We must reach an agreement on the meaning of "flop"

[HappySqurriel]

I don't think you can have a standard for something that is so varied ...

When you have small developers producing low budget games for the Wii and gigantic developers producing big budget games for the HD consoles the budgets of the games are different by an order of magnitude, and realistic sales expectations are drastically different. Publishers (often) fund those low budget games because they know that if they produce enough of them some of them will be successful enough to cover the losses on unsuccessful games, and they will create an IP which can be used in future games; and the big budget blockbuster is funded because the publisher expects that, with enough marketing, they will be able to turn a massive profit on the game.

Essentially, if you produced 10 games to have 1 breakout success, 2 moderate successes, 2 games break even, and 5 games sell poorly it is difficult to call any of those games a "flop"; but if you took your best development team, had them work for 3 years with a budget of $30 Million, and then you released the game with a $20 Million marketing budget and only broke even with 2 Million sales it could be seen as a massive disappointment/flop for that company.