4 ms·

The rise of graphic design tools and digital printing play an interesting role in this. 20 years ago, existing as a brand required an effort and resources thre

The rise of graphic design tools and digital printing play an interesting role in this. 20 years ago, existing as a brand required an effort and resources threshold. Even to have a logo took some level of commitment and skill. Minimum production runs on trivial things like the box insert meant there were stakes to bringing a product to market. With those barriers gone, we have more brands than ever, and they mean relatively little.

reactordev 1y ago
Can confirm. I went to school for this very purpose. It led me down a maze of software engineering jobs and eventually prof serv that I'm in now. (Yey?) The ability for anyone to learn Photoshop or learn how to create a website, create a game, create anything, content or otherwise, and sell it on the marketplace for a quick cash grab has never been easier. I think most people set out to try with their best intentions and run into motivation issues and it just slips downhill from there - eventually being released because they have no choice. Maybe they think some of those downhill slides are good things. The issue still remains. Quality products get drowned out by inferior ones due to letting everyone participate. There should be some sort of quality control / gate / barrier of entry to some of these things. The ultimate issue is "quality" is subjective.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Reviews are the filter. They can be gamed, and that's a real issue, but it's combatable. And in any case even if you get the market down to just 'thing with good reviews' and 'thing with good [fake] reviews' that's much more manageable. So for a developer perspective all you need to achieve is that critical mass of early positive reviews, and that's not especially difficult if you have something half decent.
  - mwkaufma 1y ago
    Speaking as an independent gamedev: review-based storefronts (e.g. steam, egs, etc) select for the 1% of hits, but offers no pathway for the midrange -- everyone else gets lumped in with the slop.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - mattgreenrocks 1y ago
      Yep. And no entity or group seems really interested in moving the needle on this. Instead it just devolves into stupid meta-gaming like the article discusses.
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      It's definitely not just the 1%. Here [1] are some interesting data. 8.9% make $200k+, an additional 6.9% make $50k+. Exclude games under $10 and the median revenue of a game on Steam is around $17k. What's more relevant than that $$$ amount is the number of reviews that entails. That's sales in the thousands, which is more than sufficient to get that critical mass of reviews to start being recommended by their algorithm. It also varies heavily by genre. People love making platformers and action type games, probably inspired by the extreme simplicity of some hyper-successful games. But those are some of the worst selling games and the saturation of the market there cannot be overstated. By contrast colony sims, 4x, city builders, and so on have median revenue (with no filtering of the chaff) in the $4k-$8k range. Filter out the chaff and it'd probably be in the $30k range. And again in those numbers I'm not appealing to the $$$ values, but the corresponding number of reviews. Because the goal is to get some traction in their algorithm, and legitimate reviews play a major part there. [1] - https://gamalytic.com/blog/steam-revenue-infographic https://gamalytic.com/blog/steam-revenue-infographic
      - somenameforme 1y ago
        One other addendum here. I didn't really put this into context of the exact numbers. So you might be thinking 'yeah, whatever - those top games are just the AAA stuff anyhow.' But those numbers are based on an average of 40 games being released per day. So in other words an average of 3.5 games are released per day that will make over $200k+! That's kind of insane really, and I think basically puts to rest the claim that mid-range games aren't being reached. Because there's obviously nowhere remotely near 3.5 big titles, or even remotely well known titles for that matter, being released each day.
  - Yoric 1y ago
    Historically, this gatekeeper role was held by editors. In most domains, though, we have got rid of them, for the better and the worse.
  - Rooster61 1y ago
    > Reviews are the filter. While gaming is indeed a concern, I think a bigger one is that the power behind reviews is derived from just that, the reviewers. Human beings, playing the part of reviewers, are from my perspective becoming rapidly dumber due to a number of factors that are discussed ad nauseam here on HN. Or they are at least desensitized to the things that would prompt a negative review due to the sheer amount of shitty things they are exposed to that would prompt said review. If you shovel enough shit, the smell begins to not bother you any more.
- Gooblebrai 1y ago
  Would you say software still has this gate / barrier or is it disappearing? From my experience looking at bootcamp students, grasping programming is still nothing short of a mind switch that some are unable to do (regardless of if they have an LLM to assist, that tends to make it worse)
  - StableAlkyne 1y ago
    > Would you say software still has this gate / barrier or is it disappearing? Not OP, but if you wanna get an idea for how much of a barrier there was 30 years ago... Just look through a few shareware CDs. So much crap was hastily thrown together by someone who read a beginner book on Hypercard or Visual Basic - and you'd have to mail $10 to an address, hope they hadn't moved, and that your floppy wouldn't get lost in the mail. The general shittiness of most software back in the 90s is still a bit nostalgic IMO. It felt like software that was written by actual people instead of a faceless corporation
rchaud 1y ago
I think you'd have to go back further than 20 years. That's only 2005, and you absolutely could buy generic design assets on CDs, or get a local signage company to do it for cheap back then. If you were cheap enough, you could get a whole website made through an overseas agency for maybe $300.
grafmax 1y ago
The brands we do have have declined - while their stocks have gone up drastically over this time. Consider the Amazon, Google, or Facebook of 20 years ago vs now. The reason is that they have made their moats and moved to rent extraction.

reactordev 1y ago

Can confirm. I went to school for this very purpose. It led me down a maze of software engineering jobs and eventually prof serv that I'm in now. (Yey?) The ability for anyone to learn Photoshop or learn how to create a website, create a game, create anything, content or otherwise, and sell it on the marketplace for a quick cash grab has never been easier. I think most people set out to try with their best intentions and run into motivation issues and it just slips downhill from there - eventually being released because they have no choice. Maybe they think some of those downhill slides are good things. The issue still remains. Quality products get drowned out by inferior ones due to letting everyone participate. There should be some sort of quality control / gate / barrier of entry to some of these things. The ultimate issue is "quality" is subjective.

somenameforme 1y ago
Reviews are the filter. They can be gamed, and that's a real issue, but it's combatable. And in any case even if you get the market down to just 'thing with good reviews' and 'thing with good [fake] reviews' that's much more manageable. So for a developer perspective all you need to achieve is that critical mass of early positive reviews, and that's not especially difficult if you have something half decent.
- mwkaufma 1y ago
  Speaking as an independent gamedev: review-based storefronts (e.g. steam, egs, etc) select for the 1% of hits, but offers no pathway for the midrange -- everyone else gets lumped in with the slop.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattgreenrocks 1y ago
    Yep. And no entity or group seems really interested in moving the needle on this. Instead it just devolves into stupid meta-gaming like the article discusses.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    It's definitely not just the 1%. Here [1] are some interesting data. 8.9% make $200k+, an additional 6.9% make $50k+. Exclude games under $10 and the median revenue of a game on Steam is around $17k. What's more relevant than that $$$ amount is the number of reviews that entails. That's sales in the thousands, which is more than sufficient to get that critical mass of reviews to start being recommended by their algorithm. It also varies heavily by genre. People love making platformers and action type games, probably inspired by the extreme simplicity of some hyper-successful games. But those are some of the worst selling games and the saturation of the market there cannot be overstated. By contrast colony sims, 4x, city builders, and so on have median revenue (with no filtering of the chaff) in the $4k-$8k range. Filter out the chaff and it'd probably be in the $30k range. And again in those numbers I'm not appealing to the $$$ values, but the corresponding number of reviews. Because the goal is to get some traction in their algorithm, and legitimate reviews play a major part there. [1] - https://gamalytic.com/blog/steam-revenue-infographic https://gamalytic.com/blog/steam-revenue-infographic
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      One other addendum here. I didn't really put this into context of the exact numbers. So you might be thinking 'yeah, whatever - those top games are just the AAA stuff anyhow.' But those numbers are based on an average of 40 games being released per day. So in other words an average of 3.5 games are released per day that will make over $200k+! That's kind of insane really, and I think basically puts to rest the claim that mid-range games aren't being reached. Because there's obviously nowhere remotely near 3.5 big titles, or even remotely well known titles for that matter, being released each day.
- Yoric 1y ago
  Historically, this gatekeeper role was held by editors. In most domains, though, we have got rid of them, for the better and the worse.
- Rooster61 1y ago
  > Reviews are the filter. While gaming is indeed a concern, I think a bigger one is that the power behind reviews is derived from just that, the reviewers. Human beings, playing the part of reviewers, are from my perspective becoming rapidly dumber due to a number of factors that are discussed ad nauseam here on HN. Or they are at least desensitized to the things that would prompt a negative review due to the sheer amount of shitty things they are exposed to that would prompt said review. If you shovel enough shit, the smell begins to not bother you any more.
Gooblebrai 1y ago
Would you say software still has this gate / barrier or is it disappearing? From my experience looking at bootcamp students, grasping programming is still nothing short of a mind switch that some are unable to do (regardless of if they have an LLM to assist, that tends to make it worse)
- StableAlkyne 1y ago
  > Would you say software still has this gate / barrier or is it disappearing? Not OP, but if you wanna get an idea for how much of a barrier there was 30 years ago... Just look through a few shareware CDs. So much crap was hastily thrown together by someone who read a beginner book on Hypercard or Visual Basic - and you'd have to mail $10 to an address, hope they hadn't moved, and that your floppy wouldn't get lost in the mail. The general shittiness of most software back in the 90s is still a bit nostalgic IMO. It felt like software that was written by actual people instead of a faceless corporation

rchaud 1y ago

I think you'd have to go back further than 20 years. That's only 2005, and you absolutely could buy generic design assets on CDs, or get a local signage company to do it for cheap back then. If you were cheap enough, you could get a whole website made through an overseas agency for maybe $300.

grafmax 1y ago

The brands we do have have declined - while their stocks have gone up drastically over this time. Consider the Amazon, Google, or Facebook of 20 years ago vs now. The reason is that they have made their moats and moved to rent extraction.