Validate Your New Game Idea: The Checklist
Tags: mobile, gamedev, tutorial, productivity
Published: 2023-01-31 11:54:58

So, you are an aspiring beginner in mobile game development and you have little experience in Research & Development Management and Game Verification but you have an idea. Maybe not even one— hundreds of different game concepts are floating around in your head. You want to start developing your ideas but you know that there is a significant risk in it. What should you do? How to avoid as many potential risks as possible when developing and launching your game? As a marketer, I launched more than 20 mobile projects, but cancelled at least twice as much. In this article, I will answer these questions and give you a checklist that will help you to bring your breakthrough ideas to life. 

There are three major steps to validate your game idea:

1. Market Research
2. Product Review
3. Verification

Let's look at these steps in more detail.

## 1. Market Research

Even while developing an idea, somewhere in the back of your mind you know that everything really starts with money. You need it to bring your idea to life, so it is important to make some calculations.

Surely, you need to compare your expected revenue with your predicted expenses. Everyone who has ever encountered marketing research understands this. You also need to do more detailed research of the game development world.

**Niche analysis**
To do it properly, you need to answer the questions concerning different projects in your niche. What about

- Category Leaders

Who are they? Is there a gap between their project and the rest of the projects? Think of the reasons why this gap exists. Ask yourself, what niche leaders are doing to:

- attract users
- retain players
- monetize

It is important to learn from the category leaders’ experience but it is also essential to look at the category leaders’ projects through a critical lens. Is there something that the niche leaders’ projects lack? Does your project have those aspects? Can you bring something new to the table? 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nft12p9skjgyxmg2enbm.png)

Sometimes you may face a situation where there are 1-2 category leaders who collect almost all the revenue in the genre. Think of the reasons why no other projects can compete with these leaders' projects. This is a risky niche, so if you want to make a game in this category, you need to have a plan on how to lure users from the category leaders' games to your game or how to approach the genre in a new way and attract completely new users. But it may be too dangerous, so it's better to find other niches.

- Middle League
 
After analyzing the niche leaders, it is time to pay attention to the rest of the projects. What are they like? Suggest a hypothesis why these projects didn’t become the leaders in the niche. Are they lacking something that your project has?

- Newbies

Another important step is to analyze your potential competitors. Are there many newcomers in the niche? Think about why your idea is different from theirs.

After analyzing the projects in the category, you may also think of:

**Plateau**

Every niche has a ceiling on downloads and revenue. Think of the ceiling in your niche. How many projects and players are in the niche? How fast the category leaders reached the plateau? Answering these questions will help you to calculate possible scenarios for your project.
Patterns and Market trends
Seasonality and Anomalies
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tmt7xmyuvr113n35tia6.png)
After analyzing all the listed matters, you can move to the next step.

**Create your scenarios**
I prefer to create at least 3 of them:

- pessimistic
- realistic
- optimistic

Basically, this step is a preparation for a real game development, and, as we know, the one who fails to prepare prepares to fail. Do not skip this step and think of all the possible future scenarios. It will help you to be prepared for every outcome of the game launching: from the worst case scenario to the best one.

You may also answer some questions about the possible future of your project:

- Does your income scenario correlate with your expense plan?
- How many users are willing to play your game?
- How many titles do you need to surpass?
- How to become the niche leader?
- ...and to reach the TOP-5?
- What if you will be in the TOP-20? Will you have enough money to continue the development? If not, where can you get additional funding?

## 2. Product Review
Usually this step requires the involvement of the entire team working on the development of the game. During this step it is essential to answer some questions concerning your project and the game designers and marketing specialists can definitely help with answering them:

- Have you made games in this genre before? 
- Is your team competent enough to develop a game in this genre?
- What are the strengths and the weaknesses of the project? Are there any possible threats? What about opportunities? Conduct a SWOT analysis of your project to find out!
- Does your project have any distinctive features? Are they good or bad?

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/wtjyyiyp9pfowj7sj19b.png)

After answering these questions you will have a better understanding of your project, which means that you will be able to adapt to all possible scenarios and solve all the emerging problems easily. 

## 3. Verification

It is high time to test your game! 

Imagine that your game already exists and describe it in detail. It is important to have a clear idea of the game’s:

- genre/subgenre
- setting
- art style
- key features
- camera view
- target audience
- other significant details

The next step is to define the benchmarks. How will you know that your test results are bad or good? After defining that, make a list of your competitors — even if you think you don’t have any because you’ve invented a new game niche that has no relevant projects in it yet. Think of what games the potential players of your game are playing right now? These games are relevant for comparison with your project and can help you with embedding a brand strategy. 

But how do you find out if the people who want to play your game really exist?

Well, there are several ways to figure it out. You can conduct a:

- Focus Group Test
- CTR (Click Through Rate) Test
- CTR (Click Through Rate) + CVR (Conversion Rate) Test via Splitmetrics or similar tools

So, how does it work? Put simply, CTR and CVR tests are the basic math that helps you estimate your potential success before actually going big.

**CTR Test is about:**
Presenting videos or screenshots of your gameplay
The results show CTR metrics, obviously
And it also shows CPM (Cost Per Mille) metrics

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/u8ddbjds5qqjf9t9uvta.png)


**While Splitmetrics Test is all about:**
WEB-landing page that perfectly imitates Google Play or App Store pages (but don't forget that web traffic can differ from mobile)
Shows you Click To Install rate
Shows Click To Install time
Allows you to check the funnel from view to install on the landing page

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/f1a0vj90hebbhvdj152n.png)


**Tips & Tricks**
Here are some tips that I can give you based on my experience of game ideas verification with CTR and CVR Tests:

- Prepare good quality store assets for your tests
- Make simple gameplay UA assets with no misleading. Show people the gameplay as it is!
- Only show the screenshots and no videos during the first tests of the Store Page 
- Present the identical screenshots and icons but in different styles/settings
- One step at a time — make one change for one test 
- Create a social network page for your game and fill it out as much as possible, add the game description, make a couple of publications about the future of the project and upload the icon and cover
- Pay attention to details on the Splitmetrics page (store reviews, ratings, descriptions)
- Know your competitors store pages (color scheme, CTA, USP, assets order)
- Find similarities and differences between your and the competitors’ projects. For example, when I was researching Merge-3 niche, I tried to understand why there are eggs everywhere and is it possible to stand out from hundreds of those eggs?
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ykz4lrhiwm9caaaoc7ey.png)


**And how to examine the results of the tests?**
Well, it is important to know that:

**Perfect CTR & CVR ≠ huge Monthly Active Users (MAU) **
For example, cyberpunk settings can show great results but attract a small group of users compared to zombie settings.

**There are a lot of reasons for high CPM & CPC** 
For example, seasonality, bad assets, wrong key vision, not relevant audience and a lot of other inconveniences can affect the testing results. It doesn’t mean that you need to give up on your idea. Keep testing!

**Engage ≠ Retain**

**Bad test result ≠ Poor idea**
Put forward the hypotheses why the test has poor results and check them one by one. Maybe the test failed simply because of the store set up.

**Congratulations! You got to the end of my article.** 
Validation of the game idea is an exciting process that will help you identify risks and prepare for them, and, most importantly, decide whether to develop your game or not. However, it is important to remember that it is impossible to predict everything. Sometimes ideas that are perfect in theory turn out to be not that perfect and successful in reality and the development teams have to change their ideas and niche. But, at the same time, sometimes it's the other way around: an amazing project appears in some unpopular market niche and attracts a huge number of new players and becomes a pioneer of the genre. So don't be scared, try new things, create and test your ideas!