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Games so amazing they became majorly successful with word-of-mouth alone

Hoa

Hoa

Member
Jun 6, 2018
4,310
Demon/Dark Souls for sure.

I also remember Valkyria Chronicles getting a big word of mouth push after its release too.

Although not on the level of the other games here, I know Eschatos on 360/Steam definitely did better than expected due to word of mouth both from it's own game and its prequel Judgement Silversword.
 
Cantaim

Cantaim

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,409
The Stussining
This is a fascinating thread to read. Mostly because I see quite a few games on here that had an incredibly forced push from marketers and publishers. That people apparently didn't even notice and thought it was word of mouth alone.
 
Kuro

Kuro

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,743
Demon's Souls is definitely the greatest example of this. I was one of the people spreading the gospel.
 
Accoun

Accoun

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,905
Doki Doki Literature Club, if we count pure VNs. Can't get more "only popular thanks to word-of-mouth" than a freeware, self-released thing.
 
menacer

menacer

Member
Dec 15, 2018
1,036
I remember specifically people in North America importing Demons Souls almost right after it launched in Japan in 2009 and one of my roommates in college actually did and let me borrow it a few times. I very obviously ordered it on Amazon the second it was available in America.
 
Tygre

Tygre

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,150
Chesire, UK
Cantaim said:
This is a fascinating thread to read. Mostly because I see quite a few games on here that had an incredibly forced push from marketers and publishers. That people apparently didn't even notice and thought it was word of mouth alone.
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Yeah, it's crazy that even on an ostensibly enthusiast forum so many people are blind to the millions of dollars being spent to get things in front of their eyeballs.
 
mutantmagnet

mutantmagnet

Member
Oct 28, 2017
12,401
Zug said:
Advertising was massive for Wow, I remember seeing the full lenght first Wow cinematic at the cinema at the time, something I've never encountered again. Big posters everywhere ... The Wow Beta was also heavily pushed toward MMORPG players before that.
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The MMORPG community was still relatively tiny back then. That's why you guys take for granted how much word of mouth mattered for that game. In the west, EQ was around 500K subs back then for several years before slowly decaying around the time WoW released. Blizzard themselves would enjoy sales around 1-2 million in the first year for their releases before WoW.

To jump to 6 million subs in the first year required strong word of mouth to push it beyond what the genre itself and Blizzard games in general typically do.
 
Grunty

Grunty

Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,389
Gruntilda’s Lair
Goldeneye 007. No one expected it to be anywhere near as successful as was. Word of mouth was so strong it eventually went on sale around 9 million units in its lifetime.
 
Armaros

Armaros

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,901
mutantmagnet said:
The MMORPG community was still relatively tiny back then. That's why you guys take for granted how much word of mouth mattered for that game. In the west, EQ was around 500K subs back then for several years before slowly decaying around the time WoW released. Blizzard themselves would enjoy sales around 1-2 million in the first year for their releases before WoW.

To jump to 6 million subs in the first year required strong word of mouth to push it beyond what the genre itself and Blizzard games in general typically do.
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That still doesn't mean it was word of mouth.

WoW launched with massive fanfare, massive advertisement for the time period, the servers basically collapsed on launch.

They didn't start small and get big due to word of mouth.
 
mutantmagnet

mutantmagnet

Member
Oct 28, 2017
12,401
Armaros said:
That still doesn't mean it was word of mouth.

WoW launched with massive fanfare, massive advertisement for the time period, the servers basically collapsed on launch.

They didn't start small and get big due to word of mouth.
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They went from big to massive. The scale in size they achieved is far beyond what advertising was designed to do. 4.5 million additional sales after the launch month required stellar word of mouth.
 
PenultimateFantasy

PenultimateFantasy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,127
London, UK
A few good examples but marketn g t chniques are really good st making you think you found something on your own

It's called assisted discovery and many games GP have used the tsame chnique to get noticed in last 10 years

Also rocket league is a terrible example - it was free with ps+
 
Advance.Wars.Sgt.

Advance.Wars.Sgt.

Member
Jun 10, 2018
8,861
Tomodachi Collection and Tomodachi Life for the DS/3DS.

The latter especially went on to have success no one foresaw almost exclusively because of the word-of-mouth surrounding its quirkiness.
 
OP
OP
Revolsin

Revolsin

Usage of alt-account.
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,373
Jaded Alyx said:
Wasn't this largely down to being in Nindies Showcase or Direct?
No it's not lol
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It had already garnered big attention from the reveal trailer several months prior to the showcase on their tiny youtube channel(which even now only has 300 subs), which came with no fanfare or anything to start with but slowly grew over the next month as people kept spreading the word that it looked really good.

And yes it is one of the best selling titles, it's literally on the Top 10 highest selling indies list.
 
Hedonism Bot

Hedonism Bot

Member
Oct 27, 2017
213
Does DOOM 2016 count? I know it had a lot of marketing but that did more harm than good, it took word of mouth on launch to convince people it was worth playing it seemed
 
Pyro

Pyro

God help us the mods are making weekend threads
Member
Jul 30, 2018
14,505
United States
Undertale has gotta be the biggest one yet. I remember looking at the game and thinking "Really?".
 
Kyuur

Kyuur

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,535
Canada
Very few games being noted in here that actually match "only word-of-mouth" but I guess OP screwed up too given that Golf Story was prominently featured in Nintendo's largest digital marketing endeavor.

Minecraft is a good example. I'd throw in Spelunky, which gained massive popularity as a freeware game initially posted as a TIGSource thread.
 

quietstorm1215

Member
Apr 7, 2018
449
A lot of games from the 80's, 90's, and early 00's. GTA 3 is the one that sticks out in my mind. I knew about it because I saw previews in egm and had a friend who was into 2, even remember seeing the reviews but it was a sequel in a series of mediocre games up to that point so there was no hype.

After the game came out I had one friend who would talk about it every day during free period. Because of that my other friend we sat with got it, then I did..... Then my entire friend group...... A month later half the school was talking about that game. Talked to many people who I never would've talked to otherwise, good times.
 
ShinobiBk

ShinobiBk

One Winged Slayer
Member
Dec 28, 2017
10,121
A great deal of indie successes

Undertale
Hollow Knight
Shovel Knight
Stardew Valley
Rocket League
Celeste
Dead Cells
Enter the Gungeon
Return of the Obra Dinn
Into the Breach
Etc.

Granted quite a few of these had kick starters but that's part of WoM imo.
 
MaitreWakou

MaitreWakou

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
May 15, 2018
13,180
Toulouse, France
goldenpp73 said:
Didn't both sell a lot right out of the gate?
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For Persona 5 in the west, it was because people and journalists who imported it were hyping it as the best JRPG of the gen. Hype was real in the west because of how fucking good it apparently was. (And people weren't disappointed once it finally released in the west)
It was only translated in english (no french/spanish/italian/etc texts) and it still sold really good in Europe thanks to the incredible hype there was online.
 
jotun?

jotun?

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,509
Minecraft, both in terms of how purely word-of-mouth it was and in how successful it became
 
Annabel

Annabel

Member
Mar 22, 2019
1,677
In (my) perfect world, it would be The World Ends With You* but alas, it was not meant to be.

*I'm talking exclusively the DS version, I don't know how much the iOS version was advertised, but the Switch version did get a rather big push by Nintendo and Square (especially in Japan where there were reportedly a lot of posters and banners for it.)

So I'll go with Hollow Knight, though I'm sure everyone pointed it out already.
 
dom

dom

▲ Legend ▲
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,462
Evil Lucario said:
Apex Legends literally launched with this in mind. Rather than go through a huge, expensive marketing campaign that would draw a shitton of negative PR because it's not Titanfall 3 and it's published by EA, Respawn just launched it and let people play it immediately. It absolutely worked, and now it's another huge pillar of battle royale games.
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They paid Ninja 1 million just to stream it day 1. That is just one of many people who they paid. Which is advertising.
 
dom

dom

▲ Legend ▲
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,462
All these Rocket League answers, what about the push on PS+?
 
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