Question Do blockbox games "ruin" developers?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Iaeyan Elyuex, Sep 14, 2016.

  1. Iaeyan Elyuex

    Iaeyan Elyuex Cosmic Narwhal

    No one knew who Markus Persson (Notch) was until he acquired some defunct code and turned it into Minecraft. Now it's all he's known for, and all the company that was formerly his will be known for.

    Can anyone name any other Re-Logic games? Terraria is all I can think of.

    I mean, sure, there's Stardew Valley, but when someone says "Chucklefish", what does anyone who knows who Chucklefish are think of? Maybe I'm an isolated case, but I definitely think of Starbound.

    These blockbox games are extremely addictive. They are the video game form of [insert highly addictive drug]. They are time vortexes I get sucked into and come out hours later. It's because this genre of game is so addictive that companies end up typecast because of them. Chucklefish has made an exception of itself by releasing another well-known game, its farming sim.

    What do you people think? I think I'm going to boot up my Starbound server and continue replacing all my server members' broken livestock.
     
  2. HueHuey

    HueHuey Parsec Taste Tester

    When you hear From Software what do you think of and does it have blocks?

    The games you cite have something in common aside from having blocks, it's that they are the most successful game of their studio by far (less so with Chucklefish, but i'm not sure to what extent people associate it with Starbound and not Stardew Valley)
     
  3. LazerRay

    LazerRay Cosmic Narwhal

    Its not the game itself that ruins developers, there are a lot of blockbox games out there, its actually the explosive popularity that may drive devs off. I may not have much in examples of explosively popular games except for Portal (It had a short burst of popularity) and Valve is still around, but a bit more research on games should reveal more of them that were explosively popular and the results after it.

    Any game regardless of type might become too popular too fast if the conditions are right, and some developers may not be able to handle the pressure caused by this. The larger companies tend to have multiple projects at the same time so a popularity bomb doesn't phase them, where an independent developer might have only one or a few projects so they might be effected by a popularity bomb depending on the people working on the games. Some times there are devs who don't have a popular game, but they only decide to make one game and are done, again this is based on the people making the games.

    Some interesting information about game development can be found on this Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz, I discovered this on a web site from a developer of a flash game series I enjoy.
     
  4. Kiweird

    Kiweird Void-Bound Voyager

    I don't think blockbox games ruin developers any more than any other popular game from a dev ruins the developer. If anything, the tremendous amount of popularity of those blockbox games might help the developers. I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I personally would have never looked towards Risk of Rain or Stardew Valley if I hadn't been poking around on Chucklefish's site for Starbound stuff.

    Will other releases from these same devs be as popular as their blockbox releases? Probably not. They're always going to be known for their most popular smash hit. But I wouldn't call that ruination. It's insanely difficult to make a game that flies off the charts in terms of popularity. That popularity gives them a large following and a wider audience, and that in turn means they can reach more people once they decide to announce their next game. I can only see it as a positive.

    I want to add that, as LazerRay said, a popularity bomb can freak out a developer. Remember Cube World? Yeah, the dev got cold feet and disappeared for a few years. No word from him for years. You should check out the subreddit for the game. From what I gathered, the dev was already shy and flaky to begin with, so the popularity must've really scared him off. So I can see that being one negative effect of having a mega popular game out of nowhere. But I think this is a rare case, because I haven't seen this happen with any other dev.

    In the case of ReLogic, the only other game of theirs I know of is Pixel Piracy, and they didn't even make it (which is good, because the game is awful and horrendously unfinished). They just published it. The only games they've made themselves are Terraria and Terraria: Otherworld, so that's probably why most people can't name any other game they've made besides Terraria. I could've sworn they've made other games too, but I might be thinking of 505 Games since they did Terraria's console port...
     
    ComatosePhoenix likes this.
  5. ComatosePhoenix

    ComatosePhoenix Phantasmal Quasar

    I actually heard of chucklefish through risk of rain and treasure adventure land first. I never even really looked at starbound until it showed up on a GOG sale, never really trusted steam early access. I would say that games like minecraft, starbound, and terraria give a big impression due to the active and vocal online communities. other games don't give enough to talk about even if they are just as good.
     

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