Was Fall Guys’ success luck or hard work and ingenuity?

It’s both, of course. But luck plays a bigger part than most of us give credit for in any game’s success. Because we’re irrational.

Let me explain.

1/? thread...

A game can be considered as a big bundle of decisions: From the core game mechanics through to specifics of a level design. Let’s say it’s a few hundred thousand conscious decisions (it’s much more).

Some of those decisions are huge: Is the game a sequel? Is it F2P or paid? What genre is it?

Others are less important: What colour is that button? Do we put three or four enemies here?

Yet they all carry various amounts of risk: Some routes are safer than others.

You can think of these decisions as pegs in pachinko (or Plinko, bagatelle, Peggle) and the players as the balls.

The players bounces around these decisions in unpredictable ways and comes out at some indeterminate destination: Love, like, indifferent, hate etc

Of course we can observe some players trajectories and move these decisions (pegs) around as we go, but ultimately until we pour lots of players in, we really don’t know.

And there are various methods of testing we have invented: Soft launch, private / public betas, early access, focus groups, play testing...

But those tests can often only come late once big pillar decisions have been made that are structurally hard to shift.

This is why AAA is so dominated by the “safe bets” of sequels, spin offs and existing genres. The outcomes are more predictable.

Publishers favour “evergreen” franchises (FIFA, COD) which can be repeatedly sold year after year with little risk.

Massive innovation, although leading to potentially massive success, has much more chance of failure.

This why we find streamers suggesting Fall Guys should be a “wake up call” so galling.

Multiple game types can be successful: Simple, complex, easy, hard, cartoony, realistic. It all can work.

Decisions then can appear almost arbitrary.

The breakout successes of recent years often come from the fringes, where small teams can take risks.

A prime example is the modding community who in the last decade invented battle royale and MOBAs

The hypercasual market is a great example of this: Although publishers can define some general trends, they simply encourage devs to build quick and test.

These games only work if there is novelty. Which novelty is good? Nobody knows, so just try some stuff. The market decides.

But humans are shit at recognising chance outcomes and instead like to post rationalise success or failure.

Package that up and attribute pure human intelligence / effort / creativity, creating a story.

That a specific decision was “genius” or “insightful”.

Yet when you look inside studios and the teams that made hit games, often they had no idea of outcome.

Supercell didn’t expect Clash of Clan’s success and Clash Royale was stopped and started several times.

With Fall Guys we can point at lots of things that went right: An accessible art style that was unique but cute, reimagined battle royale gameplay.

But also launching in the middle of a global pandemic, someone at PlayStation saying “yes”, playing well to streamers...

Mediatonic have put in the grind over the years, undoubtedly. They put themselves in a position to succeed in various ways: Hired good people, built good relationships, shipped games.

But having a breakout hit is an unpredictable chance event, even with the odds stacked in your favour.

BTW @GameOutcomes is a great read on what stacks in your favour: https://gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20141216/232023/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_1_The_Best_and_the_Rest.php

Seeing as I sell services to make games more successful, it might seem odd that I’m advocating chance, rather than specific mechanics or approaches.

But one of the first questions we ask in client discovery is: What does success look like?

If a product has to be a no. 1 top grossing, then our advice skews toward more creative suggestions - a considered roll of the dice.

Rather than apply mechanics of competitors or “best practices”. We tailor our advice on the best chance of achieving the given goal.

So ultimately this is a bit like an eternal debate in physics abound deterministic universe: Game success is likely determined by the decision we make, but by the time we can observe those decisions in action it’s too late.

We make best guesses (and there’s always we can better make those guesses), convince ourselves we’re right and ultimately the whims of fate decide the outcome.

This thread was inspired by this great video on personal success and luck:

But also @rorysutherland’s excellent book on how humans are deeply unpredictable, leading to unlikely decisions being impactful.

A must read for anyone making games https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alchemy-Surprising-Power-Ideas-Sense/dp/0753556502/ref=nodl_