I've been banging this drum for years now so do excuse Round 5,796,877 of it but the issue of smaller games only finding a relatively small audience is one the trad games press has been pointing out for a very long time now.

I don't think it hurts to do this one over again but with [whatever media], just it absolutely is a fundamental of the games industry and one an algorithm, sexy presentation or whatever can only ever make a limited change to.
Obviously, this is not a reason to not make that change. Usual Twitter/nuance/context loss disclaimer applies here.
So, anything that can help and doesn't make anyone's life worse in any way, go go go. Fully behind it.
Before everything was "influencer" led (Molyneux save me, I hate that term) - magazine staff knew and dedicating space to indies was something that was done knowing it wasn't what people buying were reading in big numbers.
When things shifted to the web at scale, articles on indies often turned the kind of metrics that exposed this same phenomena in the starkest of terms.
The rather unfortunate answer to this problem was, well, you publish this stuff anyway because it's the right thing to do to keep games vibrant, to keep things moving along etc etc etc
It's interesting! It's stuff folks believed needed to be seen. It's funny! It's sad! Whatever.

Partly the ad economy wages war on this sort of coverage. Partly big box spends to suck the oxygen from the room. Partly some stuff just doesn't do it for a lot of people. It's messy.
Austerity, poverty, compounds all this.

People don't just turn to writing and selling games because it's fun. It's a hope of stability for many.

The past decade has been a super obvious exercise in this.
Where it becomes especially stark is in the huge disparity between big sellers and small. It's the widest I've known in my lifetime.

So, you have absolutely ballsed up expectations of what games can and do sell, you have people needing cash to live and then the audience numbers.
It's proper grim and this is the bulk of experiences in games. It's rigged.

It's rigged for gamers who get blasted with a narrow selection of what games are - and also are increasingly struggling for money themselves.
It's rigged for the people who try and get this stuff out there because the effort is financially better spent elsewhere.

And obv, it's rigged for everyone who contributed to making a videogame happen too.
I'm not being defeatist when I say an algorithm won't solve this, press and streamers working harder won't solve this, "you need to learn to market yer game" won't solve this.

If this worked, it'd be working now because we're all busting a gut to make things happen.
Again! This is not a call to not do stuff to improve things incrementally - just a call to remember that anything over and above incremental needs systemic changes not just within games. Not just working harder.

There's only so much fucking around in the margins can gain.
Also, importantly - realising that those small gains matter for people. 7 copies sold is 7 more than the 0 they might have sold without coverage. That's still food money or whatever. It helps.
This is the really invisible part, no metrics are going to show how an article, a tweet, a video bailed someone out and got them cat litter, pie, 5 minutes respite from a hellscape but it is the legit real thing that happens.
So if you, say, did a thing and it sold 4 more copies of a small game - you did a good thing. If you can get 8 sold? Fantastic. But this is 2021 and every little bit helps.
Seriously, it's something to be proud of.

It shouldn't be necessary for everyone to have to grind, it's an awful situation we're all in and lifting one person out of shit, even if it's just for five minutes, is the good work.

More from Game

Now that I have a little more time, I'd like to go into detail as to why this is such horseshit.

-39 Seconds- The implication that the PC release was of the quality standard they intended and that's extremely hard to believe. 1/many


-49 Seconds- Leadership Team is deeply sorry (not at fault), don't blame any specific teams (hold onto this one)

-1m42s- Describes a process of making the game look great on PC and then backsliding to "Old Gen" despite the game being announced before PS4/Xbox hardware was known.

-2m11s- Describes the old gen disk bandwith as "it is what it is" Considering the game got announced before those consoles even shipped, its absurd that the entire game was built so far beyond their possible constraints. Also, those consoles put out stuff like Tsushima late gen.

-2m19s- "-our testing did not show a big part of the issues
you experienced while playing the game" This is probably the worst part. Despite telling you not to blame any specific team, the test / QA team, somehow didn't discover the issues with the game.

You don't need to have worked in Dev or QA to know that the game was flying apart at every level (even on PC). The idea that the bug nightmare that ended up shipping seen for example here https://t.co/bgDkfQMVku went under the radar of a PROFESSIONAL QA TEAM is ridiculous.

You May Also Like

The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.


This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/


A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/

https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/

https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/
THE MEANING, SIGNIFICANCE AND HISTORY OF SWASTIK

The Swastik is a geometrical figure and an ancient religious icon. Swastik has been Sanatan Dharma’s symbol of auspiciousness – mangalya since time immemorial.


The name swastika comes from Sanskrit (Devanagari: स्वस्तिक, pronounced: swastik) &denotes “conducive to wellbeing or auspicious”.
The word Swastik has a definite etymological origin in Sanskrit. It is derived from the roots su – meaning “well or auspicious” & as meaning “being”.


"सु अस्ति येन तत स्वस्तिकं"
Swastik is de symbol through which everything auspicios occurs

Scholars believe word’s origin in Vedas,known as Swasti mantra;

"🕉स्वस्ति ना इन्द्रो वृधश्रवाहा
स्वस्ति ना पूषा विश्ववेदाहा
स्वस्तिनास्तरक्ष्यो अरिश्तनेमिही
स्वस्तिनो बृहस्पतिर्दधातु"


It translates to," O famed Indra, redeem us. O Pusha, the beholder of all knowledge, redeem us. Redeem us O Garudji, of limitless speed and O Bruhaspati, redeem us".

SWASTIK’s COSMIC ORIGIN

The Swastika represents the living creation in the whole Cosmos.


Hindu astronomers divide the ecliptic circle of cosmos in 27 divisions called
https://t.co/sLeuV1R2eQ this manner a cross forms in 4 directions in the celestial sky. At centre of this cross is Dhruva(Polestar). In a line from Dhruva, the stars known as Saptarishi can be observed.