5 ms·

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 ma

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.

sam0x17 3y ago
That said, procedurally generated games have a much harder time failing.
- MattRix 3y ago
  This is really not true.
  - sam0x17 3y ago
    I've literally never seen one that isn't doing well though
Etherlord87 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 18.75× 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 3y ago
      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.

sam0x17 3y ago

That said, procedurally generated games have a much harder time failing.

MattRix 3y ago
This is really not true.
- sam0x17 3y ago
  I've literally never seen one that isn't doing well though

Etherlord87 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 18.75× 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 3y ago
    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.