VR players who want more top-down/diorama games: what's actually keeping you from buying the ones that exist?
Been chewing on this for a while so I figured I'd just ask the people who'd actually know.
I make VR games and the thing I keep circling is the "you're a giant looking down into a tiny world" view. the diorama / tabletop / top-down perspective, whatever you want to call it. I really like it and I want to develop within the genre, but every time I go look at what's actually selling I get a little discouraged.
because when I watch the top grossing stuff on the Quest store it's pretty much all first-person action. Gorilla Tag, Blade and Sorcery, Superhot, that lane. those are the games sitting at the top and staying there. the diorama/tabletop stuff just doesn't really show up there in the same way. Demeo, Moss, Astro Bot did fine, they made enough to be worth making, but they're not top-of-the-chart money and I see many similar titles never hitting breakeven sales or don't hangaround on the charts.
so I'm genuinely trying to figure out if the lens I'm looking through is off, or if this is just how the market is. is there real appetite for top-down/diorama games and it's just underserved, or does the VR audience mostly want to be in the fight with their hands, and the look-down-at-a-little-world thing is always going to be a niche within a niche? Do we need more hybrid experiences like Astrobot?
couple of things I keep going back and forth on:
- is it that first-person action just uses the headset better (hands, presence, movement) and diorama games never quite justify the headset over a monitor?
- Demeo... was that a "diorama game" win, or a "co-op with friends" win that happened to be top down? Most of it's revenue came from the flat-screen port.
- am I just not seeing the diorama games that do well, or are there genuinely very few?
but the part I really care about is hearing from someone who wants more of this stuff or was burned by it before in VR. so:
if you like top-down / diorama / tabletop / strategy-ish VR games, what are you actually playing, and what do you wish existed that doesn't? and if you tried one and put it down, what killed it? was it too slow, controls annoying, not enough depth, price, the "why isn't this just on my monitor" feeling, something else entirely?
basically I want the pain points. the "I keep hoping for X and every game gets it wrong by doing Y" answers. those are gold to me. not looking for nice answers lol, the honest "here's why I bounced" ones are the ones I need.
Thanks all, I really appreciate your time and feedback on this, I've got a couple games scoped out and I'm really just trying to get a gut check here on what my development resources should be going towards. Half of my game designs are split between table-top interactive physics games or Job Simulator-isk room scale physics. Thinking of publishing demos on itch to probe the market further, but figured the feedback here could really help with this gnawing feeling I've been sitting on for years.