Poll: Easiest video game genre to make a good game?

[Thandran]

What is your opinion? And why?

I'd go with FPS. The saturation of the market with them seems to prove my point ... at least a little bit.

Seems like it's the safest bet to make a semi - good looking game with shooting and a gimmick mechanic, call it a day and let the money roll in.

I may be a bit harsh ... but I'm just tired of majorly seeing AAA shooters. I'd like to say though that I still value the genre, it has made a lot of the best games (my opinion) that I've had the privilege to play.

You?

P.S. I probably didn't list all of the genres ... but with only 8 possibilities I'm a bit limited. Sorry.

Edit: Still trying to figure out the best way to present the options. It's a work in progress.

 

[madwarper]

None.

Every genre has a myriad of things that it has to get right to be good. Just watch the EC episode about making a puzzle game.

Also, just because they're a flood of FPS's with large budgets doesn't make them good. It's just a sea of mediocre brown.
The last good FPS was GoldenEye/Perfect Dark on the N64.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

You forgot platformer. The majority of the time they're pretty good although it helps that you have an open imagination.

 

[Thandran]

You forgot platformer. The majority of the time they're pretty good although it helps that you have an open imagination.

With only 8 options I was really limited ... but yeah ... platformers are quite a big genre. Considering the were THE genre in the past.

 

[AndrewF022]

Platformers are pretty easy to make, almost anybody who's ever done a programming course/subject has probably made one to some degree. And people seem to love platforming, hell, Mario is still going strong today and he has not really changed at all. Simple, fun.

Sidescrolling 'shoot-em ups' are not to difficult either, games like Life Force (salamander) for example. Many budget NES/Atari titles from the 80's used this format (you could call them the FPS' of the 80's if you so desire). hell the infamous Action 52 contains about 20 of em haha. These games, even when made poorly can still have some enjoyment to be found, theres just something about shooting things (preferably in space) that's so satisfying.

 

[darth.pixie]

I'd go with FPS, because it's easier to get a huge success with them than platformers, not because of how easy they are to make.

Advertise beautiful graphics, some enemy that comes along, make an antihero-looking protagonist and there you go.

 

[veloper]

Interactive fiction, provided you can write. Steal then tweak and rephrase a couple decent puzzles and fit them in your story. It's one skill.
The rest is easy. No graphics required and free interpreters like inform make coding easy.

Next is shmups, either sidescrolling or vertical scrolling.
Spaceships and alien blobs don't require much animation. You don't even have to draw different sides of the sprites. Everything is always facing the same way.
Relatively easy to code and to test. No story required. People love them. The only thing you won't succeed in is standing out from the crowd.

 

[DoPo]

FPS - No, not really. Oversaturation of the market actually hinders you, even with that aside, it's quite easy to make a shit game.
Action - adventure - possibly
RPG and MMORPG - no. This might be the hardest one to pull off.
Sports and Racing - EDIT: huh? I forgot this. But it's still not simple enough. Maybe racing, though - that has potential.
Platformer - yes, pretty much. Keep it as simple as you need it and add some cool stuff - success.
RTS - no, again, similar to the RPG, it's pretty hard to pull off.
Simulator - not exactly "hard", per se, but there is a lot of variables you need to calibrate and think about.
Point'n'click - yes, also pretty easy. Can't get simpler than that, and it's a plus. However, it doesn't mean that the game would be good unless you put some thought in it.


The platformer wins, I think - it is slightly easier than point'n'click games.

 

[Sneezeguard]

RTS's always seem to do well, it's a very rare thing to see a bad RTS

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well maybe it is FPS at the moment since the standards are so damn low, but 99% of those I wouldn't call good at all.

The actual easiest one to make good is probably point and click because the mechanics are so very simple you can do anything with it.
Problem is the standards in that genre are absurdly high, plus the market isn't big so people will only ever put money into the top cream which makes it incredibly hard to succeed.

 

[Nazgual]

None.

Every genre has a myriad of things that it has to get right to be good. Just watch the EC episode about making a puzzle game.

Also, just because they're a flood of FPS's with large budgets doesn't make them good. It's just a sea of mediocre brown.
The last good FPS was GoldenEye/Perfect Dark on the N64.

I second this. A more relevant question might be which genre is the easiest to make a functional game for but even then I doubt there is a stand out correct answer.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

I can think of plenty of poor and mediocore examples for all these genres (except RTS and simulation; since I haven't have much experience with those, although I imagine both are difficult to do well), indicating you really have to put some effort into making a truly good game.

I guess I'd go for sports and racing. Not because those are easy to make per se, but EA's practice of releasing minor updates of their sports titles every year (which individually are generally pretty good because their previous instalment were) which I'd say is very lazy and easy.

 

[KINGBeerZ]

i really don't think it's quite as easy to make a good platformer as people think it is, I mean team Sonic hasn't done one in years *Zing*

 

[VladG]

Platformer. FPSs can't get away with shitty graphics anymore and that drains away too many resources. The effort required to render current gen graphics is too great for anyone except AAA companies to have the resources to invent in gameplay as well.

Platformers on the other hand work really well in 2d, and can very easily adopt a retro look and so devs can focus on developing gameplay.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

i really don't think it's quite as easy to make a good platformer as people think it is, I mean team Sonic hasn't done one in years *Zing*

Exactly. Just look at the platformers made in the late 80's and early 90's, by far most of them are crap or very mediocore. I think people will look back the same way to current-day First Person Shooters.

 

[Aerosteam]

I'd say the sports/racing genre, there's nothing to it except sporting and racing.

There's so little points you need to pay attention to and the ones that do get a lot of attention.

You don't need to worry about the story like an RPG.
You don't need to worry about balancing like an RTS.
You don't need to worry about how many things that is featured in gameplay, like most other genres.

 

[Xanadu84]

Probably point and click. Not saying its easy, but I imagine that it would be the most straightforward from the perspective of coding. Plus, you can make puzzles that involve very specific win states involving very specific objects and actions, and still tell a compelling story. No need to balance large systems with emergent complexity and gameplay. There's probably the smallest hurdle to jump between, "Think of game" and "Have a coded, finished game"

 

[the abyss gazes also]

Ug... why did you have to mesh RPG with MMOs. I would go with stand alone RPG's. MMO's, though, have a lot of baggage that I don't personally don't like.

 

[RatRace123]

Platformer I'd say. While it's certainly not easy to have a good, creative, level design, it's still a relatively simple genre for an inexperienced programmer to create a game in, so by that logic than it must be a relatively simple genre to create a good game in.