Max Ravitsky’s Post

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Fellow programming and gaming enthusiast

Stables vs Unicorns In gamedev, we often face a choice: try to make a blockbuster "unicorn" game or focus on creating "stable" games with strong basics that grow over time. While the idea of quickly making a famous game is exciting, these big hits are rare and hard to predict. Many successful games don't start as big winners—instead, they grow slowly through good game mechanics and regular updates. Games like "Minecraft" or "Stardew Valley" did not started as blockbusters. Instead, they grew their player bases over time through solid game mechanics, continual updates, and community engagement. Their developers focused on making the game better and more engaging, rather than shifting focus to chase the next big thing. Sometimes, "just a good game" is much better than an "innovative unicorn." Stables are stable.

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Petr Leontev

Solutions Architect | 3D Engineer | Unreal Engine | Cloud Streaming | Synthetic Data Generation | R&D

7mo

Overnight success that people usually perceive is often the result of several iterations (read as previously shipped games) from the same developer. Looking at game startup batches from popular VC programs one can say that those 99% want to be Unicorns. Then you do the math and understand that only 1 out of 100 startups survives and probably has somewhat looking like a revenue. One friend of mine, successful entrepreneur, told me: think of VC investing as a game of the last fool. Whoever invests the last is loosing it all (with high probability). Whoever is selling their share before next round is winning (receives pure cash).

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