Thread by @gosokkyu

it's interesting A/Bing the promotion of indie arcade puzzle games vs. STG, many of the puzzle devs go super casual when they should probably go niche whereas STG devs often think their casual game needs to win over hardcore players when they could ignore them & sacrifice nothing

there are many STG that come & go without any sort of acknowledgment from hardcore circles that do just as well or better than games they rally behind—not good ones, necessarily, but the point is there's a non-negligible amount of ppl buying them outside of the perceived market

(oops, sidetracked)

otoh, of the massive audience that shows up for the new Tetris or whatever, only a tiny % is going to be actively trawling for new games in that style, or even a single other game; IP collabs are so common in the genre bc they're the tactic that still works

ofc it's not like devs don't realise this or that they're not maniac players themselves, but the messaging can come off as fascile—"x turns the genre on its head!", "simple but deep!", all the usual platitudes with nothing to back them up, sometimes not even thorough playtesting

...but then a shmup can drop with comparable inch-deep descriptors and do fine bc there's an audience for whom those games never amounted to anything more anyway

oh well can't wait to stake my livelihood on this bullshit someday