In this respect, it is necessary to examine what made Undertale and similar indie games so successful, as there's no "AAA"/"publisher" argument to fall back on.
I thought we had settled in "tumblr/hipster hype"??
More like Flavor of the Month hype times 100, seen it tons of times back on 4chan and it's cycle is very similar to what is happening now.
Underrail
Arcanum
Serpent in the Staglands
Lords of Xulima
Dead State
What is common with all the indie titles on this list is that they sold under 100,000 copies. As for Arcanum, it sold 234,000 copies, which is still terrible for a big-time developer but does show the effects of publisher support and developer fame.
But is this the fate of all turn-based Western RPGs in today's industry? Not exactly.
Shadowrun Returns: ~870,000 copies
Wasteland 2: ~500,000 copies
Banner Saga: ~550,000 copies
What is common with all of the above, in contrast to the previous list? The answer is name recognition. Shadowrun Returns had Jordan Weisman, creator of Shadowrun. Wasteland 2 was, of course, Brian Fargo with many members of the old Wasteland team. Banner Saga was former Bioware developers. You could also add Pillars of Eternity to this list of successes though, of course, it's RtWP not turn-based.
What all this shows is that "niche" gaming exists, but that it revolves around established persons and franchises. One could call it the "soccer dad" effect, but I've no demographics data to back that up. Regardless, the effect is the same - developer/franchise loyalty creates a group of dedicated buyers and helps with marketing, which in turn allows the games to sell hundreds of thousands of copies and secure millions in Kickstarter backing.
I dunno. I think the common theme with the clunkers is that they all look aesthetically unappealing from a marketing point of view. There's something to be said about images vs. videos vs. actually playing a game, too. For example, I think Wasteland 2 looks half-decent in images, but looks like total ass when played. I thought The Long Dark looked bad in images, but it's instant immersion when you see it in motion. Underrail, Arcanum, Serpents
et al look like mud your average gawker. They all use a lot of text and, quite fucking bizarrely, all their text is really goddam hard to read. That doesn't do any of them favors. Now someone could say that Undertale looks stupid, but it's aesthetically not. It looks like the exact sort of game its gameplay suggests - quirky, nostalgic. The text is terse and in huge font.
Consumers are graphics whores at heart and sometimes I am one too, and I usually turn shadows off in all my games. But when I say graphics whores, I don't mean maximum AA or pixels or whatever. I mean the game needs to look uniquely endearing and like it fits the gameplay. A lot of games just have this "Well, here's the engine we're using as a vehicle to drive the gameplay" look to them, but I just don't think that works anymore. Not if you're a top-down game doing a genre that's been around for decades. It might work for this new-age "survival" stuff (all those games look like total dogshit to me), but it doesn't work for this subset that's been seen and done already. 100% unfair, but it's just what I'm observing on Steam these days.
A lot of the 3D games also have this sorta generic look to them. Maybe it's just me, but I get a weird vibe from these games like I've been seeing the same 3D models over and over for years now. Example:
^ 1999, people. (Game is Braveheart for those that want to know.)
What's more, I think a lot of these games don't know the first thing about interfaces or how to make the basics look good. Check the battlegrounds in these two pictures, both of which are used as Steam previews:
First off, showing this at all is poor marketing. One of the drawbacks of turn-based games is that their actual interfaces are aesthetically unappealing to most people. It's just very hard to make it look natural. So what do devs do? They hide it. Unless your appearance is A-grade, it's got no business being shown to your average consumer. Glance around the market a little. The Steam previews of turn-based games are almost all smoke screens for a reason. (Before you get on my nuts about the expectations of the assumed audience, take into account that you want to sell outside your base consumer and also that even hardcore wargames like those Battlefront sell are still largely presented to the consumer wholly absent of their interfaces. The inside flap of Talon Soft's
West Front, IIRC, was a huge splash image of Omaha Beach. Again, I do believe that was missing an interface as well.)
Second, Jesus Christ the design.
Why do we have
bright blue and red squares poorly plastered over a more grim-colored 3D background? It shares ZERO resemblance to the overall aesthetic design, giving each image a very jarring, out of place look. Every police department understands the conjuctive purpose of these two colors, but apparently that's flown over the heads of whoever designed these two setups. This looks like something you'd see in an alpha, a placeholder of sorts. And then there is the actual design of coloring in the blocks. You take a 3D engine and carpet its floor with a transparent MSPaint look.
This might sound like pointless nagging, but I'm just using it as one example of something that matters to people even if they aren't aware of it. These images
immediately tell me I'm looking at amateur stuff. I know I'm not. I know AoD is a well-designed game and I know some people think Dead State is. But I'm not the average consumer, so what is this doing here if your objective is to move product? You're already fighting an uphill battle by going with a merely "passing" aesthetic and jumping into a genre with a small-audience, why do even more harm?
I could talk about this shit forever, and it's just my opinion, but basically I think your typical Steam buyer is making on-the-fly purchases largely based on initial impressions of images and ratings. The average buyer seems to be very impulsive, mind you, and owns a lot of games he wouldn't ordinarily buy if it weren't for constant sales. These games just don't seem to want to take advantage of that.
