5 ms·

I immediately knew someone would claim "survivorship bias" but at the same I knew that they would fail to come up with a single counterexample.

Auracle 2y ago
Vampire Survivors and Among Us were both out for years until they got traction, IIRC. That could have easily continued forever for both of them.
kyleamazza 2y ago
That's sort of the point of survivorship bias. Name one unsuccessful would-be entrepreneur. It's hard because chances are, anyone that's recognizable was successful in some way. For games, I'll give an example: Aegis Defenders. Great game, no traction.
- password54321 2y ago
  >Aegis Defenders 7/10 on Steam and Metacritic. Reviewed by major publishers. Over 100 reviews. Not sure what you mean by "no traction". But I'm sure it did fantastic in some alternate universe because Sean Carroll.
  - kyleamazza 2y ago
    But we're in this universe. Based on the number of years it took to develop the game, it wouldn't be considered one that achieved "15 minutes of fame". 100 reviews is quite a far cry from your example of Balatro with 33k. I'm not sure where you plan to draw the line on "success", but I think this is a broadly reasonable contrast.
    - skyyler 2y ago
      3 of my steam friends have already purchased it. One of them has it on wishlist. I only have 40 steam friends.
      - PurpleRamen 2y ago
        I own this game too, got it probably from a bundle-sale, so I didn't really bought it on purpose for the game itself. It also seems to haven been given away for free some years ago.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kibbi 2y ago
  Then it seems that "survivorship bias" is some kind of unfalsifiable and self-fulfilling belief. Secondly, these sorts of discussions usually don't define any concrete amount of success that a game is supposed to achieve. What is "no traction" supposed to mean? Aegis Defenders has 1,656 reviews at the moment. There's the assumption floating about that you can roughly multiply this by 50 to get the number of owners, which would turn out to about 80,000. The price point is fluctuating between $19.99 and $4.99. Will it net the developer/publisher less money over its lifetime than its development cost? In any case, I think that one of the biggest factors is not merely the game's quality, but whether there are a lot of players hungry for a game's specific concept and genre. Making an "excellent game" in an oversaturated genre, or in a genre where games require some network effect to take off (any multiplayer game), is much more risky. Don't just make something good; make something that a lot of people want even when the product is less than perfect. EDIT: VG Insights estimates $770k gross revenue. That's just for the Steam version. The game was also published on PlayStation 4 and Switch. The developer team seems to have been small. Based on your reply to the sibling comment, you're just pointing out the "contrast" to the success of Balatro? I honestly don't get the point. I don't think the particular amount of success that break-out hits achieve matters to the discussion. If Balatro had a million reviews, would you expect Aegis Defenders to also have a lot more reviews and sales? I think this isn't relevant to the question whether excellent games will succeed (for me this means: enable the developers to make a good living) with some predictability or whether it's due to luck, and whether there exist a lot of excellent but unknown games.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Then it seems that "survivorship bias" is some kind of unfalsifiable and self-fulfilling belief. It's very falsifiable. Just not by us, as we have no acccess to the sales data, nor enough public sales points to make a proper statistical analysis. The best ones out there are either based on estimations (especially reviews to sales ratios) or non-public data you pay the NPD or someone similar thousands to access (and obviously you're not allowed to share that data). So someone truly curious can pay a lot of money to get an answer.
fzeroracer 2y ago
The Void Rains Upon Her Heart [1], Fear and Hunger [2] are two examples. You'll look at both of these games and think 'wait, they're actually successful, what's the deal?' and not see the whole story, which is why I linked the charts. Both of these games launched to little to no success, with few (highly positive) reviews. What changed is that deep into their lifespan (~3-4 years after release), a popular youtuber did a video on the game, and as a result it suddenly blew up in popularity and carried that momentum forward. You can in fact see the exact point on the charts where that occurred. There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever. [1] https://steamdb.info/app/790060/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/790060/charts/ [2] https://steamdb.info/app/1002300/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/1002300/charts/
- password54321 2y ago
  >There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever. Such as? Just name one so we can all know. This is your time to help them out no matter how little and there are "a lot" apparently so it shouldn't be hard.
  - kipchak 2y ago
    Shout out to All Day Dying. 76 reviews. Also both of Colorgrave's games. One way to look for interesting stuff is SteamDB > 50 reviews and over 80%. For example Wild Dogs, Downpurr and Vetrix look cool.
  - fzeroracer 2y ago
    I mean I already gave you two examples, so here's [1] [2] [3] [4] a few examples of games that haven't had the chance to become popular. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1727180/NeverAwake/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1727180/NeverAwake/ [2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372210/Dap/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372210/Dap/ [3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1400910/Soundodger_2/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1400910/Soundodger_2/ [4] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084220/Cavity_Busters/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084220/Cavity_Busters/
rurp 2y ago
Survivorship bias is the norm in any system with high variance and a low success rate. I would say that arguing against the phenomenon is by far the more out there position. A analgous statement like, "There are actors with world class talent who never became successful" is one that pretty much everyone would intuitively agree with, outside of maybe an internet agrument. Whether or not I can come up with some talented obscure actors on the fly doesn't disprove the statement.
- password54321 2y ago
  God exists. I can't show you God. But believe me God definitely exists. Also low success rate comes from the fact that most of these games are asset flips. But we can conveniently ignore that fact so we can believe in the imaginary.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
because you'd also counter with "well that's an exception", or find some other reason it "deserved to fail" while propping up a game jam level game as "deserving to succeed". Yeah, conversation about game metrics without proper metrics and unaligned definitions of "success" is a bit of a fool's errand on social meida. No disrespect to Balarto, but you just know that if it sold 1k copies, people on Reddit would tear it apart with the usual armchair criticism. > this looks like a free mobile game > why are you selling a game about gambling? don't use poker cards > use a real engine like Unity/Unreal > rougelites AND card games are oversaturated, pick a better genre Seen the same things over and over again for years. There's a huge "rule of cool" effect and popularity bias influencing such opinions that suddenly shift when a game is "a success". >God exists. I can't show you God. But believe me God definitely exists. I wouldn't call Gabe newell "God", but I guess others would. But sure, you're free to message him, and he can definitely defy all ethics to show you the sales figures for every game on steam just so you can see how little the average indie game earns. I believe all of that is real. Not feasible, but not outside the realms of reality.

Auracle 2y ago

Vampire Survivors and Among Us were both out for years until they got traction, IIRC. That could have easily continued forever for both of them.

kyleamazza 2y ago

That's sort of the point of survivorship bias. Name one unsuccessful would-be entrepreneur. It's hard because chances are, anyone that's recognizable was successful in some way. For games, I'll give an example: Aegis Defenders. Great game, no traction.

password54321 2y ago
>Aegis Defenders 7/10 on Steam and Metacritic. Reviewed by major publishers. Over 100 reviews. Not sure what you mean by "no traction". But I'm sure it did fantastic in some alternate universe because Sean Carroll.
- kyleamazza 2y ago
  But we're in this universe. Based on the number of years it took to develop the game, it wouldn't be considered one that achieved "15 minutes of fame". 100 reviews is quite a far cry from your example of Balatro with 33k. I'm not sure where you plan to draw the line on "success", but I think this is a broadly reasonable contrast.
  - skyyler 2y ago
    3 of my steam friends have already purchased it. One of them has it on wishlist. I only have 40 steam friends.
    - PurpleRamen 2y ago
      I own this game too, got it probably from a bundle-sale, so I didn't really bought it on purpose for the game itself. It also seems to haven been given away for free some years ago.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kibbi 2y ago
Then it seems that "survivorship bias" is some kind of unfalsifiable and self-fulfilling belief. Secondly, these sorts of discussions usually don't define any concrete amount of success that a game is supposed to achieve. What is "no traction" supposed to mean? Aegis Defenders has 1,656 reviews at the moment. There's the assumption floating about that you can roughly multiply this by 50 to get the number of owners, which would turn out to about 80,000. The price point is fluctuating between $19.99 and $4.99. Will it net the developer/publisher less money over its lifetime than its development cost? In any case, I think that one of the biggest factors is not merely the game's quality, but whether there are a lot of players hungry for a game's specific concept and genre. Making an "excellent game" in an oversaturated genre, or in a genre where games require some network effect to take off (any multiplayer game), is much more risky. Don't just make something good; make something that a lot of people want even when the product is less than perfect. EDIT: VG Insights estimates $770k gross revenue. That's just for the Steam version. The game was also published on PlayStation 4 and Switch. The developer team seems to have been small. Based on your reply to the sibling comment, you're just pointing out the "contrast" to the success of Balatro? I honestly don't get the point. I don't think the particular amount of success that break-out hits achieve matters to the discussion. If Balatro had a million reviews, would you expect Aegis Defenders to also have a lot more reviews and sales? I think this isn't relevant to the question whether excellent games will succeed (for me this means: enable the developers to make a good living) with some predictability or whether it's due to luck, and whether there exist a lot of excellent but unknown games.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >Then it seems that "survivorship bias" is some kind of unfalsifiable and self-fulfilling belief. It's very falsifiable. Just not by us, as we have no acccess to the sales data, nor enough public sales points to make a proper statistical analysis. The best ones out there are either based on estimations (especially reviews to sales ratios) or non-public data you pay the NPD or someone similar thousands to access (and obviously you're not allowed to share that data). So someone truly curious can pay a lot of money to get an answer.

fzeroracer 2y ago

The Void Rains Upon Her Heart [1], Fear and Hunger [2] are two examples. You'll look at both of these games and think 'wait, they're actually successful, what's the deal?' and not see the whole story, which is why I linked the charts. Both of these games launched to little to no success, with few (highly positive) reviews. What changed is that deep into their lifespan (~3-4 years after release), a popular youtuber did a video on the game, and as a result it suddenly blew up in popularity and carried that momentum forward. You can in fact see the exact point on the charts where that occurred. There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever. [1] https://steamdb.info/app/790060/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/790060/charts/ [2] https://steamdb.info/app/1002300/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/1002300/charts/

password54321 2y ago
>There are a lot of games exactly like that, but haven't had the person with the viewerbase to boost them up. Nor will they ever. Such as? Just name one so we can all know. This is your time to help them out no matter how little and there are "a lot" apparently so it shouldn't be hard.
- kipchak 2y ago
  Shout out to All Day Dying. 76 reviews. Also both of Colorgrave's games. One way to look for interesting stuff is SteamDB > 50 reviews and over 80%. For example Wild Dogs, Downpurr and Vetrix look cool.
- fzeroracer 2y ago
  I mean I already gave you two examples, so here's [1] [2] [3] [4] a few examples of games that haven't had the chance to become popular. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1727180/NeverAwake/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1727180/NeverAwake/ [2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372210/Dap/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372210/Dap/ [3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1400910/Soundodger_2/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1400910/Soundodger_2/ [4] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084220/Cavity_Busters/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084220/Cavity_Busters/

rurp 2y ago

Survivorship bias is the norm in any system with high variance and a low success rate. I would say that arguing against the phenomenon is by far the more out there position. A analgous statement like, "There are actors with world class talent who never became successful" is one that pretty much everyone would intuitively agree with, outside of maybe an internet agrument. Whether or not I can come up with some talented obscure actors on the fly doesn't disprove the statement.

password54321 2y ago
God exists. I can't show you God. But believe me God definitely exists. Also low success rate comes from the fact that most of these games are asset flips. But we can conveniently ignore that fact so we can believe in the imaginary.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

because you'd also counter with "well that's an exception", or find some other reason it "deserved to fail" while propping up a game jam level game as "deserving to succeed". Yeah, conversation about game metrics without proper metrics and unaligned definitions of "success" is a bit of a fool's errand on social meida. No disrespect to Balarto, but you just know that if it sold 1k copies, people on Reddit would tear it apart with the usual armchair criticism. > this looks like a free mobile game > why are you selling a game about gambling? don't use poker cards > use a real engine like Unity/Unreal > rougelites AND card games are oversaturated, pick a better genre Seen the same things over and over again for years. There's a huge "rule of cool" effect and popularity bias influencing such opinions that suddenly shift when a game is "a success". >God exists. I can't show you God. But believe me God definitely exists. I wouldn't call Gabe newell "God", but I guess others would. But sure, you're free to message him, and he can definitely defy all ethics to show you the sales figures for every game on steam just so you can see how little the average indie game earns. I believe all of that is real. Not feasible, but not outside the realms of reality.