[HN Gopher] Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and fa...
___________________________________________________________________
Releasing an indie game on 3 consoles at once and failing
financially (2016)
Author : plateofsoup
Score : 303 points
Date : 2023-06-19 03:34 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (juicybeast.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (juicybeast.com)
| CodinM wrote:
| I'd play that. Thanks for showing this.
| diabolo96 wrote:
| The problem of indie games is that indie devs with no prior
| knowledge of programming, no prior artistic talent, either in
| terms of crafting an enticing narrative and/or graphical design
| wake up one day, decide to drop of university/quit their job to
| create their big commercial "dream game".
|
| The problem is that they often jump over the first step of
| learning how to make a game and go straight to publish their
| barely passable buggy mishmash of half baked ideas with no
| quality control or beta-testing done.
|
| What they first should've done is make and publish a few small
| but fun games for free, learn from their mistakes and user inputs
| and use their new knowledge to make a bigger, better game. If
| enough people tell them that it's worth buying it then they can
| sell it .
| rideontime wrote:
| What part of the article gives you the impression that this was
| the case?
| diabolo96 wrote:
| i meant in general.
| rideontime wrote:
| Ah. Did you have any opinion on the article?
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| [dead]
| diabolo96 wrote:
| When i was a kid I spent hours and hours playing Burrito
| Bison on Newgrounds so I know Juicy Beast know how to
| make games, really good and enjoyable games.
|
| As for the article, it was an interesting read and I
| almost predicted every raison why the game was a failure
| but I don't agree with some:
|
| 1.The "strike a deal first" one is nonsensical. Get
| famous enough on one platform and the sales will be as
| good on the others. 2. Only one console at a time
| should've been obvious ( currently it's the Switch first,
| others later)
|
| I also think that a significant part of the failure comes
| from the fact that the market was saturated with party
| games at the time as i remember seeing a lot of ads about
| similar games and then it just stopped. Also, these kind
| of games are not really that interesting and become
| repetitive very fast and no single-player / online multi-
| player killed it before it was even out.
| diabolo96 wrote:
| I should've said first that this is comment was a rant about
| the general state of the indie game dev industry and not
| related to the article but i can't edit my comment for some
| reason
| rasz wrote:
| >The problem is that they often jump over the first step of
| learning how to make a game and go straight to publish their
| barely passable buggy mishmash of half baked ideas with no
| quality control or beta-testing done.
|
| Hey, it worked for Adam Nickerson! Felicia Day and Adam
| Nickerson play Poosh XL
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEbLXKKkvSQ
|
| http://www.adamvisionstudios.com
| bequanna wrote:
| Is there any indication that games that do have excellent art
| and storytelling are much more likely to succeed?
| diabolo96 wrote:
| They dont need to be excellent but at least not dumpster
| worthy. Is that too much to ask ? for game stores to not
| being flooded with bug-ridden half baked asset flips or
| cringy VNs
| antigirl wrote:
| I loved this game and purchased it on PS4 as soon as it was
| available. Had some fun games with friends too. Surprised to see
| it didn't sell well. Theres not many fun instant pick up and play
| local multiplayer games.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _At the end of the day, we think the biggest factor is because
| it's a local-multiplayer game with no online play._
|
| I actually played the game with the OUYA and then on PC. I think
| it failed simply because it wasn't super fun. We consistently got
| bored after 10mins of playing it.
|
| Compare it to Towerfall. Also local multiplayer only and released
| initially for the OUYA. We played it for hours on end and I think
| it was a great commercial success.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Seems that even though Towerfall was indeed the best-selling
| game on the OUYA, it only sold 7000 units there, while making
| actual money on other platforms [0].
|
| [0] https://www.engadget.com/2014-04-29-towerfall-tiny-sales-
| ouy...
| YChacker100 wrote:
| [dead]
| a13o wrote:
| I was deeply involved in the indie scene during this time and
| played many of these local multiplayer games at GDC indie events,
| weekly barcade meetups, game jams, Indiecade, etc. I think this
| misled many developers. Your peers are together often, able to
| play local multiplayer games, and giving you a false sense of
| market. I played hundreds of hours of these games in that
| setting, but never once booted them up at home on my own couch.
| If you weren't careful you could fall into the game developer
| version of a comedian's comedian.
|
| One gameplay critique I think this post-mortem missed was that
| the keep-away mechanic at the heart of the game is a zero-sum
| mechanic. One player is keeping away, and having fun; while all
| other players are being kept away from, which is frustrating.
| They addressed this a little in the fuller release but I think
| keep-away itself is mechanically bankrupt so even a gorgeous coat
| of paint can't bring it around.
|
| All of the other local multiplayer 'successes' from this period
| were distilled fighting games - Towerfall, Nidhogg, Killer Queen,
| Duck Game, etc. These allowed for new players to enjoy themselves
| even in defeat. For Toto Temple, a game of mixed newbs and vets
| would turn into a vet running circles for the full time limit and
| then someone suggesting we switch to Towerfall.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| [dead]
| Solvency wrote:
| "Your peers are together often, able to play local multiplayer
| games, and giving you a false sense of market."
|
| Well this sounds like fun. Like the old social arcade
| experience, but made of people playing fresh indie multiplayer
| games. Even in prototype form.
|
| Why not make THAT a business model? If my town has a little
| cafe with a few bit screens and controllers, and every night
| (or even once a week), I could turn up with a bunch of gamers
| and were all playing novel small games together, that could be
| really fun.
|
| The games could be in varying stages of completion. It wouldn't
| matter. Because it'd feel like an intimate setting of people
| just hanging out and socializing and playing things.
| honkycat wrote:
| In PDX there is "Portland Indie Game Squad" and they actually
| do this.
|
| Also in PDX: Retro Game Bar, Ground Kontrol, Quarterworld...
| there are others that host fighting game tournaments etc...
|
| Unfortunately, it just doesn't make money for the people
| putting in work developing the game.
| madsbuch wrote:
| I just started gaming again after 10 years not doing it. I got a
| Switch, though I usually would have gamed on a PC. It has really
| narrowed in my reason to game: The story.
|
| Usually, I would not have bought into franchises, but I am giving
| in. The fact that Zelda already has so much culture, makes it a
| hit for me.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| First the Ouya, which turned out to be a total flop, and then the
| Wii U, which Nintendo marketed so badly many people thought it
| was an extension for their Wii. This company sure made some
| unlucky bets!
|
| Throughout the article I kept coming back to how generic the name
| sounds. It conjured pictures if the digital slot machines that
| are free mobile games, with gameplay loops mostly consisting of
| waiting or paying money to skip wait timers. The name "Toto"
| being associated with gambling sure doesn't help either. I
| would've never clicked a link with that name no matter how good
| you make your game look.
|
| A lot of genuine effort and care went into this but with an
| uninviting name and, by their own admission, a complicated
| control screen, no amount of art or advertising would've
| convinced me as a consumer to buy it.
|
| This would've been a smash hit on a flash games site, and it
| would've probably sold well if Ouya had succeeded.
|
| One thing I find interesting is that online multi-player wasn't
| added as a feature during development. I understand how
| overworked the lone dev must've been, but adding an easy way to
| play with friends would've surely boosted sales.
|
| I also wonder if the game would've gotten more sales on a
| handheld. I think the 3DS might've made this a great little party
| game, especially if you follow the "stream a limited version of
| the game to your friends" model that made DS local multi-player
| so interesting. Now, with the Switch out, with its built-in local
| multi-player features, the game might've gotten a popularity
| boost as well.
|
| It's sad to see a game made with so much love fail, but with
| problems in do many key areas I'm surprised it took them this
| long to admit defeat.
| ido wrote:
| We kept improving the game afterwards and released the final
| version of Toto Temple Deluxe on PS4, Xbox One, Wii U
| and Steam on September 29th 2015.
|
| They've released on all the at-the-time mainstream platforms, I
| don't think the choice of consoles is what I'd blame anything
| on.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Wii U, which Nintendo marketed so badly many people thought
| it was an extension for their Wii
|
| I can't decide if that's better or worse than Xbox. Xbox One
| isn't the original Xbox? And do I want Series S or X?
| zirgs wrote:
| Microsoft decided to name their consoles that way, because
| they didn't want their console to be one number behind the
| PlayStation.
| fomine3 wrote:
| They solved it on 360. Its successor should be 361.
| ginko wrote:
| They also could have gone with Super Xbox or Xbox64.
| happymellon wrote:
| XBox 365.
| chihuahua wrote:
| Xbox N Enterprise Edition
| sbm_au wrote:
| They could have used increasing rotational degrees - Xbox
| 360, 540, 720, 900 and so on. Just like action sports,
| very extreme.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Of course, and then, when they're ready to go all-in,
| they'll backfill Xbox 180 /s
| alpaca128 wrote:
| So instead they chose three numbers behind the PlayStation,
| and 359 numbers behind its predecessor? Not sure I follow
| that reasoning. Not to mention they could just jump to the
| same number as PlayStation used, just like MS also skipped
| Windows 9.
|
| That said all the jokes at the time likely helped make it
| clear to everyone that the Xbox One was the new model. And
| Series S/X is just two letters, nobody seems too confused
| by that.
| zirgs wrote:
| They chose a naming system that's not based on sequential
| numbers to both differentiate themselves from SONY and
| also to avoid being one number behind. Nintendo is doing
| the same.
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| They should have skip a number and aligned on PS numbers
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Xbox names are the worst.
|
| Just look at these names:
|
| one, one S, one X, series X and series S
|
| I had so much trouble figuring out which xbox was "the new
| one" when I considered buying one last year.
| dm_me_dogs wrote:
| I'm a pretty big supporter of Xbox (had every console
| they've so far released, heavy into Game Pass) and my god
| they need to get naming right. They should have called it
| the "Xbox 4" or something to make it simple.
|
| Though, Microsoft is never one for making names simple.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Xbox naming is terrible but at least their target audience
| seems to know how to keep them apart. I don't think that can
| be said about Nintendo's audience, which since the Wii has
| always seemed not as dedicated to console gaming as their
| competitors' audience is. I've never heard of a die-hard Wii
| fan, at least, though with the Switch they made up a lot of
| ground.
| happymellon wrote:
| And at a glance I have no idea whether S is better than One
| without going to Wikipedia.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > First the Ouya, which turned out to be a total flop,
|
| They still paid for the initial development, so it is hard to
| argue that was a bad place to start.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's a good deal for sure, but it didn't do the creative work
| that is the game any favors. It basically killed off the
| exclusivity deal that indie studios can often get for on-
| platform advertising.
| mike_hock wrote:
| > Wii U Wii U Wii U Wii U
|
| DAE this sounds like somebody mocking a siren?
| magic_hamster wrote:
| > I understand how overworked the lone dev must've been
|
| Not sure that you do, especially when offering "just add
| multiplayer". Clear sign that you are not a solo game
| developer.
| coder_san wrote:
| I agree. Anyone developer who has had to work on multi-player
| games will never say "just add multi-player". The whole way
| you approach the game changes massively.
| ilyt wrote:
| It was a massive mistake in game like this tho, the mistake
| many other games like that died by.
|
| Appeal of buying essentially party game where you need other
| people in same room to get the most of it (games like that
| are rarely good singleplayer) is very low, even worse in
| pandemic.
|
| Not saying it would make game succeed, as that's still 90%
| marketing in oversaturated indie market, but it is a thing
| that would make me go "nope" if I saw what I like then read
| that it is local-only, hell, it did in many cases.
| raincole wrote:
| I'm still quite surprised by the fact that Overcooked
| succeeded without an online multiplayer mode.
|
| *I don't know how successful Overcooked was, but it was
| successful enough for them to make Overcooked 2
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Of course online multi-player is difficult to pull off but
| with console sale numbers for the Wii U I think the time
| spent on porting the game to the Wii U could've been used to
| get online multi-player to work. They spent an estimated 50%
| of their two years development time on a console that was
| pretty much a failure at the time the game came out.
|
| The PS4 was well ahead of any other console in sales long
| before the game was released onto the Wii U. I don't know
| their exact sales distribution, but I think a better game on
| PS4 and maybe Xbox One would've sold a lot more copies.
| koromak wrote:
| They only have a single programmer...
| ezconnect wrote:
| Re-release it with the title "Get the Goat"
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| > You also need to have a good title that is both
| memorable/catchy and describes the game well.
|
| I feel like "get the goat" was just screaming to the be the name
| of this title. (they even use this term in some of their
| marketing)
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Goato Temple
| xeonmc wrote:
| There are only two hard problems in computer science...
| bequanna wrote:
| P=NP and Sales?
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Such a missed opportunity, the current "Toto Temple Deluxe"
| sounds like a generic casino game
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, or like 90s / 2000s 'addictive' puzzle games that later
| were converted into Facebook and then mobile cash cows.
| raincole wrote:
| It's just my pet peeve, but I absolutely hate the titles with
| "Deluxe" in them.
|
| Maybe it's okay for a game that has lots of DLCs and a Deluxe
| version that comes with all (or the most important) DLCs. But
| nothing else.
| Ekaros wrote:
| In general have added new stuff and upgraded things in
| general for already well known name.
|
| But from initial launch? Just no, that is just stupid.
| nathannecro wrote:
| I thought the exact same thing when I saw their second trailer.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I've played a ton of Towerfall (4 player battling), some
| BattleBlock Theatre (vaguely similar), Spelunky (thematically
| similar), and my biggest takeaway at least from the trailer is
| that it took me a really long time to figure out what the goal
| of the game was. If I was browsing through youtube or steam I
| would have clicked away.
|
| I agree that the name of the game contributes a lot to this
| confusion, although even "get the goat" fails to describe what
| is going on in the game.
|
| I think when people see a game and are contemplating purchasing
| it they envision what kind of fun they will be having with it.
| And gameplay footage with unclear goals just isn't enough here.
|
| "Keepaway" style games aren't super common (maybe it's in a
| Mario Party minigame? I've also played a version of this with
| my kid in roblox [1], where it's one minigame among many).
| Maybe along those lines this title would have succeeded with
| more variety.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/mcH36Ld6x3A?t=22
| [deleted]
| keyle wrote:
| When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime time to
| get indie games out. The whole indie market thing was hot.
|
| But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game
| engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with
| developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on
| serial games and releasing top quality indie games.
|
| It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where we failed.
|
| Steam says that there is no better or worse day of the week or
| month to plan your release... That should be your first red flag.
| There are about 30-35 quality titles being put out on steam
| alone, every day of the week, weekends included. Other markets
| are a bit of a joke, they hardly fly on the revenues radar,
| unless you have a special deal with them for increased
| visibility.
|
| You see the title you've worked on for the last 6 months solid
| just fly off the list quicker than you can say woof.
|
| I know for a fact (we talk) that most indies don't make a 10th of
| their budget back. It's a marketeting's game now. So you probably
| want a publisher to be in charge of that... and we're back to the
| old days of non-indies, or essentially small studios.
|
| "True" Indie games are dead, by the law of numbers and
| algorithms. Even people that saw success in the past are now
| having a hard time pushing signal through noise.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Feels a lot like what happens with electronic music producers.
| There is a bunch of highly taltented sound designers out there,
| putting their hard work on BandCamp or whatever platform is
| friendly enough to make some bucks on. But almost nobody can
| make a living off selling releases. Almost everyone has to tour
| and play live gigs to make some money. And I guess the biggest
| reason why it is so hard to make money with releases is the
| same as with indie games, too many people trying to get a piece
| of the same cake... Paying fans are rare.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by "true" indie games. Valheim
| [1][2], by any reasonable interpretation of the word, is a
| completely indie game. It was made almost entirely by a single
| guy in his spare time after work, well at least until it blew
| up and he was able to expand the studio. And it was released
| with little more than a post on itch.io - 'Hey guys here's my
| game and a couple of pics. Let me know what you think.' And of
| course it did exceptionally well, because it's just a very good
| game.
|
| In my opinion now is currently the absolute golden age for
| indie development of all sorts. But the catch is you actually
| need to make really good stuff. Just making a functioning game
| isn't really sufficient. There's even still a huge market for
| stuff that looks like it came from a 24 hour game-jam
| codeathon, but it needs to be _fun_. Check out Forager [3] for
| instance. As a warning, play that game for an hour - and you
| 'll be playing it for 10 (or 100) because it's _really_ just
| insanely fun.
|
| And that's really all it is. The "problem" is that it's just
| become really (relatively) easy to make games. And so just
| making a functioning complete game is no longer any sort of
| real achievement. It needs to be fun. Make a game where people,
| with no connection or bias for you, will _organically_
| recommend it - and you 're going to succeed.
|
| [1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/892970/Valheim/
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valheim#Development
|
| [3] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/751780/Forager/
| freeCandy wrote:
| Valheim and such games are very much exceptions to this, for
| every successful indie game released, there is an ocean of
| unsuccessful games out there and that may be equally as good,
| or even better than Valheim.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| Can you fuel your argument with some examples? I hear the
| argument in similar forms a lot, how a lot of good games
| failed because of bad marketing or just no luck. But I
| never see any examples. The response I get to my question
| is usually "I don't know of an example precisely because it
| never got popular", but I find it very fallacious - if
| there's thousands of good games out there, that failed to
| be popular, surely you would stumble into a few of them. A
| claim that a game either is popular and makes money, or is
| not popular and no one ever hears about it - is a false
| dichotomy.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I have a one that immediately comes to mind:
|
| Chicory, A Colorful Tale is way less successful than it
| should be. It's a cross between a Zelda style game
| (upgrades, bosses, dungeons, exploration) with a coloring
| book (you color the world) with a deeply touching plot
| about impostor syndrome and the pressures of being
| labeled a talented artist. It has a huge number of
| accessibility features, co-op mode, an amazing ost,
| difficulty settings, runs like butter, and is all in all
| a super polished game. IMO this was GOTY shit and I don't
| know why it didn't take off.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| I must admit it's a very good example, overwhelmingly
| positive on Steam with 1987 ratings, so it's hard to
| argue the game is bad.
|
| If I compare Chicory, A Colorful Tale (A) to Stardew
| Valley B:
|
| A: 97%/1987 B: 98%/483781 on Steam
|
| A: 93.2%=2317 B: 97.33%=562`831 on Steam.db
|
| I don't know where the disparity comes from, but those 4
| % are significant. And here's something even more
| important:
|
| A: 8 in game B: 36`293 in game
|
| 8/1987 = 0.4%, whereas 36`293/483781 = 7.5%! Stardew
| Valley, it seems, has 18.75x more replayability (which
| absolutely makes sense just based on genre).
|
| Also price:
|
| A: $14 to $20 B: $7.49 to $15
|
| Shouldn't be surprising a game that is considerably
| cheaper, is more fun and provides that fun for an order
| of magnitude more time, sells better. It also was
| released earlier, so it got more sales from the "tail"
| sales, as well as it provided more value in the form of
| updates. In fact when I look now at the player count
| history, it's uneven, perhaps driven by updates, but the
| tendency is that it grows!
|
| One more thought: maybe Stardew Valley makes for a better
| streaming content for some reason?
|
| Perhaps Chicory deserves less sales than Stardew Valley,
| but still considerably more than it got? Maybe its good
| reviews come from the fact the game reaches the niche
| very well, it's clear what you do in the game (paint),
| but maybe this niche is just small?
|
| I can admit I never heard about this game, despite its
| very high rating.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I wouldn't compare Chicory with Stardew: for one, Stardew
| was genre-defining (as some people call things
| soulslikes, a whole heap of games are trying to capture
| Stardew). Replay ability of Stardew is part of its
| specific genre niche, where Chicory is again more like
| Zelda, in which replay ability isn't a huge selling point
| to the game (although I find chicory just as fun as a
| Zelda to replay). Additionally stardew expanded multiple
| times throughout its development. I'm certain chicory's
| devs would've done the same had it had it's deserved
| attention at launch.
|
| Now that I'm looking at my steam library I have some
| other games I think deserve more attention:
|
| - Citizen Sleeper is not unlike Disco Elysium or a visual
| novel. But its mix of space opera and cyberpunk dystopia
| is extremely compelling. Excellent OST, and heartfelt
| characters. You get a real sense of the desperation and
| humanity of the impoverished, the undocumented, the
| refugee. The word building is deep and expansive (a
| sequel is coming, to not enough fanfare imo).
|
| - Umarangi Generation is a photography game where you are
| playing as a propagandist during an ecologically-vibed
| apocalypse. You explore scenes of war, poverty, luxury,
| and terror, taking photographs all the while for the
| cause. The capacity to tell a deeply layered story with
| multiple political factions and economic groups merely
| through environment is stunning. The expansion is
| absolutely seething with anger.
| TylerE wrote:
| Huh? Stardew is blatantly, ahem, "inspired by" the
| Harvest Moon series. It was mainly successful because it
| wasn't a Nintendo exclusive.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I know that, but most people compare such titles to
| Stardew and _not_ harvest moon.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| I have no hidden agenda here, so I compared, I admit,
| peaches to oranges, Chicory to Stardew, just because
| Stardew was the first popular indie game I found to
| compare with. Feel free to choose a successful indie game
| within the same genre as the Chicory, and then we can try
| to analyze the differences again.
|
| > Stardew was genre-defining
|
| What is the argument here, that it was very good? That's
| exactly my point, it was very successful because of how
| good it was (rather than lucky).
| rasz wrote:
| CGA, trauma inducing palette doenst exactly scream wide
| audience accessibility. This game has a very strong and
| distinct art style.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| That said, procedurally generated games have a much harder
| time failing.
| MattRix wrote:
| This is really not true.
| notThrowingAway wrote:
| >Forager
|
| This is offtopic but the forager lead dev is often criticized
| for claiming to be a solo dev and taking credit for other
| people who worked on the game.
|
| https://indiecator.org/2021/04/14/forager-the-rise-and-fall
| cubefox wrote:
| Of course there are _some_ successful indie games! But the
| only relevant thing is the probability that any one game will
| be successful. That chance is very small.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I don't see what the average would matter, because not all
| games are created equal. It's kind of like the Steven King
| / Richard Bachman experiment [1]. The question he was
| answering was not how likely a random author was to
| succeed, but how likely a good author was to succeed. So it
| seems that the important question is what are the odds of a
| genuinely good game going unrecognized, flopping
| completely? What are the odds of a Valheim failing? And I
| think that percent is extremely near zero.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman
| cubefox wrote:
| I think the probability is quite high that even fairly
| good games will flop, because there are so many indie
| developers, and because the tools are so advanced. So
| only the best of the best will succeed, or those which
| satisfy some unique niche, or which somehow already have
| an established brand.
| somenameforme wrote:
| If you're correct, then this would mean there are
| countless genuinely great games on e.g. Steam going
| completely untouched that would otherwise be megahits if
| people simply knew about them. This sets up countless
| _amazing_ commercial opportunities if you are correct,
| that are seemingly just going completely untapped. But
| for the more simplistic purposes of our discussion, can
| you think of any particularly compelling examples?
|
| Basically I'm arguing that there is no black swan. It's
| not really hard to refute it, if I'm wrong, because all
| you need to do is point to one. I suppose the inevitable
| outcome might be we then hem and haw back and forth about
| whether something is "good", but well - at least it's a
| reasonable evidence based starting point, yeah?
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Among Us would be the most famous example of this.
|
| The game was unknown for ~2 years (Released 2018, picked
| up ~2020) until it got picked up by streamers and was
| catapulted into the spotlight.
|
| Why is it so hard to believe there are more games out
| there like this? These kind of markets are nowhere near
| efficient.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Among Us was released in November 2018, saw regular and
| rapid gains in users for nearly every month that it was
| released, and then went to the moon (briefly) after it
| became a streaming fad. I just don't think this is even
| an appropriate example?
|
| Keep in mind the way that word of mouth works, it's about
| the percentages - not the userbase size. Your active
| userbase growing 30% a month doesn't look impressive when
| that translates to 3 new people, but so long as that 30%
| is reflective of organic word of mouth spread, that's
| going from 10 users to 5500 in a couple of years. Their
| userbase had increased by orders of magnitude before
| streamers came, and there's no reason to think it
| wouldn't not have continued to grow rapidly.
|
| And that's one of the great things about games. People
| love to talk about them, share what they're playing, and
| also of course seek out those hidden gems. Players do
| this for fun, others like publishers do it with a big
| profit motive. If you think and can demonstrate that the
| market is nowhere near efficient, then you could be
| making a killing off of it.
|
| [1] - https://steamcharts.com/app/945360
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| If you look at the Twitch viewership on the chart you can
| see that it led player count significantly even before
| the massive blow up. There's a 26k viewer spike in 2019
| then consistently 2k+ viewers in 2020 before it went
| vertical.
|
| Without content creators spotlighting it I highly doubt
| the game would have gone anywhere. The developers even
| say "we're really bad at marketing":
| https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/09/among-us-improbable-
| rise-t....
|
| The whole article is a goldmine: _"We stuck with Among Us
| a lot longer than we probably should have from a pure
| business standpoint," said Willard. "We tried to quit and
| should have quit several times."_.
|
| It's clear they got lucky here. This kind of organic
| growth doesn't happen often, even with very good games.
|
| > _If you think and can demonstrate that the market is
| nowhere near efficient, then you could be making a
| killing off of it_
|
| The market being inefficient doesn't necessarily mean
| it's easy to exploit. A publisher is far better
| positioned than I am to "[make] a killing off of it".
| strken wrote:
| I think you're taking about two different things: a game
| rising from a small number of players to a massive
| phenomenon, and a game getting that small number of
| players to begin with.
|
| The HN analogy is a SaaS company struggling to become
| profitable vs struggling to find the first ten or hundred
| users. Profitability is very hard, finding a big enough
| niche is very hard, but...ten users?
| cubefox wrote:
| If you pick the 10 largest apples out of 100 random
| apples, then those will, with high probability, be
| smaller than the 10 largest apples out of 1000 random
| apples. This should be dead obvious to anyone.
| Xen9 wrote:
| I agree with you and Keyle.
| dbspin wrote:
| You're describing survivorship bias. It's impossible for you
| to know about the great games that you haven't heard about.
| I'd suggest listening to the devs on this one. I can attest
| that 'the cream rises to the top' isn't remotely true in
| areas I know more about - short stories, movies, music. There
| is indeed lots of cream (in addition to lots more crap with
| money behind it) at the top. there's also lots of cream, vast
| gallons to stretch the metaphor, sinking always. Especially
| now perhaps, in our era of vastly greater content production
| and a well established arms race of advertising and
| marketing.
| karpierz wrote:
| Can you point to some great movies that didn't see any
| success this year?
| strken wrote:
| Which great games are pulling less than 1k steam sales? Or
| have just a handful of reviews? I've found some games I
| like with very low review count, but they're all clunky and
| whimsical, or extremely short, or can't be played without
| pestering the people you live with, or shoot themselves in
| the foot in other ways.
|
| At some point the needle to hay ratio becomes untenable and
| searching the whole haystack is no longer possible for a
| single person. You can still randomly sample the stack,
| though, and rely on the opinions of others to find what you
| personally missed, and good games with mass appeal _do_
| tend to rise a little bit from random players stumbling
| across them; maybe not to blockbuster status or even
| profitability, but enough that a game with a marketing
| budget should get more than 21 Steam reviews if it 's
| genuinely appealing. There's really not a lot of cream at
| the very bottom.
| somat wrote:
| Valheim is not an indie game, it is published by coffee stain
| studios. Now it is a small dev team, and they defiantly take
| the slow burn approach to development. Both common traits to
| independent developers. And good for coffee stain publishing
| to let them develop this way. But... I don't think I am being
| too pedantic in saying indie means independently published,
| and if you have a company publishing your title... you are
| not indie.
| m_0x wrote:
| None of coffee stain studios are AAA games.
|
| I think there's a blurry line that separates indie games to
| non-indie games. Sure stardew valley is an indie game and
| God of War is not. But those are the extremes of the
| spectrum.
|
| Is Hades an indie game? It is developed and published by
| Supergiant Games, but at this point is really well known
| and funded.
| somat wrote:
| I think that definitely language has shifted a bit, and
| terminology that used to mean "artist that is unable or
| does not want to get a publishing contract" now means
| "small limited resource artist". I mean for gods sake
| there are "indie" publishing companies now. Which I
| regard as this amazing contradiction in terminology.
|
| But yes, my pedantic side insists that if a large well
| funded game(or movie or song) uses the same legal entity
| to fund the game as was used to build it. They are
| independent and may fairly use the term "indie". Steam is
| a weird kink in the rules, because they are technically
| publishing all these games. But I hand wave that away by
| claiming that they are a market not a publisher(the
| difference being that a publisher takes on risk by paying
| you before the work is done).
| MattRix wrote:
| Indie is about whether some other company is controlling
| what you make. This means you can make an indie game even
| if it is published by another studio (like with Valheim).
| MattRix wrote:
| As someone who has been working as an indie game dev for the
| past 13 years, I think you've got a pretty unrealistic view
| of the situation.
|
| You can't just make a "good game" anymore. The tastes of the
| market get more demanding over time. To put it another way,
| the bar for what constitutes a "good game" gets more and more
| difficult every year. There are successful games from a few
| years ago that would not get any sales if released today.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > The tastes of the market get more demanding over time.
|
| That seems to me to be true of most (every) industries /
| areas of human endeavor?
| MattRix wrote:
| It probably is, but because games are such a new medium,
| the rate it's advancing (not just in terms of tech, but
| also in design and audience expectations) is quite rapid.
| It means if you work on a single game for a few years, by
| the time you release it the demands of the market may
| have changed dramatically.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Could you name a few? Not trying to challenge I'm actually
| really curious how the bar has shifted over time. (It also
| makes me curious if it means newbies have an increasingly
| high bar to clear and eventually pushes out young people?)
| TylerE wrote:
| Frankly most of them.
|
| There are a dozen rogue-lite survival zombie games
| released on Steam every week. (Only a slight
| exaggeration).
| passwordsarehar wrote:
| It is objectively a good game yes, but you're glossing over
| how it also released with _extremely fortuitous_ timing for
| the type of game it is: a casual small-group-multiplayer
| survival exploration builder that leans more toward a
| lighthearted experience as opposed to the sweaty/hardcore
| experience which is/was the norm for these types of games.
|
| Valheim dropped early 2021, just into the 2nd year of real
| COVID measures including lockdowns and an overall social
| atmosphere of "stay hunkered down at home and don't go
| anywhere". It was absolutely perfect timing, and I am 100%
| convinced it would not have done _nearly_ as well if it
| released 1 year earlier or 1 year later.
|
| It's hard to make a shitty game successful without a AAA
| marketing budget sure, but it's also hard to make a good game
| successful without either a AAA marketing budget, or great
| luck/timing.
| bigger_inside wrote:
| don't forget Rimworld. One guy making a huge and sprawling
| game that ignored the studio sensibilities and became hit
| (and a couple of memes).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Rimworld (and I'm sure Stardew will also be mentioned) came
| out years ago though; sure, the indie market was hopping
| back then too, but it's gotten worse since then.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| > Rimworld [...] came out years ago though;
|
| Rimworld was released in 2018, two years after the
| article was written (2016)
| lfowles wrote:
| 2013* It spent a long time in Early Access and was
| already a beloved game by the time 1.0 released.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| That's a fair argument, I was one of the backers and I
| pretty much stopped playing the game (long) before it was
| released (still well spent money).
| hhmc wrote:
| > that ignored the studio sensibilities
|
| I mean, it's strongly 'inspired' by dwarf fortress, so any
| heterodox design credit mostly belongs there
| bigger_inside wrote:
| design credit, absolutely! I'm speaking of Yayo and human
| leather hats, though. :D
| rcxdude wrote:
| I think games like that, where it's a small team and they
| grow to great success from essentially just word of mouth,
| are very much lightning in a bottle. It's not just a case of
| good game design, it's the right kind of game for the time,
| and well as a fair amount of luck that the snowball starts
| rolling at the start. It is true that the conditions have
| more or less never been better for it to happen (arguably it
| was easier before the market was as saturated as it is now),
| it's just very rare for it to happen to any given game, even
| with good execution.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _Make a game where people, with no connection or bias for
| you, will organically recommend it - and you 're going to
| succeed_
|
| I.e. "make a fun game that has organic viral growth"
|
| As if developers don't want to do that. You have not provided
| any information of value here.
|
| Organic viral growth is extremely rare, and "fun" is a
| useless descriptor for someone trying to replicate "fun" in
| their own game. Why would developers want to make a game that
| isn't fun?
|
| "build it and they will come" is almost always a lie, and the
| times it's not (I.e. organic viral growth) are not
| replicable.
|
| If you're making something you have to solve for
| distribution. Just making the thing isn't enough for it to
| succeed.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| > Why would developers want to make a game that isn't fun?
|
| Of course nobody wants to make a game that isn't fun. But I
| know just how easy it is to get caught up into the "hustle"
| mentality where all you're focused on is getting the
| features _complete_. Once you 're in this mindset, it
| becomes very easy to realize that your own game isn't even
| fun _to you_. This simple reminder is huge, should be
| repeated often, and is great advice.
|
| Make a game that you would enjoy playing for hours on end,
| and you'll likely gather an audience of people that also
| enjoy it. It really is amazing at how easy it is to forget
| this and end up building a game that even _you, the
| creator_ , don't enjoy playing very much.
|
| Likewise, it's very easy to focus on small slices of
| gameplay and ignore the cohesiveness of the entire game. If
| different mechanics are super fun, but aren't fun together,
| you will have created a game that isn't fun.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > Why would developers want to make a game that isn't fun?
|
| I mean, why do people want to write buggy software? It's
| not on purpose, they're just not good enough to deliver
| quality in a timely fashion.
|
| My experience with most indie games cannot deliver on a
| core gameplay loop that's satisfying, even when that loop
| is not the draw of the game in which case I'd expect them
| to ape something competent.
|
| IMO an example of a studio that doesn't mess this up is
| Giant Games. I've liked some titles more or less but the
| core gameplay loop has always been _competently_ designed.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Right, so what does saying "[the game] needs to be fun"
| achieve? Absolutely nothing, because people who get it
| translate that into something useful like "make a
| satisfying core gameplay loop" and people who don't get
| it are still wondering what the hell "fun" means.
|
| I'm criticizing the shallowness and lack of information
| in the comment. Everyone knows games should be fun.
| Saying "[the game] needs to be fun" has literally 0 bits
| of information and is a lazy explanation for why games
| don't succeed.
| nathants wrote:
| games are art, and art has a certain i don't know what.
|
| art has to risk failure or it's not art. perhaps has to
| even be near certain to fail.
|
| no one should be depending on art to feed their family.
|
| no one should be making art for any reason other than
| love.
|
| art must be beautiful.
|
| as many have pointed out, blockbuster movies and triple a
| games are interesting, but they are not art.
| krapp wrote:
| Art is work, friend. I don't know if you've ever
| encountered an actual artist in your life, beyond someone
| making macaroni collages, but professionals in any craft
| can't afford to do what they do for love alone. Certainly
| not in game development, the most brutal, toxic and
| exploitative industry a creative can work in. Even
| Michaelangelo didn't paint the Sistene Chapel ceiling for
| free.
| matwood wrote:
| > It became a game of marketing.
|
| Welcome to selling pretty much anything.
|
| "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise." -
| Ted Turner
| mycocola wrote:
| > There are about 30-35 quality titles being put out on steam
| alone, every day of the week, weekends included.
|
| Absolutely not. The vast majority of games released on Steam
| are not good. You can verify this yourself by looking at new
| releases. Maybe one or two out the ones released the 19th of
| June are _potentially_ interesting.
|
| Quality, defined as well-produced games in unsaturated niches,
| is really the only thing that matters, but marketing can be a
| multiplier of that quality. I've seen many games that blame
| marketing for their failure, and I have seen many games that
| fail despite their marketing. Usually those games are not
| compelling, and reviews will confirm this. It's rare to see
| games fail despite their high quality.
| burntalmonds wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. If anything, it's actually surprising how few
| truly good games are ever released. There is still a massive
| opportunity for indie games.
| prmoustache wrote:
| That doesn't mean this is a massive opportunity to sell.
|
| I mean if a handful of quality games are buried within tons
| of shitty games, what do people do? They buy a few random
| cheap games at first, then realized most of these cheap
| games are shitty and end up not looking at non AAA games
| after a number of deceptions. Instead they wait for AAA
| games to go on sales.
|
| That is what at least what I did, instead of finding a gem
| among indies, I just wait for well reviewed AAA ones to
| lower in prices because I have other things to do than
| reading hundreds of reviews to make up my mind and find the
| gem among a huge pile of poo.
|
| Additionally there are so many games entering the market
| that all of them cannot be reviewed so there is little
| chance your very nice indie game will be reviewed.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| For me the main problem with indie games is the amount of value
| you get for your money.
|
| Games are software, if you sell 10 copies or 10 million, it's
| basically the same amount of work. That is: no matter how big
| your development budget is, or how many you expect to sell,
| 100% of that budget goes into developing 1 copy of the game.
|
| However, the actual budget does scale with the number of
| expected sales. A game that is expected to sell 5M copies is
| going to have a much larger budget than a game that is expected
| to sell 10k copies. Add to that the lower price of indie games
| and there is a huge budget difference.
|
| The end result of this is that as a gamer I can choose between
| a EUR20 indie game representing maybe EUR500k of development
| effort, or an EUR80 AAA game that represents EUR200M of
| development effort. The AAA game may cost me 4 times as much,
| but it gives me 400 times the value.
| laeri wrote:
| I have a different experience. I can't play most of the AAA
| games as their gameplay seems quite simple in a lot of cases
| and they often follow common structures. Indie games are
| radically different in a lot of cases as they usually take
| more risks and just the personality of the creator(s) shines
| through.
|
| My most favoure genre is roguelikes/roguelites which is just
| not present in AAA titles.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Have you played Scavenger SV4? Might not quite be the kind
| of thing you're into but it is definitely something the
| developer put a lot of time into making interesting.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| You're right, this is a problem.
|
| However you can look at the same logic from a different
| perspective: If you're playing an AAA game, you're playing a
| game made for everyone - and therefore for no one. This is
| why some people (including me) aren't fans of AAA games.
|
| Imagine the world (future) where material costs of most
| things are insignificant and majority of the cost of your
| food will be paying the designers of this food. Would you
| want to eat the same, bland (can't be too spicy, can't have
| particular ingredients-allergens, has to be safe for
| children...) stuff everyone else eats? Or would you develop a
| taste for something more niche?
|
| Due to high budgets, the companies also don't want to take
| risks, that's why indie games are innovative (and that's why
| indie games fail more often?).
| raincole wrote:
| Your logic is 100% correct until you realize the only
| conclusion it drives to is: there is no small teams that make
| software, TV shows, comic books, anime, movies, books, and
| video games that can survive.
|
| The fact is game taste is quite subjective and different
| people value different things.
| ilyt wrote:
| > The AAA game may cost me 4 times as much, but it gives me
| 400 times the value.
|
| So what non-multiplayer AAA game you played 400 times as long
| than an 10 hour indie experience ? Or did you had 400x the
| fun playing it?
|
| That's very MBA way to look at it. Game's budget is only
| vaguely correlated with how good it is _as a game_. Sure
| prettier blah blah blah, but we had plenty of big games
| coming out mediocre and just being bought coz of market
| inertia of average non-internet-scouring user buying next AAA
| title from big publisher and not even looking at the smaller
| ones or indies.
|
| Like, if I look at the top amount of spent time in game (the
| "value" per spend money) it's some small dev management games
| (Factorio, Banished, Rimworld, X4), the type of game that
| most AAA developers just refuse to make in the first place.
| Most of "singleplayer story driven ones" I've played also
| fall out of AAA space because while 20 years ago industry was
| busy making games like Baldur's gate or Fallout, now anything
| similar only happens in sub-AAA space.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Outright play time isn't the right way to measure the value
| of a game (or any other piece of art or entertainment)
| unless your sole purpose is to spend time. I value Half
| Life 2 hundreds of times higher than skribbl.io even though
| I probably have more hours in the latter.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > if I look at the top amount of spent time in game (the
| "value" per spend money) it's some small dev management
| games (Factorio, Banished, Rimworld, X4)
|
| I don't care for those kinds of games at all. That's the
| problem with most indie games: they rely solely on
| gameplay. Me, personally, I'm more into story driven games,
| and that additional budget buys you better writers, actors,
| mo-cap, etc.
|
| > the type of game that most AAA developers just refuse to
| make in the first place. Most of "singleplayer story driven
| ones" I've played also fall out of AAA space
|
| I'm mainly a PlayStation gamer and they release a lot of
| story driven single-player games. It's the may reason I
| stick to PS. God of War, Horizon, Uncharted, TLoU, etc. are
| all amazing games and impossible to make on a small budget.
| ykonstant wrote:
| > I'm more into story driven games
|
| I have yet to see a story as good as the Blackwell
| series. Perhaps you have made up your mind that indie
| games do not have good story lines, so you are not
| looking for them. I don't know.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| I had a quick look and it looks really low-budget.
|
| The thing is, I have limited time to play games, so I can
| be very selective what I spend that time on. This means I
| can limit myself to games that do everything right, not
| just one thing. That means story, but also production
| value. Good acting, good mo-cap, good graphic, a good
| sound track, etc.
|
| Why would I spend the limited time I have for gaming on
| games that don't check _all_ the boxes ? There may not be
| a lot of games that do, but there are enough for me to
| only play those kinds of games.
| rasz wrote:
| >really low-budget
|
| because they were first. Look at later games from the
| list http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/
|
| Gemini Rue, Primordia, Technobabylon, Shardlight,
| Strangeland, but especially Unavowed!
|
| Clifftop Games Whispers of a Machine and Kathy Rain are
| also good https://store.steampowered.com/developer/clifft
| opgames/#brow...
| stereolambda wrote:
| Just for another perspective, there is a limited space of
| games story- and gameplaywise that can get major funding.
| If you want something outside this, you have to go indie.
| You can be also satisfied with the AAA games. Just as
| there are great independent films and Hollywood classics.
| They should be able to coexist in the market.
|
| But honestly I don't play AAA titles because they are
| expensive (don't feel worth it for me, so similar
| argument as yours), and are designed for long immersive
| sessions and not 20 mins here and there. There are
| secondary factors like Linux compatibility and disliking
| the companies. For story and visuals I prefer films.
| Second hand I hear that mainstream titles are either
| designed stupid easy, or in a small niche with spiteful
| level of difficulty, but this is probably exaggerated
| sentiment.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > For story and visuals I prefer films.
|
| I like films, but the problem with them is that they have
| to cram a story into 2 hours, maybe 3. With games being
| 20-40 hours, there is much more room for in-depth
| storytelling and world building. Also, being in control
| of the main character makes a story hit differently from
| passively experiencing it.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > God of War, Horizon, Uncharted, TLoU, etc. are all
| amazing games and impossible to make on a small budget.
|
| You only list successes, but it's exactly this type of
| story-driven block buster games that can sink a
| development studio if just one thing goes wrong (and it
| doesn't even have to be the fault of anybody involved
| with the game).
|
| Enjoy this type of game while it lasts, because this era
| is coming to an end, it's just not sustainable.
| Eventually each studio will produce an expensive flop,
| and it's much harder to build an AAA development team
| then to destroy one.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > Enjoy this type of game while it lasts, because this
| era is coming to an end, it's just not sustainable.
|
| Do you also think blockbuster movies are not sustainable?
| Because AAA games have a _very_ similar business model.
| Actually in some ways games are more attractive due to
| the possibilities with DLC.
| reddit_refugee3 wrote:
| You are making quite a few generalizations that I don't
| think are necessarily accurate these days. Indie games
| don't always "rely solely on gameplay". That's just not
| true.
|
| In fact, I would say one of (if not the) greatest
| narrative games I have ever played, Disco Elysium, would
| absolutely be considered "indie" by just about every
| metric.
| mejutoco wrote:
| This is assuming that the more money is spent in development
| the more value you get out of the game. That is a big
| assumption, maybe true for very established game genres.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > The AAA game may cost me 4 times as much, but it gives me
| 400 times the value.
|
| I... guess? If your only calculation of value is how much
| money was spent making the latest edition of a cookie cutter
| experience like 90% of AAA games are (because execs aren't
| willing to risk budget coloring outside the lines). And
| frankly I find that pretty sad, but looking at sales numbers
| I guess that's the majority of the gaming market.
| prmoustache wrote:
| And you forget the depreciation. 20$ small indie game compete
| with 4 or 5y old AAA games with much bigger content that are
| now sold at 20$.
| raincole wrote:
| I think you romanticized the past.
|
| > When the movie "Indie games" came out, this was the prime
| time to get indie games out.
|
| > It's a marketeting's game now. So you probably want a
| publisher to be in charge of that...
|
| Fact: Jonathan Blow, one of the devs featured in the movie
| "Indie Games", signed a contract with Microsoft way before
| Braid (one of the games featured in the movie) came out.
|
| You want a publisher, or just _someone else_ , to be in charge
| of _something_ , if you're not very good at or interested in
| _something_. Big news, I know.
| reddit_refugee3 wrote:
| "True" indie games are far from dead, there are just different
| degrees of quality and success. Yeah, there is a lot of
| shovelware, but there are also tons of amazing indie games
| coming out on a regular basis.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > It's a marketing's game now.
|
| Making games break even always was 90% marketing though, maybe
| the current indie scene had it's own little "happy time" period
| where it was enough to create a high quality game and put it up
| on Steam to sell on its own, but that definitely wasn't the
| case for "non-indie" games since at least the late 90's (the
| way how game marketing is done has changed dramatically
| though).
| ilyt wrote:
| > maybe the current indie scene had it's own little "happy
| time" period where it was enough to create a high quality
| game and put it up on Steam to sell on its own
|
| That was never the case.
|
| Just that some indie that made "good enough" or "great" game
| got lucky that they got picked by "right" streamer or
| youtuber that liked it and it got virally popular off it.
|
| Like I doubt Minecraft would explode as it did if Yogscast
| didn't pick it up and made a popular YT series about it,
| which also made modders jump on the then-barren game, making
| it even more interesting.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or by Valve and Steam itself. They were essentially king
| makers when they really curated the content. Then came
| Greenlight and later just opened flood gates. Justly I
| think. The curation was not optimal model.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| Who is convinced by such argumentation I wonder? If there's
| a hypothesis, and there's multiple examples disproving the
| hypothesis, and not even a single example proving the
| hypothesis is provided - how can you be a fan of the
| hypothesis?
|
| It may be a matter of marketing and luck to make money on a
| "good" game, but a brilliant game is destined to spread
| like wildfire, because the gaming community is enthusiastic
| enough to look for such gems and announce the findings.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > Like I doubt Minecraft would explode as it did if
| Yogscast didn't pick it up and made a popular YT series
| about it
|
| Pretty sure before Yogscast there was already the
| rollercoaster minecart video released and on Kotaku (and
| other sites) that made Notch a millionaire overnight.
|
| Yogscast may have helped shoot it into the moon, but Notch
| had already joined the mile high club by then.
| fileeditview wrote:
| I disagree. There are still "true" indie games out there. Just
| the masses of games produced that call themselves "indie games"
| are not. Often it seems to be used as an excuse for an
| unpolished, boring and in the end shitty game.
|
| You are right that it became a marketing game. It was a hype
| and everyone started to call its product an indie game. The
| solution however is not more marketing. It will automatically
| solve itself. Games made by passionate small dev teams that
| really love what they are doing will still produce indie
| success hits.
| gareve wrote:
| > Games made by passionate small dev teams that really love
| what they are doing will still produce indie success hits.
|
| If there's 5 indie games that fit that description, people
| can easily enjoy, & more importantly, remember them.
|
| What happens when 20, 30, 50 games fit that description?
| There's no way no good games fall through the cracks. The
| amount of games developed in a year increases while people's
| retention remains constant.
| fileeditview wrote:
| Of course there might always be exceptions but I doubt that
| games like Stardew Valley or Papers, Please! could fall
| through the cracks.. but who knows.
|
| I think there is a general saturation problem. I won't have
| the time to play 20, 30 or even 50 games a year. I don't
| need more games but better ones (in general.. there are of
| course great games).
| reddit_refugee3 wrote:
| Yeah, I think it is important to distinguish worthless
| shovelware with quality indie titles. Both still exist.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| 6 months is a very short development cycle. It's also very hard
| to build an audience in such a short time frame. Obviously if
| you repeat this cycle you are going to get very frustrated.
| dmix wrote:
| > the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week
| and eating noodles, working on serial games
|
| The line between indie game and zero budget side
| project/potential small business often gets skewed in these
| sorts of discussions. Anyone in the startup scene eventually
| learns the distinction between a startup legitimately chasing
| high growth and a small business caught up in a trend.
|
| Sometimes you should just be a small business, not simply
| because you as a person are not capable of making something
| high growth, but because your own circumstances, team, effort,
| and product simply aren't much beyond a niche play.
|
| There's nothing wrong with running a small business, plenty of
| people live fulfilling lives fully supported by one, but if you
| really want to be something more (like topping console charts
| absent a lottery viral win) it's going going to take plenty of
| chutzpah and commitment. Otherwise as a business model it's way
| more profitable and time saving to be realistic.
| onion2k wrote:
| _It 's a marketeting's game now._
|
| I don't think that's true. Not because I think an indie game
| can succeed without marketing, but the opposite. I think most
| indie games would still fail _even with incredible marketing_.
| They 'd just lose _more_ money because they 'd have an
| additional cost. You can't always advertise your way to success
| in a completely saturated (or over-saturated) market,
| especially if your competitors are trying to do the same thing.
| You can either get lucky or fail.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Non-indie games too; think Daikatana, Anthem, Babylon's Fall,
| Duke Nukem Forever, Shenmue, etc; all high budget, high
| marketing budget titles but ultimately flops.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| To be fair, now that we got a chance to play a leaked (and
| reconstructed) version of the Unreal DNF build... If this
| game came out in 2001 it would absolutely be a top tier
| legendary title. It's tragic that they didn't finish it
| when they should have. It had nothing to do with marketing.
| Just plain old fucking up.
| barrysteve wrote:
| The market is saturated with remakes and games with nothing to
| say. This is the exact problem Norbet Weiner described in the
| 1950's book Human Use of Human Beings. Computers are
| characterized as a Spiritual Filter in that book and the aim is
| to get a message through the filter.
|
| These games aren't selling, cause everyone can tell they've got
| nothing to say. The know-how that goes into making them is very
| good, but the content itself is hollow.
|
| Steam's most played is plastered with games from 2015-2019
| because nothing has knocked them off the throne yet. We all
| should be wary of making "a game" or "an game" or "a remake"
| and only make a game when we have something worth saying in a
| game format. The premise is so underrated lately.
|
| We know what happens when the games market is saturated with
| hollow, empty games. 1983 video game market crash.
| noobermin wrote:
| This might be harsh, and may be a crash isn't needed, but
| clearly if there's oversaturation, it is just natural that
| making "indie" games shouldn't make money. It is depressing
| perhaps for people who want to make games which clearly is a
| lot of people, but you're just upset at the economics of
| reality.
| barrysteve wrote:
| Huah? I'm not upset about the economics though. I'm just
| describing what I see. What upsets me is the drop in
| meaningful/just games to play. I really like playing and
| making games, and seeing a valuable thing be created....
| It's not happening often any more in the Steam games space.
| It genuinely hurts to go from GTA V, RimWorld, Stardew, CS
| and HL (ect) to empty, hollow games.
|
| It's okay with me if it crashes. My core ethos is that
| cream rises to the top. It should be hypothetically
| possible to make a video game that sells in the great
| depression or whatever economic nightmare. I wouldn't try
| to do that, because it's basically insane to try... but if
| you're going to make a game, don't half-ass it. Have
| something to say!
|
| It has to be worth playing and buying even in hard times..
| Just making "AN game" isn't enough. The Hollywood
| screenwriters would beat a premise to death before green-
| lighting it. I only say that to point out that the
| phenomena exists in other industries too.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| > Have something to say!
|
| So much this. This same theme repeats itself all over the
| place. Humans have an amazing BS filter. We can detect
| ingenuity even when we don't understand it. That's why
| I'm not too worried about AI.
|
| With almost every aspect in life--just focus on being a
| real, genuine person and the rest will work itself out.
| badpun wrote:
| > With almost every aspect in life--just focus on being a
| real, genuine person and the rest will work itself out.
|
| It won't, at least not in terms of money. Most people's
| indiosyncracies aren't conducive to making enough money
| to sustain oneself - that's why we have the job market,
| where people sell their time, and spend it doing stuff
| that other people actually want to pay for.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| Game development has turned into the same kind of nightmare
| that music is for anybody who wants to go into it. Unless
| you're really good at marketing/get really lucky, you're never
| going to make a living doing it because the market is insanely
| oversaturated and the gaming media focuses most of its
| attention on a handful of popular high budget games because
| that's what draws the traffic.
|
| Another major problem is how long today's high budget games
| are. Not only the multiplayer "live service" casinos that are
| designed to addict their players and keep them playing in
| perpetuity but the modern single player open world RPGs that
| seemingly average around 100 hours of playtime. If somebody is
| playing 300 hours of that extremely bloated Assassin's Creed
| game about Vikings, they're not playing other games in that
| time and presumably have less interest in buying them.
| Likewise, stuff like GamePass and the new tiers of PS+ that
| offer access to an enormous number of games for a small
| subscription fee have to be cutting into game sales. And new
| games are also competing with 50 years worth of old games.
|
| I wonder if many of the indie games, especially story driven
| games, might be better off as movies. Given how everybody
| carries a camera in their pocket these days, Hollywood movies
| are formulaic garbage and no actors are stars anymore, there's
| probably a market for innovative low budget movies shot in the
| woods on a single phone camera by a few friends and with little
| to no special effects. That seems like it'd be lower time/money
| cost and higher expected reward than game development plus
| you'd get to be outside doing interesting things rather than
| just sitting at a computer for years working on a game that
| will most likely be played by a few dozen people.
| karpierz wrote:
| Analogously:
|
| I wonder if many of the low budget films, especially
| narrative focused films, might be better off as games. Given
| how everybody has a computer these days, AAA games are
| formulaic garbage and games aren't centered around a single
| developer any more, there's probably a market for innovative
| low budget games made in a basement on a single computer by a
| few friends and with little to no art assets. That seems like
| it'd be lower time/money cost and higher expected reward than
| movie production, plus you'd get to spend time on the
| internet researching interesting technical problems rather
| than just sitting in a movie editor for years, working on a
| movie that will most likely be watched by a few dozen people.
|
| tl;dr: I don't think a good movie is any easier to make than
| a good game.
| JohnFen wrote:
| But games and movies are very, very different mediums that
| don't substitute for each other very well.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The issue is that filming in meatspace is still often less
| complicated than trying to make those graphics on a
| computer (assuming your low budget movie has little to no
| CG). And if you want voices, you still need labor.
| karpierz wrote:
| If you want to make a game, it's never been easier!
| Download Unity, download a bunch of free
| sounds/textures/models/etc, and then write some simple
| code to your things around.
|
| If you want to make a movie, it's never been easier! Grab
| your smartphone, write a script, grab some friends and
| have them read it, then post.
|
| But from experience, actually making something passible
| (much less "good" or "great") takes years of dedicated
| practice, which is more accessible thanks to the above,
| but still doesn't really make the years any shorter.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think for most of the general public, a movie shot on
| your phone represents a significantly smaller burden than
| programming.
|
| The oft-quoted figure is that the production cost of the
| original Paranormal Activity was $15,000, and that was
| made before the advent of smartphones.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| You can only play so many small narrative focused games
| before you realize they're pretty boring. Especially if
| you're saying they have few art assets. People say these
| things are great, but part of that appreciation is for the
| novelty of a game being so stripped down and devoid of
| gameplay that it feels interesting.
| strken wrote:
| I really like narrative games and don't think they're
| boring, but the ones I play have hundreds of thousands of
| words of dialogue paired with reasonable gameplay loops,
| e.g. Failbetter or Spiderweb Software rather than
| critically acclaimed walking sims.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > You can only play so many small narrative focused games
| before you realize they're pretty boring. [...] People
| say these things are great, but part of that appreciation
| is for the novelty of a game being so stripped down and
| devoid of gameplay that it feels interesting.
|
| I honestly like this kind of games (and buy copies of
| them). But as far as I am aware (I read quite some
| articles about this topic) such games typically have a
| very small audience that is highly positive about such
| games. This means: such avant-garde games, if they are
| good, do have their niche of people who will buy and
| highly praise them, but outside of this group, which is
| quite separared from other types of gamers, hardly
| anybody is interested in such games. In other words: you
| will sell some copies and get great ratings if the game
| is good, but you won't sell very many copies.
| greybox wrote:
| This game looks cool, but having trouble when releasing a
| platformer these days sadly doesn't surprise me, its one of the
| toughest markets in games right now.
| epolanski wrote:
| The amount of negativity and criticism in the comments here is
| sad.
|
| Not only I think it's way too easy to criticize other's work and
| choices (in hindsight), but there's also a total lack of empathy.
|
| We should cherish many small developers and entrepeneurs that
| share their experiences with such honest and thorough posts about
| the experience as they offer unique and valuable inputs and
| reflections.
| fullshark wrote:
| People are doing a postmortem, for the purpose of learning 7
| years later. Comments don't strike me as that negative really
| and people are relishing an in depth look at failure cause the
| in depth looks at success are overrepresented statistically.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean, even if the developers did everything right, that's no
| guarantee for success; there's a ton of competition, and a lot
| of indie hits are more by chance than design.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Vice versa, there are plenty of games that are low quality
| (some some dimensions or another) and make tons of money.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Getting just the basic things right is hard. Imo designing
| and implementing fun is much harder than utility.
|
| I'm sure everyone has seen beautiful looking and sounding
| games that were downright boring or broken
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Indeed. Art/entertainment is not an exact science. There is
| no code to crack.
| hinkley wrote:
| World is full of great movies or games that came out a few
| weeks after a blockbuster and never got the buzz they
| deserved. Once in a while they become cult classics.
| barrysteve wrote:
| The dev is obviously skilled. He created all of that game
| himself and made his crowd cheer at PAX EAST 2015. He did a
| good job, good for him!
|
| I think there's a lot of empathy in putting yourself in his
| shoes and trying to help his game succeed, via
| deconstructing/criticizing the game's weaknesses.
|
| And if he's around making indie games again, he'll want to know
| what current devs think of the market..
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I remeber Gamasutra (game dev news site) having a regular Post
| Mortem column, where developers who had shipped a game would
| write about what worked and what didn't during development and
| launch of the game.
|
| Even though I wasn't a game dev I really enjoyed reading these,
| as most contained info applicable to other teams as well.
|
| edit: Oh wow, I had assumed they had gone the way of the Dodo
| after being bought way back, but seems they're still going:
| https://www.gamedeveloper.com/search?q=post%20mortem
| Solvency wrote:
| I used to love reading Post Mortems back in the early 2000s.
| Maybe it's nostalgia lenses but the problems and obstacles
| just felt so much more relatable and interesting. Now it's
| all market dynamics and marketing and tortured business
| mechanics and layers of artificial tech complexity. It's more
| depressing to read than motivating.
| cttet wrote:
| I don't consider the comments helpful as well, but quite
| contrastively, because of the over optimism.
|
| Lots of the comments contribute the failure to quite a few
| reasons, and emphasize on the effect of the reasons. But the
| real thing is this actually can imply that the failure can be
| narrow down to "a few simple obvious fixes".
|
| To me it make me feel good since "a bad title" can be a very
| simple excuse to think that "what if I fix that, things would
| get better" and ignore more problem in depth.. Since I can
| never go back in time and retry it in the exact same setting.
|
| Things like "It's OK, you have tried your best" is the real
| negativity to me, since it implies that I have reached the best
| I can do in potential/capacity, and can be quite discouraging.
| But it is quite helpful sometimes since I can recogonize my
| limits and try to improve myself or pivot.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am willing to agree for one more reason. Success has many
| fathers and few have issues with sharing their story ( even
| if it is sanitized ). Few have 'intestinal fortitude' to go
| over their failings. Even if the game flopped ( I looked, I
| actually liked the aesthetics -- it struck a chord, so
| something was there ), we all can learn something from it and
| the author should be commended for it. It is not easy ( or
| fun ) to expose oneself to internet scrutiny.
| erikerikson wrote:
| A different interpretation of "you tried your best" is valid.
| It's not a remark that one has reached their capacity but
| that one made their honest best effort for the moment they
| made it (even if it often doesn't feel that way). In fact,
| because of that effort they'll have learned things that will
| make their next best efforts even more effective and less
| prone to the risks that reduced the desired outcome of the
| prior effort. Bests are a constantly evolving target.
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [flagged]
| rfrey wrote:
| Not always. I'm pretty sure MY failures in life are because
| I'm bald. Certainly they have nothing to do with my own
| choices.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's obviously not true; but I don't get why you're saying
| that. What prompted it?
| rawbot wrote:
| This was 7 years ago. What good would vapid praising comments
| do?
| rfrey wrote:
| It's interesting that you think seven-year-old positive
| comments are vapid, but seven-year-old negativity is not.
| epolanski wrote:
| I'm saying authors of such content should be cherished for
| sharing it, and after writing a 30 minute-long article they
| may deserve some criticism that goes beyond the "obviously
| they failed with such a name/marketing/game/whatever" seems
| way too cheap and dismissive especially if not really
| motivated.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| How is it dismissive when that is the reason why they
| failed? What more can one way when they see a game that
| doesn't have any interesting visuals, a generic name and
| overly niche gameplay?
|
| Even ignoring that this is a very old article, what sort of
| feedback do you expect people to give?
| mrangle wrote:
| In general, a socially and personally healthy life choice is to
| refrain from pointed criticism of anyone's work whose specific
| profession one is not in. Apart from instances when their
| performance has directly impacted you.
|
| If for no other reason than the fact that you haven't attempted
| it and therefore don't actually know.
|
| After that, the next level of karmic adjustment is to refrain
| from posting bad reviews of restaurants.
| thewebcount wrote:
| No, that's just stupid. If someone sings off key, I have
| every right to say that person is singing off key and it
| sounds bad even if I also cannot sing on key. If I see a bad
| movie or read a bad book, I have every right to criticize it
| even if I cannot direct a movie or write a book myself.
|
| I don't need to have attempted any of those things to know
| that what I experienced was sub-par. I've heard better
| singers, seen better movies, and read better books.
|
| If what you said were true, only movie directors would be
| able to criticize movies. That's not helpful.
| joebob42 wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| I see gps sentiment more often than I can understand, and
| it horrifies me. Especially as regards creative mediums
| (music, art, etc) where the point is to entertain. I may
| not know exactly what's wrong with a work, but I'm
| obviously qualified to critique it.
|
| But even in other areas. It's easier to tell if something
| is good than to make a good thing. With a limited number of
| exceptions, I can tell if something someone did is crappy
| or not with a fairly limited understanding of their field.
| hinkley wrote:
| We should cherish small developers. Simultaneously releasing on
| three platforms? What small developer do you know who does
| that? I'm still waiting for critics' favorites to be ported to
| platforms I own.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Their last release was in 2016 as well. Hope they're all doing
| well.
| rasz wrote:
| 2 years spend on Ouya Flash looking game. No, it wasnt the title
| or marketing.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| This comment is a little mean-spirited. This looks like an
| indie game that I would have expected to have launched during
| the time period that this was written, and it's a pretty good
| post-mortem on how the game was made, marketed, and where it
| failed.
| rasz wrote:
| Its realistic and factual. Game was made for Ouya by a studio
| specializing in Flash games. Its still $10 after 7 years,
| would you pay $10 for this game?
| lmm wrote:
| > This looks like an indie game that I would have expected to
| have launched during the time period that this was written
|
| Disagree. I think it genuinely looks significantly worse:
| it's so thoroughly _brown_ , and the blocky level design
| looks like a zillion super mario clones. That seems like a
| bigger factor to me; yes, it matters that you can't tell
| what's going on looking at the gameplay, but that would be
| much less of an issue if it looked good/interesting.
| Rallen89 wrote:
| Yeah, they spent a good chunk talking about a distinctive art-
| style of games they liked but the game looks derivative of so
| many 2d platformers
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The brand backing helps, but Nintendo still sells plenty of
| copies of Mario, the gameplay if which wasn't all that
| inspired back in the day either. Even Spelunky is just a good
| implementation of a type of game dating back to the late
| eighties.
|
| Consider indie titles like Minecraft and PUBG taking off with
| completely ripped off assets and game ideas because they made
| a great version of an existing concept. Minecraft had the
| visual style of a 2005 bargain bin game and PUBG is the
| blandest of bland models and art design coupled with a good
| implementation of their earlier mod. You don't need to be all
| that original, gameplay or art style wise, to make a game
| successful.
|
| I don't think this particular art style was all that common
| on the PS4 or Xbox One. There was a lot wrong with the way
| they presented and marketed the game, but I don't think the
| art style is that much of a problem.
| somenameforme wrote:
| This feels like they completely missed the reasons that they
| failed, which is a great way to ensure they fail again. I don't
| know how you can blame marketing with a straight face when your
| game was featured on multiple Nintendo front pages. That's more
| marketing than like 99.9% of games get, and you're performing way
| worse than average. The issue isn't marketing.
|
| In the article when it gets to the question of whether the game
| is fun, the developer beats around the bush. 'Well you see...'
| which is as good as saying, "no." What's "fun" in a hyper-social
| 'indie fest' type of environment with a bunch of people _wanting_
| to like everything, has little relationship to what 's fun when
| you're at home with some friends. In the right environment people
| can get really hyped and excited over a literal snail race [4].
| It doesn't mean those people are watching snail race reruns at
| home.
|
| Then there's the game itself. You can find the game/discussion of
| it here [1]. There were many complaints about bugs, misleading
| labeling, poor/buggy and unremappable controls, and more. There
| were also somewhat more 'positive' questions like somebody simply
| asking how to even play local-coop since it seems its not well
| elaborated on in the game. And the developer chose to completely
| ignore everything and everybody, making a grand total of 4 posts
| - including 2 about a negative review.
|
| There is no recipe for success in games, beyond making good
| games. Games have become easier to make than ever (even back in
| 2016), players now have to-play queues months to years long, and
| there are simply a lot of _really_ good games out there and more
| being released every day. This game, a silly casual party style
| game, was directly competing, in 2016, with games like Ultimate
| Chicken Horse [2].
|
| There's also a lot of other problems. The game's theme isn't
| unique. It feels like a Goat Simulator [3] rip off, in terms of
| theme, even today. Incidentally Goat Simulator released just a
| couple of years prior to this game, so it was going to be
| bucketed there even harder back then. There's also the issue of
| price. You're going to be compared against games of the same
| price (such as Goat Simulator, again), and $10 is a relatively
| hefty price for this sort of game.
|
| The game almost certainly would have well more than 5x the
| success it did at a price tag like $2, where it can be more
| comfortably bought as a joke or whatever. And if you want to get
| into meta-market gimmicking, add Steam cards. There's lots of
| collectors who will pick up cheap games with cards because in a
| number of cases, cheap games on discount can be bought for
| 'profit', where the card values themselves become worth more than
| the game.
|
| But really most of all, just make a fun game. We live in an era
| where games can stay purchasable indefinitely on both PC and
| consoles. If you make a game that people will organically go out
| of their way to recommend, you're going to succeed. There's an
| ever increasing number of long-tail successes, and in games I
| expect this to increasingly become the norm. Even for games like
| GTA V, it's long tail success [5] is really starting to rival
| that up-front success that marketing budgets in the hundreds of
| millions buy.
|
| ---
|
| [1] - https://steamcommunity.com/app/342920/discussions/
|
| [2] -
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/386940/Ultimate_Chicken_H...
|
| [3] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/265930/Goat_Simulator/
|
| [4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-6Wwd184uo
|
| [5] - https://steamplayercount.com/app/271590
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > There is no recipe for success in games, beyond making good
| games.
|
| There was an ancient gamedev site in the ancient times of
| 2000-2001-or-so when the "indie" term first started being used
| online to describe what up to that point was largely called
| "shareware games" and the term already a lot of negative
| connotations attached to it.
|
| I don't remember much about the site because i only found it
| around when it shut down but there was an advice from someone
| who actually made a living back then making games i remember
| that went something like: code, graphics, music, design,
| marketing are _all_ aspects and elements of your game and they
| do not add, you can 't ignore one and hope the others will pull
| it up, instead they multiply - fail to pay attention to any of
| those elements and it will drag down the rest.
|
| I paraphrase a bit (or a lot) since it has been more than two
| decades since i read that but i think it holds up today as much
| as it did back then.
| [deleted]
| andai wrote:
| The images didn't load for me, but this archived version has
| them: https://archive.ph/jlWJX
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| I remember reading a dev diary from Toto Temple years ago, about
| making their character select menu run in-engine so they could
| make sure all 4 players knew how to use the dash move.
|
| Then I lost track of the game.
|
| It's funny that 2 years after this article, in 2018, Celeste
| became a triple-I hit using a similar dash move but single-
| player. Turns out pixel platformers still had some juice left,
| but couch MP is never coming back.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Should have called the game Get the Goat. That would make me
| curious enough to look into it. Toto Temple makes me feel
| nothing.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I didn't see price mentioned, nor totals for revenue?
|
| I wonder how much it would cost to port to Switch as "Get the
| Goat" (or maybe King Goat, Goat King, Capture the ... Goat, ...).
| To capture that couch co-op long tail.
|
| It's interesting how the marketing of other games impacts,
| particularly around naming.
|
| The Stegosaurus tail link was possible more interesting.
| msie wrote:
| Off-topic, Only Up is one of the best games Ive seen in years.
| Check it on YouTube.
| remram wrote:
| Move or Die is a similar game, except it has hilarious narration,
| many game modes, a ton of mutators, and online multiplayer.
| Taking a look at Steam, it is $15 to Toto Temple's $10. It's just
| too small a game in a very competitive genre.
| honkycat wrote:
| I was one of those kids who LOVED video games, and I went to
| school to learn how to make them. Thankfully, I listened to my
| parents, and got a degree in Computer Science instead of a game
| focused major.
|
| I tried for a long time time do the indie dev thing, but i just
| didn't have the commitment to stick with it after a full time
| job.
|
| The friends I went to school with who DID end up in games are not
| working on Dark Souls 3. They tend to work on shitty mobile games
| with barely any game play, and make half as much as I do with a
| way less portable skill set.
|
| Personally: I am happy with how it all turned out. I prefer
| building actually useful tools and applications over building
| shitty video games.
|
| After reading enough of these indie game funerals, I have come to
| the conclusion that there just isn't a market there anymore. I
| think the data agrees with me here.
|
| I also make music in my free time, and it is a similar issue. I
| pour work into my music, and for what? For nobody to care or to
| listen to it. So it goes.
| Kapura wrote:
| Extremely detailed and good analysis, and I agree with just about
| every point. A lot of it feels like a mystery story, 'why did
| this game that had good convention vibes not sell?' and I think
| their ultimate root cause analysis is spot on:
|
| > we think the biggest factor is because it's a local-multiplayer
| game with no online play.
|
| Ultimately it's important to think about who the people on the
| other end of the console are who buy the game are looking for; in
| 2023, multiplayer games without online play don't fill a critical
| niche. I think it's easy to see people at festivals enjoying a
| game and think it's guaranteed money, but festival games
| atmosphere is unique, and not necessarily the same as just some
| dude scrolling thru steam looking for something to play.
| musicale wrote:
| Conventions like PAX are basically the perfect environment for
| a pick-up-and-play multiplayer game.
|
| There may be a shrinking market for those sorts of games, but I
| expect there are many people who only play Mario Kart and Super
| Smash Bros. locally and never go online.
| bulbosaur123 wrote:
| The game looks just bland.
| adhvaryu wrote:
| It was 8 years ago and the Indie game scene was not so
| saturated with games in this style and genre.
| cyode wrote:
| Even so, that was the era of Cuphead, the first Overcooked,
| and other local multiplayer games that had undeniable
| character about them. Even compared to marquee 2010 _flash
| games_, this game comes off as lackluster.
|
| (Props to them for their effort and this writeup, of course.)
| a13o wrote:
| Juicy Beast was considered a top tier studio in the Flash
| ecosystem with many hits in that space, and Toto Temple was
| well-known and much anticipated at the time by the scene.
| Unfortunately the scene was dying; and the gameplay
| aesthetics that made for a successful Flash game did not
| translate well to the PC and console markets.
|
| Cuphead and Overcooked wouldn't come until a couple years
| later, on the next generation of hardware. It's easy to
| blend these timelines together in 2023, but at the time
| these things were worlds apart and not influential over
| each other at all.
| ilyt wrote:
| It had enough games that were not one gimmick to overshadow
| it anyway.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| It was even more saturated 8 years ago, especially if you
| take Flash gaming into account that was still fresh in
| people's minds.
| Ekaros wrote:
| https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/2015/
|
| Steam releases in 2015. Some 2200+ titles in total. Lot of
| them indie.
|
| Notable pick at least Duck Game. For something completing in
| multiplayer games.
| Incipient wrote:
| I'm not sure why exactly but I see so many "<game name> Deluxe"
| titles out there I just assume they're janky cloned 5-minute
| games with 50c in the discount bin.
|
| At least for me, the name is an immediate "no".
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Same with "$thing Simulator" (there was a 'gas station
| simulator' on Steam recently) or (in the 90's) "Sim $something"
| or "$something Tycoon) (sim city, sim ant, sim skyscraper, sim
| hospital, apparently there's a huge list [0]). Or "$something
| Online", because every franchise had to be turned into an MMO;
| Lord of the Rings Online, The Elder Scrolls Online, Eve Online,
| you name it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sim_video_games
| jawilson2 wrote:
| > sim city > [rollercoaster] Tycoon
|
| Ok, I'm going to have to stop you there. These are two of the
| greatest games of all time. ALL TIME.
| ponector wrote:
| There are exceptions, like Transport Tycoon Deluxe
| melcor wrote:
| That is one legendary exception in a sea of janky "Deluxe"
| titles
| rootlocus wrote:
| Exceptions reinforce the rule. The other games that have
| Deluxe in their title have such strong titles, that the
| "Deluxe" part is often overshadowed. The article gives some
| examples:
|
| * The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Deluxe
|
| * Assassin's Creed 2 Deluxe
|
| * Mass Effect 2 Digital Deluxe
|
| When the fast cognitive System 1 [1] has to make an initial
| impression on a title, it uses all biases available to waste
| as little energy as possible to come up with an answer.
| "Unknown Deluxe" is very fast labeled as " janky cloned
| 5-minute games with 50c in the discount bin". "Assassin's
| Creed Deluxe" is just as easily labeled "some newer /
| improved release of Assassin's Creed".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also perfect example of kinda eeh updates "Deluxe" versions
| can contain.
|
| New biomes were kinda interesting, but were they really
| needed?
| culebron21 wrote:
| This was probably the game that set this trend.
| khamisiyah wrote:
| Yes, but that was released in 1995, way before all the
| shovelware of the 2000's.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > The process of porting the game was hard by itself, but
| following up a year of non-creative work with a launch that
| doesn't make much noise, nor sell a lot, was pretty hard on all
| of us.
|
| I think classifying the one (!!) programmer's work as uncreative
| when he got the game running on multiple consoles is completely
| wrong. That guy is your main asset, and probably your most
| creative team member.
| honkycat wrote:
| I think he was trying to show empathy that the work in porting
| the game was not "fun game-design-y" work, which I would
| absolutely agree with.
|
| I doubt the dev got into game development so he could mess with
| console APIs and squash bugs.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| "Creative" and "Un-creative" don't have to mean "Good" and
| "Bad".
|
| "Creative" makes me think someone who is working on story, art
| assets, gameplay mechanics, etc.
|
| Engine work can be good but it is not creative from the
| player's perspective. Maybe from the programming-for-the-sake-
| of-programming perspective it is.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't think it is good and bad; I just also think that
| creating things is creative.
|
| Writing a video game story or drawing its assets aren't the
| only type of creativity, and in this case it sounds like the
| creative workload on the technical person was fairly extreme.
| stoniejohnson wrote:
| I think the term 'non-creative' was just used as a
| practical distinction when discussing 'creating <the game>'
| versus 'porting <the game>'. I don't think the author
| intended to comment about the quality or even creativity of
| any developer's work.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Why not call the drawing the non-creative bit, then, if
| it's purely a distinction? (-:
| [deleted]
| genpfault wrote:
| (2016)
| plateofsoup wrote:
| Thanks, added.
| xwdv wrote:
| This has all the hallmarks of typical soulless, extra juicy hyper
| stimulating arcade games that are so common and commoditized. The
| name of course is just randomly chosen words thrown together that
| aren't too offensive and implies some kind of vague theme. Don't
| know who Toto is, why there's a temple and what makes this so
| deluxe from the original Toto Temple, but also seems like it
| doesn't matter.
|
| And this is what I tell most indie devs: you're probably going to
| be a failure. So don't go down making some bland cookie cutter
| game trying to make a few bucks. Make something truly unique,
| shocking, strange, something that no producer would touch,
| because you're independent and can do whatever you want. You
| might not make money, but you might win some real fans. And in
| the end, what matters on this journey is the friends you make
| along the way and touching people's lives with your game.
| belugacat wrote:
| One of the most inspiring things I heard was - if I recall
| correctly - the Dead Space director giving a talk at GDC.
|
| They were talking how from the get go their mentality was - if
| we're going to make a horror game, it has to be the most
| fucking horrifying game anyone has played. If we make a horror
| game that's kind of scary but not that extreme, then what are
| we doing?
|
| I've strived to carry that mentality in all my projects since.
| raverbashing wrote:
| "50% in marketing is common, especially for AAA games"
|
| Yes, but you're not an AAA game! Be small, act small. Smarter.
| More strategically.
|
| But yeah, games are hard
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Trailers are important and this one doesn't convey what's going
| on or why someone should be interested.
|
| Couch coop only is an obvious mistake too because your convincing
| someone to buy on the off chance people will want to play it with
| them
| chihuahua wrote:
| The trailer looks like pure twitchy chaos to me, even after
| watching it twice. And the article has a detailed description
| of how the developer thinks the trailer perfectly explains
| every detail. To me, it's still incomprehensible chaos, and it
| tells me almost nothing.
| lastangryman wrote:
| There is such a small market for 4 player local co-op indie
| games, I think you need something really special to grab people's
| attention.
|
| It was an interesting deconstruction though. The bit about the
| different trailer variations they needed to create is a great
| example of the value a good publisher can add. It seems like this
| team did a lot right though, just not the right game at the right
| time.
| culebron21 wrote:
| The whole game looks just like tons of other mobile games, that
| come for free. The style reminds of the "Hero Wars" scam that was
| profusely advertized on Facebook about 4-5 years ago.
|
| The trailer is just incomprehensible. I played a lot of PC games,
| but here I see the same drama like in pompous movie trailers,
| just 10x faster, and I still didn't get, whom on the screen I'm
| supposed to play for.
| AdeptusAquinas wrote:
| Before opening the article I was thinking "I bet its another 2D
| side-on platformer". The genre isn't even mentioned in the
| article, but from looking at all the screenshots (as I would on
| steam) I can't see why I would buy this over the other three
| thousand or so 'indie platformers' released each week. They need
| to do something different, not in theme, appearance, gimmicks or
| whatever, but in actual game style.
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