4 ms·

> nine out of ten products fail Nah, not even close. I mean, not unless you include every random app store game made by some teenager. Obviously the big compa

by TillE 10y ago

> nine out of ten products fail Nah, not even close. I mean, not unless you include every random app store game made by some teenager. Obviously the big companies almost always do well, but there are a ton of small and medium-sized companies which have been ticking along for years, releasing game after game with at least modest success. Failure isn't random either. You have good designers and good management, you're probably not going to release a bad game. A company's track record is often surprisingly consistent, in either way.

ForRealsies 10y ago
You can release a good game and still not have financial success. And vice versa.
cableshaft 10y ago
That's because publishers tend to take on the risk. Development studios, as long as they can keep finding a new publisher to pay them, can churn out financial failure after financial failure and it won't hurt them beyond possibly making it harder to find a new publisher to fund them. But if they can blame the game's failings on decisions made by the publishers -- and that's often the case, i.e. 'must be free to play!' or 'we don't need to market this game! if we make it, they will come!' or 'let's release it six months before the game is ready!' -- then the developer probably won't be hurt too much by a failed game, as long it wasn't super technically broken. I worked for a small publisher. We put out four games that did okay, and two games that lost a bunch of money (partially due to quality, partially due to misreading the market, partially due to timing, partially due to how the platforms worked), and those failures were enough to put us out of business seven years ago. Meanwhile the developers of those games are still chugging along today. By the way, I'm not saying those developers don't deserve to still be in business, as they did their job to the best of their abilities with the resources available. But that's just the nature of the business.
cookiecaper 10y ago
If you divide out the years it takes to craft those games, the "modest successes" look a lot less appealing.

by TillE 10y ago

ForRealsies 10y ago

You can release a good game and still not have financial success. And vice versa.

cableshaft 10y ago

That's because publishers tend to take on the risk. Development studios, as long as they can keep finding a new publisher to pay them, can churn out financial failure after financial failure and it won't hurt them beyond possibly making it harder to find a new publisher to fund them. But if they can blame the game's failings on decisions made by the publishers -- and that's often the case, i.e. 'must be free to play!' or 'we don't need to market this game! if we make it, they will come!' or 'let's release it six months before the game is ready!' -- then the developer probably won't be hurt too much by a failed game, as long it wasn't super technically broken. I worked for a small publisher. We put out four games that did okay, and two games that lost a bunch of money (partially due to quality, partially due to misreading the market, partially due to timing, partially due to how the platforms worked), and those failures were enough to put us out of business seven years ago. Meanwhile the developers of those games are still chugging along today. By the way, I'm not saying those developers don't deserve to still be in business, as they did their job to the best of their abilities with the resources available. But that's just the nature of the business.

cookiecaper 10y ago

If you divide out the years it takes to craft those games, the "modest successes" look a lot less appealing.