VR Market analysis and VR game concept – LO1
Market Analysis – P1
The VR gaming demographic is a new group in the industry, modern technology has brought many games to players in new ways to play. What games have been made for VR and who is playing them? Firstly, where they are playing them is an important step. There are two major ways to play VR, tethered and standalone. Tethered refers to the requirement of external tech (PC, Play Station) and a headset. Headsets such as the [1] Valve Index and [2] PSVR 2 are examples of tethered headsets. Standalone headsets don’t need anything other then the headset and controllers. The Meta Quest 2 and HTC Vive XR Elite are both standalone headsets. Examples of the benefits of standalone headsets is the lack of wires and accessibility, examples of the downsides are the decreased computational power, although the Vive XR Elite does offer 1920×1920 per eye resolution, 6 degrees of freedom, and the Snapdragon XR2 which offers 8K 360 degree video, it still does not match the graphical power that using a high end PC can offer.
Outlining these headsets, there are three groups of players so far, tethered users on PC, tethered users on PS5, and standalone users. PC users are the widest group, as the range of components that a PC uses will change the computational power the VR headset has access to, a high end player may use a top of the range graphics card, processor and have access to a headset like the Valve index which has full body tracking, which a high-end player may have interest in, but PC players can use most headsets, the standalone Quest 2 can be used as a tethered headset and was the [3] most popular option for Steam VR players as of September 2022. PS players are separated to PC players because of the range of possibilities that PC has access to, as PS5 uses the PSVR2 headset and the console, or the PSVR and PS4 console, the previous generation of PSs VR headsets. The last group are the users of standalone headsets, these players may be testing the water with VR and not ready to put down the large sum of money for the tethered options need of PC or console. They may also be a fan of the portability and lack of wires, which can be un-immersive if you get tangled up. The benefits of the Quest 2 is the entry level friendliness as well as the range of games. Even though the Quest 2 is a low price point at [4] £399.99 (low when compared to other headsets) it offers a wide library of games, many of which you can play on PCVR, popular games such as Beat Saber, TWD: Saints & Sinners, and Superhot VR are available on both platforms. The Quest 2 brings its own exclusive games to the mix as well two Star Wars games and an Iron Man game as well as several others. Game exclusivity is a tactic used often to bring in players to a certain platform, in this case having Star Wars fans may be more inclined to purchase a Quest 2 headset if they overlap with the VR market.
What are the popular games on VR? Beat Saber (BS) is commonly considered one of the best VR games and with good reason, [5] in 2021 BS sold over 4 million copies on the Quest platform alone, bringing in over $100 million in revenue which puts it in line with [6] Fortnites revenue after its first 90 days on mobile, a testament to BS popularity. The revenue of BS is not wholly game sales, as of March 2023, BS has [7] 146 extra purchasable songs ranging from Lady Gaga to Lynyrd Skynyrd, the variety in genres is one thing that is assuredly part of BSs success. One genre of games that tend to popular on VR is horror, horror naturally becomes better, scares more, for better or worse, the more immersive the experience is. Resident Evil 7 and 8 have their own VR versions and RE 4 has its VR version on the Quest platform. Capcom made a decision to start including a VR portion to solely Resident Evil, their strong horror franchise, as opposed to Monster Hunter or Devil May Cry. I would say that this decision to focus a VR portion of Capcom to horror games highlights the additional spookiness that VR brings to horror.
Who is the VR market? The market contains a variety of games, a selection of groups but what are the demographics of VR? [8] In 2020, Meta, Oculus at the time, published their research into gamer-segmentation where they outline three demographics as VR targets, dedicated gamer, play-to-win gamer, and the steady gamer.
| Gamer Type | Gender | Age | Preferred Genre | Described As |
| Dedicated Gamer | 74% Male | 25-34 | First Person Shooter | Impulsive & Competitive |
| Play-To-Win | 74% Male | 18-24 | First Person Shooter | Focused & Competetive |
| Steady Gamer | 63% | 25-34 | First Person Shooter | Eager & Enthusiasts |
[1] Headset (2019) Valve Index® – Upgrade your experience – Valve Corporation. Available at: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/index/headset (Accessed: March 1, 2023).
[2] Shop PS VR2 now: PlayStation® (UK) (2023) Buy & Pre-order Consoles, Games & Accessories. Available at: https://direct.playstation.com/en-gb/playstation-vr2?emcid=pa-co-422388&gclid=CjwKCAiAjPyfBhBMEiwAB2CCIhppsS3Ox-3_2l6hN1fizE8Hsw_jxRopKZBj_T0js9KR3GVS9bswxRoCc8YQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds (Accessed: March 1, 2023).
[3] Alsop, T. (2022) Steam user VR headset share by device 2022, Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265018/proportion-of-directx-versions-on-the-platform-steam/ (Accessed: March 9, 2023).
[4] Meta quest 2: Immersive all-in-one VR headset | meta store – facebook (no date). Available at: https://www.meta.com/gb/quest/products/quest-2/ (Accessed: March 9, 2023).
[5] Baker, H., Stockdale, H. and Heaney, D. (2021) Beat saber passes $100 million in revenue on Quest Platform, UploadVR. Available at: https://uploadvr.com/beat-saber-100-million-revenue/ (Accessed: March 14, 2023).
[6] Nelson, R. (2018) Fortnite earns $100 million in its first 90 days on mobile, Sensor Tower – Market-Leading Digital & Mobile Intelligence. Available at: https://sensortower.com/blog/fortnite-mobile-100-million-revenue (Accessed: March 14, 2023).
[7] Steam DLC page: Beat saber (2019) Steam. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/620980/Beat_Saber/ (Accessed: March 14, 2023).
[8] Understanding the VR gaming market – oculus VR (no date) Oculus. Available at: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/understanding-the-vr-gaming-market/ (Accessed: March 23, 2023).
Game Design Document
Planning and Managing game development – LO2
Game Development Plan
Project Timeline – P4
Copyright – M2
Copyright is the umbrella term for the legal protection of creative work and as such copyright is important in the games industry and their are multiple things that need to be considered during game development associated with copyright law. Anything that is created is protected by copyright law. Copyright protects Intellectual property, which is ideas, tin games development this would be the game design document. Trademarks are names and brands but are not automatically protected under copyright law and need to be applied for. Eventually after many years, copyright falls into the public domain which means that creative work that was once protected can be used, this has caveats however as specific designs for characters or other intellectual property is still protected so the name and story can be used by the public but not all of the copyright is accessible to the public. Piracy is an illegal act and is the unauthorised copying or use of a copyrighted property. In games development, off the shelf assets are used often and all of the assets fall under some form of copyright which allow for limited use of those assets, depending on the license. Licenses are the authorisation for someone to use material and property that are copyrighted by someone else as long as the party using the licence adheres to the license. One of these licences is a creative commons license, this is the most common form of license and can be used as long as the creator(s) of the asset are attributed in the credits of the game in some form. There are different kinds of creative commons licenses such as a non-derivative license which allows you to use assets as long as they are not modified and the creator(s) are credited appropriately. Another license is a non-commercial license which means the assets can be used as long the creator(s) are credited and the assets used are not used in a commercial product of any kind. Another kind of license, is an exclusive license. This license allows for a copyright holder to allow another person or group to have access to copyrighted material and only the people who hold the exclusive license. Another version of a license is a public license agreement. This is a non-exclusive license and there is no need for paperwork. This licensee is used for copyrighted material that is bought. The buyer of the material does not own the product they are only buying access to the product. By using the asset that is purchased, the user must adhere to the license or break copyright. The owner of a copyright is legally required to defend any infringement on copyright. If copyright is not protected by the holder of the copyright, they loose the defence that copyright law provides. An example of this is Nintendo and their fierce defence against a large variety of fan-made content. If Nintendo where to not defend the copyright against these games then they would not be able to defend against any harmful infringement on their copyright. What are the consequences of breaking copyright? The US law for breaking copyright is a 5 year prison sentence along with a fine of $250,000 per offence of copyright infringement. There is also a fine of up to $150,000 for each work that has been infringed. In the case of the games industry, a game that has content that breaks copyright has an injunction to stop the selling of the game immediately. Alongside this the breaker of copyright must pay all attorney fees and profits lost for the defendant, the owner of the copyright.
Patents are similar to copyright protection except they protect inventions instead of creative media. In the games industry this would be game mechanics. The ability to obtain a patent for a game mechanic is a difficult process and it is highly likely that a patent will no be granted for a mechanic. The notable outlier is a patent held by Warner Bros. for the nemesis system created for the Mordor: Middle Earth games developed by Monolith. The nemesis system is a complex array of AI that allows for the normal orcs of middle earth to learn and develop each time when they face the player in combat and each time they return from death the visuals reflect the way they where brought back from death, if an orc was beheaded, if you fin the same orc, its head will be stuck to their body with bolts and metal, the same is true for missing limbs or if they where shot using a bow or set on fire, the complexity and nuance in this system was what allowed for Warner Bros. to obtain a patent against it.
VR Game Production – LO3
Production – P5 M3
| Milestone | Start | End | Activity |
| Project Start | 29/03 | ||
| Milestone 1 | 29/03 | 05/04 | Camera – Whitebox |
| Milestone 2 | 05/04 | 12/04 | Camera -Horror in photos |
| Milestone 3 | 12/04 | 19/04 | Camera continued |
| Milestone 4 | 19/04 | 26/04 | Develop player photos – Mechanic Completion |
| Milestone 5 | 26/04 | 03/05 | Environment Work |
| Milestone 6 | 03/05 | 10/05 | Audio – Environment work |
| Milestone 7 | 10/05 | 17/05 | UI – options?, menus |
| Milestone 8 | 17/05 | 24/05 | Polish |
| Project End | 25/05 |
Milestone 1: 29/03 – 03/04
The first week of development was focused mostly on working on the camera mechanic as it is integral to the game, once this is complete the rest of the mechanics will follow as I can’t “develop photos” if there is no way to take photos. Over this week I have made progress towards the camera mechanic and a simple environment that I can walk around in VR.
There are several ways to move around in VR, the area that the player can walk around freely are outlined with grey planes on the floor, this is also the area that can be used for free teleportation. The light grey squares on the floor are anchor points where the player will stick too if they do not feel like they can move freely and avoid motion sickness. The playable area is very limited as the game is highly a visual experience, to account for this I have added extra details to the environment including the points of interest the player needs to take pictures of.
Milestone 2: 05/04 – 12/04
This week was continued development of the camera mechanic along side getting the horror aspects to only show through the camera. I did not finish the camera mechanic this week completely but I can take some time next week for continued development of the mechanic and based on the progress that I have
I have moved around the milestones of development, I am going to focus on scripting and mechanic development before moving onwards to environment work as I think that having the game mechanically complete before moving onto another task will keep the development of scripts concise and allow me to focus more on working on scripts and finish them sooner. The game will be mechanically complete by end of milestone 4. At the current pace of mechanic/script development I should finish before the end of next week and I will start work on the games environment and removing the white-box level with a proper level.
Milestone 3: 12/04 – 19/04
Over this week I finished the camera and developing the players photos.
I have had no success using my first idea on how to do so. when the player takes a photo with the camera, it is saved temporarily in Unity as an actual photo file. My first idea was to assign the photo the player took to a material and then when the player creates their photos, the material would be applied to an object and show the players photo.
When the player takes a picture, it is added to a list as an element, I know which element refers to which photo the player took as it is added to a list as an element when the player takes the photo. I assigned each element of the list of captured images to a 2D texture, I then assigned that texture to a material. “image1.mainTexture = photo1;” It was my intention for the element of the list to apply itself as the main texture of the material and would show the photo I took.
After my first attempt of using materials I looked at another solution for developing player photos.
Milestone 4: 19/03 – 26/04
This week was focused on environment work, over the second week I decided to move the mechanic completion to this week instead of the end of milestone 5 (03/05) as I did in the original timeline but I finished the development of mechanics last week.
Milestone 5: 26/04 – 03/05
Over this week I worked on the environment of the game and implementing smoother movement into the game. Due to slight differences in the height of the environment the player was consistently jolting up and down, sudden movement like this leads to motion sickness and creating a smoother, sickness free, environment for the player to walk around will help greatly with the users experience of the game. Along side this I worked on adding in teleportation as a movement option. The main reason behind this was to give the player an additional option if locomotion made them feel motion sick. The process was simple for the most part, getting specific teleportation points to go over the bridge and rocky terrain was a process of testing and modifying until it was in the right spot.
Milestone 6: 03/05 – 10/05
This week I had some testing of the game where the main feedback was the lack of feedback when the player takes a picture. Originally, the camera screen froze when the player took a photo to identify that the player took a photo and let the player see that photo before they develop it later on. When I added in additional functionality to the camera script, this feature stopped working but as I still had work to do on the camera I finished the script before fixing this feature. There is no reason in particular to why this function stopped working but over this week I went back to work on the script. Along side fixing this I added some extra lines in order to play a camera shutter sound when the player takes a photo, the combination of audio and visual feedback for when the player takes a feedback can still be improved with these features with the only remaining idea for additional function being a camera flash which triggers when taking a photo but from my own experience, flashing lights are not a good combination in VR.
To get the camera freeze to work I created a new script for a secondary camera. The reason why I used a secondary camera is because of the horror aspects of the game. The way it currently works is having a camera that can see objects that are on a certain layer that the player cannot see, the camera takes a picture and then the player can see the horror through the photo. This means that when the player takes a photo they can see the horror before developing the photo which I don’t want to happen. To get around this I have created a secondary camera which functions in the same way but it cannot see the layer of horror objects and the photos that this camera takes aren’t saved anywhere but at when the player takes a picture with this camera, the camera that can see the horror layer takes a photo which can be developed and the player can see the horror aspects.
Getting the camera to play sound was simple, using those two lines of code, the first line is what sound will be played and the second one is in the TakePicture() function and plays the sound when the player takes a picture.
Milestone 7: 10/05 – 17/05
This week I added some text to guide the player in what they need to do to take a picture and how to develop the photos they take. I have also acted on some additional user feedback, two of the points raised in this feedback are the player walking to slow and the player falling off the map. I have increased the speed which was a simple thing to do as the controller for locomotion in VR has a variable that can be changed for the speed the player walks at. For the second piece of feedback, the player falling of the map, I have introduced two fixes, one is invisible boxes around the map and the second is a plane beneath the map and when the player collides with this plane they are sent back to a specific location, currently on top of the bridge at the start of the map.
Milestone 8: 17/05 – 25/05
Over the course of this week I have put a large amount of time into the polish of the game. All of the mechanics needed finished development a few weeks ago and the remaining work was environmental and the aspects of horror in the game. The progression in visual depth and environmental work is highlighted in these two comparison images taken from the same location. Along side environmental work, the game now has audio the different areas of the game as well as for the different actions that player can do.
Asset development and Sourcing – P6
The visuals of a game is built on assets, pieces of the environment, the user interface, the player, and the enemies are all assets and there are different ways of getting those assets for a game. Developing assets or sourcing assets are the main categories. If I where to create assets for use in my game, that is asset development. If I where to use assets I haven’t made, that is asset sourcing. There are dozens of sites where assets can be bought or where they can be downloaded for free using a creative commons license. Unity and Unreal both have their own store where assets can be downloaded and bought but sites such as Sketchfab, Turbo Squid, and CG Trader have a range of 3D models that can be bought or downloaded for free and affiliated with any particular engine. Craft Pix and Game Dev Market are sites where 2D assets can be sourced. Another approach to sourcing assets is to hire someone to develop assets, Fiverr and Yuno Juno are sites where a game artist can be hired for 2D or 3D assets. Hiring a developer to create assets specifically for a game moves away from asset sourcing and into asset development, Expanding on a previous statement, asset development is from within a studio or team and asset sourcing is a third party of pre-built assets. This alternate path could be used for an asset that the game needs but cannot be developed or sourced by other means. If the artist has a particular art style that the game would benefit from, hiring an artist as a team member from one of these sites is a different approach to asset development. Where does this come into game development as a process? During the design and planning stages of a games development, a list of needed assets is created. This list is likely not a comprehensive one and additional assets will likely be needed. This list is created when the game design is far along and set in stone as it is only here that a list of what is actually needed can be made. It is around this time that the development of assets would start or if assets are being sourced, they would be looked for as the game is undergoing whiteboxing and early development. Asset development and sourcing are two different things and more time is needed in order to develop all the assets for a game, asset sourcing is mostly looking through sites of assets for specific assets that match an overall theme and art style. What will I be doing for the development of the VR game? The game will be built using asset sourcing, development of 3D assets is not a skill I have notable strength in and the time gained by sourcing assets can be put to good use by focusing on the development of the game environment, mechanics, or other features of the game. I have used a range of assets all following a simple texture – low polygon style.
“Low Poly Bird (Animated)” (https://skfb.ly/6n6vx) by Charlie Tinley is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/camera-3d-model-1711563
Curtains by Poly by Google [CC-BY] (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) via Poly Pizza (https://poly.pizza/m/aFWefo0cEFo)
Refining the game through QA – M3
Refine a video game through the application of quality control methods, usability testing and revision
Over the course of development, regular testing was done to assure the game worked as intended. I naturally found issues as I developed the game but the issues found by other people are more important to fix as these issues are the ones that come to the players attention immediately. There have been several bugs, crashes, and other issues that I have fixed. The player could fall through the map, when the player walked over certain aspects of the landscape, the floor had no colliders so the player fell through what looks like solid ground. To solve this issue, I added a boundary using hedges which put the playable space into a lore-friendly boundary. Alongside this, if the player does manage to fall through the map, there is a plane that covers the playable world that will reset the players position.
An issue that players encountered often was that they did not know what to do at several sections of the game and to reflect on that feedback, I added several notes around the map to guide the player on their objective. Later on in a different test, it was found that the notes lacked the correct punctuation and misdirected the player, asking them to look to their left when they actually needed to look to their right. When at the ending of the game, some players did not reach the door in time to see the ending play out and so I changed the order of progression so that the ending starts when the player goes to open the door instead of when their is a knock at the door. An occasional issue that changed from version tested was that the player could not always move freely around their home, the issue behind this was that there where several remnants of invisible colliders from prior testing that I had not encountered during my play testing as I did not go to those areas. Sometimes the player was stuck higher up then what they where supposed to be which lead to actions that where at waist to chest height where by their feet or unreachable altogether, to solve this issue I changed the tracking of the headset to not be based off of a specific height but rather to check the distance from the real floor to the headset using out-ward tracking. A handful of quality of life features where also highlighted during QA, the world was visually developed yet the lack of additional audio left something to desired, in the final version of the game there are tow environments that the player is in both of these have a background track and the interactable objects have their own sound, the camera has a shutter sound when they take a photo, the printer and copier have their own sound for photo development.
Marketing and promotion strategies – LO4
Marketing report – P7 P8 M4
There are a multitude of methods to market a game, split up into traditional and viral marketing. Traditional marketing are methods that pre-date the games industry whilst viral are modern methods that utilize current technologies. Examples of these two groups are TV adverts and posters for traditional marketing or stunts, blogs/vlogs, and influencers as modern means of marketing. The two different groups are defined by what they contain as each form of advertisement serves the same purpose overall, its form is specific. Traditional advertising for games is dominated by AAA studios with massive budgets for game development and an equally large budget for marketing. Marketing for horror has taken many different forms, The Blair Witch is a notable strategy. The film based itself in reality and to emphasize that point a website was created that created posed several missing people (not real people) in Black Hills forest, the setting for the film. The website detailed an urban legend of the Blair Witch, and the realism of the project was emphasized by several interviews with the families of the missing people. Alongside this, false information was spread into several forums, the strength of this guerrilla marketing strategy is that it made the story of the film believable which emphasized the horror of the film and allowed a small independent film to earn over £200 million but also create a genre of found footage horror that would continue to be present for many years after the film (Quality Logo Products, 2023). The importance of a market strategy is the result, the reason behind marketing is to make the consumer do something, whether that’s buy a product there and then or leave a lingering thought in their head so that next time when they are doing something related to the product, the advertisement comes to mind and then they act upon marketing later. The game that is being marketed is a VR based horror game, in this game the player is tasked with taking pictures of a forest and then to go back home and develop those photos. The reason behind this is left open for the player to fill the role, however they choose whether the character is a hobbyist photographer or if they work for a nature magazine is the player’s discretion. The market for this game is the VR market on the Quest 2 platform. This platform is what the game has been developed using and although the game will be playable through PCVR. The audience for VR games is limited, though the games industry has a massive influence on VR’s commercial success, the market share of VR in the games industry is around 1% of yearly revenue, a small percentage but still equalling over £2.5 billion in 2022. As the main platform for the game is Meta’s Quest 2, the audience and demographics of that audience are broader than non-VR games as the market for VR games is much smaller and many VR gamers are shown to enjoy a wide range of games and as such, the audience for this horror game is defined by Meta’s demographic research as dedicated gamers. This is a predominantly male audience, 74% being men, with 25-34 being the predominant age range of these players. Using Quantic foundry’s gamer psychographics, the audience that most enjoy this game are likely a Bard with Acrobat as a secondary type, due to the reflexes needed natively to play VR. The Bard is a likely player psychographic as these players are not focused on progression of a character but the development of a world and story. The marketing for this game will consist of a live action reveal trailer, posters that show key artwork for the game and a website. The reveal trailer for the game will depict the actions that the player would do in the game, walk around a forest taking pictures, travelling home, developing the photos and then the person has a shocked face as they look at the photos before the trailer cuts to black leaving the watcher in suspense, the cliff-hanger ending is intended to leave the audience with questions which will lead to them wanting to play through the game to experience it for themselves. Posters for the game will not share much detail about the game but will be used to inform rather than influence, the poster will have art of the game which will give the player some idea of what they would be doing but will have information about platforms the game is on, the age rating of the game, and the release date of the game. The last part of the advertisement is a website like The Blair Witches advertisement, a website will be created detailing a missing person, who the player will be playing as, and about a mysterious force which is the creature that the player sees in game. The way my prospective audience can see the marketing for this game is dependent on the form of marketing. The trailer for the game would be released onto YouTube which can then be ran as an advert on YouTube to show during other videos people watch on the site. The trailer can also be posted onto several social media sites, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit are some of the options for this, these sites have such a wide range of people and communities but the better options for advertisement of a product like this would be Reddit and/or Facebook. Reddit has a wide range of subreddits which are dedicated to specific subjects which means that I can post the trailer to those subreddits or pay to have the trailer advertised on subreddits about VR games, Indie games, and horror games. The same is true for Facebook, there are many communities that made boards which are focused on specific subjects, the benefits of Reddit are the same benefits for Facebook.
What are the benefits of a different marketing campaign? Each game should have its own marketing strategy, every game is not any other game. Different strategies for marketing appeal to different audiences, just like different genres of games appeal to different audiences. The marketing for an indie game will differ from a AAA games marketing, even if the games are the same genre the cost of advertising and marketing means that lower cost marketing strategies, such as guerrilla marketing, are more suited towards a small indie studio as it can provide a much larger amount of coverage than a traditional marketing strategy. The outreach of viral marketing is high risk, if a viral marketing campaign reaches an audience at a critical point, then the gain from a viral campaign is much higher than what could be provided with a similar budget spent on traditional advertising. Another benefit of different advertising is reaching a different audience, targeting an audience that prior marketing did not influence will widen the market and allow for an increase in audience size which may lead to an additional audience that becomes part of a re-occurring fanbase which has loyalty a certain game IP or to the developer of a game. This can be seen with most developers, people who like the Elder Scrolls or some of the Fallout games are highly likely to have an interest in Bethesda’s next game, Starfield. The same is true for Mario and other Nintendo games or Ubisoft and Assassins Creed or Tom Clancy’s. On the other side of benefits, instead of spreading marketing resources to bring in a new audience, focusing resources on a prospective audience for a new game or a new audience for an old game. Focusing resources allows for a studio to bring an audience for a niche genre of games where the funding for marketing is better spent targeting groups that are the intended audience for the game. A wide reach and large coverage is best used with a large budget but focusing on a specific audience and tightening the reach lends itself to a low budget which is useful for indie studios who are more likely to be making a niche game with a small audience. Marketing is only as good as what the budget was spent on, using the correct strategy for the correct budget and then marketing to the correct audience are the struggles of a marketing strategy. AAA games need a larger audience to make money and using a large budget to advertise to a wide coverage allows for more players to know about the game and keep enfranchised players in the franchise. The benefits of reaching a wider audience with the downside of increased cost is that the budget for the game and marketing are much more likely to be recovered and the game be profitable even when millions are spent to develop and market it. Indie games likely don’t have the budget to reach a wide audience with the amount of advertising a larger studio would so the budget is best spent advertising to niche audiences who are the most likely to interact with the marketing. The downside of a limited budget means that advertising that reaches the niche audience is not likely to be seen by other audiences which may enjoy the game and bring in additional revenue for the game. The low budget to develop and market an indie can be recovered and profitable from just the small audience of the game but without access to a larger budget to market a game the full extent of the games potential revenue is not likely to be realised.
Jacob's game journal 