SlorgNet on 08 April 2008
Hmm, interesting question. I've often though that in addition to turning a profit or at least recouping investment costs, which previous posts have covered in depth, there are really two other measures of success for a game.
First, there's success in simply creating a successor, i.e. spawning a franchise of some sort. This doesn't necessarily mean creating precisely the same game over again. The team behind "Ico", for example, went on to create the wonderful "Shadow of the Colossus".
The second measure of success is creating a new type of game-play, which goes on to become the new measure or standard for other games. "Max Payne" revolutionized action games by building bullet-time into its core gameplay; gaming would never be the same.
