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Does such a thing necessarily exist?
7DRLs[1] are a good example of prototyping gameplay. Some of them ultimately go on to become full fledged games. Cogmind [2] is an excellent example of this. [1] - http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=7DRL [2] - http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Cogmind
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That's clearly not entirely true though, because there are hits. They're just extremely rare, but extremely visible. You can read interviews with the Stardew Valley guy all over where he talks about spending 4 years working solo on his game, refusing to give up on realising his artistic vision. Then he releases and it's a mega-hit. That's a very seductive story. This isn't a problem unique to indie games. Every creat…
Another good take on the phenomenon is (the insufferable) Taleb's discussion of "Black Swan" professions. History (from culture to natural disasters) gets defined by exceptional cases, but your own life in these professions will probably get defined by the typical case. Unfortunately, the industry is set up to stoke and profit handsomely from people mis-assessing their own chances. The people I've known (actors and w…
how so? how does the industry profit from people mis-assessing their own chances?
I wrote this controversial tweet on the matter a while back (embedded here for convenience [1], controversial because it uses averages!) Which might make things seem more or less bleak depending on your perspective, but an important note from this data is that the 2017 median sales were about 2000 units per game (yikes). [1] https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/967249172804943872 Average number of units sold per game on…
Whats the average numbers if only top 20% are taken. To basically reject newbies in 2017 and recent years.
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Whats the average numbers if only top 20% are taken. To basically reject newbies in 2017 and recent years.
Problem with that is everyone thinks they are in the top 20%, by definition they likely aren't.
There is simply so much shovelware/copy and paste games.
'Infinitroid is a roguelike (or rogue-lite) sci-fi platformer with procedurally generated levels and deeply customizable weapons" The problem is that the "roguelike" "metrovania" "platformer" genre is oversaturated with so many indie games, so if you're going to grab some money with it it's better gotta be absolutely perfect. From my first impression I don't know if the mechanics are solid, but the art and sound seem…
Some games are so unpolished or uninspired that they were never going to succeed, but always picking apart "why it failed" makes people think that "if I just do x and y and z, my game will succeed!" Which right now honestly just isn't true; there's too much luck and random chance involved (plus of course other concrete factors like marketing effort etc).
The next argument is usually "well, then why don't I see really good games that aren't successful?" A few years ago that was a sort of reasonable argument, but there are plenty of great and unsuccessful games on Steam now. They just don't show up anywhere.
Coding heads down without any marketing or validation (like selling early release steam copies) and hoping it'll see viral growth is a mistake, for both startups and indie games.
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Another good take on the phenomenon is (the insufferable) Taleb's discussion of "Black Swan" professions. History (from culture to natural disasters) gets defined by exceptional cases, but your own life in these professions will probably get defined by the typical case. Unfortunately, the industry is set up to stoke and profit handsomely from people mis-assessing their own chances. The people I've known (actors and w…
> the industry is set up to stoke and profit handsomely from people mis-assessing their own chances. how so? how does the industry profit from people mis-assessing their own chances?
Then, when they are done, you get to skim big chunks of their revenue with app store, payment processing, etc. Don't forget to sell additional advertisements, to other game devs, on top of the places where you list their games!
All of the profit streams above scale with the number of devs and the total size of their market - not with the success of the average/median dev.
release it
focus on marketing for a while
Treat it as a purely hobby project
Make it into an ethical game experiment
pour a lot more time in, improve graphics and music, add more levels and variety
I feel like there is only one right answer here, and it's just glaringly obvious. Marketing is the thing that needed doing before starting, during the project, and after it's done. Regardless of the trends on Steam, in fact even more so because of the trends on Steam. None of the other options will solve the problem. Releasing it won't help, and making an ethical experiment won't get anywhere without an audience. Pouring more time into graphics will result in greater loss without first gaining an audience.