Maybe it’s inappropriately lofty, but I feel like we’re entitled to the same large pool the big dogs are, which is I’m okay using an average skewed way towards the top. So I’m certainly not expecting millions of people to buy this game but because of my own personal standards, I’m (not to invoke an awful cliche) shooting for the stars on principle.

It’s this kind of superfluously positive thinking that keeps me going. Haha!

Stats on sales of games are most likely to be found/hosted by fans of the games.

A game with a small number of fans is less likely to have stats on its sales available.

A game with a small number of fans is likely to have sold fewer copies anyway.

Therefore, all available stats will be the stats of games that sold a lot of copies.

Therefore available stats will make it look as though the average game is very popular. If you had ALL the stats you ever wanted, the average would be brought down.

I suppose the thing I was trying to learn is “how large is the pond that I’m about to drop a hook into?” I like the idea of knowing that if I push a beat ‘em up to market that sells 500k units, that I only tapped into roughly 1/4th of the demographic. Why? How? Etc. I realize this is REALLY clumsy math, but it’s the best I can do given the information I have, and given the brain I have, too. Haha! Math and I are not the strongest allies.

And I’m not quite sure what you mean by “it’ll seem as though games-that-are-like-your-game are more popular than they really are, right?” Can you clarify?

Sorry to be demanding, but I just don’t see anything that you learn from the 2.2million number. I mean obviously, if you select the most popular games-that-are-like-your-game and draw any impression from them, it’ll seem as though games-that-are-like-your-game are more popular than they really are, right?

And I see what you’re saying about a representative market slice but I’m only picking on the big dogs because I only have so much time. And trying to make rudimentary guesses by measuring the relatively large group of people who throw their money at the AAA entries in the genre is a better exercise in my mind than I don’t know, not. But I don’t typically think like this, so if there’s a better way to stab in the dark and what we stand to gain then I’m all ears…provided it won’t take an unbelievable amount of time (like playing and studying and researching all of the beat ‘em ups from the last x years).