I hate reading this kind of article, because they usually don't say anything of real substance. I can argue with many of the points, but I think that the bottom line, point 3 is simply wrong. Smaller titles such as Minecraft or Terraria or Torchlight have more than a tiny market, that's obvious. The only truth is that it's hard to get to the huge market that's out there.

Really, what the point of the article? Who does it address? The devs that develop based on demographics instead of creating the game they want?

I'll give you five years. My generosity.

It won't happen though even until you die.
Dota 2 has the worst community on this planet. Even after 3k hours into it I still don't understand.

I'm at 3.2k MMR solo and 4k MMR party, and even at this level I still find stupid players on the planet playing on a match with me.

This would be the stupidest thing they could do.

Great read. I am the 1%. :) By the way, I just noticed the front page. Holy crap! D&D heaven!!!

I think you misunderstood one of the points. Those games (certainly Minecraft, and probably Terraria as well) are in the same category as WoW, in that they didn't so much capture a part of an existing market, as much as they created entirely new markets that didn't exist before. It's a neat trick if you can do it, but like with memes and viral videos, it's impossible to predict what will catch on. If you set out to develop a game with the express purpose of creating a new market, you will almost certainly fail.

Torchlight on the other hand played directly into an existing market. And yes, it "only" made about 1.4m sales, but that's not something anyone would scoff at. There are several indie games listed with over 2m sales (Trine 2, FTL, Binding of Isaac, Don't Starve).

Whichever way you look at it, the only point of the article is "you're not likely to sell much". That's something every indie dev knows, and it's true for pretty much all creative markets. That's a pointless point. Every creator knows it, and every creator hopes that their work would be in that tiny percent that makes it big.

GoG has been in existence since 2007 and during that entire time Steam has not shrunk one bit, in fact it has grown year over year. No major developer is going to release something exclusively on here and ignore 85-90% of the market unless they don't plan to be in business very long. Not even CDProjekt is dumb enough to do this because last I checked Witcher 3 was sold on Steam.

It would also be somewhat ironic if exclusives showed up here because that is the exact thing Gog fanboys slam Valve over, exclusives on Steam.

To be honest 18% is probably right, because they can't take into account how many people masquerade as female in order to scam free games, or other reasons. (Yes, this is a known phenomenon on Steam and it happens a LOT.)
There's some weeeeeeird people in the Steam communities, which is why I stick to people I know as my friends and stay out of a lot of their forums/communities.
So, by the time you adjust for females with male profiles, adserve eff ups, etc, it's probably more accurate than you'd think.

Sure, but for every one of those games, how many others were released that failed miserably? For every market that exists, 100% market share is available, such is the nature of mathematics. But if, at any given time, 95% of the market share is taken up by 5% of the recently released games, then 95% of games are in deep trouble.
Well, yes. But since money is on the line (game development is a costly business after all), then obviously a lot of people either have not actually understood that, or just have an abysmal business sense.

In order to succeed, a game has to have something special going for it. Either original ideas or exceptional implementation of existing ones. All of those games you listed have at least one of those, but the vast majority of released games don't. And those are the ones the article talks about, and not just indie games either, even though you seem to be focused on those.

The games the article talks about are those (the majority) that try to do nothing new, but instead try to gain a foothold on a playing field already densely populated. The ones that go for a specific demographic (as futile as that is), or a specific genre (using all the "tried and true" concepts of said genre). The end result is a game that isn't substantially different from tons of other games already on the market, and hence most of them fail.

The answer, therefore, is to do like the developers of the games you listed did, namely to make a game that they themselves would really like to play, because nothing quite like it already exists. As opposed to "Military Shooter #1736" or "Brutally Difficult Retro Indie Platformer #8462".

So no, the point of the article isn't simply "you're not likely to sell much". Rather, it is "if you try to compete in a saturated market, you're 99% certain to sell too little to make it worth your while, so don't do it". Really, if you want to boil it down to the bare essentials, the point of the article is "be original", and while it may seem an obvious truth, the fact that the vast majority of developers don't follow it means that it certainly can't be obvious to everyone.

Once in a Dota 2 game, I was AFK for 1 min right after the game started. And when I came back, this player on my team started raging at me like I just had sex with his girlfriend or stole his iPhone. Every horrible insult you can imagine thrown at me over the mic because he thought me being AFK for 1 min, cost us the game.

haven't read the article yet but, should I be proud belongin to that 1%?

Catfishers don't actually factor into either stat. There are two datasets: the Alexa data, based on people who've installed their toolbar, and the Google data, based on Google spying on a user's overall browsing habits. Neither data notices whether a user is pretending to be a woman, unless the user in question is a real method actor and googles juice cleanses all day long.

(Not that I know what the actual number is -- 18% feels right. but holy shit the main numbers are so shocking that I don't trust my feels at all -- but I can't help but comment on obviously shitty stats.)

I disagree. Torchlight did nothing new. It's (IMO) a boring, formulaic game. It just filled a hole that people felt needed filling. So did Legend of Grimrock (which is just as formulaic, but it's a formula that I personally like, so i won't say it's boring).

Most creators don't go about trying to create mediocre games. They all think they have a new twist or they're bringing back something that was lost. They all intend to create something that people will have fun with. That's not true for all, but I'm sure it's true for most.

Which is why it's pretty meaningless to give that kind of advice. People are interested in buying "Brutally Difficult Retro Indie Platformer #8462". If one comes along that hits all the right buttons, it will sell great.

Creators need to have abysmal business sense, at least in the sense of risking their time and money to create something. That's how you learn, and if you fail you try to create another game, and another, until you get something that's good enough.

Well all of the Forgotten Realms video games that got released for sale today on gog.com are published by GOG Ltd. and are sold exclusively on gog.com only. They are not sold on Steam at all.

Revenant published by SQUARE-ENIX is sold exclusively on gog.com only.

A bunch of Ubisoft published video games that released last week and another week before that for sale on gog.com, is sold exclusively on gog.com only and not on Steam at all.

While these are very old video games it's a first step not to mention that after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt released for sale gog.com grew bigger and this year gog.com grew bigger than any other years.

Those exclusivity don't bring any real value. I don't know why you're choosing to close your eyelids and ignoring bunch of cold hard facts conveniently.

But since you put it that way, I'd explain in simpler words.

The exclusive releases that GOG really needs are killer games, not some old stuffs that people have forgotten.

Release Witcher 4 exclusively on GOG, and we have real talks. THAT thing is, sadly, something that won't ever happen.
Typical dota 2 match. I guess we have to eat that kind of event raw. :(