expensive ) level editor , while other players could play new levels for free

stolk · March 2013

Dreamwriter said:

Wow, pessimistic much stolk? :) To me iit seems wildly crazily pessimistic to think that the OUYA won't even sell 40k units, when a game console that sells really poorly sells around 30 million in its lifetime. Especially considering 60,000 people were convinced to pay real money up front 8 months in advance for something that may never have shipped. If the system was going to be such a gigantic flop as to sell only 40k, it wouldn't be worth anyone's time to develop for.

Well, I hope the sales are as good as you project them to be.

The only reasonable attempt I have seen for OUYA sales forecast is by James Coote.

http://www.crystallinegreen.com/?p=408

I must say the analysis of @SpoonThumb seems pretty sound to me.

His website is full of good insights into OUYA.

They should probably hire him as strategist or something :-)

Maybe over time, the numbers will be bigger, but in its first year I would not expect big numbers.

I do hope I'm wrong though.

Bram

Dreamwriter · March 2013

That blog is suggesting that the system may have sold another 40k units in the early preorders, before they announced the retail orders. It's not saying it'll only sell 40k more units in its entire lifetime or even in the first year - it's suggesting that's how many systems may have already sold as of the first week in February.

SpoonThumb · March 2013

That figure you quoted is really just a guestimate. There will have been lots of people who signed up in the month immediately after the kickstarter, but about a month after, things went quite quiet on the ouya front until the new year when the dev kits got shipped. Be great if it is higher but I think anything lower is also drifting increasingly away from realism

lukevp · March 2013

I love dungeon crawlers / diablo style games. From a programmer's perspective though, I'd have to ask who your devs are and whether they really have the skill/time to implement this. Even a "small demo" really doesn't much reduce your programming load, just your content load. Unless you want to ship the first preview with an incomplete feature set.

GoldiLocks · June 2013

sounds good to me. For the 3d ouya has a plugin for Unity3d. its pretty easy to make games in. still needs code. lots of great tutorials for it i recomend using it.

~:>

GoldiLocks · June 2013

sounds good to me. For the 3d ouya has a plugin for Unity3d. its pretty easy to make games in. still needs code. lots of great tutorials for it i recomend using it.

OOOOOUUUUUYYYYYAAAAA!!!!!

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Is this idea plausible/is there a market for it?

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