I wholeheartedly endorse the apparently radical idea of selling games, for money, as products.
Still gonna be a fuckin' miracle if this works. A multiplayer-centric shooter, focused on teamwork? That's a gamble no matter who you are. Nostalgia gets your foot in the door. But there are no "slow burn" arena shooters. There is no long tail for multiplayer-only games. You succeed wildly, right off the bat, or you die.
There is no long tail for multiplayer-only games. You succeed wildly, right off the bat, or you die.
Now and then a game seems to buck this trend (Among us blew up after 2 years, Goose Goose Duck after 1 year). So there are exceptions to this rule, but I imagine it's increasingly hard to pull off the larger the studio's costs are.
Those got lucky because COVID made social-ish gaming popular. I played a lot of both with coworkers when WFH, and haven't touched it since returning to the office.
Goose Goose Duck released in 2021 and nonetheless didn't blow up until 2022. Among Us' explosion also happened only in the second half of the year, when most games experienced "lockdown growth" earlier during March-ish (see TF2, CS:GO, Rocket League).
I'm sure circumstances helped, but imo it seems difficult to attribute the delayed growth of those two titles solely to that. There are surely also other multiplayer-only titles that similarly weren't runaway hits on release that later became more played -- these are just the first two that I could confirm information for quickly.
Interesting. I guess I just assumed GGD got popular because people got bored of Among Us and wanted to try something different, and GGD was familiar, free, and had new features.
Thanks for the info! Now I'm interested to look up more examples and figure out how they got popular.
I wholeheartedly endorse the apparently radical idea of selling games, for money, as products.
Still gonna be a fuckin' miracle if this works. A multiplayer-centric shooter, focused on teamwork? That's a gamble no matter who you are. Nostalgia gets your foot in the door. But there are no "slow burn" arena shooters. There is no long tail for multiplayer-only games. You succeed wildly, right off the bat, or you die.
Now and then a game seems to buck this trend (Among us blew up after 2 years, Goose Goose Duck after 1 year). So there are exceptions to this rule, but I imagine it's increasingly hard to pull off the larger the studio's costs are.
Those got lucky because COVID made social-ish gaming popular. I played a lot of both with coworkers when WFH, and haven't touched it since returning to the office.
Goose Goose Duck released in 2021 and nonetheless didn't blow up until 2022. Among Us' explosion also happened only in the second half of the year, when most games experienced "lockdown growth" earlier during March-ish (see TF2, CS:GO, Rocket League).
I'm sure circumstances helped, but imo it seems difficult to attribute the delayed growth of those two titles solely to that. There are surely also other multiplayer-only titles that similarly weren't runaway hits on release that later became more played -- these are just the first two that I could confirm information for quickly.
Interesting. I guess I just assumed GGD got popular because people got bored of Among Us and wanted to try something different, and GGD was familiar, free, and had new features.
Thanks for the info! Now I'm interested to look up more examples and figure out how they got popular.