3 ms·

This is a problem, but it's not the problem honestly. Every game that fails, there's something about it that people can point to as obviously why it failed. And

by Nition 8y ago

This is a problem, but it's not the problem honestly. Every game that fails, there's something about it that people can point to as obviously why it failed. And just about every game that succeeds, also has something about that they could have pointed out as why it failed, had it failed. Some games are so unpolished or uninspired that they were never going to succeed, but always picking apart "why it failed" makes people think that "if I just do x and y and z, my game will succeed!" Which right now honestly just isn't true; there's too much luck and random chance involved (plus of course other concrete factors like marketing effort etc). The next argument is usually "well, then why don't I see really good games that aren't successful?" A few years ago that was a sort of reasonable argument, but there are plenty of great and unsuccessful games on Steam now. They just don't show up anywhere.

savanaly 8y ago
On the other hand, sometimes it's very much not chance. Take stardew valley. It's not like Barone hit some sort of jackpot with his game. It really is head and shoulders above the competition, and that appears to be entirely due to his hard work on it. My evidence for this is that after I played Stardew Valley I was thirsty for more similar farming games, so I played or looked at every single one on steam (there's only about a dozen or so that qualify) and none of them are half the game that stardew valley is. If there were some diamond in the rough, stardew valley-quality game out there that through happenstance never went viral I would have hoped to find it, but no, there really isn't.
- Nition 8y ago
  I just had a look myself. The first one I see is "Fantasy Farming: Orange Season"[1]. Looks very similar to Stardew Valley, review average is 96% positive, but it only has 61 reviews (a good general indicator of sales) vs Stardew Valley's 86,000. I'm sure it's probably not as good as Stardew Valley, but one has probably 1400x the sales of the other. It did also release after Stardew Valley which is a problem. You can certainly benefit from being a first to fill a niche that people are missing. I wonder if the Stardew Valley dev had taken another year to release and Fantasy Farming had released first, if things would be the same. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/416000/Fantasy_Farming_Orange_Season/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/416000/Fantasy_Farming_Or...
  - xupybd 8y ago
    You don't happen to be the creator of another indie game Scraps, do you?
    - Nition 8y ago
      Yeah that's me. Still working on it when I get the time - unfortunately I don't have a lot of time at the moment.
      - xupybd 8y ago
        Ah cool, I thought I recognised that username. I used to work across the room from you back at UR. I hope all is well. I was impressed with how well your kick starter went.
        Nition 8y ago
        Small world. Yeah, the Kickstarter was good. Not good enough to finish the game as full-time work unfortunately, but that was my bad estimating of how long things would take. The experience on it got me another good job when I needed to go back to work on something that'd actually pay money, but I still want to finish it (for the people that have bought into it, and for myself), so I'm doing bits when I can. Working on a hopefully fun singleplayer mode that'll help alleviate the fact that there's no-one on the multiplayer. Should've coded it in Umajin. ;)
  - hhjinks 8y ago
    It's also immediately obvious that it's just an RPG Maker game with very little effort put in to conceal that fact. RPG Maker games generally don't do well, because 99% of them are garbage, and those that aren't go to great lengths to distinguish themselves visually, like Yume Nikki, and I don't know if that title ever was a commercial success.
    - Nition 8y ago
      Nevertheless its review score average is equal to Stardew Valley's. Although I concede that people's expectations may be lower when buying this game, and that may make them less likely to leave a negative review.

by Nition 8y ago

savanaly 8y ago

On the other hand, sometimes it's very much not chance. Take stardew valley. It's not like Barone hit some sort of jackpot with his game. It really is head and shoulders above the competition, and that appears to be entirely due to his hard work on it. My evidence for this is that after I played Stardew Valley I was thirsty for more similar farming games, so I played or looked at every single one on steam (there's only about a dozen or so that qualify) and none of them are half the game that stardew valley is. If there were some diamond in the rough, stardew valley-quality game out there that through happenstance never went viral I would have hoped to find it, but no, there really isn't.

Nition 8y ago
I just had a look myself. The first one I see is "Fantasy Farming: Orange Season"[1]. Looks very similar to Stardew Valley, review average is 96% positive, but it only has 61 reviews (a good general indicator of sales) vs Stardew Valley's 86,000. I'm sure it's probably not as good as Stardew Valley, but one has probably 1400x the sales of the other. It did also release after Stardew Valley which is a problem. You can certainly benefit from being a first to fill a niche that people are missing. I wonder if the Stardew Valley dev had taken another year to release and Fantasy Farming had released first, if things would be the same. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/416000/Fantasy_Farming_Orange_Season/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/416000/Fantasy_Farming_Or...
- xupybd 8y ago
  You don't happen to be the creator of another indie game Scraps, do you?
  - Nition 8y ago
    Yeah that's me. Still working on it when I get the time - unfortunately I don't have a lot of time at the moment.
    - xupybd 8y ago
      Ah cool, I thought I recognised that username. I used to work across the room from you back at UR. I hope all is well. I was impressed with how well your kick starter went.
      - Nition 8y ago
        Small world. Yeah, the Kickstarter was good. Not good enough to finish the game as full-time work unfortunately, but that was my bad estimating of how long things would take. The experience on it got me another good job when I needed to go back to work on something that'd actually pay money, but I still want to finish it (for the people that have bought into it, and for myself), so I'm doing bits when I can. Working on a hopefully fun singleplayer mode that'll help alleviate the fact that there's no-one on the multiplayer. Should've coded it in Umajin. ;)
- hhjinks 8y ago
  It's also immediately obvious that it's just an RPG Maker game with very little effort put in to conceal that fact. RPG Maker games generally don't do well, because 99% of them are garbage, and those that aren't go to great lengths to distinguish themselves visually, like Yume Nikki, and I don't know if that title ever was a commercial success.
  - Nition 8y ago
    Nevertheless its review score average is equal to Stardew Valley's. Although I concede that people's expectations may be lower when buying this game, and that may make them less likely to leave a negative review.