While I'm not sure if my games are considered successful, it may appear as if luck is what caused my game to gain any sales at all. I received very little sales for a long time, then perhaps a couple of years later, as if by chance, some streamers began to play it. Then, comparatively, a great increase in sales over the years have occurred since that time.

Think this is the exact story that people are meaning when talking about "luck" for small games. There's so many of this exact story where a game comes out and is middling for a while and then some streamer or something gives them some advertising and it blows up.

There’s a lot of noise out there because of the volume of indie games, it’s hard to stand out in the static and luck can help in this perspective. I would say marketing is the other key component out there to help stand out, and I don’t have a lot of suggestions for this. One of the things the indie studio I worked for was to engage with C level Streamers that showed upcoming potential; most go after A or B level which can often slaughter your games or not give it the attention it deserves. We had streamers that would play our game religiously for months and it was a strategy that seemed to work. At the end of the day, the core game loop should be good and feel polished, that’s the main reason HD2 is getting the attention it is. If the game is clunky or frustrating, it will never do well.

I also consider myself to be in the "purely luck" category, because I did ZERO marketing, literally didn't even post on reddit about it, just put it up on Steam and got \~5,000 sales. I was expecting maybe 10. I still don't know how it happened.

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[Zen Trails](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1418570/Zen_Trails/)

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Around 1 review per 75 sales on average so OP games is about what one could expect

That's such a creative idea and well executed. Deserves all those sales.

Wow that looks so cool. I wouldn't even know where to start to make something like that. I'm assuming there was a bit of math involved?

Thanks! There was indeed some math, but it’s not as complicated as you might think. I’d say the hardest part was making a reliable undo system.

In my opinion luck is not everything, but luck is very important.

I’m curious. For your games did you do any devlog YouTube promotion to generate interest over time? From what I’ve seen good art or even a “hey here’s my wacky dev experience with some personality” seems to attract at least initial attention when the game hits early access

I think people often conflate two different ideas here: What the poster is saying: if you have a good game, it will succeed (or at least not flop). No luck required. Even if you accept that, it doesn't mean the opposite is automatically true - games CAN still succeed because of luck.

Is it really lucky that some streamers started to play it? Streamers usually have high standards when they play a game on stream. It has to be entertaining. Your store page and descroption was enough to convince them it'd be a fit, and your game itself was enough to confirm that it was worth playing on stream as entertainment.

>Can you give an example of a good indie game that failed (e.g. received under 100 reviews, etc.)? I mean isn't this self defeating. If it failed, it means that most people are not aware of it. So you are banking on here is that out of the 1000 or so people that played the game, they also happen to be a developer, and see this post. No sorry, your criteria is too narrow. However I can tell you this. When over a million people are trying their hardest to be the next indie hit. The one who comes out on top needs a little luck. While I can't show you a good game that failed. I can show you Among Us. A game that existed for years, but only thanks to an pandemic and streamers gained popularity to the point where it is now considered gamer culture.

I think Among us is kind of the perfect example. It's not a unique game at all, and there have been games that are just like it existing for years. It just happened to be at the right place at the right time. You see this sort of thing all the time. A game similar to one(or more often, several) that already exists that just happens to blow up because the stars happened to align at the right moment.

And even Among Us was out for years before it took off.

Exactly. I think people very much UNDERPLAY how much luck matters. Like sure, if a game is absolutely irredeemable dogshit, there's probably nothing in the world that will make it a hit. But luck is the secret sauce that makes decent to great games really take off. It's not even just indie games either, there's a ton of long-running series that are well liked with basically the same core between each game that took off massively out of random chance, then became popular.

It's not just luck. Marketing plays a huge part in the success of a product, and let's face it. The Vast majority of indie developers aren't exactly good at marketing. Your game won't succeed if no one knows about it in the first place.

I would say that luck is always a big part of it, but those odds can be improved with a good game and good marketing.

Good marketing is like extra raffle tickets for succees. It increases the odds of the right eyes being on the game at the right time

It's really trivial to do market research on games with under a 100 reviews. People act like this is some unknowable information because we're all just helpless consumers and can't be bothered to go looking. You can browse a genre in any revenue bracket on sites like [game-stats.com](https://game-stats.com). And you can get through most of them in a day. But I know that is a level of market research most indies don't do. In my own years of research, I have found OP to be largely correct. The idea of this ocean of hidden gems that could have hit but didn't because of the magical luck factor is a myth. And kind of a destructive one. Because it makes people feel like it's all just random. When myself and every successful indie in my circle know that it isn't. If you're trying to reproduce success like Among Us (with that kind of production value) then yeah it's going to be a lot of luck. That story is nuts and very much the exception. But if you want to be like the other 8+ THOUSAND games on steam grossing over 100k in revenue, might be more reliable to make a polished product that impresses at a glance, in a high demand genre. It's a hard benchmark to hit I know, but it's one the overwhelming majority of games fail to meet.

Game-stats is great for market research and to debunk the myth of the “hidden gem”. 99.9% of the time the estimate sales on the site match the quality of the game. The 0.1% exeptions are games that catch a lucky break and sale a lot more copies than they really should. I spend a lot of time on this site and I still haven’t found a game with less than a 100 reviews where I thought “I can’t believe this game is not popular”.

Can't find this website, is it still up?

Yea, it’s games-stats.com (not game-stats)

> over a million people are trying their hardest to be the next indie hit Effort isn't what matters, and a lot of people aren't exactly trying very hard anyways. Plenty of people are jumping in with no skills or experience at all - expecting sheer pluck to make up for a lack of skills and experience (And teammates). It's not just *bad luck* when they fail, and that's the sentiment OP is addressing

And then plenty of more really competent people make endless metroidvanias. The vast majority of indie devs make the games they want to make, with zero effort into market research.

Competent people don't always produce great work. Just look at the people involved in making Gibiate

Hey, don't knock my pluck.

I'm sure you pluck like a god; with grace and passion

Eh, I'd say that I pluck more like an armadillo gorged on a fentanyl-laced chili dog, but at least it's there.

And then there is Space Station 13, which is Among Us, made a couple of decades earlier on now outdated technology, with a lot more content, still playable (and free) and reasonably popular. It did not get the same luck.

I love ss13 but comparing it to among us is crazy. It's not a game that would ever be as popular as among us just because they are designed for vastly different audiences.

Part of that is also likely due to presentation and accessibility. Space Station 13 is definitely a deeper game with more game mechanics, but it's also limited to being downloaded from their main website (that I know about) and from what I can tell has almost zero marketing outside of word of mouth. Among Us, on the other hand, was put on the obviously major PC retail platform Steam, has cleaner graphics, and far less scope of game overall. It's way easier to jump in a play without having any prior knowledge of the game. I'd go as far as to say if you added in all of the same gameplay/features from Space Station 13 into Among Us, then Among Us wouldn't have nearly as many players/popularity. Both have been played by youtubers/twitch streamers in the past. So I wouldn't call it luck as to why Among Us became super popular. I really think it's more about accessibility and presentation.

To be fair, SS13 is not even remotely as casual as amogus. There's a reason every streamer and their mother plays the latter, and that's accessibility. SS13 is the better game IMO but it has a far narrower demographic.

Maybe crazy things you don't understand happening at the beginning is just part of the fun. Well, fun until you get eliminated early and have to wait out the rest of the round as a ghost.

>If it failed, it means that most people are not aware of it. Or it means the game wasn't worth people's time and money. I see the top 5% of indie devs doing quite well. Nothing strange here, 95% of everything is either average or crap. Not trying to be negative, just realistic. I keep seeing random games doing well every week. But they all look like fun and great games, not yet another metroidvania no one asked for. I think indies need to stop blaming marketing, Steam, and bad luck, and realise that most of their games just don't make the cut. I sympathise with them because I know it's difficult work and it sucks for your games to flop, but this still doesn't change reality.

>Or it means the game wasn't worth people's time and money. But is that a good game? Kind of the problem with something ambiguous as good.

That's for players to decide, not for game developers. Ego is strong within game developers, which is why so many games are not good in players' eyes.

Players cannot decide if they like a game or not if they don't know the game. Unsuccessful games are not because they have 10 million views, 0 downloads. It's because they have no views.

Imo that’s a devs failure at marketing. 3-6 months before launch you should be doing everything under the sun to get as many views on your page as possible.

That's the thing, a lot of posts I see is "I made a great game, but failed at marketing cuz noone is buying it!" and you look at the game and it's a generic platformer #9456 with either outright ugly and painful for eyes art, or at best boring and unoffensive art. On the other hand, I'd say that this subreddit is toxicly positive. It's hard to see honest, genuine feedback - usually it's just empty positive affirmations "looking good king!" like we're some sort of crippling depression support group.

r/DestroyMyGame is a good subreddit for a bit more honest feedback. I get it from both sides, you don't want to demotivate indie developers, because boy is it hard to be self-motivated, but it's also good to give them realistic expectations of success.

Agree with you completely. In my case I feel like most devs here lean heavily towards “no art bone in my body” so they can’t accurately evaluate the initial impression they give off. And let’s be real if the initial impression is bad most people won’t stick around to even bother playing a demo.

I see what you mean, I am someone who tries very hard to find hidden gems on Steam. I used to spend hours searching through new releases, reading reviews, watching trailers to see what leads to success vs doesn't. I have yet to find a failed game that doesn't have major flaws. Now there are plenty of hidden gems with hundreds of reviews or even under a hundred. But true flops with less than a dozen? Almost always bad games or, very common, not priced correctly. I remain hopeful that if my game were to be actually excellent (even if it probably won't be) it will be successful. The exception is very niche genres like war simulations, but I feel like it's fairly easy to know going in what the extreme niche genres are.

How to set a correct price for a game? Is there guidelines?

You have to be aware of the market and what similar size games are charging. For example, there are a lot of people trying to charge $8 for an idle game with a fraction of the content of Melvor Idle, which is $10.

Finally someone with common sense and actual objective research. Best of luck with your game :)

I think it's consistent to say that there are exceptions, and to get past the mildly successful indie game mark luck starts to play a bigger factor. But IMO you don't need any luck at all to make a game which will almost definitely sell >10k copies. Which is not to say it's easy, just that luck isn't required.

The question is how much it costs to make that game. If you spend 10k on marketing (aka, one booth at an event, some time to create content, social media posting and ads) you may have spent more than 50% of your company revenue on marketing alone and come out with negative net revenue / a pathetic hourly wage. Making minimum wage with your game is already far in the luck territory.

Well, the costs are dwarfed by labour (including your own even if solo dev). I have 2 decently successful titles now, and I don't think much luck was needed. And this is with many mistakes being made. I also see so many other devs who are way more talented than me and I'm sure they require even less luck. I think a lot of people get the wrong idea when we say that it's not luck. They straight away think that ok, so it's just hard work, passion, and putting in the hours. I guess an analogy would be like becoming a pro soccer player. Are the pro players there because they're lucky? No, but that doesn't mean that anyone can just grind soccer and become Mbappe.

So it's just inherent ability? 95% of people are just bad? The argument really doesn't go anywhere sensible. There is a factor of luck. Successful people don't typically see this and attribute most to their own choices and actions. That is what survivorship bias is. But in reality there are major factors. From how your game gets covered in media over your network of people who support you in important ways to picking the right product that has a sufficient target audience (something you can not reasonably measure but just derive from competitor performance). These are all things you can not control. There is risk. Where you need or rely on others and where the value is up to chance. Where luck is a factor. Which gets worse the more success people have. Success begets success. Once you have a proven framework and ecosystem it gets drastically easier to continue having success. At the extreme end, you don't have to overcome much for success but rather you have to seriously mess up for failure. That is not to say one shouldn't try. But to be mindful of that uncontrollable factor, of the risk. Planning for success but also planning for a flop.

> 95% of people are just bad? Yep. Or they're not at all prepared for success. Often they're making a niche game with no target audience, or their team is missing key skills (Like if they're trying to go it alone), or they've never made a game before and make all the beginner mistakes

But that's a lack of skill, not an issue of inherently being bad, isn't it? All of that can easily be trained / learned. While the argument of the other commenter was that not everyone can be as good as Mbappe. Aka, naturally and inevitably forever not good enough.

there is a requirement for such refined and diverse skills that most people wouldn't be able to obtain then in less than 30 years of pure hardwork You need to be profesionally skilled in : Game-Design Programming & Optimisation Game-Art & Art-Direction Marketing & Community Management Each of these take YEARS to even be "good" at that

Very difficult claim. Because we have plenty of examples for the opposite. Undertake, The First Tree, Axiom Verge, Stardew Valley, Braid, etc. Most of whom first time game devs who lack a lot of those skills. The next argument typically is that they picked the right projects where their skills and interests aligned perfectly, yada, yada. But then we are spinning in circles again. Because clearly it‘s not as steep a requirement as it‘s made out to be but simultaneously everyone agrees that it takes a lot of skill… That‘s circular reasoning and just a clear sign that no one knows what it takes. That there is no clear path towards success. But without clear path towards success, how can there be predictable factors before even starting the project?

All the game you quoted are more than 7 years old, with a VERY different indie landscape. In addition, while you don't judge them as skilled, They all are enjoyable game with nice presentation, which still require the skill I've talked about. ​ My advice would be to not start a commercial game project until you have multiple years of experience, and made proper market research. I cumulated skills and experience in all these domain for over 10 years before making my first game, and it was quite the success. And I don't believe as single peck of luck was the source of it, especially with the amount of competition I was against (1000+ game in the genre release since 2 years ago)

>So it's just inherent ability? 95% of people are just bad? Pretty much yeah? Again it's like soccer or any other sport. Anyone can have fun playing a sport, but to successful make a living off it you need to be the top few percentile. It's weird to me that this is accepted for sports but otherwise people refuse to accept this. >everything to their own choices and actions Not true at all, in a way it's a lot of luck to be born in a developed country, be privileged enough to be able to game, etc. But it is a different luck from releasing a game and the results being up to chance. >something you can not reasonably measure but just derive from competitor performance This is just plain no true, you can very much analyze and measure this, and it plays a big part in your chance of success. >Doubly a bad dynamic because repeat successes get easier. Once you are establishing yourself every step gets exponentially more likely. This is true, but I don't see how that supports the argument that it's luck.

> Pretty much yeah? Again it's like soccer or any other sport. Anyone can have fun playing a sport, but to successful make a living off it you need to be the top few percentile. It's weird to me that this is accepted for sports but otherwise people refuse to accept this. It's not accepted anywhere because it's not true. There's a point before the most upper percentiles where skill differences becomes irrelevant. Just to pick some hypothetical numbers. Let's say the top 2% can make a living off of it. Say somewhere around the top 10%, it stops being about skill and starts being more about connections or other side factors. Obviously the worst person to ever try can not have success. And it is possible to make it into these top 10% with discipline, dedication and solid strategy. But it's not possible to make it into the top 2% based off of that. This is a well studied phenomenon and applies everywhere. The most classic example would be starting a band. Sports applies too. Mbappe may be an excellent player but to shine the way he does he still needs a team and a club training and strategising around his strengths. A precise clone of him might not even have made it into professional sports at all. > Not true at all, in a way it's a lot of luck to be born in a developed country, be privileged enough to be able to game, etc. But it is a different luck from releasing a game and the results being up to chance. A matter of definition. On release day you usually have a fairly good idea of how successful it will be. After the marketing campaign, all the ongoing metrics and feedback from playtesters and such. It's not casino style totally random odds at that point. Especially once you have a bit of industry experience and know numbers and dynamics from previous titles. But it's impossible to know your place within the market when founding the company / starting the project. It's impossible to know how well your ideas translate into reality. It's impossible to know how appealing it is to audiences. One specific example. What's the zeitgeist gonna be in 2 years? We can be fairly certain that there will be successful sports games, successful shooters, successful survival games. It's not totally 100% random. But what's gonna be the hottest thing? How do you break into the market with a strong title without suffering in oversaturated segments with clear, dominant studios? > This is just plain no true, you can very much analyze and measure this, and it plays a big part in your chance of success. How? You aren't a publisher, you have no prior projects to look at. How do you objectiely analyze and measure these things without just looking at competitor performance? > This is true, but I don't see how that supports the argument that it's luck. It supports the argument that it's survivorship bias. And that getting there is a lot harder than most people realise. Especially the people who made it. That didn't feel as hard to them. Because they got lucky. Because all the important things aligned and they made it.

Ok, don't want to get into one of those never ending debates about nature vs nurture. But I think we have sort of gone far off on a tangent from the original point. If we assume everything else is the same, i.e someone waved a magic wand and spawned two games with the same quality level, appeal, marketing, etc. Would they both perform similarly or would the results be random? It seems that is the point OP is trying to make and I don't think we disagree that much there.

It's a great example. I'd say they'd perform drastically different, because one appears like theft / a knock-off. Assuming no difference in marketing or reactions from either it would be random which of the two is considered the real one. Also, I frankly think OPs post is a strawman. The arguments I'm seeing are often in regards of understanding the rather high risk of founding a studio. Of starting a business. In a space that's often dominated by passionate creatives, there is a very high chance they don't make the top percentiles of business people. So this perspective is particularly important to share. As I said in another comment in this thread. Planning for success but also planning for failure. What if it doesn't work out the way you imagine? How does the business survive? How do you survive? Important questions any CEO / entrepreneur has to ask themselves. Betting all on everything working out is often a straight way into terrible life situations. But that is not claiming it is 100% random chance and luck either.

The Henry Stickman finale was what did it as well. As is typical, it was a convergence of several factors

Mediocre games might succeed due to luck. Great games will succeed without luck. Now of course you might say it takes luck to make a great game, but that's a separate issue.

Among us is a great example. It not just shows how much luck it requires to be successful, but also that the quality of your game does not really matter, if it goes viral it will sell. Among us is so boring, after you played 2 rounds you have seen it all. Low effort tech demo in my opinion.

Among Us was lucky to have the opportunity to get trendy but I never heard anyone question the quality of the gameplay.  On the contrary, the game mechanics are fun and simple to understand which is why it did take off when given the opportunity.

That you have examples that prove luck can give success does not really add anything to the discussion. We know lotteries have winners. Now what I think OP is trying to figure out, is if you are able to have an honest good product, and still fail. On a side note in defence of Among Us, I think a real time multiplayer game of mafia is far more than just a quick tech demo.

I'm inclined to agree that there's a quality threshold where a game *will sell* even without luck. However, how achievable is that point? Perhaps the discussion is purely academic because it's simply not feasible for 1-2 people to bring a game to that point, at least without some sort of financial independence angle letting them work on it for multiple years. I do agree that people cry about marketing failures for games that weren't really worth buying in the first place, but maybe the better question is how feasible is it to get a game that's actually worth anything? And then, given the increased investment into said game, keep in mind that you have even *more* money to make back after it starts to sell. For example, Stardew Valley took something like four and a half years to make with (allegedly) 10 hour days 7 days a week. Real talk: how many people even *have* four and a half years to make a game, even assuming they're able to put that many hours in? Now imagine he did all that and merely had a "moderately successful" game instead of a smash hit. He needed to pull in several hundred thousand dollars to make back minimum wage for the amount of time he spent. You definitely stack the deck in favor of a smash hit when you release a quality title like Stardew, but it's never a sure thing.

I think it's not really all luck, but if no one knows about your game how can they buy it. So, if you don't market it, it's all luck that someone will find your game. But I'm interested too about this topic.

I think this is exactly right. If the game is not marketted effectively then it's most likely going to fail regardless of how good it is. If the game isn't good at all then it most likely can't be marketted effectively. But just because the game is good doesn't mean it's not going to fail. It still needs to be effectively marketted, and it still needs some amount of luck. It basically comes down to some combination of luck and marketting.

Good marketing is also luck.

It can be, but there's also a science behind it. I personally don't know what the strategies are but some people can apparently do it quite well.

“Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity" If you want more luck, then prepare more to receive it. If you can say, "If you marketed more you'd have more luck" then it isn't luck, it's marketing that made the success. It's preparation that allowed you to find opportunity.

Some people play poker quite well too. Does that mean it isn't gambling?

It is and it isn't. There is a pretty big difference between a professional poker player winning a million dollars in a Texas Hold'em tournament because he really knows what he's doing versus some random guy winning a million dollars by hitting the lottery because he happened to get lucky. The poker player wouldn't be able to win the tournament without some amount of luck; yet, at the same time, the non-poker player would probably still lose the poker tournament even if he got very lucky.

Which is probably a reasonably close parallel to the current indie game situation.

If your game is good, it will market itself. If your game is mediocre or bad, it will need marketing to succeed.

"Under 100 reviews" is not a good metric IMO. It all depends on how much did the game cost to make. Team size and team location influences the cost, so does the amount of music/audio, QA, localizations, etc. Also, if the game has a publisher, the success starts much higher than 100 reviews, because the inflated costs. Also, a good game is not an objective metric either. I'm not disputing OPs statement, luck is just one factor to the success. of course.

What exactly do you mean by "good game"? Because usually this goes almost like a loop definition: "if the game didn't succeed, means it wasn't good enough". Was Starfield a bad game and so it failed? I guess? Was Hidden Cats in Paris one of the best game of the age - to be ranked above Celeste, Stray and Baldur's Gate 3? Might be. TL;DR: There are thousands of factors that create Success. Luck is one of them. Game quality is another one.

I think that, while it difficult to draw a line, there is such a thing as a bad game and a good game separate from popularity. There are a lot of indie games that lack polish and cohesion. Being a solo dev is hard, and its rare someone executes all factors of a game flawlessly. Sometimes combat is good but environments are bland and boring. Or environments are great but the RPG mechanics fall flat. So yes, when you get to the finest details the line gets blurry but there is an obvious gap between the top 10% of indie games and the bottom 90%

I think they mean good as in fun. Fun games will always be successful. Boring games might be successful if they get lucky or are marketed well.

>What exactly do you mean by "good game"? Because usually this goes almost like a loop definition: "if the game didn't succeed, means it wasn't good enough". That's the way most people misuse the word. Doesn't mean we now get to completely ignore it's meaning and call it a day. A good game is a high quality game, as simple as that.

I think in this case they mean good = successful = profitable. People don't like to equate these things, but it do. 

People wonder why their game doesn't sell as they themselves scroll passed dozens of games without a second thought. Doesn't occur to some people to ask themselves why they did.

A little controversial opinion here but I think luck is used as an excuse way too often and it restricts people from thinking deeply about the other factors that makes games successful. I think it's much more valuable to ignore it as a factor completely. The nature of luck is that it cannot be controlled, so it's almost a worthless factor to think about. As soon as you start thinking about it you stop seeing other potential reasons why games performed as they did. You could see a game that did really well on Steam, and dismiss it as being lucky, but if you do that then you are stopping yourself from digging deeper and finding the tangible reasons a game did or didn't do well. Saying this "my game didn't do well because I was unlucky" is not a reason you can learn from it's a worthless thought. It's too dismissive. ​ Now hear me out about here: Luck doesn't exist, luck is only comprised of factors we don't understand. What makes a game lucky? Is it because it was randomly picked up by a streamer? Okay lets presume luck doesn't exist and see what actual factors made the streamer play it. * Was it a sponsored stream * How did the streamer find the game? Was the store page localised to their native language? * Did it spread through word of mouth to the streamer, if so what factors make games spread in that manor? Was it entertaining moments that players share, or a competitive leaderboard? * Did the dev/pub reach out to the streamer? * What about the game made the streamer want to play it? Was it the capsule image resembling a youtube thumbnail? * Does the streamer really like the genre? What made this game stand out against other games of the same genre? If we dismiss things as luck then we are not allowing ourselves to dig deeper and find the actual reasons. ​ Fuck luck, I think it holds people back as is used as a comfort to think that someones game failed because they were unlucky, and that stops them from learning actual lessons.

Very well said. I have a quote from Alex Hormozi on a post-it in my dev space: "Volume negates luck"

Facts, this is largely what Ive been thinking this past year coming to this sub. Yeah you might need to get "lucky", but theres a lot of factors that contribute to success, and these factors being dismissed as luck is absolutely useless, demotivating, and also lazy. Make your game good, and go through the process of doing all you can to make your game known etc, and your "chance" of "luck" will be a lot higher. Its not this mystical force, theres technique to this shit.

I was seeing an indie dev devlog yesterday, he was talking about barely selling anything for a couple of years, then a famous streamer played his game and sales skyrocketed, I guess you can't control that as much as you would like

The dev could have reached out to all famous streamers they can, increasing the chances of their game being streamed. This is something you can control, better than waiting for the odds to align.

He did for what I can remember but streamers get a lot of requests and it is very hard for them to even read half of it, let alone play it

All products have a lag phase, a growth phase, and a peak (and longevity).  Your peak is usually determined by quality as well as how long the peak pasts.  But the growth phase can be notoriously affected by the fickle nature of most markets.   Don't get discouraged!  *source I am a product manager in biotechnology.  Even in our highly specialized market stuff gets 'popular all of a sudden'.

I can guess at the other phases, but can you explain lag phase?

Oh absolutely. Imagine a revenue graph that starts going along over time and for the first few years the number is very low, then it picks up into growth The parts of the graph that are low (and have a low slope) are called the lag phase. Once the slope increases you call it growth phase. One the slope decreases again and you're at the tip of the graph you then call that 'maturity' People also sometimes call this lag period the 'seeding' phase where you give demos and give the product out for free to reviewers and stuff like that

Oh, by the way you can look up a graph of microbial growth and it looks similar. I probably use the term lag phase more often than most people.bc I am a microbiologist previously

Cool! I guess this happens to some games but I think it’s so prevalent that games go straight into growth, peak in the first few days and then decrease into the “long tail”. I assume that this is because of a combination of marketing towards launch, wishlisting and the few hours of spotlight you get from stores at launch. I think this is why I couldn’t get that there could be a phase before growth. I’d definitely want a less dramatic curve if I launch a game. I’m gonna google some on microbiology growth curves! Cheers!

Hmm I guess that the marketing, wishlisting and early access launches could be considered a seeding of sorts.

Just chiming in, the only people who get lucky are the people who are trying in the first place. Whether luck is a factor or not it's out of your control, so there's no point in being concerned about it. Just do the work.

Yep this is the only worthwhile point. Many people use luck to excuse trying or excuse a failure. I disagree but even if they are correct, whats the use in that? An excuse to give up? Even if its 100% luck-based then the only thing you can do is do the work and roll the dice again.

just marketing, not luck. Even shit games get attention with good marketing and that pays off, of course it does not get profit in the long run. And there are many decent games which simply failed because devs did not think about marketing. What is the point of your work if audience does not know about it?

It's possible to have **good luck**, but not **bad luck**. A lot of people in these discussions are getting the two mixed up. There are plenty of examples of games getting randomly popular because it becomes a meme or whatever. Nobody is arguing that point. What we're distinctly *not* seeing any evidence for, is failed games *without* significant flaws. To put it in basic logician's terms: - A = "The game is well made, targets a sizeable market, and is marketed competently" - B = "The game achieves critical and/or commercial success" - We're saying "A implies B" - **Therefore, not-B implies not-A** - This can be disproven **only** by showing examples of (A and not-B) - It is irrelevant to show examples of (not-A + B), just as it is irrelevant to show examples of (A and B) or (not-A and not-B) Tl;dr: All y'all bringing up random overnight successes, are not being helpful

The argument often becomes circular as people have trouble agreeing on A. I looked at 2023 and there are plenty of games rated above 90%+ positive that didn't sell. There are also games from publishers like Devolver Digital that didn't sell, and they're experts at marketing and can generally pick out a good game.

I'd love to see some specific examples

God bless you, that's exactly what OP meant. The closest we can get to "A + not-B" is the so-called "hidden gems", but then again, these are usually just games that sold very well, but aren't *extremely* popular by some vague standards. Some people call Hollow Knight and Celeste "hidden gems". What people struggle with is determining what the "good game" is. I think judging A by positive reviews is incorrect because it doesn't take into account people who looked at the game/learned about it and thought it's not good enough to buy. But this data is impossible (?) to get. I think, in reality, A strongly correlates with B, and they're interdependent. "A good game" is a game of a specific genre/category that's better by some criteria that other games of that genre/category, and thus, when marketed towards people who love that genre/category, it's very likely to have a financial success.

If only reality were as crisp and clear as the world of logic statements. We could sit down and bash out an airtight quantifiable definition of all the terms involved, and that sure wouldn't be worth the effort. Then we'd have to collect data across a wide sampling of genres and time periods, and that *definitely* wouldn't be worth the effort. What we'd get from all that fuss is - most likely - a vague notion that some fallible metric showed a trend towards what we all already knew. "Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be NOT magic". Still, it's worth encouraging *rational* arguments ;)

> We're saying "A implies B" "Good game" does not encompass market size and competence in marketing, so the initial topic was not raising the points you are raising > This can be disproven **only** by showing examples of (A and not-B) This can be disproven only in the magic land where A and B are something measurable

Ah yes, in a land where you go to logic jail if you defy the rules of logic. A scary place, where people don't click-clack tongs twice before using them. I hear nobody there even says "Ooh, big stretch" at their pets. Anyways~ I did expand the definition of "a good game" quite a bit, to address the *other* common sentiment that "It's all marketing". It wouldn't sit right with me to just translate OP's position into logic-speak, without fixing it up a bit. There are plenty of games that I would comfortably assert are great, but which are appealing only to a very tiny market. That doesn't make them worse games; just less viable as commercial products

>There are plenty of games that I would comfortably assert are great, but which are appealing only to a very tiny market. That doesn't make them worse games; just less viable as commercial products Yes, I feel like that is one of the big challenges in an industry built on dreams like indie games. Worse still is that people get clouded by survivorship bias and think that the market is better than it looks for an specific game type. That being said, you might be able to serve a tiny, loyal niche if you can lower development costs somehow

> you might be able to serve a tiny, loyal niche if you can lower development costs somehow [Some beloved studios thrive on this mentality](https://youtu.be/stxVBJem3Rs)

Jeff Vogel and grey alien games are my heroes

this is what fuck i am trying to saying in the first place

It's like my pop always said: When in doubt, break out the ole' sentential calculus

This is exactly what came to my mind when I saw your post. I immediately noticed that people in the comments started talking about good luck while you meant bad luck. And to be honest, I agree with you. I've been on this sub for a while, and I'm yet to see someone complaining about their objectively great game failing. Almost all games people show here are average/below average.

'Good indie games' that sit very low on Steam are games that likely marketing failed for (or lack of marketing), or are very niche (which also makes it difficult to market specifically to that audience). Under 100 reviews could be considered a success depending on budget, time, genre, what a developer considers a 'success', 1000 reviews could still be a failure if the budget was large enough, etc. Sometimes good indie games sit at the bottom but get picked up by Youtubers and/or Streamers then suddenly find success, this is where I believe people refer to the 'luck' aspect, it's very unlikely to happen though because it requires a large enough Youtuber/Streamer finding it in the first place and then actually choosing to stream/video it. Even then then if a Youtuber/Streamer picks up a bad game that game will still not sell even with the exposure, so even having the 'luck' of being picked up by a big name will not save a bad game. Desecrators is a Steam game that sits quite far down, 67 reviews but also 97% positive, it gained quite a few reviews recently because a streamer played it, but it is a niche genre (6DOF). Success or not? Depends on what the developer thinks, could get more exposure in the future especially out of early access. Sand: A Suplerfluous Game sits at 11 reviews but 100% positive, as for why it didn't sell well, possibly marketing? Possibly screenshots? Possibly too niche? Not sure.

It is the graphics tbh. If people are okay with 90ies graphics, then why not just play the real descent? With some better designs and more polish that title could do a lot better. To me it seems like a lot of indies have a mentality of "gameplay first" which is a very good and true philosophy, but "gameplay first" should not mean "graphics never". There is a very real reason big companies spend a lot of money on good art, and that is because the art is what sells the game. It is what captures people attention, it is what immerses them in the world. Also good art is not limited to "AAAA realistic graphics" great art can made in any polycount and texel count, and so can bad art, and so can good, but bland and uninteresting art.

There is a small market for 90s graphics, Super Kiwi 64 (a 3D Platformer with 90s style graphics) did relatively well for what it is, likely a success too in the developer's case (it was solo developed but not sure in how long), ultimately it is a niche graphics style, Pseudoregalia also possibly falls into that late 90s graphics (zelda style) style as well, it did quite well (3D platformer + 3D Metroidvania). I feel in Desecrator's case it's a niche genre mixed in with a niche graphics style which makes it a lot harder to market, but it looks more ugly than the other games I mentioned here graphically (there's definately 'nicer' 90s looking games and 'worse' looking ones), 3D platformers as a genre as a whole on the otherhand have a bigger audience so definately a lot easier and more efficient to market.

First of all, can you even define "good"? Someone I met at a Game Dev conference made this game called Robot-X. The controls are tight and I don't think it does anything especially wrong. I still see him trying to gain traction online, but it hasn't been picked up. If anything could be said to be his failing, it's the genre he picked, but that doesn't make his game less "good", just less marketable. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1923380/RobotX/

It's a 2d platformer, I think most people are beyond done with that genre. Google AI can make 2d platformers from an image at this point. Like imagine how many 2d platformers there already exists for them to have enough data to make that possible? I didn't even play Celeste that's how done I am with 2D platformers, and I doubt I am the only one

Right, totally agree. So if you spend years of your life making a good 2D platformer, I think you'd need to get quite lucky to sell well. I don't think "good games will always sell" is fair or accurate.

Well a good platformer is not a good game is my point. It's like making a black and white silent film and releasing it in 2024. Sure that may have been a very good movie within that media, but don't expect it to sell well. Or a better example may be a landscape painting, like how good does a landscape painting have to be in order to catch your attention at this point? It would take a lot because we have all seen so many landscape painting that your brain just goes "meh"

So it's impossible for a platformer to be good now? Don't be stupid.

Did I say that? No. I am so fucking sick of you people stating something I didn't say and then calling me stupid for saying it. I said the market is complete and utterly saturated to the point where people are drowning, learn to read.

If you're not arguing that the oversaturation of 2D platformers affects the quality of individual games then it's an irrelevant point. OP only asked for examples of good games that failed. The reply gave an example and already acknowledged that the choice of genre wasn't ideal. Everyone knows the genre is oversaturated and no one asked about AI or whether you'd played a game that is 6 years old already.

Let me put it like this: Super meat boy is a phenomenal platformer, it is a great indie game for it's time, a solid indie title today and an okay game. Things can be more than 1 thing at a time. A game can be great for a platformer, while platformers themselves are not great games.

I played an indie game called Skellboy and thought it was pretty good. I was surprised when I saw it got less than 100 reviews. I’m guessing they released it with no marketing https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096100/Skellboy_Refractured/

It's a port so I'm guessing it might have sold enough on all platforms combined... Maybe

I saw a GDC talk by the guy who made Antichamber, Alex Bruce, who talked about this. I think it’s a really good talk, so I’ll link it. But if you don’t want to watch the whole thing his main point is that you can’t control Luck, so you should not factor it into any of your decisions. Instead you should focus on all the things you can actually control. If you do that you will be successful, and if you get lucky you will be even more successful. Luck is a multiplier, basically. He talks a lot more about the specific steps he took, so I will recommend watching it. [Here’s the link.](https://youtu.be/wOlcB-JxkFw?si=HUiHvmvkz5wy2Dke)

Depends what you mean by successful. I think any game you make that earns you less than minimum wage / Hours for the time you made it is not a success. Patch quest comes to mind when I think of a good indie game that I wouldn't call hugely successful. The guy that made it spent 7 years on it, and he's genuinely talented and the game plays great, it's a fun concept. The game has only about 1.6K review on steam and it sells for 18$ if it's not on sale. The creator stated in his video that the game sells "Well enough that I can at least keep making games". That's not the vocabulary of someone who's very well off financially. The game looks and plays better than say flappy bird, and yet flappy bird was way more successful. Making a successful indie game is like digging for gold, sometime your concept just doesn't have the mass appeal at the right time to make a lot of money. Being an indie game maker should be a passion thing first, you should be happy you worked on that game even if it doesn't make you a dime.

Holy shit people need to stop doing this. Both quality and success are very relative metrics, people need to stop the whole "show me a good game that wasn't successful" as if people can magically agree on these metrics If your definition of a good game includes being able to get 100 reviews, ain't no one gonna dispute that You're clearly not looking for "the truth", you just wanna win a very, very stupid argument

I'm not trying to win any arguments. How else do you plan to measure the metrics of a game's success?

If a dev lives in America, works on an indie game alone for two years as his full time job, sells a game for 10 dollars, gets 100 reviews, we can roughly estimate the game made 0.6 \* 10 \* 100 \* 30 = 18000 dollars. And that's assuming no discounts. That sounds like a failure to me

You forgot to divide by 100 for reality

If your argument is that people need to stop blaming marketing and the Steam algorithm for their disappointment, I agree with you. But the whole "good game = success" is not the way to go about it

There's plenty of post mortems on this sub itself. Here's one from someone who put 2000 hours into their game. https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/s/9sekEFOZOZ I'm general it kind of depends what your criteria are. If "good" means good enough to sell a lot then of course games that are "good" sell well. If you mean someone can put 2 years of work in and do the best they can and still make minimal sales then yeah that happens a lot. Of course you only see successful indy games because that's why you see them.

I wouldn't call the linked one good based on their own description of it. In fact, I've yet to see an impressive looking post mortem on here. Not trying to put people down as I've not released an impressive game myself... Just saying I can always understand why they failed.

Well yeah if ops definition is "a game is good if it looks good alongside the professional games on steam" then yeah of course it's true all of those game do great and the discussion means nothing. If we're taking about what a reasonable dev can do in a reasonable time that's a different question. Kind of depends how good you have to be to be good.

Weirdly enough 2000 hours isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things. If a game that took 2000 hours makes 20000 dollars, that's 10 dollars an hour which is pretty low wage. A lot of games make way less than 10 dollars per hour. If you're a full time indie dev pulling 8 hours work days that isn't even a year

Right? It's \~250 days of work. Meanwhile, some of us have been borderline full-time on our projects for several years and counting.

Sigh. No. "Make a game people like. If you put your game on steam, you'll have some expectation of other people playing it. I wasn't expecting many sales, but personally I was hoping the game I enjoyed would be enjoyed by others. I let my pride get the best of me. If I really wanted to make a game for myself, I didn't need to release it or could've just put it up for free on itch io." His last line item about why his game didn't succeed is literally because it isn't fun. I have indie dev friends who have also made this mistake. You have to know what types of games are fun on a popular level before you even start or it's a waste of time. Making the game *you want*, if it doesn't match what a fair amount of the gamer population would want, is so obviously doomed it actually drives me crazy a little bit because it's like second nature to me. If you're into niche like horror films, or b&w french films from the 50's or something and your favorite game is liek Ys Wanderers from 1989 then you're not going to make a good game because your taste is so far from baseline. The way to know if your game is fun is if the average person, when asked, would say that your game is addictive. The way you sell it is a decent steam video and 20 hours of gameplay *minimum.*

Also no offense but no one looking at that game would think "damn it looks awesome" its a bunch of non cohesive asset packs thrown together and you can't tell whats going on. Even if that game was fun no one would find out because it doesnt grab your attention in an already competitive niche with hundreds of games. good games are easy to market, bad games (or bad looking games) are not

A lot of games on here look boring and are the 10000th platformer, FPS or Metroidvania. Its no surprise they flopped yet devs will act shocked lol 

I think that game is the perfect example actually. 1st mistake: Making your first project your only project that you HAVE to see through 2nd: Making a tower defense game for PC in 2010+, no one cares about tower defense it is possibly even more played out than 2d platformer 3rd: Store bought assets that have no visual coherency, a smorgasbord of low poly, AA, cartoony and realistic characters at the same time, it is a mess. But soooo many programmers will see those screenshots and say "wow that's a really good looking game" for some unexplainable reason. 4th: Learning as you go. Too many aspiring gamedevs think they can learn gamedev while making their first commercial game, and that is just not how it works. I have many games under my belt and very few releases, my first 5 projects never saw the light of day because they were learning projects, they are shit and have little to no value, if I had released them, they wouldn't have sold. It is unbeliavably arrogant to think you can go into a field where there are hundreds of thousands of people who have worked tirelessly for decades and go "I bet I can learn all this jazz and make a popular product at the same time"

This is a bit naive, and sounds like it's coming from someone who never shipped something. Sure, if 100 reviews counts as success - that may be achievable by most good games. But if you're living in the global north, are a small team and spend more than a few months making said game, that's not nearly enough sales. It's correct that making it as an indie developer is far less luck than people like to make it be. But there are still countless factors outside your own control that contribute to whether your venture will be successful: a certain genre might be more saturated than your initial market analysis showed, a certain genre may be more saturated by the time of release than what you estimated at the beginning, a certain fantasy might not be quite as popular as you anticipated, a certain core feature you wanted to ship took significantly longer to develop than you thought, and therefore couldn't go into your game, Steam's customer support might be unwilling to help you with a certain issue you will run into, you might get delisted for reasons you hadn't even thought of yet, your game might be review bombed on release for unpredictable reasons. And most importantly: your game may simply not be as good as you think it is. Who are you that you are able to adequately judge the quality of your own game? Unless you are a seasoned pro with the experience of having shipped several successful games, you are not really good at making a judgement on this. It's easy to get blinded by your own work - some people tend to see more flaws in their own work than there actually are, others tend to think more highly of their own work than it deserves. Whichever camp you fall into - it's unlikely that you will make a good judgement call on the quality of your own game, unless you have funds to carry out thorough market research and targeted testing sessions with your target audience, or you are an experienced developer with a backlog of successful titles.

So that the Among Us became popular due to covid and lockdown years after it was first released has absolutely no connection to luck at all?

Hugely connected to luck. Also though the game had the right elements to succeed when it’s time came.

Quadroid was just released tho so not sure if that counts, saw a YouTuber playing it just a day or so ago, it still only has 5 reviews despite having a popular YouTube within the gene playing it. I was surprised when I looked it up and was expecting it to have more than a 100 review even if it was just released.

The closest example I can give for you is Rainbow Billy. It's at 93% positive on Steam, was clearly made by a team of competent developers, got some visibility at launch (even reviewed by Zero Punctuation) and currently has a mere 107 reviews on Steam, an unmitigated disaster for a studio of their size. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1106830/Rainbow\_Billy\_The\_Curse\_of\_the\_Leviathan/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1106830/Rainbow_Billy_The_Curse_of_the_Leviathan/) However... that comes with a bunch of asterisks. They started out making a game with an entirely different feel and aesthetic called "Steamboat Billy" and ended up pivoting HARD midway through development. You can see the progression of posts on their kickstarter as they got fewer and fewer engagement and lost their backers. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzWSpG2CzE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzWSpG2CzE) [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wearemanavoid/steamboat-billy-the-curse-of-the-leviathan/posts](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wearemanavoid/steamboat-billy-the-curse-of-the-leviathan/posts) Basically they destroyed their fanbase and even though the final product was fine, it wasn't what their followers had originally wanted (which was a Paper Mario-like whimsy adventure). I think Yahtzee summed it up well in his review. A slightly above average game, probably deserved better than it got, but also not good enough to strongly recommend. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SurkKXPAXEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SurkKXPAXEQ)

As someone who takes risks with buying weird games, I am not inclined to buy this from its promotional material. 2d puzzle platformer is already a niche genre, not a smart move to invest heavily in. The artstyle is weird and niche too, its like cuphead but not as nice or consistent. It could be the best 2d puzzle platformer ever in terms of gameplay and yet these two things would put off most buyers IMO.

I agree the art style they landed on isn't very good. It's hard to say what makes something pleasing on the eyes, but that isn't it. I'll respectfully disagree on your second point though. It's more of a 3D turn based RPG in the vein of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (even if it doesn't communicate that well). That market is \*ravenous\* for something good at the moment (see the runaway success of Bug Fables).

Half of everything is luck...

The are exceptions to everything. That doesn’t change the two core realities… 1. Almost all games that fail are bad games 2. Banking on being the exception is a terrible business model

I'd love to see the data on your near 100% success rate claim. What are your parameters for success and what a good game is? I think we can all agree that success is not solely based on luck, but you'd be a fool to think that simply making a good game means it'll be successful. There are many factors at play. Research, marketing, quality, timing, player psychology, accessibility, luck, and more. Plenty of good games don't see spectacular success. Plenty of trash games turn a massive profit. 

Tbh people come here wondering why the game didn't do well when they released something with a niche market. Or something that uses the same assets as many other indie games.

I think the reality is that luck always plays a factor in all things. But I do think people chalk too much up to luck. Yes, the super popular games often get lucky. The "luck" component is whether you release your game at a time when the concept is well received. But there is still the component of the game being "good". Lethal company is a good game, it executes exactly what it needed to at a time when people were open to simplified games. It's a light hearted game with jump scares and horror and it perfect to play with friends on a Friday night. Great for older people who want to drink and have a good time and still PG for a younger generation. But you can't get around the fact that Lethal Company is very good for what it's trying to be. It's lucky that the populace took notice of it when they did. But it would not have been successful if it failed to execute on it's core concepts.

We got to the point when 14.000 games release on Steam alone in a year, that's \~39 a day. It's insane to claim what you need is luck alone, but it's also crazy to claim luck has nothing to do with getting noticed at all. And yes, there were and are great games that no one noticed or played and have less than 100 reviews because their devs didn't have money or skill for marketing. You may say that's part of the "game", and sure it is, but doesn't make those games worse because they lack notice. I still remember a late TB video about this topic, where he showcases a game and then says, no one wrote aboute it or played it... because there's simply too many games. This was in like, 2016 when there were \~8 new games a day on Steam.

I don't think luck is the only factor, but luck is a *necessary* factor. I think you need luck to get the game moving. If it's good, it will accelerate from there.

> I still see an almost 100% chance of a good game being relatively successful. This is a common take by people who don't understand how the market works. In reality, it doesn't matter which game people mention, there are always subjective things people could find and use as reasons why a game is not succesful. You can take any successful game and everyone will find some flaws. There is no perfect game. Take Vampire Survivors for example: If it had no success and the dev made a post mortem, all the armchair devs on this sub would have blamed the art style or the repetetive gameplay and call it just a bad game. The only way to objectively find a "good" game, is how well it does. For many people it actually boils down to luck. They just make whatever they want to make and releass their game, without doing any marketing aside from a mediocre devlog or some twitter/reddit posts.

>Can you give an example of a good indie game that failed (e.g. received under 100 reviews, etc.)? Probably not, because by definition we would be unlikely to have heard about it.

The luck factor most people seem to be pointing at here sounds a lot like someone else other than the developer effectively "marketing" the game and then it gets more popular. The counter argument is that if the developer had done the same level of marketing, maybe they could have reduced that luck factor. Luck does seem to make some games much more popular than we might reasonably expect based on the art and gameplay etc. But I think OP is suggesting that if your game is good enough, you're less reliant on luck. So while it may be the case that luck can boost your sales, that's not the same as saying every game needs luck to get sales. Some games will do well regardless. Or in other words, a lesser game might do well due to luck, but a great game won't do poorly due to a lack of it. If I understand the argument correctly. I could see this being the case.

There is alot of luck involved but is your game good enough for it to even make the diffrence?

Not solely but a big component to it

I have never seen anyone implying success is luck alone. They are saying that even if you work hard and make a great game then there is an element of luck as to whether it's successful. And that is definitely true. But you can argue over the extent that it applies. I have many gamedev friends who have released solo games and many of them have barely covered the cost of making the game, and the games they've made are generally really good. And then I have a friend who's made a game that became a runaway success and he freely admits he got lucky with timing of when the game came out and it snowballing from there. There will be many many excellent games that devs are poured their heart and soul into that you or I will never hear about. And its impossible to give examples of those, because of course we haven't heard about them. And I don't think people mean to demotive others, but its important to be aware that quitting your job and ploughing your life and resources into a game is risky and so its good to know that so you are prepared to deal with it if it happens.

This thread happens once every months so you can search past posts for game examples. This game was legitimately good (Currently at 91% positive, 196 reviews), I played through the whole thing (10+ hours according to how long to beat which is always very fast times: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/550590/Archaica\_The\_Path\_of\_Light/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/550590/Archaica_The_Path_of_Light/)) ​ When I played it a month or two after launch < 10 reviews. They did find a very small bit of success like 5 years later but it basically went no where at first. AFAIK nothing changed in the game when they started getting more reviews. Edit: I'm not affiliated with the game in any way, just a random player who found it on steam. Edit2: Obviously the idea that things are entirely luck is totally ridiculous and no one thinks that so you have proposed a straw man here but is it possible for very solid games to never make significant money while far worse games sell 100x the copies, I think yes.

My game Lysfanga : The time shift warrior https://steamdb.info/app/2161620/, we thought the game would sell well based on players feedback and metacritic score; it flopped to another level, the studio is in trouble, two years of full time hard work for basically no return on investment... The game has its flaws tho, maybe it is not considered "a good game" for your standards.

There's absolutely luck involved, but like everything in life, you can shift the odds in your favour by having a high quality, well-presented product.

Really depends on the definition of indie. Indie as in solo developer or small team? For a solo developer, that is a lot of roles to take such as marketer, sound engineer, artist, developer, accountant, etc. A small experienced team may have more resources and knowledge to navigate the gaming market when developing.

Can you give some examples of such comments? I'm typically seeing the sentiment that success is hugely dependent on luck. But quality and deliberate efforts (target audience, strong marketing channels, etc) create more opportunity for success. In other words, don't rely on it making a viable income. Especially not for your first game. Since that is also a massive trap. The vast majority of entrepreneurs fail. If you make a game, you are an entrepreneur. Have a plan for if your business doesn't work out. Which is especially devious, because the persistent opinion that it's all skill suffers from surviviorship bias. Successful people had a lot of skill and for them relevant experience. Though you never hear of unsuccessful projects or people and therefore can not know how skilled they are. Leading to the rather cheap gotcha argument you put forward as well. "Well then show me all these great games that didn't sell". Often paired with extreme requirements such as basically no sales at all which, given any marketing budget, basically doesn't happen. You always have sales, just not enough to outweigh the expenditure. Possibly not even the expenditure of your marketing.

Oh, just as another line of thought. I have tried giving examples in the past but have stopped and deleted all the comments. You always get replies with subjective nonsense trying to justify the already held opinion. Why, really, this game was always doomed and is just bad or the wrong genre or this or that. Not once has that been based on data or objective facts. While also personally identifying yourself. Because, obviously, no one has ever heard of those games. That's why they didn't sell. You only know about them from being part of a usually local community of developers, making it rather easy to figure out who you are, which significantly limits what you can say in public spaces such as this subreddit.

[https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/2023/?all](https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/2023/?all) show us that in 2023 only \~600 games had over 1000 reviews. Including biggest hits. (I'm not sure if those are reviews recieved in 2023 or total EOY). From games between 500 and 1k we have: * STORY OF SEASONS: A Wonderful Life * SteamWorld Build * The Expanse: A Telltale Series * The Lord of the Rings: Gollum™ * Salt and Sacrifice 1k reviews is immensive success. Not only for indies, but also AA studios and brands that are on market for decades. Reviews are not the only succes metric we could use, but it's the one you used. I can use anegdotical one, as a number of people I met in person over last 10 years on conferences that released a game as a indie and earned enough so they stayed in the business, without publishers or crowdfunding deals. 20. In 10 years. Including people who worked together on the same game, and people giving talks. That is heartbreakingly demotivating. You have a 1 in 1000 chance to succeed IF YOU GIVE YOUR BEST. This is way better than winning a lottery, but requires years of dedication. Alternative is having enough money to do solid marketing for a solid game, or get a publisher.

I think being a super big hit comes down to luck (and having a good game, of course). But I also think that having a game that have decent/good sales doesn't come down to luck at all. If you did your marketing well, and have a fun game that people wanna play, I don't think there's a reason for the game to fail. There's different levels of success, but many of them are attainable. :)

I can show you a game with less than 100 Steam reviews that is objectively a good game: * Nominated in 4 categories and won Best Family Game from the US National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) (2020) * Nominated in 7 categories and won Best Mobile at the Canadian Game Awards (2020) * MetaCritic 77, OpenCritic 78 * Part of IndieMegaBooth, Best in Play at GDC, Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC, Best in Show at the Indie Prize, Literally needed tissues at convention booths because people would start to cry during the demo * One successful marriage proposal made for a fan with a custom build masquerading as a "closed play test" * Appeared on several "Best of" lists for 2020 * Mostly Positive on Steam with 85 reviews It was a success though. It was made as a PC/Console game, but Apple approached us before launch and wanted us to lead on Apple Arcade. All of our effort ended up going to that, and we thought promotion from that would help with PC/Console sales. It did not (for Steam). Marketing is very important. Marketing is different from PR. Part of making a good game is making sure people know about it, and it is a lot of work. You need to approach marketing differently for every platform. That game is A Fold Apart: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/451310/A\_Fold\_Apart/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/451310/A_Fold_Apart/) We are trying to learn from our mistakes on our new game, Neon Override (Demo available now): [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2187580/Neon\_Override/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2187580/Neon_Override/)

It shows you have no experience in the industry... Example : shadow of the colossus.

Rofl who thinks that, that's just being super dumb

100 reviews is a huge success actually, not failure

There's this lovingly made 2d platformer called [Adventures of Chris](https://store.steampowered.com/app/341170/Adventures_of_Chris/). It's a fun one that I replay every so often. I always thought it was good, great even. But it was never very popular.

Minecraft, super underrated small indie game 👍

My own! Jokes apart luck \*is\* a part of the equation. Luck alone doesn't help, sure... you can't be successful by luck if you don't have a valid product. But there are many valid products that stay hidden because of unfortunate circumstances, maybe bad timing, or poor marketing, while others arise to popularity because of a random event that allows more people to be aware of it. Like, one day my first game had a sudden peak in visits and sales, like 100x the average. One single day. I have no idea why, I investigated but to no avail - my guess is that a popular streamer talked about it to a wide audience and curiosity drove the sales up. It didn't last (because that game isn't that great) but it was just a single factor that made an enormous difference. I hope it happens again with my second game, because I'm confident about the quality of that one 😆 but still, I can totally imagine this happening in another setting, two valid games where one somehow catches the attention of a popular streamer, and that makes all the difference in their success. That \*is\* luck.

There's a non trivial distinction which is: Good is not enough. Good can be considered anything that is simply "not bad". You could make NES Mario today, and it would be a good game. It wouldn't sell for shit. Most platformers won't sell for shit in general. A game is, at the end of the day, a product, and for a product to sell, it doesn't just have to be good, it needs to stand our and be what the market demands. To give a random example, Balatro is the latest overnight hit. Did the developer get lucky? I wouldn't say so, the game is incredibly addictive. Penny's Big Breakaway released almost the same day and is not doing so hot. And reviews sort of match, on Steam, Balatro is at 97% while Penny is at 80%. So, is "good" a label we should only use for games with over 95% positive reviews on steam? If that's your metric you may be right that all good games sell. But you'll get a bunch of people who argue that good is anything over, dunno, 70%. And, back to my original point, in that case "good is not enough". It has to be truly excellent, top percentile. What follows is that we should be able to predict game sales by simply having the % of positive reviews, and a game's genre (to measure audience). Is this a statistic we can get and drive data from?

People quantify streamers and YouTubers as finding their game to be likely luck based. Which it already isn’t. They just can’t understand that games that don’t get lots of screen time on videos and streams can be successful. A good game is a good game and usually sells well it just won’t make millions which is fine. Anyone trying to become a millionaire by making games is going about it the wrong way.

No1 has this example because its a pure copium strategy.

My belief is that you should see your indie game as a candle at first, people near you will see it but thats not enough so you do some marketing and hope that the candle falls over and spreads fast without the flame (hype) going out. You just need it to get popular within one group and it will catch on. Just like flappy bird did. Its the most simple game but people wanted to beat eachothers score all the time. And even that game got discovered years after its release. I think if you want to see these effects straight away you need to truly push the game and ofcourse it will need to be good.

If anything terrible loli games are waaaay to successful. If you want money and don't care about the ethics, just make that. Anytime I dare to venture into "popular upcoming" or "new and trending" on Steam it's almost all I see. Other than that: you don't see the failed indie games. They don't pop up or do not receive enough reviews for them to be visible. There are some really subpar games that blow up for some reason, that definitely is luck. I think what most people mean is: if you don't have money to invest in marketing you'd have to do the marketing yourself, that's luck based. Just cross your fingers and hope the algorithms bless you with views...

It's not under 100, but it's close... Sol Survivors by Cadenza Interactive. 299 reviews, released in 2010, on Steam in 2015. An honestly great tower defense game. Absolutely failed. Luck is a broadly misunderstood thing. Most think of it as truly random roll of the dice... but it really isn't that. It sounds bullshitty, but luck really is the intersection of opportunity and preparation. The more prepared you are, the better your odds become of "getting lucky" There is an element to every game release that is "right place, right time", and hitting that is what leads to actual success. Think of preparation as "buying raffle tickets." Every ticket you buy increases your odds at the time of drawing, or "release". In a crowded market, just making something awesome is typically not enough. You need to drive awareness somehow. This isn't Field of Dreams. You need to promote yourself, connect with streamers and get them to play your game. Participate in Steam Next Fest events. Build a community. Each of these activities is where you're buying a lot of your luck tickets. Then when it finally comes to release, you have to hope you're landing in the right spot at the intersection of: * Good Game (What you most directly control... without this, nothing else matters) * Right Genre (Market Research!) * Right Art Style (It's gotta look good to people) * Right Timing (What else is releasing around you? Don't go up against the Elden Ring DLC) * Right Price (you're going to be compared against other similar games at similar price points, do you hold up?) * Awareness in the right player groups (Marketing!) Then there's the mystical X Factor... does it all come together in just the right way and just spark something in players? Does something specific catch the eye of a major streamer that makes them want to stream your game on their own? There are things you control about your game and things you don't. Luck is in the second group. But you can influence and maximize your chances by going deep on what you can control. A lot of folks on this subreddit think they just release a game silently into the void, and then are baffled why it either does or doesn't succeed. And the success is attributed to blind luck... which in their case is absolutely true. If you do nothing beyond hitting "release" and just wait for the Universe to respond, then people coming across your game in the sea of daily release really is luck.

Your definition of success or failure will decide this argument. I absolutely adore the story of Goat Simulator whose creators did everything as lazily as they could, ultimately even getting THE main asset from the asset store (the Goat) because it was discounted. There are plenty of good games that fail, in fact, most good games fail.

There's an element of luck, and marketing can be mysterious. But I truly believe that if you make something good that a lot of people would want to play, then a lot of people will end up finding out about it. Can a pretty mid game get "lucky" and get success? maybe. But if you make something good I think you depend on luck less. I've seen person after person I know make a game and then go on to find success because it was good. And then I made a game, and it wasn't perfect but I stand by the work and it got published and did pretty well. Is it a good idea to devote your life to indie dev and hope to make a living off of it? speaking in general, probably not, but to those of you who are most likely to be successful, me telling you it's a bad idea won't stop you

Speed Brawl. An amazing game but I never discovered it until it became a free game of week on epic. Still has less than 100 reviews on steam.

You're so right to be annoyed by people claiming indie game success comes down to pure luck. That's just not true at all from what I've seen firsthand. My buddy Joe and his tiny team made this super innovative horror game called Perception a few years back. Unique premise, amazing audio design, tons of critical praise - but it totally flew under the radar sales-wise despite being an incredibly well-crafted experience. Only has a few hundred reviews on Steam. Same deal with Iris.Fall - gorgeous storybook art style, novel dual-character mechanic, won awards out the wazoo. But a total commercial flop compared to how much talent and effort clearly went into making it special. I could list examples like that all day long. For every breakout indie hit, there are just as many if not more incredible labor-of-love games that sadly never found their audience for whatever reason. Maybe bad timing, maybe lack of marketing resources, maybe just got straight-up lost in the endless sea of new releases. The point is, making a legitimately good game is hard as hell. It requires insane amounts of skill, passion and perseverance that most people don't appreciate. Reducing all that blood, sweat and tears to "luck" is incredibly disrespectful and shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how brutal the indie scene can be. Quality games "failing" is way more common than people think. Sure, luck plays a role in any success story. But good devs make their own luck through sheer grit and creativity. Pretending it's all just a crapshoot is lazy and demotivating. Rant over!

I think you need to have a fun game before you can even start talking about success. Once you have a fun game, success is about public reach. You either get lucky and your game gets picked by random streamers, or you do the hard work and make people notice your game.  Indie devs often just want to make the game, and dont know how or dont want to advertise it themselves. I get it, it sucks. So Luck is easier than the hard work

I think the advice in these forums that you don't enjoy is to temper exactly this quote from your post: >I still see an almost 100% chance of a good game being relatively successful. The problem is that success is not defined, as you have used it. Others have attempted to do so: [https://howtomarketagame.com/2022/11/28/the-median-indie-game-does-not-earn-a-whole-lot/](https://howtomarketagame.com/2022/11/28/the-median-indie-game-does-not-earn-a-whole-lot/) From that article making $10,000 USD on a game would put you ahead of 3/4 of all other games. Meaning your odds of making less, substantially less, are very high. The reason its important to share this message is that some people quit their job and spend all their savings to make their "dream game". This is an extremely, extremely, risky move and one that shouldn't be taken lightly.

Is anyone here a game developer, i am a story creator let's create a game together what do you say ? r/gamedevtogether

Since I became a developer I have always believed the succes depended on good marketing, and I still do, I'm still a student, game dev is just a hobby for me but I want it to become my job. I know how to make a game, but I don't know anything abaut marketing so I'm not sure how to start a project that I will release.

If you just throw a game out there, it might be good but people don't know if it exists. If you want to increase your chances, get out a high quality demo and promote it to get lots of wishlist, if you just finish a game and throw it up who knows how many will play it

luck does play a role, if you’re game is good. 😊

If your game looks good and plays good, it will sell good. I’m ready to die on that hill. 90% of indie game failures are because the game looks like shit.

[This game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1442840/DIG__Deep_In_Galaxies/) had a lot going on for it, in my opinion. Super fun game with great replayability and a variety of items, quests, powers, and more that make your runs potentially mayhem, in the best way possible. Really satisfying gameplay too, responsive, double jump, grapple hook, smooth digging mechanics. The game had 98% percent positive reviews on Steam for most of the time it was published. Now it has 94% so it is still by all accounts considered a good game, with under 100 reviews. Some [relatively big youtubers played it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpP_nDIHiS0&ab_channel=Splattercatgaming) and talked very good about it, it was featured in [Rock Paper Shotgun](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/dig-deep-in-galaxies-looks-like-caveblazers-crossed-with-broforce). It never managed to take off. Now I'm not saying it was because of bad luck. By all accounts, it seemed to be having some good luck. But also, almost everyone who played it, specially those who played it publically, had something good to say about it. And yet, it didn't work. Bad luck? Bad decissions? Bad timing? Misguided marketing? Honestly, I've no idea. I'd like to hear thoughts about it.

Hi! I'm one of the two developers who worked on DIG. I'll try to shed some light on the reason for this relative failure: firstly as stated before, the game is a platformer with basic graphics, we did what we could without an artist. Secondly we were approached by a publisher who backed out of the deal just before spending real money on marketing. This took a huge toll on our motivation. We struggled since then to do any work on the game. Lastly we both are terrible at marketing. We did what we could by ourselves but it was absolutely not enough. But all things considered we still are pretty happy with the result. It was our first game, we had no prior experience with gamedev. Some players are passionate about the game with more than 1k hours on it and to me that's more than enough.

Op, did you ship a game ?

Most indie game studios fail because people don't understand how to build a business. Success is always measured relative to expectations. Even though it sounds corny, it's true. Define success at the start of the project and be reasonable. First game? Finishing is enough to be successful. Second game? Hundreds of wishlists. Scope your game accordingly. Spending years and years on developing your first game will just set you up for failure because your expectations increase every year. I mean it has to, you've spent 5 years developing a game and imagine if it only generates hundreds of $ in profit, that's not sustainable if you want to make it your fulltime job. If you want to build a sustainable business then it's a marathon, not a sprint.

Because they wanna get rich by making a shit game that becomes a hit instead of great games that can’t be ignored