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this is purely my own gut feeling and i’d love actual devs input, but i get the sense that on top of everything else collapsing, one of the big struggles in games is that the Normal Iterative Sequel, reasonably scoped and made on a quick schedule, seems to sell like six copies now

it depends extremely heavily but yeah you have to expand further because the biggest problem is just the eyeballs. eyeballs are driven by algorithms are driven by novelty. and of course people still like "new thing that's old thing but new" but if it's too much the same it doesn't move the needle

marketing is, more than it ever was, the entire industry right now. if you can't get people to find your thing it basically doesn't even exist

social media's efficacy has also basically fallen off outside of (only sometimes!) tiktok. this means you have to be in a showcase (meaning it needs to feel like Big News) or be talked up by a youtube vid or a stream if your game cost any money to make or the money has just been lit on fire

the only answer i've landed on is intrinsically understanding how normal people will receive your game because that matters so much more than anything else. that's step one to being really good at turning your thing into an Event, which is unfortunately not a skillset many people have

it's easy to think "you just need money to do that" but you can absolutely do it without any money and having money really doesn't do anything if you're not good at this. for example: concord, suicide squad, the avengers game, etc etc etc etc etc

and unfortunately if you don't think about it in these terms it's basically a zero. i'd love to not have to try to plan a thing out to have to be an Event but if you don't it's not just "well it'll hit with the fanbase" it's "it will be bought by nobody and everyone involved will lose their job"