#GameDevs #UnexpectedPopularity
Have you ever wondered if there are games out there that became famous for reasons completely different from what the developers had in mind? 🕹️
Imagine pouring your heart and soul into creating a game, only to have it gain popularity for reasons you never even considered! 😱
I’m curious to hear if you know of any games where the developers were completely surprised by the way their game took off in a different direction than they intended. Maybe it started off as a simple indie game and ended up becoming a massive e-sports phenomenon! 🏆
Let’s delve into the world of gaming and uncover some hidden gems where the unexpected happened. Share your thoughts and examples in the comments below! 💬
RE 8. Capcom wanted people to buy the game.
But after the trailer, people wanted to play the game alright, but not for the reason capcom wanted.
Capcom eventually knew and just marketed the 9’6 goth vampire momma, and that was that
I think Fortnite might be the obvious example of this.
Gunz was like this mediocre multiplayer shooter + melee hybrid until people found all these bugs that made it an incredibly technical(all the crazy animation cancels for movement, shoot with shotgun and block with sword at same time, etc. ) game. Many people loved it and put up with them greedy monetizations for many years.
EA’s battlefront 2. Big, multilayer star wars shooter? No, it became the poster child for predatory microtransactions.
Overwatch went from being known as a cool multilayer hero shooter with interesting world building.
To being known for its “fan animations”
And all the stuff that happened when it went to overwatch 2
Rimworld. It a colony simulator with a sort of self generating story. But it’s known for warcrimes.
Toby Fox: “I want to make a game, but I should make a practice game before I go on to the real thing. We’ll call this practice project Undertale, I’ll make a nice sound track to go with, and- -and 500k copies sold within the first month, Undertale music is being used in every meme compilation on the planet, Megalovania is being played for the pope, and Masahiro Sakurai invited me to play Smash Brothers with him.”
Smash Brothers Melee for having included a mechanic that was not intended in the slightest: *Wave Dashing*.
It was so *not* intentional that it has not been in the series ever since. It absolutely WARPED everything the game stood for.
There are good reasons for it, but there’s also good reasons it has not been replicated in the series ever since. Melee is quite unique in the smash brothers fandom. Again, for good reason, but some things are best left as happy accidents, once.
I can say, in its defense (Wave Dashing) is that the very first person who discovered it must have felt like an actual **wizard**.
Hard thing to replicate in games, especially intentionally. A real oddity that’s perhaps more charismatic because of it being such an oddity. Maybe oddities have an edge in the field of charisma. Who knows.
I think Metal Gear Rising Revengeance started to become more popular some years later after it release because of the memes lol
Limbo of the Lost is now infamous because of the sheer amount of plagiarised material that was used in the game, to the point where this is how most people know of this otherwise forgettable game.
Duke Nukem Forever, a game that was famed as vaporware for 14 years.
StarCraft and its expansion brood war were sold for the unique space opera narrative and fun multiplayer lan.
Within a few years, to Blizzard’s complete blindsided shock, it became the basis of a major esport, played at fastest speed in 1v1s in ways the devs had no idea could be done.
Warcraft III was a popular (and awesome) game in its own right, but a custom map created in WC3’s map editor eclipsed the main game and popularized a new game genre.
All of Bethesda’s games are famous for their bugs
Not entirely the positive spin but No Man’s Sky – famous for being almost nothing like what was originally advertised.
Tribes. The unintended skiing mechanic completely changed the nature of the game. Speeding it up about 1000% in the process.
Monopoly is a good classic example. The game was meant to be a negative commentary on capitalism. Then it ended becoming a massive hit with people more or less thinking it was glorifying it
FF Origins Stranger of Paradise, the writer surprised the game popular because of the meme esp with Jack Garland “Chaos”.
Toaplan made a solid, well playing horizontal shmup in the arcades, and then brought it to the Genesis with an equally solid port. Along the way, they gave it a cinematic opening that wasn’t in the arcade version. That opening and it’s awkward use of English became what many people remember about the game… because not many forget the first time they read, “All your base are belong to us” when watching the opening to Zero Wing.
GTA 5 for its role playing servers
Superman 64.
Famously awful. Despite there being a pretty wide selection of really terrible games, it seems to be the meme of choice, effectively cementing itself in everyone’s minds for the foreseeable future.
The original Gwent, had that whole “monster hunter”/ find find your adopted daughter sidequest. That ended up being pretty fun and had a lot of good DLC after..
E.T. on the Atari.
Crysis. It was a pretty interesting shooter on its own, and had a compelling story. But it just became known as a meme benchmark to test your build on for a decade after it released.
Combos in Street Fighter II were a happy accident. Changed an entire genre.
Subnautica – “We didn’t plan on making a horror game…”
Flappy Bird is possibly the patron saint of unintended video game fame.