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i love how common the we need more games like [massive longshot million to one success] to save The Industry is as a take. sounds both sustainable and possible to plan for

i have an oomf that worked at a small studio making a fun game that also used poker in creative ways for gameplay and storytelling and was in the same next fest as balatro, and i think friends in our discord were the only ones who bought it and the studio closed immediately

people need to understand that games on steam largely do not ‘underpeform,’ they either hit the algorithmic tipping points and become viral successes or they do not exist. they sell bad day at a garage sale numbers. this is a reality constructed and encouraged by valve

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i don’t mean a number i’m talking more about the positive feedback loops and rich get richer design of steam; get enough sales and you get listed more in the popular tab, get enough reviews and you can get overwhelmingly positive, steam is designed with lots of deliberate tipping points like this

A 20k + games released every year situation cannot be sustained by any marketplace where you have GAAS hording playtime and attention span. And a homepage can only display so many games every day.

GAAS also suck down incredibly large amounts of money like if you play a single gacha game even mildly seriously it's probably eating a year's worth of gaming budget in ways that are deliberately opaque and sketchy.

This sucks, I specifically recall lots of media about how the "long tail" meant you could have even a mediocre game make money in the long run. Make a few of those and, yeah! Right? Right?

If you have a game on your wishlist that game is already basically an "algorithmic success" and that's only expected to sell somewhere in the ballpark of ~10-15% of total wishlists on launch I believe. It's a fucking miracle anyone makes money in games at all.