I'm a firm believer that there's a market for any type of game you could possibly make. The question is whether you can find it and sell to it. If you like the marketing side and you enjoy the work of selling, then this is probably as good a genre as any. If you want to write a game, chuck it on the portals and start writing something else while you wait for the money to come in, then probably not.
My trivia game does ok, but only with a lot of work ( and a bit of money thrown at it ) to actually get it out there. It never seems to do much on the portals and my guess is that you would see a lot of TV tie-ins on the portals if trivia games did well on the portals in general. Weakest Link, Millionaire, these sort of licenses would go down well if the market was there. There indeed are a couple of them. Jeopardy has been around for a while and another American one whose name escapes me at the moment. I don't have their sales figures but they never seem to trouble any top ten lists so unless they've been extraordinarily slow burners, I doubt they did much business on the portals.
Probably straining your brain with a bunch of trivia questions doesn't count as casual or relaxing for most people. But yeah, if you've got a plan on who you're going to sell it to and how to market to them, I'm sure it could do very well. Also, since the portals haven't been inundated with TV tie-ins, you might well find yourself in a position to get a license. Millionaire and Weakest Link have been done in retail, so the licenses are probably not available, but there's a new crappy quiz on tv every week, so I'm sure with a decent programmer and a decent artist you'd have a good chance of getting a license for Golden Balls or Eggheads or some such. If you wanted it, and if it fit with your marketing plan, that is.
My trivia game does ok, but only with a lot of work ( and a bit of money thrown at it ) to actually get it out there. It never seems to do much on the portals and my guess is that you would see a lot of TV tie-ins on the portals if trivia games did well on the portals in general. Weakest Link, Millionaire, these sort of licenses would go down well if the market was there. There indeed are a couple of them. Jeopardy has been around for a while and another American one whose name escapes me at the moment. I don't have their sales figures but they never seem to trouble any top ten lists so unless they've been extraordinarily slow burners, I doubt they did much business on the portals.
Probably straining your brain with a bunch of trivia questions doesn't count as casual or relaxing for most people. But yeah, if you've got a plan on who you're going to sell it to and how to market to them, I'm sure it could do very well. Also, since the portals haven't been inundated with TV tie-ins, you might well find yourself in a position to get a license. Millionaire and Weakest Link have been done in retail, so the licenses are probably not available, but there's a new crappy quiz on tv every week, so I'm sure with a decent programmer and a decent artist you'd have a good chance of getting a license for Golden Balls or Eggheads or some such. If you wanted it, and if it fit with your marketing plan, that is.