(36) What ACTUALLY Makes a Game Successful?

Creating a Successful Game

• The process of making a successful game often perceived as either overly complicated or overly simplified.

• Successful game design can be distilled into essential core parts or fundamentals.

Core Foundation Elements

• The success of a game relies primarily on two elements:

  • Attention: The level of exposure and recognition the game receives.

  • Conversion Efficiency: How effectively that attention translates into actual sales or player actions.

• Additionally, there are:

  • Value per Player: Determined by pricing (e.g., $5 vs. $30, microtransactions).

  • External IP Exploitation: Expanding into merchandise, media deals, etc.

Attention vs. Sales

• Many games may receive substantial attention but fail to convert this into sales.

• Common cause: The game may not resonate with the audience or might be niche or poorly executed.

• Conversely, even a high-quality game shown to no audience will result in no sales.

• Both attention and action are necessary for a game's financial success.

Importance of Balance

• Developers often focus on one aspect (either attention or sales), leading to linear growth over time.

• Example: Increasing marketing without improving conversion rates will yield slow progress.

• Focusing equivalently on generating attention and optimizing conversion increases potential success.

Diminishing Returns

• Concentrating excessively on one aspect leads to diminishing returns:

  • Enhancing game quality beyond a point yields minimal returns.

  • Similarly, aggressive marketing may hit saturation where additional views do not convert considerably into sales.

Building a Strategy

• Successful developers should prioritize both elements for exponentially better outcomes.

• Metrics: Aim for growth in both attention and action metrics simultaneously to maximize profits.

Hooks and Market Strategy

• Current game development advice emphasizes having "hooks" in your game. A hook draws players and keeps them engaged.

• Misunderstanding of hooks: Ideas like an art style are seen as hooks, but they do not contribute directly to sales.

• Boosts vs. Multipliers:

  • Boosts: Actions that provide a direct increase in attention or action but are limited in scalability (e.g., posting on social media).

  • Multipliers: Features or strategies that exponentially increase attention or action (e.g., translating games into multiple languages).

Effective Features for Multipliers

• Examples of multipliers:

  • Releasing on multiple platforms doubles outreach.

  • Engaging features like multiplayer can multiply overall game traction.

  • Positive user reviews can significantly affect sales figures.

Math of Success Multiplication

• Understanding multiplier effects through concrete examples can illustrate their power:

  • Console ports, good reviews and multilingual support significantly enhance a game’s market potential.

• By applying multiple effective strategies or features, developers can achieve exponential revenue growth rather than linear increases.

Conclusion and Call to Action

• To maximize the odds of creating a successful game, focus on implementing multipliers rather than just boosts.

• Future content will explore various multipliers that can be effectively utilized in game development.