Tell us about your flops

[TheMysteriousStranger]

It occurred to me that we see hundreds of threads asking about what games sold well, and what makes a good game etc, but we never see threads about what games really stank up the place.

We all learn from our mistakes, so why not learn from other's mistakes too? So I ask everyone here - which games of yours do you consider real failures, and what do you think it was that caused them to fail?

[cliffski]

I did a game called minefield that was a rubbish minesweeper + knobs on game. It sold maybe a dozen copies.

I did a top down car racing game called Kombat Kars, and one called Rocky Racers. They were good games, very popular with downloaders, but I think people didnt see there to be enough *game* to be worth actually paying for.

I thought Planetary Defence was a good game, one of my better games, but it doesn't sell anything like as many as it could. I'm not entirely sure why.

But I'm past worrying about any of these, concentrating entirely on my more successful and fiture games.

[DrWilloughby]

Ha, my career till I went indie is full of flops:
Star Trek: Hidden Evil
Whacked!
Medal of Honor: Breakthrough (expansion pack)
Goldeneye: Rogue Agent

Of course, I'm proud of Whacked, even though its sold for crap. It was shown in Congress by the REAL Joe Lieberman as one of the top 10 games you shouldn't buy your kids. That and it was the first Xbox Live game, and I wrote the online UI code.

[PoV]

Oh wow Doc, you should try a career that includes medocre and sub par games for girls, that sell ridiculous numbers. Now that's a disturbing experience.

Diva Starz: Mall Mania (GBC) - Awful game, 2 month shedule. 6 dumn easy minigames. IGN gave it a 2/10 (They're far too generous). Sold way waaaay waaaaaaay way too much. Eclipsed decent games, like whatever the hip/new Megaman game for the system was many times over.

And so began 4 further years of whoring myself to a pair of Barbie games (Secret Agent Barbie GBA, Barbie Gotta Have Games PS1), Polly Pocket (GBA), and Atomic Betty (GBA)... though Betty wasn't that bad of a license.

Ok, so my history's more about stink than failures. Hopefully my apparent touch of gold extends beyond girl games.

[Chris Evans]

My Puzzle game still has a noticeable pulse on my site, but over a year ago when it was released on BigFish it did absolutely horrible. I guess I'm not allowed to talk about sales figures but it did so bad that I still haven't seen a single penny from it. They may owe me a little money, but I really don't care at this point. I've moved on.

Also, I did a collector's edition for my first game which included a gamepad. It sold quite a bit at first but then sales for the collector's edition slowed down. Now I literally have a closet filled with 100s of gamepads, printed materials, and blank discs. So I somewhat over-estimated the demand... The good news is that I can still use the gamepad and discs for future projects and promotions. Only the printed materials are somewhat wasted.

So for those listening, the lesson learned is only make a collector's edition of something when after you know people actually want to collect it!

[kevryan]

David Wolf: Secret Agent - made Computer Gaming World's 100 worst games list a decade or so ago. It ran in EGA (16-color) or CGA (4-color) and mixed 3d scenes with digitized artwork. We learned a lot building it.

Here are some screen shots of it in all its 16 and 4-color glory.

[gosub]

Never release a game after Radio Shack discontinues the computer it runs on:

http://gosub.com/Jeremy/CocoVideoGames.htm

-Jeremy

P.S. At least they got good reviews: http://nitros9.stg.net/crystalcity.html

[Tom Gilleland]

Medal of Honor: Breakthrough (expansion pack)

Hey I liked that one. Of course I'm selling it on Ebay at this very moment, so I guess I didn't like it that much.

Eleven Games for Mac OSX
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MESE%3AIT&rd=1

Tom

[jeb_]

I once worked on a game that is probably the worst role-playing game ever! I feel sorry for the people who actually bought the game!

Here, look at this review (there were worse reviews, but I haven't been able to find them again): http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/valha...es/review.html

I don't take responsibility for the game design, though They paid me to code, not to come up with great ideas (they didn't listen to me much back then).

[Emmanuel]

Our first game, Garden War, holds a non-performance record on Bigfish, which I believe remains unchallenged to this day, not even by you Chris

Short of completing a game that allowed us to understand the process and iterate again, and eventually strike oil with our third game Atlantis, we did everything wrong -- production values, technical execution, focusing on the "engine" instead of the gameplay, accessibility, and targetting (midwestern women don't like playing strategy games, even if they're cute -- how come nobody told us that!). At least an accessible strategy title with artistic integrity (not "cute") like Master of Defense shows that we weren't entirely wrong.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[Tertsi]

While not even nearly a finished game and as modified, it is still a work in progress, the start of our second game got a major setback after receiving feedback here, I had to change a major design element of the game (luckily no programming had been done but the graphics and design were) and we had to redo the whole main playing screen. That was a major learning experience for me though.

[vjvj]

All of my games have been flops When I was still doing console games, I got used to seeing my games show up in bargain bins only months after release!

One of goals with going indie is to simply outsell those old retail games I did...

[cliffski]

I thought we were talking indie games?
I did some camera-collission code, tools support, sound engine code and newspaper GUI for 'Republic: The Revolution'. It was the infinite polygon game that sold about 7 copies.
Then I worked on a really well-designed cool strategy launch-title for the XBox which got binned.
I worked on the Movies, but thats not really a flop.

[Gilzu]

My first game, Goose Chase, had great graphics (hired top notch artist), nice music and simple mechanics.

but it suffered from the "first game" syndrome...

• It was great look&sound, but gameplay and level design was lacking.
• It was 3d & DX 8 - which gave up 80% of the low-end computers it was aimed for and gave some real head-ache for those who did manage to work it out.
• Target audience was totally missed.
• Bad/almost no marketting plan.

I'm still surprised it sold over a few dozens of copies (in a lifespan of a year, its about 3 per month, which is nothing), but i finally decided to stop publishing it, simply for the fact I wasn't pleased with it.

Hopfully i'll learn these valuable lessons in my next game (soon to come).

[vjvj]

EDIT: To answer the OP's question Reasons for Meridian not doing well (mostly specific to MMOs, however):

- Graphics. Source art of questionable quality + Direct3D = bad art, but filtered Also, the data layout used for the maps did not map well at ALL to GPUs, resulting in high CPU load and far from optimal GPU performance. 10k-20k tris per frame at 60fps on a GeForce3 is pretty embarrassing.
- Very steep learning curve. Hardcore pvp gameplay; you can be killed by other players anywhere outside of an inn. Character advancement was confusing, with spells and skills being use-based like in Ultima Online, and hit points be semi-level based like Everquest. Poor documentation.
- Internal customer service issues. The other devs were all great guys, but one guy in particular was just not good with customers on the message boards. He's a great guy, but he always comes off as highly patronizing and adversarial with customers. That just doesn't work.

I thought we were talking indie games?

Haha sorry, fair enough

My indie work on Meridian 59 could easily be categorized as a flop, as subscription numbers didn't really change after its release. It generated a lot of good press though, which was cool.

That said, I learned a LOT on that project. One of the things that struck me was that despite the typical lack of budget, indie operations can be run extremely efficiently. It's a wonderful feeling being able to make changes to a game that you KNOW are a good thing, without having to convince 17 levels of management first.

[jefferytitan]

Hey Jeb, just wanted to thank you - that review was the best laugh I've had in ages!

Seriously though, I've never completed writing a worthwhile game, so kudos to all of you for doing that and learning to laugh when they flopped.

[Speckled Jim]

And so began 4 further years of whoring myself to a pair of Barbie games (Secret Agent Barbie GBA, Barbie Gotta Have Games PS1), Polly Pocket (GBA), and Atomic Betty (GBA)... though Betty wasn't that bad of a license.

Ah, so I'm not the only one with a terrible Barbie related secret. Although I should add, that's just one of many stinkers.

[Chris Evans]

Oops, I forgot to add why I think my puzzle game failed.

- I'm generally not a big fan of puzzle games, so I kept trying to add more "action" elements to make the game more appealing to me. As a result the gameplay ended up being way too hectic for the average casual gamer. Most casual gamers want to relax and zone out, not break a sweat. Initially a great majority of the players couldn't even get past the first couple of levels. The average game session would last only about 1-3 minutes since the game was fast paced. This meant most of the players didn't come close to using up their 60 minute trial time.

Eventually I did level limiting and made the game easier so this improved my direct sales, but by then the game had long since been dropped from the BigFish game list.

- I released my game right when production levels for the average casual game went into high gear. My game was nice and colorful and had the basic features but it was missing a lot of the smaller intangibles that are now common nowadays.

- Using my wife as a key focus tester... She actually still plays my game literally every day. She likes it a lot but she's never bought a game online. She's one of those 99% of the people who never buy anything and just bounce from free game to free game. Even though she's played it consistently for over a year, when I ask if she would pay $14-20 for it, she gives me funny looks... But while I was developing the game I figured if my wife likes the game then a bunch of other wives will as well. So I learned if I'm going to do focus testing beyond basic usability, I need to find someone in my target market who actually has a history of purchasing games online.

But most importantly I learned to just concentrate on making games that I really know and like. It was basically the turning point. I don't want to keep polling people with questions like, "Do you think casual gamers will like this, do you think they will like that? Will they be offended by this?" No more tap dancing. So now it's taking me a little longer to make games but I'm happy with the way things are headed.

Good thread. Yes we all have our failures but you can use them as a spring-board to success if you learn enough from them.

[DrWilloughby]

eh, sorry to go off topic before. In any case, the things I learned from those flops:

Star Trek:Hidden Evil -- Story (in the traditional sense) means next to nothing in terms of sales.

Whacked! -- Reviews ARE important. It was a really good game that got SLAMMED by the press because it didn't match what they wanted out of an Xbox game. I swear if it had been released for the GC it would have been a big hit. It's important to captivate the press or they are likely to taint the public's perception of the game.

Medal of Honor: Breakthrough -- Wasn't really a flop. It was the second exp pack to a last gen franchise, so we didn't expect that much out of it.

Goldeneye: Rogue Agent -- Never design a single-player game by designing a multiplayer game first. It's much easier to design the single player game first, and add multiplayer to that. Games that are designed as multiplayer first almost always feel soulless and boring in single player mode.

[Mike Boeh]

I paid a bunch of money to buy the rights for a game called Marbles Deluxe because I believed logic games were the genre that sold really well. It did absolutely terrible... Thanks a lot Pavlina! :-)

On a positive note, that money seeded the beginnings of Arcade Lab...

[Coyote]

I don't know the sales numbers of all the games I worked on, but I did a game for Microsoft called Outwars that I don't think did very well.

The reasons for its failure could go in an entire book. But in a nutshell - there were poor decisions in the beginning, troubled development, the entire team leadership quitting a third of the way in and not being replaced until two-thirds of the way through, and both the developer and the publisher losing interest in the game (they just wanted to meet contractual obligations and call it done).

There was also ECW2: Anarchy Rulz for the Sega Dreamcast. Released right after Sega announced that it was going to discontinue their hardware business.

[PoV]

Ah, so I'm not the only one with a terrible Barbie related secret. Although I should add, that's just one of many stinkers.

I see, so our shame makes us brothers.

Diva's was more shame than Barbie, just Barbie's more embarasing 'cause it's the brand you associate with girl games. IGN called Secret Agent Barbie "the best Metal Gear knock-off that the GBA has".

Go ahead, make the "sisters" joke. I dare ya. ; )

[Tom Gilleland]

Many years ago we did a title for a now defunct company that was based on Sports Bloopers. It was a really bad product. We even knew it was bad at the time, but that's what they wanted. We hid a spinning rendered golden shovel in the product. Our own little "Shovelware" award.

Tom

[vjvj]

I see, so our shame makes us brothers.

Diva's was more shame than Barbie, just Barbie's more embarasing 'cause it's the brand you associate with girl games. IGN called Secret Agent Barbie "the best Metal Gear knock-off that the GBA has".

Go ahead, make the "sisters" joke. I dare ya. ; )

Dude that Barbie game looks cool, nothing to be ashamed of

You think that's bad, the first two games I worked on were for the medical industry... You controlled colorful, friendly dinosaurs who had to manage their asthma/diabetes; collecting inhalers and insulin shots while avoiding asthma catalysts and insulin-spiking high carb foods. My stomach churns just thinking about them

[Hamumu]

Vj - I worked on porting that game (Bronky) to the Genesis! I worked at Wavequest. The project was cancelled though as they tried to move into 'real' games (and then collapsed six months later, of course). GamePolitics or one of those sites just had a little blurb on Bronky a couple days ago.

[vjvj]

Vj - I worked on porting that game (Bronky) to the Genesis! I worked at Wavequest. The project was cancelled though as they tried to move into 'real' games (and then collapsed six months later, of course). GamePolitics or one of those sites just had a little blurb on Bronky a couple days ago.

LOL what's up, Mike... It's me, Peter. All this time I've known you are on these boards but I guess for some reason never bothered to let you know I was here

Yeah I was reading something about Bronkie recently, it sounded like the PC version (not sure if you remember Brian, but he and I were working on the "optimized" PC version) eventually shipped... So perhaps they contracted it out to another dev or something after Wavequest folded.

Ah well... Far from my proudest achievement, but makes for a good story

[princec]

Which games of yours do you consider real failures, and what do you think it was that caused them to fail?

Alien Flux - still sells to this day, albeit at a rate of 1 a month now. Famously argued about by all and sundry but at the end of the day it's a hardcore game for the ever-elusive hardcore player, a rare beast on the internet. Only good thing that really came with it was a nice big library of code, a lot of experience, and about $4k revenues.

Super Dudester was far more spectacularly bad, selling 7 units in its entire history. I pulled it and put it on a backburner but I've been too lazy to fix it and re-release it.

Cas

[PoV]

Dude that Barbie game looks cool, nothing to be ashamed of

No shame what so ever. Just embarasment whenever I'm in conversation. "Yeah, I make video games for a living. What have I made? Uhh.... Barbie.". You can't tell me that's a good situation. Or at least, I havn't met the girl that makes it a good situation.

Super Dudester was far more spectacularly bad, selling 7 units in its entire history. I pulled it and put it on a backburner but I've been too lazy to fix it and re-release it.

So that's what happened. I totally understand the law of lazyness. But still, I have to say it, bring back the Dudester.

[yanuart]

Dude that Barbie game looks cool, nothing to be ashamed of

You think that's bad, the first two games I worked on were for the medical industry... You controlled colorful, friendly dinosaurs who had to manage their asthma/diabetes; collecting inhalers and insulin shots while avoiding asthma catalysts and insulin-spiking high carb foods. My stomach churns just thinking about them

A game about asthma and it's called bronky or was it bronchie ? hah.. now I've seen it all !

[Anthony Flack]

7 sales? Damn!

I think there was something really cool about Dudester (it'll always be Super Elvis to me). But somewhere among all the design revisions it just slipped away.