4 ms·

It's not valid criticism though. You just said: > I haven’t found a single scenario where the game wasn’t unfinished, janky and/or just plain unfun. You coul

It's not valid criticism though. You just said: > I haven’t found a single scenario where the game wasn’t unfinished, janky and/or just plain unfun. You could easily find lots of problems even with hugely successful games like Vampire Survivors or Enter the Gungeon. I'm fully confident that given a random assortment of fun, polished, shipped games that didn't go viral, you'll be able to come up with a long list of complaints.

dimgl 3y ago
Right but in this argument the onus is on you to find a game that should have been successful, but wasn't, due to the sheer volume of good games, not the other way around. You're making the argument that there lots of games that are polished and deserved some kind of success, and are inundated by other polished games. I'm arguing this simply isn't the case, and most indie devs that have complained about this have not made good, fun games. Flaws or not, Vampire Survivors and Enter the Gungeon found a market because they were fun games that had some redeeming qualities that wasn't widely available on the market at the time. Other examples: Project Zomboid, Shovel Knight, etc. Edit: still waiting on ONE game. Just one. Feel free to edit your comment with a game that deserves more recognition.
- Firmwarrior 3y ago
  EDIT: This is what I'm talking about. Not a productive conversation. You've convinced yourself that every failed game dev deserved failure, and all you have to do to prove it to yourself is make a half-assed complaint about every game you see. Send me an e-mail and I'll just message you every game I come across that should have been a hit and wasn't, once you get tired of it you can block me
  - sp3n 3y ago
    > should have been a hit and wasn't care to share a few of those on here?
  - dimgl 3y ago
    Why can't you share it here, on Hacker News, for everyone to see? These games deserve more recognition. Please, I want to be proved wrong here.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      How about much of Obsidian's catalog pre-Pillars of Eternity
      - fellowniusmonk 3y ago
        Do you mean Neverwinter Nights 2? Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment#Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment#Games
        Apocryphon 3y ago
        KOTOR II, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas are all well-regarded by fans as cult classics more or less, but suffered from typical Obsidian bugs and poor sales and/or critical reception.
  - JSLegendDev 3y ago
    An example of a game I think should have been a success but wasn't is Counter Spy released for the PS4. It's a really fun game and just stumbled on it in the PS Now catalog.
    - dimgl 3y ago
      This is a great example! I took a look at the trailer and I think the artstyle and gameplay looks really interesting. I took a closer look at it looks like reviewers at the time had a lot of technical issues. I wonder if those issues are now fixed. Did you play it on the PS5?
      - JSLegendDev 3y ago
        I played it on a regular ps4 and there were no bugs.
- larsiusprime 3y ago
  The best game that exhibits this is Among Us, but not in the way you think. What you're actually getting at here is a hypothesis that success for a game isn't contingent on circumstances, a variant on the "a truly good game, will sell" hypothesis. Among Us is a very clear case study to the contrary; it's a clear example that success, even for "truly good games" -- IS contingent on circumstances. Being a good game -- whatever that means -- is necessary, but not sufficient. Among US was released in 2018 and it was a flop. I know the development team, and before the game released they were ready to call it quits any day. It wasn't until 2020 that a particular streamer picked it up and that, combined with the pandemic, vaulted it to mega success. If that hadn't happened, it would have been a flop to this day. This was a multiplayer game, and so if at ANY POINT they had given up the ghost and just shut the servers down -- as they very well could have totally rationally done -- it would have never taken out, and if I were to have shown you Among Us as a game that was good but didn't succeed, I'm sure you'd pick it apart and say, well of course it wouldn't succeed, look how much it sucks.
  - ED_Radish 3y ago
    To be fair the market forces that apply to multiplayer games are quite different from singleplayer, on multiplayer you have network effects and such to worry about. I, personally sorta... buy the twitter cope? But I think it obviously doesnt apply to Multiplayer. Altho, actually going to check my assumptions.. I found that out of 200-ish randomly selected steam games. I could find about 5 that were singleplayer, genuinely unpopular and looked good in screenshots/descriptions. Out of those only 2 didn't review poor to middling, and 1 of those passed the subjective test of "Would I play this?". (The game was rotatePDF: a corporate tale)
  - kibbi 3y ago
    Do you also know singleplayer games that are examples of truly good games that don't sell? I can totally understand that it's hard to get the ball running with a multiplayer game where it's necessary that enough other players are online at the same time. I'm sceptical of the assumption that "you can make a truly good game and there's a good chance that it won't sell at all" that can be found in online discussions. Instead, Ryan Clark's approach to consistently make profitable indie games seems very plausible to me. So I would add a few caveats to the hypothesis that "a truly good game will sell", such as the importance of selecting a viable genre and ensuring that development costs are not overly high, but otherwise I still believe in it...

dimgl 3y ago

Right but in this argument the onus is on you to find a game that should have been successful, but wasn't, due to the sheer volume of good games, not the other way around. You're making the argument that there lots of games that are polished and deserved some kind of success, and are inundated by other polished games. I'm arguing this simply isn't the case, and most indie devs that have complained about this have not made good, fun games. Flaws or not, Vampire Survivors and Enter the Gungeon found a market because they were fun games that had some redeeming qualities that wasn't widely available on the market at the time. Other examples: Project Zomboid, Shovel Knight, etc. Edit: still waiting on ONE game. Just one. Feel free to edit your comment with a game that deserves more recognition.

Firmwarrior 3y ago
EDIT: This is what I'm talking about. Not a productive conversation. You've convinced yourself that every failed game dev deserved failure, and all you have to do to prove it to yourself is make a half-assed complaint about every game you see. Send me an e-mail and I'll just message you every game I come across that should have been a hit and wasn't, once you get tired of it you can block me
- sp3n 3y ago
  > should have been a hit and wasn't care to share a few of those on here?
- dimgl 3y ago
  Why can't you share it here, on Hacker News, for everyone to see? These games deserve more recognition. Please, I want to be proved wrong here.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    How about much of Obsidian's catalog pre-Pillars of Eternity
    - fellowniusmonk 3y ago
      Do you mean Neverwinter Nights 2? Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment#Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment#Games
      - Apocryphon 3y ago
        KOTOR II, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas are all well-regarded by fans as cult classics more or less, but suffered from typical Obsidian bugs and poor sales and/or critical reception.
- JSLegendDev 3y ago
  An example of a game I think should have been a success but wasn't is Counter Spy released for the PS4. It's a really fun game and just stumbled on it in the PS Now catalog.
  - dimgl 3y ago
    This is a great example! I took a look at the trailer and I think the artstyle and gameplay looks really interesting. I took a closer look at it looks like reviewers at the time had a lot of technical issues. I wonder if those issues are now fixed. Did you play it on the PS5?
    - JSLegendDev 3y ago
      I played it on a regular ps4 and there were no bugs.
larsiusprime 3y ago
The best game that exhibits this is Among Us, but not in the way you think. What you're actually getting at here is a hypothesis that success for a game isn't contingent on circumstances, a variant on the "a truly good game, will sell" hypothesis. Among Us is a very clear case study to the contrary; it's a clear example that success, even for "truly good games" -- IS contingent on circumstances. Being a good game -- whatever that means -- is necessary, but not sufficient. Among US was released in 2018 and it was a flop. I know the development team, and before the game released they were ready to call it quits any day. It wasn't until 2020 that a particular streamer picked it up and that, combined with the pandemic, vaulted it to mega success. If that hadn't happened, it would have been a flop to this day. This was a multiplayer game, and so if at ANY POINT they had given up the ghost and just shut the servers down -- as they very well could have totally rationally done -- it would have never taken out, and if I were to have shown you Among Us as a game that was good but didn't succeed, I'm sure you'd pick it apart and say, well of course it wouldn't succeed, look how much it sucks.
- ED_Radish 3y ago
  To be fair the market forces that apply to multiplayer games are quite different from singleplayer, on multiplayer you have network effects and such to worry about. I, personally sorta... buy the twitter cope? But I think it obviously doesnt apply to Multiplayer. Altho, actually going to check my assumptions.. I found that out of 200-ish randomly selected steam games. I could find about 5 that were singleplayer, genuinely unpopular and looked good in screenshots/descriptions. Out of those only 2 didn't review poor to middling, and 1 of those passed the subjective test of "Would I play this?". (The game was rotatePDF: a corporate tale)
- kibbi 3y ago
  Do you also know singleplayer games that are examples of truly good games that don't sell? I can totally understand that it's hard to get the ball running with a multiplayer game where it's necessary that enough other players are online at the same time. I'm sceptical of the assumption that "you can make a truly good game and there's a good chance that it won't sell at all" that can be found in online discussions. Instead, Ryan Clark's approach to consistently make profitable indie games seems very plausible to me. So I would add a few caveats to the hypothesis that "a truly good game will sell", such as the importance of selecting a viable genre and ensuring that development costs are not overly high, but otherwise I still believe in it...