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Did I just waste 3 years?

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Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#451

Post by baud147258 »

rabidrat wrote: post #372
EthanHeilman wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need a massive amount of top notch artwork, music, 3D modelling, shader effects, SFX, etc. to have a polished nice looking game. That takes either superhuman talent or a large team of specialized people beyond yourself. I think gameplay and marketing win here. Consider two gamesL one has great graphics but bad gameplay, the other has bad graphics but great gameplay. The great gameplay game is going to win that…

> one has great graphics but bad gameplay, the other has bad graphics but great gameplay. The great gameplay game is going to win that match up. Yes, in terms of player satisfaction, but no, not in terms of sales. Terrible movies with great explosions out-earn great movies with low budgets every single summer.

> Terrible movies with great explosions

They usually have bigger marketing than low budget movies.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#452

Post by macspoofing »

varjag wrote: post #442
macspoofing wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kid of. You'll still see a small minority of Uber drivers making money and a large percentage breaking even or losing money. It's like that in the real-estate market, where a small minority of agents take in most of the profit and a large number breaking even or losing money. This is also why you see trade groups frequently supporting policies to increase barriers for market entry. In real-estate this means higher an…

Real estate is infrequent high value transactions with high margin/commission. Doubling your real estate sales can well make you rich; doubling your Uber driving would not.

No doubt there are differences between the markets but at a high-level similar forces act on both. That is, in both cases, the vast majority of participants either break-even or lose money. A small minority makes money (and therefore takes in most of the profit to be had). The uber market, because it centralized and has an impartial dispatcher (i.e. Uber corporate), that market will probably be more egalitarian. Overall though, the same dynamics play out.

For real-estate, some numbers that I saw had 51% of licensed real-estate agents making one or zero transaction in the past year.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#453

Post by Rainymood »

fiblye wrote: post #444
fileeditview wrote: post #430

After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem. You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you…

>You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't…

>Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't very spectacular. Stardew Valley takes the formula of an existing series (Harvest Moon).

>To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck. If the right person finds your product and endorses it, quality doesn't matter. You'll get guaranteed sales. It's then that it takes quality to sustain those sales.

I strongly disagree.

Stardew valley did well because it is a fun game with good graphics. That's it, it's fun and addictive, graphics are good and it gets the gestalt right. Stardew Valley is just a truly truly fun game in which you say "just one more day" a bit too often. It's just that much fun. The game is FUN and addictive. Did I mention I had a lot of fun playing it? It has nothing to do with marketing it had everything to do with how I played the game and whether I had fun or not. The first time I picked it up I poured in more than 40 hours in a single week! And that's a lot!

I just read this article about the creator who spent 4 years making Stardew Valley and it is a really interesting read:

https://www.gq.com/story/stardew-valley-eric-barone-profile

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#454

Post by fileeditview »

fiblye wrote: post #444
fileeditview wrote: post #430

After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem. You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you…

>You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't…

Well I disagree a lot with what you are saying. Marketing is important sure. But you cannot market "bad" indie games to be successful. Maybe big gaming companies can do that but even they fail often enough. Luck is an important factor and maybe I would even rate it higher than 5%. I find the number of 90% marketing for an indie game ridiculous.

Stardew Valley is based on existing formula but it is incredibly polished and even people not from this genre play(ed) it. It has something special, similar games don't.

However I think that quality trumps for indie games. There are always exceptions and some "shit" games are hyped because of some Twitch or Youtube coverage. And of course there are some (maybe many?) games that have a high quality and fail. You don't just need quality. But you need it. And you obviously can make a good game in a bad time.

As for the game in the article. I don't want to disparage the author because making a game of this scope is incredible!

However watching a video on his game's site instantly gave me two reasons why the game is not successful.

- The movement of the character looks very stiff and unnatural. - It is missing atmosphere. A lot of repeating textures. No details which makes the whole world uninspiring and uninteresting.

Now these things can be changed and improved still. But in the end the market for this specific type of game really is a hard one. And you compete with game's made by bigger teams and bigger budgets.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#455

Post by BigJono »

fileeditview wrote: post #430

After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem. You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you…

> You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't.

Interesting. I think you're right about half of those. I can't see any way that SDV or Darkest Dungeon could have failed. SDV is a great all round game with tons of polish, and DD has 99th percentile art direction and atmosphere for an indie game.

Mini Metro and Papers Please could absolutely have been dead on arrival. Mini Metro is just an above average puzzle game (of which there are tons), and PP is a really cool and unique game, but there's tons of games with similar art styles and it's impossible to understand what's good about it from a trailer. It's really one of those "you have to play it" games (aka "sells 0 copies in 99 of 100 alternate universes" games...)

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#456

Post by CodeArtisan »

reaperducer wrote: post #291
WalterBright wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't new. It happened before the internet to books, music and film. The internet has just amplified it.

It's 1983 all over again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

>In 1986, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi noted that "Atari collapsed because they gave too much freedom to third-party developers and the market was swamped with rubbish games". In response, Nintendo limited the number of titles that third-party developers could release for their system each year, and promoted its "Seal of Quality", which it allowed to be used on games and peripherals by publishers that met Nintendo's quality standards.

In 2017, 21 games per day were released on Steam and most of them were trash.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#457

Post by fileeditview »

BigJono wrote: post #455
fileeditview wrote: post #430

After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem. You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you…

> You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Interesting. I think you're right about half of those. I can't see any way that SDV or Darkest Dungeon could have failed. SDV…

It's only my opinion and I may well be wrong :)

I agree that Mini Metro is the one of the listed games that I would be least certain about. I think however it is very polished (more than other "puzzle" games) and it strikes a nerve because the design is very familiar to people using metros or buses.

Papers Please is a very special case. It has a very unique idea and that's what makes it stand out. You are right that you need to play it. However if someone played it he will most certainly recommend it and that's the strength of this game.. the implicit "marketing" it conveys.

You obviously always need some marketing be it a only dev log or whatever to at least get the core group interested. For a game like PP that really should suffice to get the ball rolling.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#458

Post by fileeditview »

fileeditview wrote: post #430

After being active in the indie game dev scene for many years I see this kind of story again and again. I see many people ask why didn't it work or others say he should have done better marketing. I think they all don't understand the real problem. You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you…

Since I cannot edit my post. If you are interested in this topic you can test your skill in predicting a game's success here:

https://www.steamprophet.com/

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#459

Post by beaconstudios »

Rainymood wrote: post #453
fiblye wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't…

>Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't very spectacular. Stardew Valley takes the formula of an existing series (Harvest Moon). >To make a successful anything, it's 90% marketing, 5% quality, and 5% luck. If the right person finds your product and endorses it, quality doesn't matter. You'll get guaranteed sales. It's then that it takes quality…

the point is that if the game wasn't well marketed, you wouldn't even know it existed in the first place.

Re: Did I just waste 3 years?

#460

Post by bartread »

fileeditview wrote: post #454
fiblye wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have to look at really successful indie games, such as Terraria, Factorio, Mini Metro, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Papers Please.. and there are many more. If you look at these games do you really think there is an alternative reality where they would not sell many copies? I don't. Very much yes. Most of their success is due to being fortunate enough to get a bunch of coverage. From screenshots, most aren't…

Well I disagree a lot with what you are saying. Marketing is important sure. But you cannot market "bad" indie games to be successful. Maybe big gaming companies can do that but even they fail often enough. Luck is an important factor and maybe I would even rate it higher than 5%. I find the number of 90% marketing for an indie game ridiculous. Stardew Valley is based on existing formula but it is incredibly polished…

I'm inclined to agree. Certainly for games, quality is necessary but not sufficient, and the same goes with marketing. You need them both.

The GP makes a point that pewdiepie picking up this game would result in thousands of sales whereas, although I'm basing this purely on watching the gameplay video, I'd have to say maybe: I don't think pewdiepie, or any other major YouTube reviewer, would pick this up because it's not distinctive enough.

This is especially the case when Infinitroid is going up against games like Dead Cells within the same genre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbfxPptEU6M. Infinitroid is an impressive piece of work but, as a game, I don't think it comes off well in the comparison.

There are markets where quality is of much less importance, such as enterprise software. How else does a company like Deltek survive? Answer: there aren't that many viable competitors and they're all just as crappy. Then it's down to the quality of and investment in the business development and sales process.

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