If you’ve been paying any interest to the gaming industry recently, you’ll know that it’s going through something of a boom period. The industry is worth more than the music and movie industries combined, which is another way of saying: it’s extremely valuable.
And the output of the industry is pretty staggering too — more than 10,000 new games are released every single year. But, of course, you’ll only ever hear of a fraction of those many thousands of titles. Most fade into obscurity just as fast as they arrive (in other words, they fail).
So what influences the success or failure of a game? Let’s take a look.
The Storyline
There was once upon a time when games such as Pong were considered groundbreaking. And to be fair, Pong is still enjoyable to play. But mostly for nostalgia reasons. If it were released today, it’d have little hope of becoming a hit. Both casual and avid gamers want their games to have some sort of storyline/narrative; you don’t want to stay stuck in the same loop over and over. You want to progress. The best, most successful titles have storylines to follow. They don’t have to necessarily be complex, either — they just need to be engaging.
The Aesthetic Appeal
It’s not just the storyline that gamers look for when choosing a title. They also consider the aesthetic appeal of a game, too. A new title may have a fantastic storyline and celebrity voice cameos, but if the game design is not quite right, then it’s unlikely to be a hit. Of course, this isn’t true across the board; it largely just applies to new titles. Older titles, such as Mega Joker or classic arcade games, naturally feature outdated designs, at least compared with modern standards — in these cases, the retro design tends to be a selling point, rather than a drawback.
The Gameplay
A game could have a Nobel-prize-worthy storyline and the finest graphics on the market, but if the gameplay is overly challenging, then it’ll be unlikely to be a hit. The interaction between the player and the game is highly important, and in today’s climate, it should feel as if the two are connected. If the gameplay is illogical or clunky, then it’ll fail to resonate with gamers, who will have no problem turning to one of the many other titles that do make sense.
User Reviews
There’s power in reviews, and that’s especially true in the gaming world, which has a rich community. A single bad review from a gamer won’t doom a title, of course, but if many serious gamers are giving detailed critiques of how and why the game sucks, then it’ll be unlikely to become a hit. The game’s chances will take an even bigger blow if professional reviewers dislike the game. In a climate that sees so many new titles released each year, gamers need to have some way of telling which games are worth their time, and they usually place that responsibility in the hands of the major gaming publications.
The Price
Finally, there’s the price. Gamers are more willing to take a chance on a title if it’s attractively priced, whereas they’re more willing to breeze past a game if it’s deemed to be expensive. There are different pricing rules for different types of games. For instance, console games of course have higher prices than mobile games, which have a low ceiling for how much the developers can cost. And then there’s the matter of free games, of which there are many. Indeed, some of the biggest titles in the world are free-to-play games.
