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Comment by keyle | Hacker News Reader

The whole 2% makes 95% of all revenues doesn't just apply to books... it certainly is true for the video game industry, and I suspect, most of the industries being sold online.

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On video game sales, I find it interesting how successful games can be while being 90% the same as an existing established game.

I’m not coming at this from some kind of ethics/copyright perspective, I think it’s totally fine to rehash the same idea. I’m just surprised they sell so well when I look and think “why would I buy this, I basically already have it”. The particular example I’m thinking of is a series called Overcooked which is a co op time management game and right now one of the hot sellers on steam is called Plate Up which seems to be basically the same thing at a similar level of polish.

The real learning I guess is to not be discouraged by existing products, because they don’t seem to prevent you from succeeding even when you can’t quite define why yours is better than the rest.

Ofc this depends on the industry, people in infrastructure for example prefer battle tested tools so breaking into the market is harder and requires a significant investment. Same with game engines, people don't write them these days.

> The real learning I guess is to not be discouraged by existing products

This applies to the real world a lot too. If you have a lot of competitors in your space, it's a good sign because the market has already been validated. It's obviously best to be the first in a good market but it's hard to predict whether the market is good when you're the only one playing.

In games I think the principle applies even more because gamers often want to play more of the same and once they finish all the Overcooked content another game that fills that need will work. Plate Up has also gotten popularized by many streamers and YouTubers playing it.

It's funny that your first thought is "why would I buy this, I basically already have it."

I think a much more common reaction people have to titles is "why would I buy this, it isn't like what I already have."

Isn't that pretty similar to how people consume everything else? With books, people tend to pick genres. "Regency era humorous romance novels with a cinnamon role love interest," "pop science economics books," "supernatural murder mystery." Heck, "Adventure about a character reincarnated in a fantasy world with video game mechanics" is still broad enough to be an entire genre (hello out there, all you LitRPG people!). In that context, a second time management cooking game doesn't seem at all odd to me. Certainly it's a breath of fresh air from first person shooter #918738.

To me Plate Up seems probably as similar to Overcooked as Mafia is to GTA (maybe even less similar, actually). Yeah both are sort of about a similar thing with a similar third-person view but after that similarities end. If you don't care about a genre all games in it are the same to you.

Definitely no need to be discouraged if a game you want to make already exists, but "same game with different polish" is not the case with games in question...

I've played Overcooked 1 and 2 with my girlfriend, just played the Plate Up demo with her, and I think you're right. Mario and Sonic games prob look the same to ol' gramps up there, too.

Overcooked has specific arcade levels each with their own infuriating gimmick. You either can beat it or you cant.

Plate Up, despite having similar mechanics (place food onto stove to cook it), is quite different. You have to take orders yourself, clean up after customers, and you win money that you use to upgrade the kitchen. That alone makes it a very different game than Overcooked's arcade levels.

I'll probably buy it.

Plateup at the top level is a simple cooking and upgrading your kitchen game.

It can also quickly turn into a Factorio-type game once you start automating the cooking of the food. Which sounds boring, if all you’re doing is serving, but it then turns into a game almost similar to Guitar Hero once you get into the overtime rounds because you’re having to put into muscle memory all of your actions with higher intensity in the later rounds.

Then there’s the insanity of automating cooking /and/ serving.

Add to that interactivity with Twitch stream viewers who can visit and order and even pay with tangible money, adding another twist and a layer of appeal to viewers and especially streamers. That fundamentally changes the game IMO, turning a game to play with friends into a game to stream and participate in.

Yeah power law distributions are everywhere nowadays. Nassim Taleb talks about this a lot and uses book sales as a reference, which is cheeky since he’s doing it in his own best seller books.

Anyone writing for publishers outside the top 10 (tbh, big 5) and KDP, isn't writing to make money - at least initially. They are writing because they like writing books. The vast majority of authors really just want people to read the book they often spent an enormous amount of time creating.

classic 20-80 rule

but more like 2-95 rule

You get somewhere there if you apply it recursively; "and of the top 20%, 20% have 80% of the 80% sales" and so on.

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