When I worked in retail we were in an area with a couple of similar stores nearby (outdoor equipment, in this case). You might think this would be bad for business, but it made our area a destination. If you needed a sleeping bag you made your way to that part of town. It might seem that it would be better to be placed somewhere with no “competition” - but your “captive” audience is offset by far fewer customers.
Where having competition nearby *is* bad is if your neighbouring store does the exact same thing you do, but much better. But it turns out that there are a lot of different customer types/niches/interests in the outdoor market.
I think this comes to your point of “what are these games doing for the player”. If you are making a worse version of Dark Souls (maybe more accurately, a game with marketing/screenshots/reviews that is perceived as a worse version of Dark Souls) that is coming out on the same day as a Dark Souls sequel, yeah, you’ll be in trouble. If you’ve made something that communicates its own vision I think having an established audience in the “genre” can be beneficial. Familiarity is valuable.
Context: not a developer, just a person with an opinion on everything
Bang on! Here’s an interesting analogy:
When I worked in retail we were in an area with a couple of similar stores nearby (outdoor equipment, in this case). You might think this would be bad for business, but it made our area a destination. If you needed a sleeping bag you made your way to that part of town. It might seem that it would be better to be placed somewhere with no “competition” - but your “captive” audience is offset by far fewer customers.
Where having competition nearby *is* bad is if your neighbouring store does the exact same thing you do, but much better. But it turns out that there are a lot of different customer types/niches/interests in the outdoor market.
I think this comes to your point of “what are these games doing for the player”. If you are making a worse version of Dark Souls (maybe more accurately, a game with marketing/screenshots/reviews that is perceived as a worse version of Dark Souls) that is coming out on the same day as a Dark Souls sequel, yeah, you’ll be in trouble. If you’ve made something that communicates its own vision I think having an established audience in the “genre” can be beneficial. Familiarity is valuable.
Context: not a developer, just a person with an opinion on everything