Well put!

That is probably also the same reason the anime games are highly rated but low income. It’s a small community that is super focused and dedicated.

@@ezraho8449 I was 5 seconds into the video when I was like "I really hope we ignore niche's where you obviously love what exists but will filter out anyone who isn't the target audience like visual novels" Yep. Fortunately he did. Was so glad he was brutally honest because it pretty much mirrored my thoughts on things as well. You can tell when things are off when you come from an outside perspective. Also the final conclusion that taking into consideration community and shareability of a game I feel was both blatantly obvious as I'm constantly pulling up twitch streams and reddit pages to see content. But I had no real way of grounding this sort of thought in reality. It's one thing to think it, but it's another to be able to compare similar games with different outcomes, Statistics.

Yeah. And also higher probability to get dragged into "mainstream AAA" games by friends. And they don't wanna do the same with the niche games.

Gotta recommend Neon Tail

What I'd be curious to know is if this video have brought any noticeable uptick in sales.

​@@Myrvold I wondered that right away too. 😅 Not much direct Steam sales impact, had a lil' 3-day bump of a few dozen extra purchases. So, nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, I'm always happy when new people get to experience the game. Go buy Linelight! Let's overtake Mini Metro and Nick will have to make another video about the impact of KZfaq comments!

@@BrettTaylor1 Interesting. Not that I expected thousands and thousands of new sales, but I actually thought it would be a bit more than it was. Thanks for answering! :)

​@@BrettTaylor1 This is probably the reason for Hook doing so well compared to Linelight.

Hey Brett! Thanks so much for sharing these insights! It's cool to hear the behind-the-scenes a bit. I find the point about players being able to project themselves onto the abstract visuals particularly interesting, reminds me of what people say about pixel art compared with high fidelity art - people can fill in the blanks much more liberally. Thanks for making Linelight! I look forward to seeing whatever you make next.

Yeah exactly. And it gets worse whenever a game gets boosted to insane sale numbers by online streamers on KZfaq or Twitch. More eyes on a game, generally does equate to higher sales. It does _not_ mean those games are therefore that much better at all. Plenty of the meme games are complete trash. And yes, this includes very overrated games boosted by streamers/YT game critics like Undertale. It would actually make more sense to investigate what are objectively mediocre or even bad games and figure out why they sold high numbers anyway. In some cases the answer isn't much more difficult than 'soccer moms bought the game for their kid for christmas' after seeing its ad on TV and their kids not leaving them alone about it, think Call of Duty, Fifa 22 etc.. Or what to think of the many nostalgia boner remakes that sold on nothing but an old fan base that is reminded of the 90s / 00s when the game originally got released and newer players being encouraged to buy because of this hype / visibility. WoW Classic, but also Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 comes to mind here. A game combo that is in no way spectacular whatsoever. And judging by how the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 got cancelled, it probably underperformed in expected sales, lol. Well, what did they expect for games that do not hold up anymore in today's world of video gaming? It's not worth the $30 and remember it launched for $55 or so. And even then it'll still have sales because of people who want new Tony Hawk Pro Skater games to be made and naively think it would help by supporting these remakes. It doesn't work like that. Unless people have been asleep, it is well known the demand for good skateboarding games has been as high as never before. It's why Skate 4 is being made. It's why Session exists, as does SkaterXL, but also the Olli Olli games. People _do_ want more skateboarding games. But they have to be good.

Your first example is flawed, since you're comparing apples to oranges. A game that has sold less than 500 copies vs a sequel to an already established and well known game engine

@@borazan comparing 47 reviews and 500 sales with 94 reviews and 22000 sales seems quite reasonable to me when making the point that reviews =/= sales. Much more important is that the vid makes no pareto analysis while trying to understand revenue distributions.

Well, I would disagree sort of. Low sample size doesn't mean flawed. It means less reliable. It's an example of the vast number of factors that influence whether a game receives 0.003% sales to review ratio or 9% sales to review ratio. There are plenty of other examples in my experience working with the back end of Steam as a develop I could give you. Degica published a number of bullet hell arcade conversions about 7 years ago as well. Eschatos and Exzeal being 2 examples that both sold over 10,000 copies. Eschatos (12,881) getting 162 reviews. Exzeal (11,002) getting 15 reviews. A ratio difference of about 1000% from very similar games from the same publisher released within a year of each other. The overarching point being that one of two conclusions can be drawn. Either; a) There is no possible way to extrapolate sales numbers from reviews numbers. Or b) There is a way but it is complex and takes many factors into account and miscalculating on any of those factors can leave error margins that make any conclusions drawn rather meaningless.

Yea, this! Also we cant tell if different genres have different propensities of being reviewed. Like, will people really write public review of an erotic anime game when their friends will also get that review in their activity flow? Also I think good but "harmless" games will get few reviews because while a lot of people kind of enjoys them, they are not something that you talk with your friends about on breaks at work. And thus you probably will not review them either. Divisive games on the other hand will get more reviews.

Wtf is Matrix? And these are def games my dad would’ve played but he does use Steam and he doesn’t own any of them, probably because they’re not well known. He used to love those kinds of games when I was a kid though. He needs simpler games as he gets older sadly.

Paradox Interactive does not belong in the "dad games" genre, but most of their games are definitely some kind of niche. On the other hand, they're a publisher, not a studio, they're pretty diverse in the strategy game genre, and they make a ton of bank. I think a ton of people could find at least one of their games enjoyable. I'm sure this video is talking more along the lines of individual studios why some games don't perform because the publisher tends to have little to do with core game mechanics.

Yeah it’s getting more competitive

That too, definitely. But I feel like the answer he landed on here is also relevant and correct. It's both of those.

@@Megalomaniakaal theres also the fact a lot of great independent titles fall under a niche that isnt as readily profitable as your main genre staples

This is true. Its frankly a lost cause for most indie devs because their games are barely even getting seen by the tiny minority of players that even care to begin with.

Part of the reason for that, and something that wasn't brought up in this video, Steam Greenlight was on the way out in early 2017, and was replaced by Q3 2017. Steam Greenlight nearly assured every indie game that made it through at least moderate success due to the voting involved.

This is what really killed the game That Dragon, Cancer. By all accounts a great game, but it's a short, linear story driven game and people just watched streamers play it on twitch and got about 90% of the value out of it. There was no reason to go and buy it after that, and it ended up selling just 14,000 copies and lost money.

@@andrewshandle I'm not so sure about that. There are quite a number of indie horror game that still make a profit for their developers despite being totally linear and even janky in a bad way. Maybe less people go look for a game with heavy subject matter like Cancer.

imo this is why watching a speedrun is the best way to experience a game you plan on playing yourself-- the runner does things so quickly theres no way you can tell what the hell is going on, much less remember, and even glitchless 100% runs tend to skip over a lot of things, especially in more optimized games

@@mdd4296 Horror has tons of fans with close to zero quality control.

@@doctorwhouse3881 I meant, that's kinda the point.

I think the key is to look for things that are too niche in that they'll effect the data in ways that have to do more with its nicheness/special circumstances than anything easily comparable between games.

Well we can't predict what will be niche in the future, but we can look at what is niche now and in the past to take games away from the data, and a game being niche is simply a small market, so applying that logic we can reasonably get rid of games types that are currently niche

@@ThahnG413 curious then are we counting battlefield 2042 as niche since it had lower concurrent players than farm sim 22

Quite sure all of those examples have exploded specifically due to youtuber exposure, tons of them. I think vampire Survivors, the most recent, was started by splattercat? He even mentions the game was fun and reminded him of something he used to play and it was a shame nobody was buying it before he made his video.

Oh, and Vtubers too, specially Hololive, once they set their sights onto something it turns into gold, instantly.

I was a QA tester for a couple of years and I got to test Fez for the Xbox marketplace. It was my favorite game to test. I had all the game design documents and technical documents, it had a translation for the in game language. I went through the game and translated all of the dialogue and signage by hand and submitted a few bugs where the spelling or grammar was off. It was way more fun to test than this Temple Run clone they had me on before.

Shame about the dev acting like a baby because some people disagreed with him online and canceling the sequel.

Which is the very definition of a game Too many games are just cinematic movies which the player loosely interacts with One trailer of Any new game and boom i feel like i played it I'm sure what that's why that cat game did so well

@@itsaUSBline That's a really disingenuous framing of what happened. Phil Phish maybe wasn't the most politic guy, but there was an outright industry built up of publically harassing the guy. I couldn't have put up with that either. And the only option he had to escape it was to abandon his career and entire online life.

Uh about those back room deals... yeah they turned out to be true Phish was sued the frick over them and lost the case. Its why he went effing mental and said no fez 2.

He knows nothing. :P Your game's style looks awesome.

Oh gosh! This is my nightmare. I almost cut that part because it felt too unfair. But I kept it in for (attempted) comedic value and I figured my channel was small enough that you wouldn't see. I hope my random internet stranger words weren't too discouraging! Make whatever games you want and just ignore me

xd

which one did u make exactly

@@raquexx Fight Knight

👆 this!

yes exactly, MiniMetro makes it very intuitive what the goal of the game is, whereas linelight is more abstract, you don't know why you're moving that line around solving puzzles

Exactly. the goal is obvious and easy for any person to understand!

even if Limelight has better player retention and each player that tries it likes it more, it doesn't matter much if there isn't an obvious reason to even try/buy the game in the first place

So facts

Funny to see you here. I've watched you play that game before. I haven't played it myself but it definitely looked pretty fun from your videos

What’s the game?

@@Xenji5 The Coin Game

Love that game

I don’t consider The coin game in the niche category, It has people playing especially when updates drop, Big streamers also check the game out every once in a while, So that has already bigger than most game coverage which is none for many

I agree. It's too minimalist. It reminded me of a science video of light beam being shot through a water bottle at 1 million frames per second. I think it would do 10 times better if the playable object was a cute worm crawling through pipes or an ant trying to find a way out of an anthill. Especially since the puzzle/game mechanic part of the game was very good.

great way of putting it!

Metro has a more immediate 'charisma'. Which is something difficult to quantify.

I believe that is preference of collaboration vs consumption. Sometimes I myself feel more collaborative and want to create and share it, sometimes I just want to sit back and consume something that has been created.

i've made games (win32) and stuff (mostly vst) for decades. modern attitudes about making games mystify me. i always did things by myself, never with a team. i used borland's fclt compiler which takes about a half second to compile a win32 app and has a 5 meg hard disk footprint. i could develop super quickly because of that half second. basically i tend to write non-OO code, C more than c++. it bothers me to crap how people make an OO function that takes several lines to implement when the actual command is a single line because they are trained to write OO code, totally obfuscating the process, which is why people can never do anything, because they live in spaghetti, instead of a simple, minimal, self conceived instruction set. i finally managed to afford a 64 bit windows system this year, i've been using xp. unfortunately it will be a while before i can afford enough hrd disk to install the retarded microsoft vs shit for direct x or their package for product development, gigs and gigs of it. waaaay beyond what fits on the 60g drive my lappy has. now i make stuff with ps4 dreams and i'm among many ignored in favour of retarded crap. as a matter of fact, the gamedev website issued a special page after they banned me (i've never read it) explaining the reason for banning me for posting how my super minimal system actually produced faster win exes than microsoft despite my os being limited to opengl 1.4. apparently, non-OO code is that offensive. but in short, the reason why entertainment is often sucky is because so many people are masons and it's their duty to milk you and keep you dull. it's doubtful any reader will believe it in this lifetime, but there you are.

@@atomictraveller what are you smoking bruv, 64bit windows and 60gb hdd in 2022?...are you in the third world? It's pretty simple really, art wins with games not the 0.5s saved with a c compiler choice. You can make GCC fast with the right flags anyway but unless you are working off existing code bases you're spending a lot of time reinventing a 3d engine and not doing what is important, like making an actual game, Godot with gdscript is extremely fast, no compilation needed.

@@woobilicious. tucson. no AC. limited income. bleed out my ass regular this time of year from overwork anyway. be dead soon. expanding my hard drive wouldn't be a high priority, but i only purchased this asus L210 six months ago and the OS has increased to a size where i'm going to have to soon apparently. the vst3 sdk (which we didn't address) spits out a half gig of shit every compile. if i were you, i'd reconsider defending total fucking bullshit to someone about to die from bleeding out their ass.

@@atomictraveller 60GB drive in 2022? Even 120GB SSDs are cheap nowadays. Unless you live on the most rural area in the most third world country in the world I think most people should be able to afford it. I know, because I live in third world country myself.

The same could be said of KZfaq. The 5 star rating system was far better than this thumbs up thumbs down stuff.

the negative/positive rating is based off how machine learning algorithms succeed. They are really good at handling binary yes/no variables in bulk to make correlations between different people and what similar people would like. Its not supposed to be user friendly but instead machine learning friendly. It works the same as youtube, netflix, facebook, (another manipulative company), etc.

binary rating system actually helps me to have cleare vision on what that rating number even meaning. I know if I would like game genre how likely I would like the game after purchase. 5 start rating maybe can help find good games ?!? but I prefer finding game by tags then look at ratings and review's. 5 star rating don't tell you what percentage of buyers liked what they got. and reviews can help you know exactly what people feel about it with more details than any rating system can achieve.

Well 10/10 are all based on how someone enjoys the game, Many people have perfect score for games that others would look past from, So for some games there are also variables on whether or not the game has been played by other creators to the fan in word of mouth and for some who finds the game naturally though steam or though other sources may just find the genre and game they are looking for even if for you it’s not the genre you play at all or have even seen

I've played several you listed as good but not great, and most have some level of hidden depth that makes them special to those who invest the time into them while appearing generic at a glance. House: A horror game with a time loop that feels rewarding to go through. There are numerous interconnected puzzles and each time you restart the cycle you get closer to finding the true end. Aside from the frogs it's something that is a challenging puzzle yet feels achievable without a walkthrough. Wilmot's Warehouse: originally free through Humble Bundle, so that put a big damper on sales. While at it's core it's a simple organization puzzle, it is relaxing and satisfying with a very carefully designed difficulty curve, as you need to manage more items you are slowly unlocking upgrades and developing the skills needed to succeed. By the end you'll feel like a master. Spirits Abyss: An absolutely massive roguelike with tons of hidden content and unlockable including a card game minigame. If you like hunting for secrets and are looking for something like Spelunky you will enjoy this as well as Noita. Recused: A puzzle game that takes full advantage of it's core recursive mechanic. There's only a handful of basic rules, but you're naturally figuring out their nuances and intricacies creating insanely complicated puzzles by the end. It also came out 3 years before Baba is you which has similar puzzle logic.

amen man

No worries, Each genre will always have its fan base and people who enjoy niche games or intriguing genres and themes will usually seek out games that are within their genre of choice

2d games that aren't already established ips will always underperform

They only "under-performed" because they didn't have millions of dollars to throw into marketing. It doesn't matter how good you are. If you can't market your wares competitively, you're not gonna get very far with it.

@@MFKR696 using the excuse of needing millions in marketing I feel is a cop out excuse. Marketing is about virality. No point spending millions of it only generates half that. I’d recommend reading the lean startup on this for making sure you have a good viral coefficient and how to go about creating virality in the consumer space.

@@TheGrinningSkull A bit naive, are we? lol

Horizon's Gate is amazing to play through.

mid 10s

Indie boom started in 2005ish

@@Eyeball-with-legs this is true. I only learned about Mini Metro after playing a shitton of Factorio/OTTD/Workers & Resources. there’s a huge playerbase (not even that niche of a group) who love train and rail management sims, myself included. Most of those who have played any game with trains will most likely have heard of Mini Metro, kinda like how Townscaper and Islanders are popular “casual” games for those hardcore city building players

This is exactly right. Timing, but also the store you release on AND these days the COUNTRY you release it in is a huge factor. In my opinion people should check which country their game resonates with, which culture, and market mainly to that region of the world as well.

There's a documentary about Brazillian indie game designers, and they said that 80% of their sales come outside of their own country. Also, Steam isn't the only store that exists. These are things to think about.

I didn't really notice it before you mention it. But yeah it's actually a better watching experience. I feel KZfaq videos often became "over-edited" with non fitting sloppy license-free music. Am i making sense?

@@Aminekbcovers yes my friend. I feel the same way hence my post. Glad to hear more agreed on my sentiment😅

Also Timing: 2014 Market Saturation: Low on Steam Market Trends (for that particular time): iOS and 'sleek' small games were popular at the time.

As a fellow VN enjoyer, I agree with all three. In no offense to generic people but that's how it was with anime until recently. VNs, especially in the US, are pretty much a niche of a niche.......of a niche. It's a very specific audience, especially with some of the wackier ones. It makes sense though when you think about it as well with stats. MOST people on Steam aren't gonna go "Huh, I'd sure like to read and look at images for 50+ hours now. Let's try this game!". Even in close to the same realm, they'd rather play Fire Emblem, Naruto or even something like Monster Hunter. That sort of audience is kind of hard to expand upon.

I find visual novels unplayable on PC. They work better for me on mobile, where I can lie in bed instead of sitting in chair.

@@Gnidel I play using a laptop that i can bring to bed

The other thing is there are *tons* of VNs compared to the audience that consumes them. I guess because the barrier to getting started on them is pretty low; it's largely about the writing.

yeah the steam reviews are super inaccurate for VNs and r18 games, you got stuff rated like 4/10 on vndb but "overwhelmingly positive" on steam lol, i think it's cuz only the people that actually liked said VN ends up buying it on steam same with r18 games, seen 1 star stuff on dlsite rated O-P on steam lol, same reason

Game jam culture has NOT helped the gaming market in my opinion, it's almost at the heart of the problem. There are so many 'game jammer' types that I've meant, in where they could have created the next Final Fantasy and yet they're stuck creating Bubble Shooter 3000. They're aiming for mediocrity on purpose not realizing their own talent.

@@astrah982 I blame mobile games as what started the whole "your game can have mediocre single-finger gameplay, need the least amount of interaction and have poor production value but still sell millions anyway because most people wouldn't know any better" doctrine and thought process.

I mean some of those games do hit the spot for the folks seeking that niche genre, Even though they won’t see massive amounts, They still created something than it has a small fan based around it

"Return of the Obra Dimn" for me is the best example of a decent indie game that didn't received that much attention from the internet

@@ITSTAKING That's a really good point, mobile games for sure...I don't see why I didn't see that before, but I remember a game on the Nintendo Switch for 10 bucks in where you were a square jumping around sidescrolling fighting circles.

Wasn’t hollow knight made by like 2 people though?

Many Visual Novel titles are releasing to steam because it's basically free money for them, when their fanbase and normal sales are Japan only. They used to only sell on Japanese only sites like DLSite, or physical copies, until steam got rid of greenlight and opened for everyone, so now on top of their original sales they are simply getting this extra money from steam. Those VN games are also made by moderate teams, sometimes 10-20x people. I remember one title(which I think is from 10 years ago) even hired China's national orchestra to play their original music, that's seriously very impressive. I don't play VN games though, I'd rather just read a fucking book and/or masturbate to porn.

@@TheYeetedMeat no team cherry was a bit bigger like 15-20 and grew over time

Check out Neon Tail

@@captaineflowchapka5535 The Team Cherry and Hollow Knight websites describe them as a team of three people. When did they get bigger?

so being a artist it's not an actual profession but just people playing around?

Simple concept: People buy what they know from authors they perceive to know. This is why you should make some kind of personality presence online first, even if it's smaller, but always remember social media is only a formality and don't look too much at others accounts, you're there for the players only, know your purpose.

Similar situation with Higurashi I'd think, I don't know if Steam can show an "official" release date and a Steam release date, but that might clear up a couple of the games rated very high but without many sales/reviews.

Don't mind me, I'm just paying a visit to the based department

Because its super niche almost nobody plays them

Also a lot of people dislike bullet hell and anime games, so having both at the same time will obviously imply a niche audience.

@@miceatah9359 lmao touhou is one of the most successful franchises

I agree that being able to compare the estimated revenue to the amount of costs the game development incurred is really necessary to determine if the game really did well. If it takes you 3 years to make the game yourself you would hope for 3 times the profit of a game that took you a year to make, and if it only made 2 times as much, you would be disappointed despite making twice as much money.

Can I ask you what proportion of the game's revenue (before store fees) translates into income in your case?

@@Kenionatus My income is very inconsistent on a month to month basis. But over the last 6 months there was about 32k in total steam revenue. And that ends up being closer to 20k after fees and taxes. So it's not a lot, but its enough to get by. :)

Can you link your Steam games page?

I do not agree at all. IMO it's more 90% luck and 10% work. Most of the games that work great are not even that good, some of them are even pretty bad... *The meritocracy is a lie.* If you succeed you just got lucky but *the survivorship bias will make you think it's because of your work.* If you failed it's surely because you got unlucky. I recommend you to do some research on meritocracy. Making a game during years is more or less like playing the lottety... You need to be very lucky with the algorithms of stream/youtube/twitch, and the quality of your work as almost nothing to so with it. *Look at the number of games that seriously suck but that got millions of copy sold because big youtuber played it by mistake or for fun.* Look at the number of awesome games that just got ignored because they have too little visibility. *It's not for nothing that ALL recent AAA games spend more money on marketing that in dev.* We call the people on youtube and Twitch the "influencers", because it's their role... Decide what people will play based on lobby requests. Edit: too many synthax and spelling mistakes

@@pierrotA facts but once you get famous after that its 90% work 10% luck because people already know you and are waiting for your next game or update to current game and if you don't work well people will forget you so after people know your game it's mostly work

@@krunskisenpai9148 It's true that you need to work to stay at the top. But IMO it's still mainly chance that will determine if you survive. Each video is basicaly a lottery... Be on the good game/topic/cameo at the good time and you continue to climb, be caught in a drama or simply lose your niche public for some reason and it's over. In addition, the algorithms can change everything overnight... You can do Lego content for years with 50views, and suddenly your topic is blessed and you become famous for years, before the topic become dull again and you return to almost nothing. It's for me the reason that make most youtuber say "a video a little special today" everytime they slighly change something. They are all afraid to lose half their views for a insignificant reason.

Its neither 90% work 10% luck or 90% luck 10% work. Its 5% work 5% luck 90% industry connections

I think it's a multiplication: Product Quality * Marketing * Luck If one of these is zero or close to zero, everything will fail. They multiply each other.

Go for it!

If you're an amateur looking to put out an artistic product and finance is your primary motivation - you've already failed.

He also didn't count any games with less than a certain number of reviews. This means, if a good game gets enough players it will get big. However he could have also missed tons of great games that never got discovered.

It was also free on EGS, I tried it and had some fun. Will certainly return to it in some time.

I liked it a lot when it was on Gamepass. I don't have the kind of mindset that would enjoy the game for more than a week, but I think many would. Especially anyone who enjoys speedrunning or finding patterns. The game doesn't really include those things, but it exercises similar thinking skills.

I loved it, only felt the ending was a bit of an anticlimax, but I had a lot of fun along the way.

I know this game too, I fell in love with it pretty fast

Glad someone else defended it. It's great

That's exactly right. It seems to me it's all about those initial superfans that push it. It's disappointing that many creators then get very popular through those 10 people, but then often they drop off from their posse eventually and they forget about them later.

Is it really though? It's pretty much just another slightly more difficult than usual platformer. It also has a marketing problem, being sold as a 'level maker' game. I understand the game's premise, but potential buyers will avoid what looks like a not free level editor for sale... Compared to other direct competition, it's probably not that good at all.

Did either of those games make you feel like batman?

There are probably lots of reasons why the Steam versions of the official Touhou games aren't exactly big sellers. Here are some of my ideas: 1) The games are often (to this day) pirated by folks, for many possible reasons. Like someone could be from a developing country, where people have less money to spend on games. Or their PC might not even have an optical disc drive, making physical game copies useless. Or they decide to pirate it since they can't find the game on a common/favourite online video game vendor (like Steam). Or maybe even they don't think it's worth paying for the games at all and would rather they be free to play... 2) Official Touhou games have only started being released on Steam for 2-3 years now I think (correct me if I'm wrong), and lots of the games still have yet to receive an official Steam release. Lots of the official Touhou games are being released on Steam long, long after their original release (ex. Touhou 10 -Mountain of Faith originally released in 2007/8 I think) so it'd also make sense that they wouldn't be selling as much as they did back when the game was newer. 3) People who can't read Japanese have to manually patch the games to use fan localizations so they'd understand the game's text/dialogue, making the official games a bit more inaccessible to non-Japanese readers. 4) Lots of Touhou fans are fans of the series because of the wealth of fan content and not the official games, so only a smaller portion of Touhou's fan base actually goes ahead and plays the official games to begin with... Sorry if this was a long read.

Difficulty is probably also a factor

physical copies to digital copies sold ratio is only higher in japan (7:3) and looking at touhou's origin it's not surprising

His takeaway was specifically "not enough weebs on steam". He understood that the sales were a result of the game just not doing as well on Steam, you don't have to stand up for Touhou lol

@@jeffe2267 I just wanted to use Touhou to illustrate a broader point, hope that’s cleared up now.

Simply having Chinese doesn't really do much, plus the Chinese fanbase frequently bombard reviews for any political reason. I've never seen any Russian buy game unless it has hardcore gunplay or anime, plus we are in war time so Russians can't buy anything even if they want to.

@@qiang2884 russian here, well I try to buy every game I like, so I have over 1000 games in my steam library. My friends do the same - they usually buy games they likes even if they are short on money. Yes, probably russian pirating more than others, but that does not mean that it's what most people does And yes we can buy games, it's just harder now

@@qiang2884 Exactly. Marketing to authoritarian dictatorships is great until you (or somebody from your country) says or does something they object to. Then you have 500 wumao wrecking your review scores.

Russian here. While i am not one of them, a lot of russians follow the "No russian no buy" ruleand for many its the deciding factor, cuz language educatiion here rather poor, nor is it encouraged cuz, well, politics

@@chrono269 well it's good that we still have mandatory english classes in scool, even though they are pretty much very bad. But well, after 11 years of listening to "I am apple", "I slept well until ***" etc - you probably will learn something. But yes, most of my skill comes from games, but school teached me some common words and basic grammar so it still was not learning from the scratch

+1 since I would also love to play around with those data

I wanna know which game almost 100 000 000 $ at under 0.25 ratings! 3:39

Yeah, I was surprised to see this in the 'underperforming' category. It was a very capable and well-polished game.

It's so good!! For me a 9/10

also, even tho I understand the initial comparison between the mini games and linelight, theyre still fundamentally different in a way I think perfectly explains their different performances (I say that as a professional gamedev with user acquisition experience). the mini games have an art direction thats just more approachable and familiar. the graphic design invokes infographics, public signage and flat-color-on-white-background design thats ubiquitous in modern branding and UX. linelight already starts in disadvantage with its dark general vibe, which is known to be less appealing to the general public in terms of UX, the visual elements are way thiner and more delicate than the minis while also being stylzed, which adds friction to the readability (even tho it adds style), and it is ultimately hurt by its premise compared to the minis. linelight is a game where you have a main character that goes through a linear puzzle-narrative, which means it depends a lot on the player's ability to connect emotionally to whats happening and its not very replayable. its a game that needs you to go through a rise in engagement to motivate you to keep coming back to play it and finish but will also stop being attractive once its done. even if it does manage to cativate you when you play, as many reviews demonstrate, its introducing a lot of friction elements that go directly against that primary need with its visuals being less approachable and translating less emotiom so it fails to convert users and fails to retain most of them after they start. in the other hand the minis go in exact opposite with very clear and readable gameplay, no narrative or main characters that'd introduce the need for a stronger emotional connection and procedural gameplay that scales well. it doesnt need you to be continuosly engaged with it because there's no direct connection between play sessions. no narrative or character to care about. the gameplay offers variety through progress but can be approached way more casually, accepting a higher fluctuation of engagement. you can forget about it for a week and still decide to go back on a whim and still have the same experience without needing to get back into any emotional state or remember any narrative. its easy to see how different both games would be at their ability to acquire new users and retain them for longer and more numerous play sessions, which even ties into the points you bring up in the video. minimetro had a free web version, relatable concept and was about creativity which is shareable, sure but being a jam game that would normally only mean other gamedevs and enthusiasts get to play it. without paid marketing, only virality couldve made it reach the general public and without the positives I mentioned it would never have gone viral.

House for example is one of those "weird games" but it's really good in my opinion. It's really unique.

At one point Dota was an over complicated oddity with little mass appeal now it's the hottest shit around

I love Butterscotch Shenanigans' games! My favorite is crashlands.

@@blockgunk BUTTTER-SCOTCH SHENANNIGAAANS!

As a fellow LevelHead fan, I'd love to know why LH got scratched from the shortlist.

@@Dave-rd6sp Which is strange to me because keyboard & mouse is so much better for building...

LEVELHEAD RECOGNITION ‼️

holy shit its Ana from overwatch!!

obligatory piggyback on Levelhead mention to emphasize that it is an extremely ownable and playable game, bought it on mobile and PC, have spent a couple thousand hours playing it in the past year and a half and have probably spent even more time watching others stream it definitely allow it to inhibit the perceived need for other life experiences, such as sleeping

For the past 3 years levelhead has been my favorite game! I grew up playing platformers and this one feels super great to play. The controls are really precise and satisfying. As a creative type, this game is really rewarding to me. The editor is super powerful. I love making things in games, be it a custom character, game type, custom map etc. So the level editor in this game is a dream come true for me. It's not quite programming your own game but damn does it come a lot closer than other editors in games I just wish there were more people playing the game and creating content

i basically stopped making games when i started playing Levelhead 3 years ago.

@@flowa.r.t.5331 Haha, you're the (main) reason I frequently come back to this game! It's so much fun just binging through your levels^^ The're just so consistently good, I'd urge anyone interested in Levelhead to check them out! I hope you'll keep making levels for as long as you're having fun doing so, cause it really shows! Your creativity seems to know no limits (but maybe that's to the game's credit, also?) But I should stop with the praise before someone thinks I'm your alt-account (which is something an alt-account misuser would say... wait...) Anyhow you've certainly improved my days in the past, so I was just hoping I could perhaps "uno-reverse-card" you today. (Let me know if it worked ;D) Peace

@@evildjado1516 hey that's awesome! I'm really happy to hear that. Yeah I love making stuff in levelhead and I don't plan on stopping any time soon

As soon as he said that, I loaded all of the comments on this video and did a Ctrl+F for "Recursed" and you're the only one. :/ Recursed is and always will be one of my favorite games of all time.

It's a super great game and I'm glad someone recommended it to you!

Recursed really needs some love + polish on its art I think. The first glance impact isn’t great.

That's fair. I wasn't quite sure how to place House, maybe I was a little harsh on it. I did enjoy it well enough although found it a little tedious at times... perhaps I should have been a bit more patient (I was trying to get through a lot of games and give them a fair go, but maybe I was still a bit too rushed)

@@NickCastonNZ Yeah I feel you! The amount of work in this video was crazy!!

was looking for this comment lol

Amazing games indeed, it feels almost relaxing to play and yet can be very challenging, its disign is simple and very appealing.

Thanks for the feedback and for sharing your thoughts! I hadn't heard of Atlas Reactor but I'm going to look into it now. I don't have a discord but it's one of those things that is forever in a state of "I should probably do that"... Good luck with your game dev! It sounds like you're making good progress and thinking critically about your approach. I look forward to seeing what you make.

Thanks for the kind words and the encouragement! I'm glad you liked the video. I agree with what you're saying about psychology and emotions. It does seem to be getting more emphasis in game design books/talks/etc these days which feels promising (or maybe I'm just seeing it now). Video games are such a young industry, so you're probably right that there are some important areas still to be discovered. Good luck to you, in whichever route you end up taking!

Could you explain what you mean by timely and timeless?

I just checked and the game is cheaper now, but the splash page on its store is “30,000,000 players can’t be wrong” - thankfully it’s being reviewed more critically but I can’t help but feel like that score was so unwarranted and people bought it solely because of the score and not because it was a decent desirable game.

Souls-like is a bad example - the thing is, this sub-genre is not exactly THAT niche AND but players are pretty... demanding - the original Souls games generally have outstanding quality and thus every imitator has a pretty big shoes to fill - and every mistake will be scrutinised by the community. On the flipside - look at proper tank simulators - it is basically impossible to find one that isn't 2 decades old. And if you can, there is pretty good chance that they are so technically bad that getting them running on anything semi-modern is a challenge, because the game's code is basically held together by duct tape and good wishes. This creates a situation where people interested in the genre will welcome virtually anything that works, because they are starved for content.