It's a misconception about indie, in indie game development there are literally 99 games that flop and die for 1 that succeeds, and you don't even hear about those that died having 100 players peak on release day.
yeah, even for studios that already have one success under the belt, like one game that doesn't quite work out means everyone could lose their jobs. nobody can get discovered in a sea of shit, the AI slop problem has made it even worse as nonsense that had no effort put itno it is made equally as visible as something some poor fuck has spent the past five years of their life making. marketing is unfortunately way more important for indies than for big name studios where the mere fact they're working on a game is going to get it noticed.
like fuck, for all concord gets mocked people knew it failed. it was newsworthy that people didn't know about it, that's just how unusual it is to be completely ignorant of a game of that scale, and even then it got a ton of attention after it got shuttered. that's so much more attention for something that sony basically put zero effort into advertising than something someone has put their life savings into.
Even Mojang the studio behind the biggest game of all time (Minecraft) couldn't get much success from their second game Scrolls
Wdym Sony didn't advertise Concord? They went hard on it and invested heaps into marketing, they funded an animated cartoons series and an entire behind the scenes documentary about it too. It was supposed to be their biggest & best live service game that lasts the next 10yrs.
The marketing hit very late. I only found out the game existed like a month before release. Even then, the biggest issue was the godawful art direction. Game was doomed no matter what thanks to unappealing character designs.
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u/serpentear 15h ago
It’s the AAA gaming industry, save for a few studios.
Indie and independent games are getting better and better.