Your entire point is built on a terribly incorrect statement. A lottery is NOT the only type gambling there is. It's not a lottery-- it's a Casino.
In a casino new people are constantly flowing in, excited to try every game (approach/niche) and see what can happen. More often than not, they lose money. However, there are always a slim percentage that do in fact randomly get lucky (algo) and take off in ways the majority do not (win) with the same effort, in the same game (niche)
A Casino has many games that do in fact greatly increase the chance of winning, if you are a skilled player. Your entire article could be retitled "All Poker Players Are Talentless Hacks That Rely on Luck A lone - Poker is A Lottery" which upon reading I hope shows how absurd your entire article literally is.
It doesn't really matter what you are doing. All online businesses are e com. Influencers, Only Fans, Musicians, Game Devs, Film Makers, Voice actors -- whatever. "The House Always Wins" these are giant multi billion dollar social media conglomerates that win when the majority fail.
Most of YouTubers revenue does not come from the top creators, it comes from the literal 99% who aren't monetized, and all the ad rev Google keeps 100% of combined. It is in their best interest to have as many people as possible trying desperately to win, when they rarely do.
The majority of steam games uploaded do not make their initial cost of entry back in their first year. Same as how the majority of musicians do not make back the cost of music distribution from their royalties.
Is it impossible? Of course not. But you paint this horribly flawed idea that it's the devs fault if they fail. 100% YOUR fault. Just as it is toxic to blame a lack of luck or a random algo for your failure, it is equally awful to shift that blame solely on the creators and say they just aren't good enough. Which is exactly what you're saying.
You're claiming everyone thinks it's a lotterry out of their control, then using fringe cases of wild indie success in an attempt to motivate thousands if not tens of thousands of creators into thinking they too can be the next Cave Story or whatever iconic title you can think of.
I know my tone sounds very aggressive, but that's due to having an intimate highly objective understanding of how things actually work. I work with 100s of creators a week these days, and I often tell them what they are up against so they are prepared, and do not give up when it feels impossible.
It isn't a lottery, it's a Casino. Find the game (niche) you do best at, and get frickin good at it, and learn to separate skill, hope, and luck, so you can adapt to whichever one gets you to the next level. Sometimes you rely on skill. sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes just white knuckling and trusting yourself at rock bottom gets you to the next phase.
But do NOT tell yourself luck isn't important. It is. So is skill. They compliment the other. Any one who claims it's only one or the other is dead wrong, and doesn't understand nearly as much as they think they do.
He tried his best to not ofend people like you but I guess he did not succeed. He repeated multiple times that lock plays a role and maybe he thinks it matters less than you do and he is right if you are on the right genre with a good execution on steam for example but you still get angry like this.
Btw I think at least about youtube the top 5% get almost all of the views and ads and this is true about steam and elsewhere. It is not hard to calcualte.
The number of sales the bottom 90% make on steam is how much of all the sales? why do you imply that the 30% of the top 10% is not almost all the sales on steam and imply the reverse that the 90% at the bottom make more money or even on youtube. Our company's channel has like 110 subscribers (we are not youtubers and publish tutorials) and i think combined we have 30k views or so and probably 0 ads are shown on our videos and they are on averaged watched for a minute and youtube hosts them and shows them and it shows the ones which are watched more because it benefits them and us. your logic is entirely screwed and probably based on some radical anti-market ideas.
My take on this subject matter: games, and moreso particularly indie game development, went through a sweet spot of time and technology somewhere between 2003 and 2017 or thereabouts. In that period, games were easy enough to be made that most people could, given time and not as much relative resources, and have a very reasonable expectation of success when finished. If you released a mid tier horror game on Steam in 2014 you could easily make $50,000 of sales. Prior to 2003, games were much more difficult to create, and post 2017, much easier, so the market is being flooded.
But if you compare game-making to trying to make a career out of music, or writing (next to impossible in 2024), or film-making, or almost any other creative art, it's the similarly bad odds of success.
I'm a game-maker these days (RoadHouse Manager on Steam, wishlist today!) and I love it, would still be working on my game if I made $2 million dollars tomorrow. But the profit prospects are incredibly slim for my game, and it's practically invisible, it'll probably end up costing me a large chunk of time and savings. But any creative industry is like that. Going into game making as business, as a way to generate profit, inevitably will lead to failure, from solo devs like me megacorps like Sony.
The best you can do is make the best game you can, do the required marketing and necessary things that you can, and roll the dice. If you don't like roll the dice, it's better to sell nuts and bolts or become an accountant, plumber or mechanics. Fixing a car or balancing your books is certainly a more useful skill than game-making, afterall.
I urge you to take a look at https://howtomarketagame.com and maybe take the wishlist and visiblity master class. You are not in the best genres for steam but are in a good one specially if the game has a good amount of crafting. if it mostly revolves around dialog maybe not but if items and other things play a big role and it is more systemic then the setting seems nice and interesting.
All valuable and insightful points. There is definitely a large component of "success" which is down to luck, but game development (and game-adjacent development) is still viable enough with a solid grounding in reality and decent business-oriented thinking.
I think a lot of developers and studios can get caught up in their passion, which is not a bad thing, but there should also be a healthy dose of *everything else* a business needs, if they want to be a going concern for any length of time. A moonshoot is great if you can pull it off, but don't discount the benefits of making a solid, competent product and then another, and another.
The biggest constraint for many is the same as for any other business: capital. In that scenario, where outside investment must be sought, or a dedicated team need to invest whatever they can, the ability to identify and mitigate risk is critical. That includes doing all of the homework, figuring out the marketing plan, and knowing your competition and the likely environment you're going to launch into. Knowing when you're over-reaching is difficult, but important. Only once you've done your best to mitigate risk in such a highly competitive market, should people begin to attribute things to luck. Luck is definitely part of it, but there are *so many other* parts to it, too!
It's not a lottery, but it is massively influenced by luck. Massively.
I think of a game release as a roll of the dice, but one where you can improve your odds.
I reckon you have to try and roll at least 13 on two dice, but you can have +1 for excellent execution, +1 for enthusiastic publisher backing, +1 for a previous similar hit, +1 for a platform reaching a large audience etc. etc.
So, keep trying, and make it your best shot, but at the end of the day the dice roll and it goes one way or the other.
My most-unlikely-cause-of-game-cancellation was an international collaboration kippered by Putin invading Ukraine. Not a lot we could have done to mitigate that one.
Your entire point is built on a terribly incorrect statement. A lottery is NOT the only type gambling there is. It's not a lottery-- it's a Casino.
In a casino new people are constantly flowing in, excited to try every game (approach/niche) and see what can happen. More often than not, they lose money. However, there are always a slim percentage that do in fact randomly get lucky (algo) and take off in ways the majority do not (win) with the same effort, in the same game (niche)
A Casino has many games that do in fact greatly increase the chance of winning, if you are a skilled player. Your entire article could be retitled "All Poker Players Are Talentless Hacks That Rely on Luck A lone - Poker is A Lottery" which upon reading I hope shows how absurd your entire article literally is.
It doesn't really matter what you are doing. All online businesses are e com. Influencers, Only Fans, Musicians, Game Devs, Film Makers, Voice actors -- whatever. "The House Always Wins" these are giant multi billion dollar social media conglomerates that win when the majority fail.
Most of YouTubers revenue does not come from the top creators, it comes from the literal 99% who aren't monetized, and all the ad rev Google keeps 100% of combined. It is in their best interest to have as many people as possible trying desperately to win, when they rarely do.
The majority of steam games uploaded do not make their initial cost of entry back in their first year. Same as how the majority of musicians do not make back the cost of music distribution from their royalties.
Is it impossible? Of course not. But you paint this horribly flawed idea that it's the devs fault if they fail. 100% YOUR fault. Just as it is toxic to blame a lack of luck or a random algo for your failure, it is equally awful to shift that blame solely on the creators and say they just aren't good enough. Which is exactly what you're saying.
You're claiming everyone thinks it's a lotterry out of their control, then using fringe cases of wild indie success in an attempt to motivate thousands if not tens of thousands of creators into thinking they too can be the next Cave Story or whatever iconic title you can think of.
I know my tone sounds very aggressive, but that's due to having an intimate highly objective understanding of how things actually work. I work with 100s of creators a week these days, and I often tell them what they are up against so they are prepared, and do not give up when it feels impossible.
It isn't a lottery, it's a Casino. Find the game (niche) you do best at, and get frickin good at it, and learn to separate skill, hope, and luck, so you can adapt to whichever one gets you to the next level. Sometimes you rely on skill. sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes just white knuckling and trusting yourself at rock bottom gets you to the next phase.
But do NOT tell yourself luck isn't important. It is. So is skill. They compliment the other. Any one who claims it's only one or the other is dead wrong, and doesn't understand nearly as much as they think they do.
He tried his best to not ofend people like you but I guess he did not succeed. He repeated multiple times that lock plays a role and maybe he thinks it matters less than you do and he is right if you are on the right genre with a good execution on steam for example but you still get angry like this.
Btw I think at least about youtube the top 5% get almost all of the views and ads and this is true about steam and elsewhere. It is not hard to calcualte.
The number of sales the bottom 90% make on steam is how much of all the sales? why do you imply that the 30% of the top 10% is not almost all the sales on steam and imply the reverse that the 90% at the bottom make more money or even on youtube. Our company's channel has like 110 subscribers (we are not youtubers and publish tutorials) and i think combined we have 30k views or so and probably 0 ads are shown on our videos and they are on averaged watched for a minute and youtube hosts them and shows them and it shows the ones which are watched more because it benefits them and us. your logic is entirely screwed and probably based on some radical anti-market ideas.
Fantastic article, really enjoyed this thanks.
My take on this subject matter: games, and moreso particularly indie game development, went through a sweet spot of time and technology somewhere between 2003 and 2017 or thereabouts. In that period, games were easy enough to be made that most people could, given time and not as much relative resources, and have a very reasonable expectation of success when finished. If you released a mid tier horror game on Steam in 2014 you could easily make $50,000 of sales. Prior to 2003, games were much more difficult to create, and post 2017, much easier, so the market is being flooded.
But if you compare game-making to trying to make a career out of music, or writing (next to impossible in 2024), or film-making, or almost any other creative art, it's the similarly bad odds of success.
I'm a game-maker these days (RoadHouse Manager on Steam, wishlist today!) and I love it, would still be working on my game if I made $2 million dollars tomorrow. But the profit prospects are incredibly slim for my game, and it's practically invisible, it'll probably end up costing me a large chunk of time and savings. But any creative industry is like that. Going into game making as business, as a way to generate profit, inevitably will lead to failure, from solo devs like me megacorps like Sony.
The best you can do is make the best game you can, do the required marketing and necessary things that you can, and roll the dice. If you don't like roll the dice, it's better to sell nuts and bolts or become an accountant, plumber or mechanics. Fixing a car or balancing your books is certainly a more useful skill than game-making, afterall.
I urge you to take a look at https://howtomarketagame.com and maybe take the wishlist and visiblity master class. You are not in the best genres for steam but are in a good one specially if the game has a good amount of crafting. if it mostly revolves around dialog maybe not but if items and other things play a big role and it is more systemic then the setting seems nice and interesting.
All valuable and insightful points. There is definitely a large component of "success" which is down to luck, but game development (and game-adjacent development) is still viable enough with a solid grounding in reality and decent business-oriented thinking.
I think a lot of developers and studios can get caught up in their passion, which is not a bad thing, but there should also be a healthy dose of *everything else* a business needs, if they want to be a going concern for any length of time. A moonshoot is great if you can pull it off, but don't discount the benefits of making a solid, competent product and then another, and another.
The biggest constraint for many is the same as for any other business: capital. In that scenario, where outside investment must be sought, or a dedicated team need to invest whatever they can, the ability to identify and mitigate risk is critical. That includes doing all of the homework, figuring out the marketing plan, and knowing your competition and the likely environment you're going to launch into. Knowing when you're over-reaching is difficult, but important. Only once you've done your best to mitigate risk in such a highly competitive market, should people begin to attribute things to luck. Luck is definitely part of it, but there are *so many other* parts to it, too!
It's not a lottery, but it is massively influenced by luck. Massively.
I think of a game release as a roll of the dice, but one where you can improve your odds.
I reckon you have to try and roll at least 13 on two dice, but you can have +1 for excellent execution, +1 for enthusiastic publisher backing, +1 for a previous similar hit, +1 for a platform reaching a large audience etc. etc.
So, keep trying, and make it your best shot, but at the end of the day the dice roll and it goes one way or the other.
My most-unlikely-cause-of-game-cancellation was an international collaboration kippered by Putin invading Ukraine. Not a lot we could have done to mitigate that one.