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> “Fifty Shades of Grey” was completely criticized on all fronts by reviewers, but still became one of the top bestsellers. > [...] > Most of the stories created today are low-quality ones. And that was always so. Only when we look at the past creations, we can only experience those that were good enough to be preserved.

I'm pretty sure that Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't successful for its story, but for discussing sex and specifically BDSM in a more open way than what was previously seen in "mainstream" movies.

Overall, a lot of works that, on the surface, aren't very impressive by current standards, but still managed to stand out in a novel way. Fifty shades and Half Life are two examples, but you could say exactly the same thing about Minecraft, DOOM, most of the classical movies, most of the old "legendary" cars and a lot more. Things don't become classics by standing the test of time - if you discount nostalgia, a lot of "classical" stuff is crap by todays standard -, but by founding the genre they're later beaten in.

> I'm pretty sure that Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't successful for its story, but for discussing sex and specifically BDSM in a more open way than what was previously seen in "mainstream" movies.

And because it feeded from the Twilight-Hype, on which it was a juicy twist. For itself it probably would never have become such a success.

> but you could say exactly the same thing about Minecraft, DOOM

Can we? Minecraft feeds mainly on its powerful sandboxing and modability, which other games still can't really match today, while also still getting regular updates. And doom as a franchise continued to move forward and created new games. They don't remain successful just because their first versions were awesome at the time, but because they continued to output awesome successors.

This is very different from classics which are usually frozen in time and stay classics despite getting no updates at all.

Mentioning ancient myths, I'm struck by how surprisingly good the story telling in the new God of War games is.

A clear example of reviewers not getting it. And yet another reason why you should ignore reviewers.