>> Craft > sales. Great craftsmanship always sells,
replyThat is exactly how I perceived the game industry to be before I worked in it. Now I know that there are many objectively excellent or even innovative or influential games that do not sell, or also do not sell well enough to support their development costs.
Could you give an example of something excellent and either innovative or influential that did not sell well? It’s a question I have sought to answer myself. Especially if you can find one that doesn’t take development costs into account.
replySo I’m looking for an “objectively” (figuratively) excellent game, that has not sold many copies at all. A game on steam that should be popular but isn’t. Do you have any examples?
To cite one, Okami, innovative gameplay, striking art very poor sales, they made most of their sales after the fact after the studio closed and the game got ported to other systems than the PS2.
replyI’ve worked on a bunch of games that have been canned despite being crafted with love and innovative in their own ways. It’s not enough to just be well crafted, especially if you need to pay the salaries of 10 people for 1-2 years to make the game.
replyCommenting just so I can check later what he comes back with.
replyWildgate
replythe entire failure of AAA game development in recent years has been years and years of craftsmenship wasted on games that arent fun.
reply> Craft > sales. Great craftsmanship always sells, so in the long run it is not a bad investment.
replyThis entire saga of XBOX fka Microsoft Gaming is proof to the contrary