a little less than a month ago, i was staying with my friend kevin and he told me about a little game called "among us". you've probably seen some of the memes, videos, screenshots, and artwork around the internet inspired by the game
today, i came across the graph below and additionally learned that the game was made over 2 years ago by a team of three, only one of whom is a programmer
i took away two messages from the graph:
be patient
the game took two years to become popular. their decision to stop working on the game in jan 2020 is understandable — if it hadn't caught on in the last year and a half, does it make senes to continue working on it? thankfully they kept it running instead of shutting it down completely or else you wouldn't have the massive spike on the right. sometimes it takes a long time for a project to blossom
marketing matters
but believing that every project will be successful as long as you keep at it would be the wrong message to take away. among us' success is a clear case of survivorship bias. for every among us, there are a million projects and games that stay in that doomed, flat-lined graph forever and never see meaningful growth. among us would've been part of the graveyard filled with 99% of all projects had they not gotten lucky by being picked up by popular streamers.
the lesson here is that you might have an incredible product, but if no one knows about it, it doesn't matter. the recent explosion in popularity had nothing to do with the game getting better — it was a matter of being discovered
that second lesson is the one i really need to take to heart because i tend to spend all my time on product and almost no time on marketing/sharing. i find it way more satisfying to focus on doing great work rather than promoting the work i do, but ignoring marketing entirely is not a workable strategy if i want to have lots of people use my products and build a sustainable business
<aside> 👋 You're reading Road to Ramen, where I think aloud and share everything I learn in exploring the question: Can I make a living building things I love?
by DK the Human (@dk_the_human)
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