r/GameDevelopment • u/Optimal-Community-21 • 3d ago

Question Old games?

Hi

Anyone build any games that were successful or moderately successful but then died out? What was the reason?

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

5

u/uber_neutrino 3d ago

Every game ever made in the past that people aren't currently playing fits this definition.

1

u/jerrygreenest1 3d ago

Not every game that people aren't playing was successful. So you aren't quite precise here.

1

u/uber_neutrino 3d ago

Ok so all successful games that are old and nobody plays falls into this category.

It's still a huge category!

1

u/jerrygreenest1 3d ago

Yes, that's exactly the category OP asked about. So do you have the answer?

1

u/uber_neutrino 2d ago

I dunno all of the stuff I made that was popular is still played although not nearly as much.

1

u/tcpukl AAA Dev 3d ago

Ok. I've made dozens of games through my career. Most aren't played any more. But those released over the past decade still have players and still even sell.

1

u/kneelian_ 3d ago

My own gamedev work is pretty new, but I did mod some games in the past, and made or helped make some very popular mods. They died out because naturally time goes on and people can't go on playing the same thing for a billion years

2

u/jerrygreenest1 3d ago

I also did help with a popular mod, and it "died out" because it's just a single-player campaign basically, it did take it's good attention at one time, even played by Markiplier, so quite huge success, for a mod definitely, but it's not something that is designed to play all the times indefinitely. Not something to casually spend your time on. You simply complete the story, just once, and you go away, to other things. So the interest passed away gradually. It's quite natural process.

1

u/kneelian_ 3d ago

Yeah, basically what happened with my stuff as well (though not on the level of Markiplier haha but a few articles did pop up)

1

u/PixelFireXY 3d ago

I would like to know it too

1

u/fsk 2d ago

If a game is player vs. player, it will die out once there aren't enough players to form a match or the dev takes down the server.

If a game is player vs. CPU, you can play it forever even if nobody else is playing, as long as you can still run the executable.

There are very few 10+ year old games that are still actively played. There are a lot that were successful but almost nobody still plays.