I think publishers have this unreasonable expectation that everything they release will be a smash hit, and don't recognize that some are complete flops.

Not every game will be a Skyrim, Helldivers 2, Valheim, or GTA 5.

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Even Helldivers is touch and go. They've nearly lost the entire playerbase like 3 times already.

I love the game but I've been at the "I'll drop in every now and then" stage for months already

[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 month ago

That's also just the natural lifecycle of live service games. The player base spikes after an update, and trails off again as time goes on

[–] hOrni@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

They are going the way of the blockbuster movie.

[–] NakariLexfortaine@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago

And it's been that way for far too long.

Remember when S.E was ready to shit all over Tomb Raider because it didn't reach their insane metrics?

[–] Blemgo@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

What makes it worse is that, as far as I know, the players trying it actually like the gameplay, but found the game itself to still be dull. The entire gameplay apparently was made solely on market analysis, with very little individual development taking place.

I think this highlights an interesting phenomenon also seen in "The most wanted song" and "the most unwanted song", two songs made by scientific research of people's preferences of music, where "the most wanted song" sounds nice, but is rather bland whereas "the most unwanted song" sticks out much more, a trainwreck you can't look away from, and is a good song in the same way "The Room" is a good movie.

It seems it's the flaws, the impurities, are what make games more interesting, more fun.