10 ms·

I think that, while making a game is not hard, making an excellent game is hard. And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit

by bckr 2y ago

I think that, while making a game is not hard, making an excellent game is hard. And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. It takes fast iteration with user feedback to find the fun, then a ton of polish to make it extraordinary. It has to be so good that, out of those 73,000 games and counting, I’ll spend some of my money and time on it. The way GenAI can help here, I think, is the first part of this problem. Help me iterate quickly to find the fun. Then, let me export to Unity / Godot / Unreal to begin the polish process.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game; just compare "pop culture" (optimized to be commercially successful) vs "high-brow culture". Even if you are not the "extremely high-brow taste" kind of person, there exist quite some video game genres in which excellent games are produced, but the audience of these games is a quite small (but sophisticated) niche audience, so that just by volume, games of these genres likely won't make a lot of money.
- admax88qqq 2y ago
  That really just depends on your definition of "excellent" You have defined it to mean "high brow"
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > You have defined it to mean "high brow" Both in - "high brow" - niche genres categories (which I both gave as examples) you will likely find quite some games that that are excellent, but won't make a lot of money. But don't pick too much on these categories since my central point is "Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game".
    - Jensson 2y ago
      The main games in niche can easily sell 100k copies, that is a lot of money for a couple of indie devs. And no those games are far from excellent, I play a lot of such niche games but they all suck quality wise compared to mainstream games with similar sales, I play them for new experiences but I never expect quality from them. So it is much easier to sell well enough to maintain an indie team by making niche games than by making mainstream games since the competition for niche markets is so much smaller. Maybe you think that "100k" copies is a failure since it didn't sell millions, I have seen people thinking along those lines. But no, 100k copies is a massive success, even 10k copies is more than enough for a 1 person indie game, so those "indie gems" hardly failed at all.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        > The main games in niche can easily sell 100k copies, that is a lot of money for a couple of indie devs. I understand your point, but I hope people are seeing the irony of making such arguments under a post detaliing how the median game on steam can barely pay rent. I don't think even if you filtered that data for "overwhelmingly positive games" that it'll suddenly average $500k+ revenue. >Maybe you think that "100k" copies is a failure since it didn't sell millions, I have seen people thinking along those lines. But no, 100k copies is a massive success, even 10k copies is more than enough for a 1 person indie game, so those "indie gems" hardly failed at all. really depends on team size. 100k is good, but divided among a team of 10 and after steam cuts, a $5 game is getting roughly 35k for a dev. You know, minmum wage in high COL areas. likewise for a solo game that made 10k sales. My definition of success is as simple as "can the studio sustain itself from the sales of its games?". Maybe in a day where rent wasn't $3000+, but not these days in the US.
dwallin 2y ago
Making an excellent game isn't even enough these days, that's just table stakes. With so many games out there it's a market of lemons. You need to have a way of rising above the noise. For AAA, it's having budgets to make games on a bigger scale than everyone else. For mobile games, it's generally about leveraging a large war chest to fuel an advertising-driven margin game. For prestige/indie games you need something that people will want to talk/write about, or build a dedicated fanbase over time. For tiny games like flappy bird / wordle you need massive built-in virality and lots of luck.
- bavell 2y ago
  Just get some popular streamers/channels to do a review/let's play and if they like it you'll get tons of free exposure. I've spent probably hundreds of dollars on indie games in the last year or so from first seeing them on a gaming channel and then pulling it up in steam. Channels like Splattercat are a great resource for indie gamers & studios alike: https://youtube.com/@splattercatgaming https://youtube.com/@splattercatgaming
  - jokethrowaway 2y ago
    This has been known for more than a decade, you can bet the competition does that too
    - Jensson 2y ago
      Competition doesn't have excellent games. There aren't that many excellent games released per year, if you have an excellent game just getting noticed is enough.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    "Just get some popular streamers/channels to do a review/let's play" Just is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
    - jaggederest 2y ago
hatenberg 2y ago
You won't find them.
varelse 2y ago
[dead]

by bckr 2y ago

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game; just compare "pop culture" (optimized to be commercially successful) vs "high-brow culture". Even if you are not the "extremely high-brow taste" kind of person, there exist quite some video game genres in which excellent games are produced, but the audience of these games is a quite small (but sophisticated) niche audience, so that just by volume, games of these genres likely won't make a lot of money.

admax88qqq 2y ago
That really just depends on your definition of "excellent" You have defined it to mean "high brow"
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > You have defined it to mean "high brow" Both in - "high brow" - niche genres categories (which I both gave as examples) you will likely find quite some games that that are excellent, but won't make a lot of money. But don't pick too much on these categories since my central point is "Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game".
  - Jensson 2y ago
    The main games in niche can easily sell 100k copies, that is a lot of money for a couple of indie devs. And no those games are far from excellent, I play a lot of such niche games but they all suck quality wise compared to mainstream games with similar sales, I play them for new experiences but I never expect quality from them. So it is much easier to sell well enough to maintain an indie team by making niche games than by making mainstream games since the competition for niche markets is so much smaller. Maybe you think that "100k" copies is a failure since it didn't sell millions, I have seen people thinking along those lines. But no, 100k copies is a massive success, even 10k copies is more than enough for a 1 person indie game, so those "indie gems" hardly failed at all.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      > The main games in niche can easily sell 100k copies, that is a lot of money for a couple of indie devs. I understand your point, but I hope people are seeing the irony of making such arguments under a post detaliing how the median game on steam can barely pay rent. I don't think even if you filtered that data for "overwhelmingly positive games" that it'll suddenly average $500k+ revenue. >Maybe you think that "100k" copies is a failure since it didn't sell millions, I have seen people thinking along those lines. But no, 100k copies is a massive success, even 10k copies is more than enough for a 1 person indie game, so those "indie gems" hardly failed at all. really depends on team size. 100k is good, but divided among a team of 10 and after steam cuts, a $5 game is getting roughly 35k for a dev. You know, minmum wage in high COL areas. likewise for a solo game that made 10k sales. My definition of success is as simple as "can the studio sustain itself from the sales of its games?". Maybe in a day where rent wasn't $3000+, but not these days in the US.

dwallin 2y ago

Making an excellent game isn't even enough these days, that's just table stakes. With so many games out there it's a market of lemons. You need to have a way of rising above the noise. For AAA, it's having budgets to make games on a bigger scale than everyone else. For mobile games, it's generally about leveraging a large war chest to fuel an advertising-driven margin game. For prestige/indie games you need something that people will want to talk/write about, or build a dedicated fanbase over time. For tiny games like flappy bird / wordle you need massive built-in virality and lots of luck.

bavell 2y ago
Just get some popular streamers/channels to do a review/let's play and if they like it you'll get tons of free exposure. I've spent probably hundreds of dollars on indie games in the last year or so from first seeing them on a gaming channel and then pulling it up in steam. Channels like Splattercat are a great resource for indie gamers & studios alike: https://youtube.com/@splattercatgaming https://youtube.com/@splattercatgaming
- jokethrowaway 2y ago
  This has been known for more than a decade, you can bet the competition does that too
  - Jensson 2y ago
    Competition doesn't have excellent games. There aren't that many excellent games released per year, if you have an excellent game just getting noticed is enough.
- vunderba 2y ago
  "Just get some popular streamers/channels to do a review/let's play" Just is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
  - jaggederest 2y ago

hatenberg 2y ago

You won't find them.

varelse 2y ago

[dead]