Thus I'd argue that marketing and making the game are intertwined, but you can do considerably less marketing if your game is actually above average (and it's easy to be delusional about this)
Great post. How much considerably less marketing? I was thinking about it. Hear me out.
Using some logic, I was theorizing of what would happen if a great game was released, but had little to no exposure.
Let's say that the retention rate is extremely high, the game is extremely fun. For a hypothetical, let's say it is "perfect" with a 100% rate on those who find it, to those who buy and love it.
Now, if this game had no virility, not marketing, and places like youtube, reddit, etc. didn't exist to make things a success over night. It was simply small-time word of mouth. What would happen?
Well, it would release, and make very little money, right? No exposure means few sales, meaning little money. Yet the game exists, and will continue to exist, indefinitely. (Let's ignore hosting costs, or assume it just always has a website with no bandwidth costs but the capability to buy and download it.)
OVER TIME though, the only possible outcome can be success. Why?
If 100% of people who find this fictional game like it and buy it, then give it a silent review on an unpopular website (remember, in this hypothetical, there are no popular websites and no marketing budget for commercials or ads), then OVER TIME, it would sell the same amount as if it was well known, MINUS sales based on hype or marketing.
Granted, hype and marketing sales are probably very high, if this fictional game had a 100% rate of success when it was found, it would, OVER TIME, become the most successful game of all time. The same game marketed with a huge budget, would have the same success, only QUICKER. (Ignoring that it would pull in non-gamers who would be convinced they have to own it for some reason.)
Based on that theory of "the perfect game" in a hypothetical "no one knows about it" world, wouldn't that mean that if someone made a good game, over time, NO MATTER THEIR EXPOSURE, they would EVENTUALLY become a success based entirely on the quality of the game?
A defeating point to that theory is the premise that "marketing is everything". If marketing is a requirement for financial success, because marketing convinces people to buy a game they don't care for (which is certainly true of many products), then it could not possibly be a success in the hypothetical.
HOWEVER, in the real world, isn't it only a matter of time before a good game gets featured by a popular indie review site? Then that catches the eye of other review websites, who also review the game? Eventually resulting in everyone talking about it?
Thus the theory that "No good game can remain hidden." must be true, unless "Marketing is a requirement for success, because you cannot succeed unless you convince people to buy something they don't need."?
It's just an idea, but one that I was thinking about as so often I have before scoured the website for "hidden gems" which never exist- not even in the deep recesses of the indie scene. Why don't they ever exist? Because the good ones become the popular ones. In genres where few good ones exist, it is because the bad popular ones ARE the best ones.
So I conclude that there are only two factors to success of a video game (financial success, anyway): Quality of Game & Marketing Prowess. The former being the superior one, but the latter being capable of making extra money entirely irrelevant of (or multiplied by) the former.
Something like:
(QUALITY * TIME) + (MARKETING * QUALITY * TIME) + TRICKERY = $UCCESS
or maybe more correctly
MarketSuccess = (MARKETING * QUALITY * TIME) - (NEGATIVITY * REVIEWERS);
TrickMarketing = (TRICKERY * TIME) - (FOOLED * TIME);
$uccess = Quality * TimeElapsed + MarketSuccess + TrickMarketing;