How does the direction of a game during creation affect its success

game-dev-story

This question has been bothering me for a while since I never managed to find a good answer for it. How exactly do all the direction choices when creating a new game affect its ratings, chances of winning an award, or how well it sells?

If I wanted to create a sumo puzzle game and put all my points into developing the game world, what will that affect, than say, focusing on a niche audience?

Best Answer

The direction seems to affect the success of the game very little. The conventional wisdom is that certain directions fit certain genres, much like certain genre combinations work well together. However,

  • Unlike genre combinations, the game gives you no direct feedback on the quality of your direction/genre decisions.
  • I have been unable to find any actual empirical evidence that specific direction/genre combos improve game rating or sales.
  • The nature of the production system makes every game's development unique, and randomization is thrown in for good measure. This makes it almost impossible to effectively test.

Conclusion: the amount of points does seem to make a notable difference. The allocation of them may or may not. If it does make a difference, it's subtle enough that nobody has been able to effectively quantify it.

Related Topic