So I’m working on an open world game based in the 1960s. The game has a lot of features including: mafia families, claimable turfs, interactive heists, vehicle customization, job system, police system, and many more. The problem is the current community is very active, but not very big. The old game usually sat at around 100 people and made decent revenue. I originally made the new game as a way to scale the player base up to a Emergency Response level player count (600-3000 players). The problem is the community wants very specific features. They want families to be group based and only certain families allowed, the police force would be very exclusive, and a few things relating to gamepasses and in-game functions wouldn’t work. This alienates a large portion of people that will find the game, reducing it to its normal player count of around 100. My current idea is to have two separate games of the same game. They would differ in functionality of key features so I can appease the ‘Hard RP’ community while also having a game that can be scaled up in player count.
I think what you will find, is most of your “hard RP” players will end up playing the game that is balanced in a way that more players will be able to, and want to play.
So, what it ultimately comes down to, is which will be more profitable for you in the long run?
It could prove difficult to maintain both games if you do not have a dedicated team.
I would suggest some simple calculations to find out what will be more profitable in the long run, and shoot for that.
You might lose a few die hards but the gain should far outweigh that if the game is good.
The “soft RP” is definitely more profitable, but strictly sticking to that would alienate the entire community that has been waiting months. Also since the differences between the games isn’t that massive, I can alter them fairly easy myself.
If you can handle managing two games like you said you should do just that but i’d say give the more profitable one a bit more priority in regards to updates and other things have the 2nd game there for community who’s been waiting and deal with at a slower pace so they can still get what they want in some regard.
That was my current goal, focus on the profitable ‘Soft RP’. I would make updates for the ‘Soft RP’ then transfer them to the community game. I also want to run promotions for the ‘Soft RP’ since the community game won’t require promotion.