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Comment by _mkef | Hacker News Reader

>This means that thousands of high-quality games go completely unnoticed and die a quiet death. Unless you have that star power to get people paying attention in the first place, or you win the social media lottery and go viral, you're probably toast.

Even star power isn't enough persay

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2020/09/17/disintegrati...

Games can take thousands of people to make, from coding to marketing. Maybe one or two will be able to start a new company with any success. I do really like John Romero's smaller projects though.

Not everything needs to be a AAA game

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They must have seriously screwed up marketing. I loved Halo, Portal, Titanfall. I liked those games on Facebook. I read the usual game magazine websites. I watch SciFi let's plays on YouTube. This game looks like I'll very much enjoy it, yet I had literally never heard of it until you mentioned it.

How come with all this data collection and targeted advertisement, I never saw an ad for this? Google and Facebook should know that I'm interested in a Halo-like new game.

Like the article mentioned, it had terrible reviews. It's a game in which the 'new and fun hybrid gameplay' ambition doesn't match the reality. They didn't screw up the marketing (lots of 'iterative' or 'persistent' shooters have become massive hits almost organically), they screwed up the game.

I don't think the premise upthread - that there are zillions of high quality games that nobody notices is really true. Yes, it's a crowded market but it's also absolutely mobbed with people looking for the next big or interesting thing - to play, to stream, to make a catchy review of, etc.

The problem games face is that most games, small or big, are reasonably well-produced but ultimately settle on doing more-of-the-same things, commoditizing themselves into a position where they can't address any market in particular, so instead of getting a "fair share" they get almost nothing because all attention goes to a path-dependent established best in the category. Big productions can break through that with spend, but only somewhat. And any time there is a breakout hit it gets followed by a sea of clones.

And as a whole the industry remains stuck on the problem of how to run the production, since it's still challenging to ship anything even now.

I just watched the launch trailer. I have no idea what the game play is

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