What are the best ways to create an engaging game genre?

Find your audience, gather references, and define a plan. It sounds obvious, but it's a common trap we often fall into. The best way to approach solutions is to identify the real problem and see how other designers have addressed it. Know your players and your peers.

Creating an engaging game genre goes beyond knowing your audience; it involves embracing the dynamic gaming landscape. follow those 1. Community Focus 2.Innovation 3.Player Empowerment 4.Ongoing Feedback

If you want to engage your audience this is the most important part. The first thing is that you need to have at least 3 core loop: - second to second loop: This is what the player is constantly doing, it needs to feel good (Juicy), it needs to generate resources and cost player time - Minute to Minute: This loop, is the low progression loop, the player consume the resources created in the minute to minute, it produces new content or make the second to second more efficient or expanded (the combo, more depth or variety) - Hour to hour: This is usually the goal loop, the narrative loop, and the progression loop. It push the game progression further by adding content

Core loop should be consistent atleast for a short while and then innovation is required. Let's talk about this with an example. Suppose, there is an open world game with a main quest (that starts automatically and you choose to complete it or leave it be and just enjoy the open world mechanics). Now, this quest can be collecting things and gaining rewards. For atleast 3-4 quests, they should be consistent. Afterwards, you can introduce new ways and challenges to collect things i.e completing a race, defeating an enemy etc. You can introduce new types of rewards as well. Hence, mini quests within a quest. That would be considered as innovation i.e something fresh for players while the main core loop is still consistent.

We must also know which methods of other games have worked well and which have worked badly, if for example we focus on strategy games, we have different ways to manage the ecosystem, from advanced and complicated methods where everything is controlled in detail, to simpler methods where the player can advance faster. For me it is very important to be able to balance the central loop in order to keep all the players "hooked to the game".

If you want to experiment you also need to allocate time to failure and iteration. If you don't do that you are exposing yourself to a massive production risk. That's because when you are innovating you are taking a path that only few other people took (or even noone), which means that you cannot find already sure or effective solutions to the problems that you are facing. This means that you need time to think, develop, iterate and even restart from zero.

To create a successful game, you need to bring something new to the table. For example, BeatStar is one of the most successful music games on mobile and it is basically an adaptation of Guitar Hero for mobile phones.

Start with Market Research to find your Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Look for other games in the genres you like to understand which ones are successful and what are they doing right. Then, look for the adjacent possible to find a great spin on the genre. Take the ideas that inherit or you stumble across from the original genre and jigger them together in some new shape. The next creative and big ideas in a genre might be found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas.