Success or Circumstances?

News & General Discussion
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I’m curious to know y’alls opinions on this subject.
We all know a lot of game-dev is getting lucky to have some big hot-shot game that explodes in popularity.

But one thing I’ve often wondered about, as I like to watch videos on successful people - not to be inspired, but to learn their stories, to study essentially. So many times I see them essentially lay out the groundwork to get to that point of success. But often times I wonder, was it their groundwork that led them to that point, or was it purely/mixed with the circumstances of their lives?

I just don’t understand, because if the things they tell people worked, wouldn’t everyone do it? So it makes me believe it’s mostly their circumstances or a mix thereof. I guess it could be a lot of people fear taking risks, etc. But ignoring that for now, lets say person A and person B had the same exact motivation, determination and drive to reach success - if they do the same exact groundwork, why would one make it and not the other?

This may not be directly related to game-dev, but it is definitely part of it - marketing, outreach, perhaps the groundwork people (indie-devs) have taken that got them noticed by the world.

So this isn’t a thread simply on answering the question, but also sharing your stories.

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Success is a combination of hard work and luck. This is true for anything. To quote Captain Picard: “it is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”

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@newjerseyrunner : Picard the character is definitely a good figure to lookup too :slight_smile: - I don’t know much about the person behind the character though.

But what exactly is luck? There’s no (to my understanding) bestowed upon fortune on anyone, luck to me sounds like circumstances. What differentiates two people with two identical goals, circumstances does. I guess this is getting more in depth into consciousness I suppose lol.

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My earliest lessons was in school, almost everybody had casio, which were slow ass programmable computer. Only the big programming boss had ti and hp48, that were basically school gameboy, it was still the nineties, pokemon was on the verge of appearing. People were trading simple games left and right, just small past time, nothing serious. I was and still are a terrible programmer, couldn’t compete with the bosses. Also my calculator were full of abstract programs people didn’t see the interest, like slicing number into individual number.

One days someone made a terribly slow snake games, not like Nokia 's, it was more like a lonely tron light cycle game with 4 directions control. I didn’t like the control scheme so i set out to redo the game faster by cutting instructions and making some default to make the critical path faster, i use a visual quirk of the casio to make a fancy intro where letter where overlapping, but most importantly i changed the control to a 2 button scheme. It is important to know that on old casio you couldn’t press 2 buttons at the time they would cancel each other, and it’s a game where button don’t have to be pressed too long else you do a looo and collide with yourself. This opened the possibility to make a 2p simultaneous game.

I thought of this project as one more throwaway one, wouldn’t live that much, i just shared it with one friend. In one week it became the most play game during breaks, and most of stuff i had seen as flaws where developing into full blown strategy. For example i made the game faster, but it was still slow, however that give the game a rythm that player exploited, remember two input keys cancel each other? Well timing to the beat would deny a necessary input to the other player, that’s assuming the other player do press the key, else you might take a dangerous turn, a whole mond game develop around this, another problem is that if both players where at the same distance of a target pixel, such as when they meet there is one pixel ahead before collision, they would simply phase through each other which led to a fair share of reversal coupled with the previous mind games, player were so hype by some game they took screenshot of sessions. It became competitive real quick.

Success in games is not just you making the game, it’s also the audience latching on him, defining success in term of author is only hslf the story, what was the audience trajectory? My (very local) success was due to the fact it wad the only game that allow multiplayer simultaneously on a single machine, with enough depth to be competitive. It filled a niche of bored teenagers during break looking to have something to share with friends.

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@neoshaman : That’s actually pretty brilliant. I’m glad it turned out great!
It is funny how much we overly criticize our works, when the person next door would love it.

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We’ve had topic on this before, and like in those I’m a little torn. I think there’s a little of both. There’s the obvious reality that a person has to be in the right circumstances for an opportunity to present itself. There’s also the reality that there are many “one hit wonders,” so it’s more of a person finding the right thing rather than them finding out how to make the right things. But there’s also the reality that someone has to BE in those right circumstances, and someone has to FIND that “right thing.” The “Egg of Columbus” story is a great example of the latter. A couple quotes related to that…

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take (Wayne Gretzky?).
The more I practice the luckier I get (Arnold Palmer).

Some of it is skill or talent, undoubtedly. Some of it is circumstance, certainly. But I also think some of it is is simply the willingness to step out there and try. “Initiative,” perhaps.

I’m still working on that one.

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Look up “survivorship bias”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

(opinion)
It is both.

For each Bill Gates there likely was an army of people that could’ve taken their spot. But their circumstances weren’t right.

Being in the right place at the right time with the right card to play.

The way I see it, in some situations there is a window of opportunity. And in some cases there’s spot for only one person to take the opportunity. Once the spot is taken, that’s it, the opportunity has passed, and no matter what you do, you’ll never become the guy who took the opportunity first.

However, for the shots you take, you should mind the consequences.

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Hi there, just a 2 cents (great question).

I think that success is really the culmination of these circumstances. (the saying is: ‘‘everthing happens for a reason’’).
What is success to one is not to another (‘‘One man’s tr*sh is another,s man treasure’’/‘‘One man’s dream is another man’s nightmare’’). For me or you or anybody else, success could mean simply ‘making a game’ period, no revenue no fanfare, no nothing - no marketing, just don,t care at all. A big Success - to that person (only). But, for most, I think that is not really the kind of success they seek, because most devs (indie devs solo/2-3 team) hope that it Might become a sort of way to ‘live/make a living’; professinonally (I mean, not hobby), as such it means financial return, the game Has to sell or else, it’s not viable (at all). IT’s the ‘when the stars, planets and moons align themselves’ - you might be that 1; but, it is why (as others said) so many devs that do not find the kind of success most seek (which is, like games like Stardew Valley or Cuphead for example…that sold a zillion copies and made them a fortune that they can completely retire now if they want (when probably they are not much more than 50-60 years old, most game devs - most games devs are not that age and some are barely 20 (and that’s a good thing, new people in game industry)). But all this → competiont/oversaturation of game market…I think that is the Largest culprit of why 1 out of 14,000 devs aonly finds a sucess (such as becoming rich/famous and everything; well, maybe not that much but at least the game sells Well Enough to Live off of it)…because just ridiculously competitive, and platforms are Loaded to the Seams…so…I mean back in the 1990s, making a game was harder then…but there was Much less competition…that is major reason why some games ‘made then - If made today’ would flunk…because it just does not work anymore/does n’t impress anyone anymore and so these 90s game would not find success today - because a trillion

Other games are viying for wallet dollars of gamer (who is spoiled to no end - I include myself in that, as gamer…). more games the best, but more games makes it harder for devs to find an audience, because audience must choose (the cream of the crop at cheapest price), and so that leaves so many ‘eliminated’ - right from the start (ultra-seleciton ni the making). It’s why I asked a thread a few days ago : ‘‘So…a Unity Games Store?’’…not a single soul (ok 1) wrote…completely like…I was like…dmn…so I guess it does not matter - we could finally have Another place to seel our games…but no, not a peep just ‘you have to beon steam google or whatever UltraOversaturate place’ to sell your game. → failure highly likely, unless you haave a really great game and solid marketing, otherwise nearly sure your game will piled on by an avalanche of new daily games (like on Steam, 30 games come out everyday…that’s serious competition and sure some might say buy 99% of these new games are crp and so that is like 1 game out 30 that are actually worth considering…yet, makes no difference to you- you still have to face all This Extra Competition/extra ‘removed eyes from yuor game.’ going to another game(s) instead of yours). It’s also why you read game dev that says: ‘‘Fail fast…and restart’’…it’s true but…you know, many Can’t restart, failling you be your demise/over and out. Confiscius (I believe) said : ‘‘Success is not finding success the first time…it’s getting back up after falling (and then, finding success)’’, that is true success. So the ‘fail fast’ and move on; but, this is always in the optic ‘you can restart’ but sometimes you can’t - it’S final (and is what happens to devs with lots of money on the line and put 4 years to make their game and finds 0 success ‘despite doing everything right/doing marketing/trailer/etc…’;;maybe the audience did not like that genre (the game is not bad it just not wanted), nothing to do with your game speciifically; lucky successes often are unique or fill a niche ‘that was still empty/vacant’ before it got filled; then, it,s done. Too late; unless your really re-innovate on old thing.). It’s why it’s important to gauge the audience’s ‘wants’ / ‘needs’…you hope to make a game ‘that the audience did not know they even wanted’ (until you made it - kind of like Stardew Valley retro RPG SNES or Cuphead 1930s cartoones…who knew (until they made it). But that is wishful thinking/don’t put too much on that - rather, make the game you wish (with the audience pulse in mind of course, if you wish for it to sell more than less).
Just a 2c.

PS: I think devs that spend like 7 years on making a game is just too much/it’s crazy this much human life to make a video game - that could vert welll fllop the instant it’s sold so later (a very big risk, not worth it at this late point anymore). Never more than 5 years human time (for whatever artistic thing). Blockbuster games like CyberPink 2077 FPS games that took 7-10 years to be made, are not an example to follow anymore. I think 5 years is enough and you have to ‘stop’ at some point and say :‘finish(ed)’ even if it is not finished, it’s important becauese it forces you to limit your time in the longrun (years of making). OTherwise you could spend 20 years of your life on that magica game.

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Clearly not, because even when there is clear, demonstrable, concrete cause-and-effect for certain things people still ignore it a lot of the time.

It’s both, but there’s an important thing to keep in mind: the groundwork worked for them in their circumstances at the time they did it.

You are not them, you are not in their circumstances, and that time has passed. The very fact that they already succeeded at the thing means it is now different for everyone who comes after them, because by succeeding they have changed the circumstances.

Even if the plan they suggest does have room to work again, that will change very quickly once they tell people about it and instead of 1 person doing it there’s thousands or millions.

So looking at a successful person and doing the same thing as them is immediately putting yourself behind. You need to look at both successes and failures of other people doing similar things and apply what you learn to doing your own thing, and be willing to learn from that and adjust as you go.

But, perhaps most importantly…

… no. Someone already mentioned Survivor Bias, and there’s also Confirmation Bias, both of which you’re walking into here. You need to recognise that games which “explode in popularity” are outliers. You can definitely learn from them, but they do not set a reasonable benchmark for “success”.

While they’re harder to identify, it’s important that you also look at products that did “ok” or “pretty good”. Because unless you’re planning on getting lucky that’s a much more realistic idea of what success will look like when most people reach it.

I haven’t actually watched it, but I suspect that this talk is highly relevant.

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You already answered the question, and then decided to look past it …

From what I have seen in every kind of context, people avoid risk at all costs. And it’s not just the fear of the immediate problem of failure, but everything that comes after. Their own self-image, what everyone will think of them, whether their outlook on life and general optimism will survive.

To cover up this fear of weakness, people decide to fear luck instead. They believe that something can just decide randomly whether they succeed or not, so they can reject the game entirely. It’s a double-duty excuse that works whether they succeed or fail.

But the problem here is that this very excuse it what prevents them from moving past the first failure, which is of course quite likely to occur. If someone believes that they can do something after each failure that will drastically reduce the chances of it happening again, they will not only be able to integrate the failure into their self image, but also quickly turn things around and start to succeed.

But it’s that initial punch in the gut that prevents 95% (or more) of people from doing things they have seen work very well for other people, but which most people who have tried fail at least once.

Personally, I’m quite a risk-averse person by nature, but I have a very strong (and well founded) belief that not only can I improve something, even just a bit, each time after something doesn’t work out, but that this will quickly compound into success. So all I have to do is hold things together until that point, and be ruthlessly critical of everything I do so that I can squeeze a bit more success out of every action to minimize the losses.

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Love all the responses, very informative. I’m glad they are all detailed answers, really helped put a bit of understanding into everyone’s thoughts into this matter. I hope these answers can also help others as well. :slight_smile:

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One thing the successful usually have in common is they keep trying. Most of what they try fails, they keep trying new things, and eventually one of them works.

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@ video. So many programmers worked, worked and worked, even finished the damn project.
In the end they made no money and started to hate their trade.

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Arni talks about his failures, as a path to the success.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NRRRBxcq5Y

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Now I know why some say “Work smart, not hard”. But in the video Arni says “work hard”, and I’m confused which path to take. :smile: Joking aside, IMO the financial success with creating games is result of both - smart (hard) work and circumstances. Probably the second is more important, because if you have specific traits to raise social media channel with a lot of active fans (or got connection with celebrities), then it will be much easier for you to spread your games or whatever, even if they aren’t very good ones. For example (my observations) on ArtStation, if someone with few or hundred followers publish an artwork, it will get way less attention than if someone with thousands followers publish the same artwork, or even some crap. So, popularity and marketing are very important, which aren’t necessary because previous hard work, but also because natural or artificial charisma, connections with right people, or advertising with money from legacy.
But as someone above mentioned - what is success for you? Is it to get enough money from the game, or only the enjoyment of its creation, or both? The answer may be different the next day, month or year. The most of us can’t rely on popularity, so if the goal isn’t only enjoyment, we will need to work smarter and harder to increase our chances of success. About “try and fail” thing - as CG artist I can confirm - the best results came after many many tests, but not just mindless testing, even if that may works sometimes, but analyzing, learning new things and improving as well.