Grey Acumen said:
you're getting the term "successful" confused with "worth playing" It doesn't have to be a game that is worth playing to be a successful game, it just has to meet the original purpose of making the game, which is to cover all the costs of making it, and hopefully provide enough extra to fund making another game after that. |
Unfortunately, I was not confusing those two concepts. In fact I neither mentioned nor implied quality as a consideration. I was talking about the maximisation of the return on investment - a more important, and more complex, concept than profit and a more relevant concept when talking about how successful something is.
For example, a game could make a nice profit but not be successful simply because the resources used to make that game could've been applied to make something else that obtained a higher profit. You will perhaps (or perhaps not) note that this is actually the original purpose of making the game - that is to obtain the highest return on investment to maximise the value of shareholders.
