Market Oversaturation?

[Tweed]

Robert Garriott was already complaining back in 1989 that the gaming market was getting oversaturated. Now there's endless digital shelf space for an endlessly growing amount of games. Do games of note naturally float to the top of the pile while crap sinks to the bottom? Or does it require backbreaking effort to be noticed in an ever-growing pile of crap?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Do games of note naturally float to the top of the pile

No. There are a lot of fantastic JRPGs, visual novels, and other overseas games that never get a mention in mainstream channels. And then you have books, which fantastic authors like David V. Stewart and Brian Niemeier languish in relative obscurity while crap like Rothfuss' Name of the Wind gets peddled. Great TV shows are buried while garbage gets peddled, and so on.

Marketing is a very real issue. You cannot just rely on fans to spread the word and expect everyone to hear it (or heed it). You need advertising if you want your product to become big today. The handful of black swans that become megahits with no marketing are the exception, not the rule. Unfortunately for creators, our shared popular culture has shattered as people wall themselves in their own microniches and never interact outside of that, making advertising increasingly expensive. Stewart and others have been warning people to not try to get into the book industry for profit because the reality is so bleak. Sure, write books because you want the book to exist, not because you want income from it. The book industry has turned cannibalistic as the money is not in selling to readers, but instead trying to con naive/ignorant wannabe authors into spending money on courses or services that won't actually help them make a profit. The same thing has been happening with the gaming scene for over a decade. Most games launched on Steam don't go anywhere, and the devs mind as well have done other things with their time.

[rusty_shackleford]

If anything, there a lot of bad games that do very well but rarely good games that do poorly.

[WhiteShark]

I think there is a minimum of marketing required for good games to catch on before they can 'rise naturally'. Particularly with niche games, the target demographic needs to be made aware of it before word of mouth can get going. Most gamers can name AAA franchises regardless of genre or whether they've played them, but I've played lots of indie games that seem little known even among those who enjoy that genre.

[rusty_shackleford]

I think there is a minimum of marketing required for good games to catch on before they can 'rise naturally'. Particularly with niche games, the target demographic needs to be made aware of it before word of mouth can get going. Most gamers can name AAA franchises regardless of genre or whether they've played them, but I've played lots of indie games that seem little known even among those who enjoy that genre.

Can you list some games you think undersold relative to their quality?

There are a lot of games I think massively oversold relative to their quality(e.g., Terraria is an OK game but it's one of the best-selling games of all-time), I think the market does pretty well and I'm not sure how well 'marketing' even works compared to word of mouth — the best marketing seems to be just making a game people want to play.

---

I suspect RPG(actual RPG, not "RPG elements") is probably one of the most underperforming genres vs development cost/time tho.

[Vaako]

For easy to make games for sure.

[WhiteShark]

Can you list some games you think undersold relative to their quality?

I'm not sure how to find hard sales numbers for indie games, so I will just go by Steam review counts according to SteamDB data.

• Voidspire Tactics - only 287 reviews. Absolutely criminal. Rarely talked about outside of here and the Codex as far as I can tell. Also sold on itch.io, so hopefully the difference is made up there.
• Three Fairies' Hoppin' Flappin' Great Journey! - 207 reviews. I don't expect it to be popular among anti-weeb Westerners, being a Touhou fangame with anime visuals and probably a poor translation, but it is an incredible and unique JRPG, mechanically. I've never seen anyone else talk about it.
• Dream Tactics - 633 reviews. Really fun tactics RPG with card mechanics, though with pretty unfortunate writing. I think the only place I've seen anyone else mention it was on the Discord server for Crystal Project.
• Fae Tactics - 1709 reviews. I have seen people mention this one a few times, at least, but only after the 'big names' in TRPGs have been exhausted. In my opinion, it should be at the top of the list when discussing Japanese-style TRPGs. The review count looks better, but, to contextualize it, Dark Deity, which is essentially a Fire Emblem clone with western animesque art and made in SRPG Studio, has 2989 reviews.

And so on. Since I've inadvertently ended up focusing on TRPGs, I'll add more context: I've seen Dungeon Rats discussed many times, and it has 701 Steam reviews, yet it's certainly a worse game than three I've listed above that have fewer reviews. I can't help but think what sales it does have are almost entirely fueled by Iron Tower's memetic popularity on the Codex.

I think the market does pretty well and I'm not sure how well 'marketing' even works compared to word of mouth — the best marketing seems to be just making a game people want to play.

Indie marketing basically looks like word of mouth, I think, but the dev has to start it himself: consistent posting on message boards and twitter, interacting with fans, etc. I agree that being a good game is also usually necessary for success, at least for indies. Having a demo seems to help get people talking.

[rusty_shackleford]

Can you list some games you think undersold relative to their quality?

I'm not sure how to find hard sales numbers for indie games, so I will just go by Steam review counts according to SteamDB data.

• Voidspire Tactics - only 287 reviews. Absolutely criminal. Rarely talked about outside of here and the Codex as far as I can tell. Also sold on itch.io, so hopefully the difference is made up there.
• Three Fairies' Hoppin' Flappin' Great Journey! - 207 reviews. I don't expect it to be popular among anti-weeb Westerners, being a Touhou fangame with anime visuals and probably a poor translation, but it is an incredible and unique JRPG, mechanically. I've never seen anyone else talk about it.
• Dream Tactics - 633 reviews. Really fun tactics RPG with card mechanics, though with pretty unfortunate writing. I think the only place I've seen anyone else mention it was on the Discord server for Crystal Project.
• Fae Tactics - 1709 reviews. I have seen people mention this one a few times, at least, but only after the 'big names' in TRPGs have been exhausted. In my opinion, it should be at the top of the list when discussing Japanese-style TRPGs. The review count looks better, but, to contextualize it, Dark Deity, which is essentially a Fire Emblem clone with western animesque art and made in SRPG Studio, has 2989 reviews.

And so on. Since I've inadvertently ended up focusing on TRPGs, I'll add more context: I've seen Dungeon Rats discussed many times, and it has 701 Steam reviews, yet it's certainly a worse game than three I've listed above that have fewer reviews. I can't help but think what sales it does have are almost entirely fueled by Iron Tower's memetic popularity on the Codex.

I think the market does pretty well and I'm not sure how well 'marketing' even works compared to word of mouth — the best marketing seems to be just making a game people want to play.

Indie marketing basically looks like word of mouth, I think, but the dev has to start it himself: consistent posting on message boards and twitter, interacting with fans, etc. I agree that being a good game is also usually necessary for success, at least for indies. Having a demo seems to help get people talking.

Voidspire tactics screenshots aren't interesting. It's just a bunch of people walking around or people fighting people. Does the game not have any cool monsters?

You have about 5-10 seconds(at best!) to grab people with your page, you cannot be wasting that time at all with anything boring. And this is the screenshot the developer chose to lead with:



I'd say it probably oversold and would do worse if it released today.

[rusty_shackleford]

I understand if you want to say it's not fair that a game isn't judged on how it's played but how it's showed off, but I rarely find a huge delta between the two. A low quality store page often implies the game itself isn't polished.
Watch the recent Stardew Valley 10th anniversary video, at one point the developer wonders what success he'd have seen if he released an early build of the game rather than spending so much time polishing it.

The core mechanics of the game were the same and it even had more features overall.

[WhiteShark]

Voidspire tactics screenshots aren't interesting. It's just a bunch of people walking around or people fighting people. Does the game not have any cool monsters?

You have about 5-10 seconds(at best!) to grab people with your page, you cannot be wasting that time at all with anything boring. And this is the screenshot the developer chose to lead with:

I'd say it probably oversold and would do worse if it released today.

So we agree that game quality isn't everything and marketing is important, too.

[rusty_shackleford]

Voidspire tactics screenshots aren't interesting. It's just a bunch of people walking around or people fighting people. Does the game not have any cool monsters?

You have about 5-10 seconds(at best!) to grab people with your page, you cannot be wasting that time at all with anything boring. And this is the screenshot the developer chose to lead with:

I'd say it probably oversold and would do worse if it released today.

So we agree that game quality isn't everything and marketing is important, too.

How many people making quality games would also not spend time polishing the presentation of their product?
If it comes off as lazy, what reason do I have to assume the product isn't equally lazy?

The showcase of a product is an extension of the product itself.

[WhiteShark]

How many people making quality games would also not spend time polishing the presentation of their product?
If it comes off as lazy, what reason do I have to assume the product isn't equally lazy?

The showcase of a product is an extension of the product itself.

You're (purposely) conflating clues for substance. Is it likely that a dev who puts more effort into his marketing cares more about his product and thus made a better game? Maybe. Sounds plausible. Does that mean a poorly marketed game is ipso facto lower quality? No. The game is the game; the marketing is the marketing. I have never had my enjoyment of a game diminished by its poor marketing.

Also, it's obvious that you picked the best game on the list with simultaneously the lowest review count in order to be as contrarian as possible. "It oversold relative to its quality because the dev didn't pick the most exciting screenshots for the store page." Get a load of this guy.

[rusty_shackleford]

How many people making quality games would also not spend time polishing the presentation of their product?
If it comes off as lazy, what reason do I have to assume the product isn't equally lazy?

The showcase of a product is an extension of the product itself.

You're (purposely) conflating clues for substance. Is it likely that a dev who puts more effort into his marketing cares more about his product and thus made a better game? Maybe. Sounds plausible. Does that mean a poorly marketed game is ipso facto lower quality? No. The game is the game; the marketing is the marketing. I have never had my enjoyment of a game diminished by its poor marketing.

Also, it's obvious that you picked the best game on the list with simultaneously the lowest review count in order to be as contrarian as possible. "It oversold relative to its quality because the dev didn't pick the most exciting screenshots for the store page." Get a load of this guy.

I picked the first game you listed.

[WhiteShark]

OP: "Is quality alone enough for success without marketing?"
Rusty: "Why yes, of course the best (marketed) games naturally(???) rise to the top!"

[rusty_shackleford]

OP: "Is quality alone enough for success without marketing?"
Rusty: "Why yes, of course the best (marketed) games naturally(???) rise to the top!"

Excellence naturally shines thru, it's why rpghq looks like a site from 2003.

[Tweed]

I think there is a minimum of marketing required for good games to catch on before they can 'rise naturally'. Particularly with niche games, the target demographic needs to be made aware of it before word of mouth can get going. Most gamers can name AAA franchises regardless of genre or whether they've played them, but I've played lots of indie games that seem little known even among those who enjoy that genre.

Can you list some games you think undersold relative to their quality?

There are a lot of games I think massively oversold relative to their quality(e.g., Terraria is an OK game but it's one of the best-selling games of all-time), I think the market does pretty well and I'm not sure how well 'marketing' even works compared to word of mouth — the best marketing seems to be just making a game people want to play.

---

I suspect RPG(actual RPG, not "RPG elements") is probably one of the most underperforming genres vs development cost/time tho.

I'd say timing is a factor as well in Terraria's case. It gave people something they'd been wanting for awhile. Minecraft at the time was still a pile of LEGOs. Terraria added gameplay elements.

[SpellSword]

I think there is a minimum of marketing required for good games to catch on before they can 'rise naturally'. Particularly with niche games, the target demographic needs to be made aware of it before word of mouth can get going. Most gamers can name AAA franchises regardless of genre or whether they've played them, but I've played lots of indie games that seem little known even among those who enjoy that genre.

Can you list some games you think undersold relative to their quality?

There are a lot of games I think massively oversold relative to their quality(e.g., Terraria is an OK game but it's one of the best-selling games of all-time), I think the market does pretty well and I'm not sure how well 'marketing' even works compared to word of mouth — the best marketing seems to be just making a game people want to play.

---

I suspect RPG(actual RPG, not "RPG elements") is probably one of the most underperforming genres vs development cost/time tho.

I'd say timing is a factor as well in Terraria's case. It gave people something they'd been wanting for awhile. Minecraft at the time was still a pile of LEGOs. Terraria added gameplay elements.

I remember that. Minecraft was kind of stagnant for new interesting content when Terraria came out. Terraria's promise of new things to fight, explore and build was a compelling hook.