Indie development research pt2
To first find out how a game is successful we must understand what 'success' means and how that applies to indie games/companies.
Dictionary Definition of 'Success':
1. The favourable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavours; the accomplishment of one's goals. [1]
2. The attainment of wealth, position, honours, or the like. [1]
3. A performance or achievement that is marked by success, as by the attainment of honours: The play was an instant success. [1]
This suggests that if your intention was to make a game then by doing so you have completed that goal so it is successful; However not all games are successful and this is because the main goal of making games is to make money so by "attaining wealth" this would also make a game successful. Another way that a game could be considered successful is if it "attains honours" in other words it is well acclaimed or wins an award per-se.
So looking at the games from last time we can deduce that Flower [2], Journey [3], Undertale [4], Firewatch [19] and Minecraft [5] are all successful games.
They were all nominated for or won awards
They all sold a lot of copies and made a profit
They have high critic review ratings
Some other ways of determining if a game is successful is by having:
A large fan base (having fan fiction made of your game is always a plus)
Having people produce modded content for your game
Having demand for a sequel or another game
To me a game is also successful if:
It has replayability
You recommend it to someone else
It's memorable
These are personal though so this can't be away of measuring how successful a game is unless you gave a review on a game based off of these opinions.
Overall we can tell that the way to measure if a game is successful is if it made a lot of money, If it won an award, If it has a high review score and if it has a fan base.
Obviously to go along with some of the successful games there has to be some unsuccessful games. Here are a few that I have found:
Dinner Date for PC released in 2010 [6]
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for the WiiU released in 2014 [7]
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 released in 1982 [8]
Why do people consider these games unsuccessful?
Dinner Date [6]:
- It has a metacritic score of 3.1 out of 100 [9]
- Its idea of game play is so far from being a game that people consider it not a game and just a monologue [10]
Dinner Date [16]
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric [7]:
- Had numerous glitches [11]
- Has been said to have poor controls, combat, story, dialogue and character development [11]
- Only sold a total of 620,00 (including their other game released at the same time called 'shattered crystal') which lost money [12]
- Has a metacritic score of 32 out of 100 [13]
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric [17]
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial [8]:
- "The game's commercial failure and resulting effects on Atari are frequently cited as a contributing factor to the video game industry crash of 1983" Wikipedia (2016, para. 2) [14]
- Is seen as one of the worst video games of all time [14]
- One of the biggest commercial failures in video game history [14]
- It is said to be the reason why Atari went bankrupt and closed
- 'Atari ordered five million cartridges, but only 1.5 million copies were sold.' Zak, R. (2015, pg. 5) [15]
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial [18]
From looking into these game you can now start to see a pattern; if something is successful by getting awards, high scored reviews and by making lots of money then if something is unsuccessful it will be doing the opposite. Not getting awards, having low scored reviews and by losing money. It's clear to see now that to make a game successful you need to make sure it sells, is innovative enough or interesting enough to get nominated for an award and to get a good review score. By making sure the game plays well, looks good and is fun you should be on the right track to making a 'successful game'.
Bibliography:
[1] DICTIONARY.COM (n.d.) Success. [Online] Available from: www.dictionary.com/browse/success [Accessed 08/11/16]
[2] THATGAMECOMPANY (2009) Flower. [Online] PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita. Tokyo: Sony Computer Entertainment
[3] THATGAMECOMPANY (2012) Journey. [Online] PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4. Tokyo: Sony Computer Entertainment
[4] TOBY FOX (2015) Undertale. [Online] Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux. Massachusetts: Toby Fox
[5] MOJANG (2011) Minecraft. [Online] Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Raspberry Pi, Universal Windows Platform, Wii U. Stockholm: Mojang
[6] STOUT GAMES (2011) Dinner Date. [Online] Microsoft Windows. Portsmouth: Stout Games
[7] BIG RED BUTTON (2014) Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. [Wii U Optical Disc] Wii U. Tokyo: SEGA
[8] ATARI, INC. (1982) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. [Cartridge] Atari 2600. California: Atari, Inc.
[9] METACRITIC (n.d.) Dinner Date. [Online] Available from: www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dinner-date [Accessed 08/11/16]
[10] WIKIPEDIA (2016, para. 4) Dinner Date (Video game). [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner_Date_(video_game) [Accessed 08/11/16]
[11] WIKIPEDIA (2016, para. 3) Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Boom:_Rise_of_Lyric [Accessed 08/11/16]
[12] WIKIPEDIA (2016, para. 18) Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Boom:_Rise_of_Lyric [Accessed 08/11/16]
[13] METACRITIC (n.d.) Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. [Online] Available from: www.metacritic.com/game/wii-u/sonic-boom-rise-of-lyric [Accessed 08/11/16]
[14] WIKIPEDIA (2016, para. 2) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game). [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game) [Accessed 08/11/16]
[15] ZAK, R. (2015, pg. 5) E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. [Online] Available from: http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-disastrous-video-games-that-lost-their-creators-millions?page=5 [Accessed 08/11/16]
[16] STOUT GAMES (2011) Dinner Date. [Online image] Available from: http://store.steampowered.com/app/94000/ [Accessed 08/11/16]
[17] RATHOD, V. (n.d., pg. 1) The 15 worst videogames ever that shouldn’t have released. [Online image] Available from: http://fraghero.com/the-15-worst-videogames-ever-made/ [Accessed 08/11/16]
[18] SASS, D. (2014) Sonic boo. [Online image] Available from: www.gamespot.com/reviews/sonic-boom-rise-of-lyric-review/1900-6415956/?comment_page=2 [Accessed 08/11/16]
[19] CAMPO SANTO (2016) Firewatch. [Online] Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. California/Oregon: Campo Santo/Panic Inc.