I can't help but think of the console market, where it's said that if you sell less than say 5 million consoles for a particular machine, it's considered a failure, and some companies consider if they sold less than 8 million of their game that it was a total failure (Square Enix...)

I think... larger companies set their bars too high...

Hmmm well i have more than 4... Although honestly picking up several games while on a major sale is so very easy, so unless they come for only one game that they really want, i don't see why or how they would limit themselves so much. Multiple times the D&D bundle has returned, offering lots of really good deals and hundreds of hours of gameplay for what would be 1-2 new titles that might give you 20 hours...

Then again i'm probably not making any kind of impact...

Honestly, when i was younger i only bought like 2 games ever (which were later misplaced), the rest i borrowed or played via emulation... Then again i was very poor, and just starting out, you don't have money for games... so i can totally understand that list :P

Yes, Nintendo did a nice job of creating that blue ocean with the DS and Wii. They unfortunately did not foresee the incoming supergiant blue ocean that Apple and then soon after Google were creating, disrupting their market with giant tsunamis and then without realizing it they were playing red ocean with the 3DS & WiiU. With their recent announcement of mobile game development in the works, it looks like they may be starting to right the ship. People may see it as Nintendo just joining the masses at last and decry it as a desperate aknowledgement of defeat, but the way I see it I think Nintendo may have quite a bit of innovation up their sleeve and could potentially change the landscape of the current mobile gaming market.

Many Steam gamers only play CS:GO, Dota and TF2. And they spend their money on those 3 games (they buy items). They usually don't buy many games.

There are some TF2 players with $$$$ backpacks.

Do you honestly believe that Valve cares one iota about selling 20+ year old games? Sure they have some older games on Steam but that's not what makes them money. You're also under this crazy assumption that if a game is sold exclusively here, then people will start flocking to GoG to buy games here. You think that strategy is working out great for Origin?

Like I said before, yes GoG has grown but it has grown relative to the size it was when it started (which was nothing). GoG.com and DRM-Free as a whole is and continues to be niche, all Valve has to do is point to sales and say 'scoreboard' to prove that point. In my country (US), which is a pretty big player in terms of global sales I can go to 10 people off the street and 9 of them won't know a damn about GoG. But yet I can go into any Walmart/Target/Best Buy/Gamestop/etc. and there are Steam gift cards on the wall.

Another thing you are also assuming is every GoG user today only buys their games from GoG and this is furthest from the truth. Many GoG users buy their games at multiple vendors by choice.

As shown by steam stats, if people aren't curious, they won't be interested in sales and other new/oldies titles. If you follow the forum, you probably have noticed that people create accounts when there are big announcements widely covered in general gaming press. In general, those people come only for the freebies like for the Fallout series. Then there was the combo Galaxy/Witcher3 which probably increased GOG users base a LOT (surely over 50%) but they won't necessarly convert into regular buyers. And afterall, in my personal case, back in 2009, I only registered to get Shogo and didn't buy anything else for one year :o)

I know VALVe doesn't care about selling 20+ year old video games.

It actually is working for Electronic Arts (EA's) Origin. Electronic Arts (EA) says they are earning profits form selling their PC versions of video games on Origin and that a lot of PC gamers are actually downloading Electronic Arts (EA's) Origin.

Also if you never looked under my name you can see I also live in the United States of America. I'm going to be voting for Rand Paul in 2016 and all my real life friends know about gog.com because I told them all about gog.com.

I never said that all gog.com customers purchase their video games from gog.com exclusively.

No, not at all. Precisely the opposite, in fact. What I'm saying (and the article too) is that when looking at a market like that and seeing 6757 top-down shooters (Binding of Isaac isn't an RPG), if your conclusion is "Wow, that genre is really popular. We'll make a shit-ton of money if we make one of those!", then you're about as wrong as you can be. Can a game be succesful in a setting like that? Of course it can, it happens all the time. Are the chances of being successful in such a setting high enough that you want to invest a lot of money in it? No, not by a long shot.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't make games in genres that are already widely represented in the market, it just means that you shouldn't do it if selling a lot of copies is important to you.
For the last time: Stop. Talking. About. Indie. Devs.

When the article uses World of Warcraft as an example, do you think it is to tell small indie devs that they probably shouldn't expect to outdo Blizzard? Do you really think they need to be told that? Do you think the author of the article thinks they need to be told that? No, because the article is not about what games small indie devs should and should not make.

The article isn't talking about creative freedom. It's not about 1-3 man teams making a game in their spare time for their own enjoyment. Should those people do that? Of course they should! On the other hand, should they take out loans in their houses and gamble the financial security of their families in order to work on "Cartoonish top-down shooter #7826" full time, with the expectation of making all the money back and then some? No, they shouldn't.

The article is about money, about investments and expectations of profit. If you make a game with the success criterion of making quite a bit of cash, and certainly enough to cover the expense of developing the game in the first place, then the article explains why what many devs (of all types, not just small indie devs, even mostly not those, since money is probably not as much of an issue for them) are doing almost certainly won't accomplish that.

I'm starting to question whether you even read the article, or just skimmed it while dismissing everything with the argument "that's not relevant for small indie devs". Try reading it again while mentally applying what it says to everything from larger indie studios to AA and AAA studios and publishers. And remember that games are not an exact science, and as such a single success amidst ten thousand failures does not mean that anyone can reasonably expect success.

Yes I think its quite easy for people to think their own community is very big, when in fact its actually small.
My impression is that PC gamers who play multiple games are generally not interested in actually playing older games even though they might be interested in learning about them, especially since new games are being released every week or so through Steam.

The more you invest in a game, in terms of money and time, the more you are willing to stick to that game. The never-ending nature of MMOs plays a big part in this as there's always stuff to do in these games, new mounts and items to collect and all that.

With games like CS I think its the subconscious addiction to build skill that makes people play them over and over again, the motivation is to be among the best there is at the game, or so it seems from my perspective.

I have 120 games on steam and I paid well... 4/5 or so?

I got 12 games via giveaways/friends, 19 games cause I won a knife on CS:GO (it was my first box and I had a knife :|), all indies, and 85 games via humble bundle. I must've spent 150€ max on steam, played 79%, finished 11 and that's why I totally agree with those stats. I'm not going to buy a game on steam anymore except if it's really noteworthy. I always prefered indie games and the best indies are on GOG and Desura lol.

I play too much on WoW and Ryzom to play anything else.

To me these popularity explosions seem to start with whatever famous youtubers are around at the time; they showcase a particular game which is then picked up by smaller "follower" channels and the wheel is set in motion. The constant coverage by a huge number of youtubers fuels the popularity of the game, which in turn means that youtubers will keep covering the game since they get more views, and the wheel goes 'round and 'round. Just look at the success of Goat Simulator, how it became so popular.
Would WoW, Minecraft and Terraria have gotten so popular without Youtubers ? Personally I don't so.
I think its youtubers who are paving the the way for these "newly created markets".

So true. I've paid more for Dota 2 items than anything else.




I guess I'll keep on giving Gaben my money. Dota 2 is a part of my life. No, in fact, since Dota 1, so Dota in general. :)

I guess you're right, although that only make the article feel even stupider.

AAA and AA studios know more about the games market than the article writer would ever know. That's for example why they're making the same games again and again. They know precisely that they have a few millions of gamers who are willing to play the next installment of a game.

The hard thing here is to keep almost exactly the same formula but tweak it just enough so it doesn't feel stale. That's a tricky line to walk, and games sometime fail by trying to change too much and making franchise fans irate.

But really, it's much less risky to try to address existing gamers than try to carve a new niche. When a new niche shows itself, then it's a good time to try to get into it.

GOG already has exclusives via self-publishing. (I assume they'll remain exclusives.)

They have a good handle on the market size, and set expectations accordingly. Sometimes they just don't manage to capitalise on that market well enough. But as you say, none of these companies expect to sell 130m copies or whatever. They know what to expect, and have much better stats than any layman, given that they know exactly how well their previous games sold.