If there's one thing I wish more people involved in making the big decisions in the game development industry understood, it's this:
Players don't just buy games; they allocate their scarcest resource: time; to ecosystems that offer a return on that investment through transparency, trust, and long-term respect.
Players aren't going to commit time and money if you don't show them that respect. They're looking at the history of the studio. They're looking at the likelihood of your studio being able to deliver long term value to them. The brand is going to make it or break it based on your proven track-record, not your fancy trailers, or your traditional marketing campaigns, or your paid influencer ads, or merch.
None of that really works if you treat your players' like they're walking short-term wallets who you need to "entice" with the right slogan, and it's hard to re-establish trust if you broke it.
All of this falls back to how we as humans work, fundamentally. If someone lies to us, disappoints us, or otherwise breaks the trust between us. They will become sceptical, and that scepticism will affect their actions (Long-tail collapse).
"This studio disappointed me in the past. I think I'll wait before I invest any money in them again."
This reasoning is how most react to studios AND to people, and if you don't have a track-record of anything, it's vital that you begin by building that trust through actions.
Back in the 1990's there used to be this silly saying among us nerdy people in the "scene": "The clearest sign of you being a lamer, is if you call yourself elite."
Meaning: It's what others say about you, not what you say about yourself. So if you deliver through your actions, the Community is going to be your Insurance Policy.
Please, consider this. Because it's not as self-evident, as some think, and even if you consider it as such. I ask then: Why are so many decisions made in so many studios that risk losing the trust of the players?
