Slay the Spire co-creator advises that 'taking risks is actually the least risky thing you can do,' arguing for the appeal of 'hyper-engaging' games

"Taking risky projects is easy" says a developer with a risky project that blew up. Kinda has the "hardworking lottery winner" vibe to it

I got a hit hung up on the headline take. Risk yes, but differently.

Games could use more risk, but making games is expensive and you just need a few bad risky ideas to tank it. Sometimes bad timing is enough, but that's another topic. Before I'd go big risk though, I'd involve the community via early access. Every single successful early access game I own has been successful because of them listening to the players.

I'd go as far and say, before EA there should be some public alpha, until the game is beta ready for EA. Because a lot of people don't realize, even the EA games we see, have been in development for 2-3 years already and that's valuable time and money.

For a few indie games however, I've noticed they take too much time in the public alpha and they miss the jump into selling their game via EA beta. Happened to me for example with Cosmoteer and maybe Beyond all Reason (if they don't hurry up with their EA release asap!).

You could argue, them never releasing the game out of EA, could be another issue, but thankful the good EA games do release for the most part. While the risk for the consumer is pretty low, as long as the base of the game is already decent. I mean if you buy 3 indie games for 25 bucks and one fails, you still have 2 great games, while a single bad AAA title offsets you 75 to 100 bucks easily, without any guarantees the expensive game is good.