Developing The Travel Fanz PC Game

During the Covid lockdowns of 2020, I developed the Travel Fanz PC game.  However the original version I made wasn't very popular.  There were some technical mouse movement issues with it.  The image quality was inconsistent and it just didn't catch any interest.

At the end of 2021, as Covid restrictions were being relaxed, I rented out my property and went travelling around Europe for 18 months.  I had a great time.  I visited Scotland, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, France, Croatia, Cyprus and the Canary islands.  Videos of my trips can be found on the Spaghetti Code You Tube channel.

On my travels, I decided to redesign Travel Fanz.  Whilst abroad, I had a think about what I was trying to achieve with the game.  I'll try and explain my thought process.

But first of all some numbers from the internet.

1. Over 3 billion people play computer games worldwide on all platforms.  1.75 billion play PC games.  The highest proportion play mobile games and then over 1 billion also play on game consoles.  3 billion is still less than half of the world's population (over 8 billion).  Most people do not or cannot play a computer game.  Many people may view computer games as a waste of time or they simply don't have the hardware to play them.

2. I sell my games on the Steam gaming platform.  I use Steam because they handle copyright protection, regulations and tax payments.  For this service, they take a 30% cut of the sales income.  I consider that a fair deal.  The internet says they have 120 million active users.  That's a big audience.  However 120 million is only 4% of the total worldwide player base.  And less than 2% of the world's population.

3. The most popular AAA PC games are games like Grand Theft Auto and Call Of Duty.  Both have sold over 400 million copies of all versions.  That suggests that there are about 100 million active players of both games.  But 100 million is still only 6% of the entire PC gaming user base.  So even the most successful PC games barely scratch the entire player base.

And then I asked myself what my limitations were.

I make games with a micro budget of between £100 to £200 ($130 to $260).  Successful PC games made for gamers have development budgets from $100k up to many $millions.  I am a one man band.  Most games are developed by a team of 10 to 20 people.  AAA games are made with a team of 200 to 500 developers including programmers, 3D modellers and graphic artists.  It takes me a minimum of 500 hours of work to develop a PC game with Godot.  And that's just coding, configuring and testing the game.  All of the graphical and audio assets I buy off the web.  In conclusion, there is no way I can compete to produce a game that hardcore gamers are going to like over a true commercial game.

So, while I was sipping a beer outside a bar in the Winter sun of Portugal and Cyprus, I asked myself what my strategy should be.

After exploring a few ideas I came to the following conclusions:

I should turn Travel Fanz into a game that almost anyone can play, not just dedicated gamers.  The rules and interface needed to be as simple as I could make them.  Card games are probably one of the simplest and popular designs for making a game.  So, I turned it into a casual, easy to play card game.  And it had to require low hardware resources, so it could played on even low end spec computers.

But having a casual card game isn't by itself going to generate a reasonable revenue.  There is a second part to my strategy.  Travel Fanz is obviously built around the subject of travel and tourism.  Travel is very popular across a broad section of the world's population.  So, the second part of my strategy is to overlap an enjoyment of gaming with the enjoyment of travel.

I intend to do this by connecting the Travel Fanz game to external websites that generate non-gaming revenue.  Most PC computer games are based around the genres of war or fantasy.  Connecting them to  external activities is much harder.  This is why they have to resort to selling in game loot boxes and pay  to play upgrades.  The only genre that succeeds at an external connection is perhaps the sports genre games.

However, there is also a third part to the strategy that I conceived whilst sipping a beer outside a bar in the Med.  I should design the Travel Fanz PC game so it can be easily converted to another subject other than travel and tourism.  I have written the code for Travel Fanz so that it can be reconfigured to another subject and another game.  Subjects I have in mind include science, history, art, medicine and industry.  Maybe even language learning.

I am hoping that this strategy will mean that I can access a very large part of the world's population.  Not just the 3 billion gamers but also the other 5 billion non-gamers.

And finally, I want Travel Fanz to be educational.  Most people struggle to afford travel to foreign destinations. So I wanted Travel Fanz to be a game of discovery, revealing what else is out there in the real world.