Take a 4X game but make it cute and cuddly
August 16, 2023 9:32 AM Subscribe
Why do great games fail? Matt Horton (previously) chats with a game publisher to understand why indie darlings like Season vastly under-perform in sales even after a strong indie game hype cycle and being featured in multiple game events.
I am not an extremely gamer person, so take this with several grains, but the only "hype" I saw for Season was a review in Kotaku that wrote: "[S]adly, it delivers only banality. Everything’s said so incredibly earnestly, but it all conflates ambiguity for intrigue, and sincerity for sophistication."
So perhaps the answer is that the "great" game that failed was only labeled as such by during the hype cycle by a certain circle of critics and others didn't share that opinion?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:02 AM on August 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
So perhaps the answer is that the "great" game that failed was only labeled as such by during the hype cycle by a certain circle of critics and others didn't share that opinion?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:02 AM on August 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
One of the things the video brings up is how Steam's return policy gets abused to the point that short narrative games are flatly non-viable on the platform. And I feel strongly that the people who abuse the return policy as such are thieves.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:08 AM on August 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:08 AM on August 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I also had never heard of Season until this post.
I think ultimately there are fewer times there's a reason something failed as much as there wasn't a reason it succeeded.
Take Undertale. With how terrific it is, would we remember it today if it hadn't had Homestuck to piggyback off of? It doesn't matter how great it is if no one plays it in the first place to notice. Meanwhile, some games that probably shouldn't be popular become so if some streamer finds it and shouts their head off while playing it.
posted by JHarris at 10:11 AM on August 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
I think ultimately there are fewer times there's a reason something failed as much as there wasn't a reason it succeeded.
Take Undertale. With how terrific it is, would we remember it today if it hadn't had Homestuck to piggyback off of? It doesn't matter how great it is if no one plays it in the first place to notice. Meanwhile, some games that probably shouldn't be popular become so if some streamer finds it and shouts their head off while playing it.
posted by JHarris at 10:11 AM on August 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
And some games break all of the so-called rules for commercial success (discussed in the video) about focus and "audience matching" and succeed beyond any expectation just because they are such obvious labors of love, and so much fun to play.
Yes, I'm looking at you Dave the Diver. What the hell are you, even? Why won't you let me get back to Baldur's Gate or (ugh) Diablo?
posted by The Bellman at 10:31 AM on August 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Yes, I'm looking at you Dave the Diver. What the hell are you, even? Why won't you let me get back to Baldur's Gate or (ugh) Diablo?
posted by The Bellman at 10:31 AM on August 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
The Bellman, I am SO WITH YOU on Dave the Diver. Also Arcade Paradise similarly captivated me even though you have to do people's laundry in it
posted by capnsue at 10:46 AM on August 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by capnsue at 10:46 AM on August 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Neat! I had no idea there was any connection between Undertale and Homestuck. I love the latter but have no experience of the former. I also have not watched the linked videos, sorry not sorry, library wifi & no headphones is where that's at.
Since the previous 4X thread I've been thinking a lot about these games, playing Unciv and reading Murray Bookchin (sententious and boring, do not recommend). Lame as I find Bookchin, reading From Urbanism to Cities has given me some fun ideas about 4X modifications- like, what if instead of directly ordering the production of cities, you instead choose a vassal to run it, basically automating all that clickery in an idiosyncratic bot with a "personality" affected by outside factors (maybe your vassal tends to curry favor with nearby city states, or is a member of a secret society that wants to do weird stuff with barbarians...)
Speaking of barbarians- I've always wanted to play as a barbarian "civilization". What if barbarians could build and maintain roads, and perform trade? Since a trade mechanic exists, why not have a type of playable civ that can capture land but not hold it? Obviously, the reason is: it's complicated and hard, and no one has had time and inclination to implement it as yet. Maybe someday I will do so, but it will be a minute until I have time to dig into the Freeciv source code.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 11:24 AM on August 16, 2023
Since the previous 4X thread I've been thinking a lot about these games, playing Unciv and reading Murray Bookchin (sententious and boring, do not recommend). Lame as I find Bookchin, reading From Urbanism to Cities has given me some fun ideas about 4X modifications- like, what if instead of directly ordering the production of cities, you instead choose a vassal to run it, basically automating all that clickery in an idiosyncratic bot with a "personality" affected by outside factors (maybe your vassal tends to curry favor with nearby city states, or is a member of a secret society that wants to do weird stuff with barbarians...)
Speaking of barbarians- I've always wanted to play as a barbarian "civilization". What if barbarians could build and maintain roads, and perform trade? Since a trade mechanic exists, why not have a type of playable civ that can capture land but not hold it? Obviously, the reason is: it's complicated and hard, and no one has had time and inclination to implement it as yet. Maybe someday I will do so, but it will be a minute until I have time to dig into the Freeciv source code.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 11:24 AM on August 16, 2023
I found Season on my own, browsing the store, and the only thing I didn't like about it was that it ended. There's a very sweet curation to it and I would have like to be able to add more pages. There's so much beauty there, in how well they designed the haptics to truly feel like cycling to the charm of the smallest details of the odd, doomed world. Five stars. I am very easily bored and this captured me completely.
posted by foxtongue at 12:19 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by foxtongue at 12:19 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
regarding barbarians: there are "horde" factions that don't follow the typical 4X formula in some of the Total War games, I think first introduced in Attila? and a few in the Total Warhammer spin-offs. It's also sort of the space that Jon Shafer's At the Gates was playing in
I was bummed to hear about Season and the layoffs when Triple Click discussed it and the financial reality of day one sales numbers. I was certainly guilty of bookmarking it for later, but there's just so much vying for our time and money? and honestly I had been burned by the beautiful but empty feeling Sable, which made me wary of these kinda games, perhaps unfairly
posted by okonomichiyaki at 12:25 PM on August 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I was bummed to hear about Season and the layoffs when Triple Click discussed it and the financial reality of day one sales numbers. I was certainly guilty of bookmarking it for later, but there's just so much vying for our time and money? and honestly I had been burned by the beautiful but empty feeling Sable, which made me wary of these kinda games, perhaps unfairly
posted by okonomichiyaki at 12:25 PM on August 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Probably most people aren't tuned in enough for it to have significantly affected sales, but Season had a particularly fraught development.
posted by juv3nal at 12:53 PM on August 16, 2023
posted by juv3nal at 12:53 PM on August 16, 2023
One year, when I was covering the New York Film Festival, an incredibly loquacious "critic" who shall remain unnamed and who everybody cannot stand sat down next to me.
You can just say "Armond White", we all know about him.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:32 PM on August 16, 2023
You can just say "Armond White", we all know about him.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:32 PM on August 16, 2023
One thing I'm really seeing as "why did this game fail" is "well it was PS5/Steam and exclusively promoted by Sony as a PS5 exclusive".
And I am the audience for this kind of game, when I moved on from having a 360 and a PS3, I only got a PS4, because Sony was doing so damn well at cultivating this kind of thoughtful little indie game aimed at people who are fine with paying like $10 for just an hour or two of more narrative gameplay.
But the PS5 launch was a mess. Basically the supply chain disruption of the pandemic meant that nobody but scalpers, and people who were willing to pay a thousand bucks to a scalper, got one of the things. I really just quit paying attention to any of Sony's announcements because they were mostly talking about stuff I wouldn't get to play for like a half a decade, when the console refresh cycle turned again and a $300 PS5 came out alongside a new $600 PS5 Super Turbo Deluxe.
(Apparently it's actually on the PS4 too? I don't recall seeing it get any push from Sony in the PS4 store, though I haven't been looking much lately.)
The "Steam is just for hardcore gamers" problem that Mr. Zed suggests in the first video may be changing, though. I decided to stop waiting for the $300 PS5 and got a $300 mid-spec Steam deck when Valve had them on sale recently, and I have been delighted to be able to dig through back reviews of little indy games that were Steam/Switch exclusives now.
Speaking of reviews, here's what Rock Paper Shotgun thought of it. Pretty, compelling, and melancholy.
posted by egypturnash at 2:26 PM on August 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
And I am the audience for this kind of game, when I moved on from having a 360 and a PS3, I only got a PS4, because Sony was doing so damn well at cultivating this kind of thoughtful little indie game aimed at people who are fine with paying like $10 for just an hour or two of more narrative gameplay.
But the PS5 launch was a mess. Basically the supply chain disruption of the pandemic meant that nobody but scalpers, and people who were willing to pay a thousand bucks to a scalper, got one of the things. I really just quit paying attention to any of Sony's announcements because they were mostly talking about stuff I wouldn't get to play for like a half a decade, when the console refresh cycle turned again and a $300 PS5 came out alongside a new $600 PS5 Super Turbo Deluxe.
(Apparently it's actually on the PS4 too? I don't recall seeing it get any push from Sony in the PS4 store, though I haven't been looking much lately.)
The "Steam is just for hardcore gamers" problem that Mr. Zed suggests in the first video may be changing, though. I decided to stop waiting for the $300 PS5 and got a $300 mid-spec Steam deck when Valve had them on sale recently, and I have been delighted to be able to dig through back reviews of little indy games that were Steam/Switch exclusives now.
Speaking of reviews, here's what Rock Paper Shotgun thought of it. Pretty, compelling, and melancholy.
posted by egypturnash at 2:26 PM on August 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm an indie game developer who focuses on Steam. I'll say with as much confidence as is possible in this field, that the game performed in line with what its expectations should have been. It launched with a wishlist rank of 214 and 8400 followers. These are great numbers for an indie game. Median follower to first week review count for popular upcoming games is around 18. (Game sales data is not public, but as the video mentions developers have long recognized that review counts work as a rough proxy for sales, with a ratio of 20-50 being fairly common, with recent games falling at the lower end)
First year sales are typically 3-10x first week, heavily tilted toward the first quarter.
Based on that data, before launch I would have predicted that it would receive around 450 reviews and sold 14,000 copies in the first week, probably 5x that in the first year. It got about 400 reviews and the video said that it sold about 60,000 copies, so it seems like the launch went well.
This is about the best case scenario for an indie title, especially one that's primarily narrative focused with limited replay value. I would like to read more about what went wrong.
posted by justkevin at 2:41 PM on August 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
First year sales are typically 3-10x first week, heavily tilted toward the first quarter.
Based on that data, before launch I would have predicted that it would receive around 450 reviews and sold 14,000 copies in the first week, probably 5x that in the first year. It got about 400 reviews and the video said that it sold about 60,000 copies, so it seems like the launch went well.
This is about the best case scenario for an indie title, especially one that's primarily narrative focused with limited replay value. I would like to read more about what went wrong.
posted by justkevin at 2:41 PM on August 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
I've now watched the video (very interesting! thanks for posting) and gone back to re-read and re-listen about the layoffs. regarding what went wrong, at least the Triple Click folks were very surprised the studio was 45 people before they had layoffs? I have no insight into video game business stuff but Jason Schreier knows his stuff, I think, and he said "that is humongous for an indie game studio that just put out a narrative, niche game..."
posted by okonomichiyaki at 2:58 PM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by okonomichiyaki at 2:58 PM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Season clearly has its admirers but I found it deeply disappointing in its writing, story, and execution. It is often very pretty but that didn’t make up for its flaws.
If you want to sell a close to a million copies, which is what it’d take to fund a game that might’ve taken 100 person-years to make, you need to be lucky and make a great game with great word of mouth.
posted by adrianhon at 3:21 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you want to sell a close to a million copies, which is what it’d take to fund a game that might’ve taken 100 person-years to make, you need to be lucky and make a great game with great word of mouth.
posted by adrianhon at 3:21 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
On top of the other issues, the game's name is definitely a problem with marketability. It was referred to as just "Season" in all the discussions I saw about it on Twitter around release, but you literally cannot search for that game title, it doesn't show up on the first page of results on Steam and if you google it you'll find many other pages about season passes for very popular games. They probably should have leaned into the subtitle more, "A letter to the future" on it's own is also a better game name.
And yes, 45 studio staff is a lot of developers for a game of this scale (high end indie). As a random point of comparison Tchia (which many people here would like as it's also a beautiful exploration game with interesting themes) which also came out this year seems to have credits that are about half as long: 285 people listed on mobygames (which includes publishers/etc) vs 460 for Season. It's always difficult to compare credits, but one thing that stood out to me is that Season has full voice acting in 3 languages which is very unusual for an indie game, and appears to have 3x as many programmers.
posted by JZig at 5:14 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
And yes, 45 studio staff is a lot of developers for a game of this scale (high end indie). As a random point of comparison Tchia (which many people here would like as it's also a beautiful exploration game with interesting themes) which also came out this year seems to have credits that are about half as long: 285 people listed on mobygames (which includes publishers/etc) vs 460 for Season. It's always difficult to compare credits, but one thing that stood out to me is that Season has full voice acting in 3 languages which is very unusual for an indie game, and appears to have 3x as many programmers.
posted by JZig at 5:14 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I saw Instagram ads for Season pre-launch; they featured a non-white, non-male protagonist on a blue step-through bicycle that looks EXACTLY LIKE MINE. I have wanted to play this game for MONTHS now. It reads like they took a hard look at my personal interests and designed a video game SPECIFICALLY FOR ME.
But to my knowledge, it is only available for PS4/PS5 (which we don't have; we already bought the Switch last year because it had more games we wanted) and Steam - but not Steam on Mac, only Steam on Windows 10. So even though I have wanted to play this game since before it launched, and would have pre-ordered it if it were going to be available on one of my existing platforms? It's not available to me without having to buy a new machine.
And Sony failed to persuade me that investing in (and taking the time to track down) a PS5 would be worth it to me; the only game I'm interested in right now on that platform besides Season is FF16.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 5:26 PM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
But to my knowledge, it is only available for PS4/PS5 (which we don't have; we already bought the Switch last year because it had more games we wanted) and Steam - but not Steam on Mac, only Steam on Windows 10. So even though I have wanted to play this game since before it launched, and would have pre-ordered it if it were going to be available on one of my existing platforms? It's not available to me without having to buy a new machine.
And Sony failed to persuade me that investing in (and taking the time to track down) a PS5 would be worth it to me; the only game I'm interested in right now on that platform besides Season is FF16.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 5:26 PM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Season is on Steam for $2! If you're interested, maybe buy it?
posted by evilDoug at 7:29 PM on August 16, 2023
posted by evilDoug at 7:29 PM on August 16, 2023
And yes, I just linked the steam page for those having trouble finding it.
posted by evilDoug at 7:30 PM on August 16, 2023
posted by evilDoug at 7:30 PM on August 16, 2023
That's not the game referred in the post. It's SEASON: A letter to the future.
posted by simmering octagon at 7:52 PM on August 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by simmering octagon at 7:52 PM on August 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I was just about to say what simmering octagon did, at $2 I'd pick it up just out of curiosity and wanting to help the devs, but the ~$25 asking price is outside my whim-buy range.
posted by JHarris at 8:41 PM on August 16, 2023
posted by JHarris at 8:41 PM on August 16, 2023
I recall seeing the trailer for SEASON but honestly, I got a lot of the same vibes as Assemble with Care and moved on. IDK where Matt Horton is getting the idea that cozy games are an "extremely popular niche." It's not only untrue but also self-contradictory. Even Northern Lion, who covers plenty of indies, isn't gonna cover SEASON. They cover this at the end but streamers can't really do well just replaying the exact same game, and if your game is so narrative it's borderline not a game, there's a risk when streamers do pick you up: why would viewers pay 25 bucks to play a story they already know?
And honestly, if your game is all about the story, reviewers better damn love it. "Controls are clunky sometimes, but what an amazing story!" Like, if you're a traveler on a bike journaling people's stories, I want some Kino's Journey level "really makes you think" shit.
posted by pwnguin at 8:57 PM on August 16, 2023
And honestly, if your game is all about the story, reviewers better damn love it. "Controls are clunky sometimes, but what an amazing story!" Like, if you're a traveler on a bike journaling people's stories, I want some Kino's Journey level "really makes you think" shit.
posted by pwnguin at 8:57 PM on August 16, 2023
Fwiw I spend the whole video being like “Hey expert, this is my perspective. Am I wrong?”
And he tells me basically “yeah you are!”
But cozy games have a big niche. I just exist in a bubble where they’re very popular
posted by matthorton at 6:18 AM on August 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
And he tells me basically “yeah you are!”
But cozy games have a big niche. I just exist in a bubble where they’re very popular
posted by matthorton at 6:18 AM on August 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
were very surprised the studio was 45 people before they had layoffs?
That is very surprising. It answers the question of how it could fail with 60k copies sold, but just raises further questions.
From digging around, the studio's timeline was: Formed in 2015 to make an ambitious multiplayer battle royal first title with a large (for indie) team. When that was a commercial failure, tripled their size to make a short artistic narrative game.
How did that happen? This is not a rhetorical question.
posted by justkevin at 8:59 AM on August 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
That is very surprising. It answers the question of how it could fail with 60k copies sold, but just raises further questions.
From digging around, the studio's timeline was: Formed in 2015 to make an ambitious multiplayer battle royal first title with a large (for indie) team. When that was a commercial failure, tripled their size to make a short artistic narrative game.
How did that happen? This is not a rhetorical question.
posted by justkevin at 8:59 AM on August 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
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