thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
I generally don't think it works this way.
In the same way that Overwatch and Fortnite are "Cartoony PvP shooters" that were both incredibly successful and both kinda filling the same aesthetic genre.
People don't play multiplayer games for the aesthetic genre (SP gamers do this more often), they play it for the gameplay loop.
"Sci fi military FPS" can vary substantially in terms of gameplay.
Yeah but look at where Overwatch is now. It's practically dead. In fact, as Fortnite grew, Overwatch began its gradual decline before Overwatch 2's bad launch finished it off. I'm not saying Fortnite's growth has a direct correlation to Overwatch's decline, but there is some type of incidental relationship present which is kind of interesting.
I agree that ultimately it's for the gameplay loop, but I wouldn't completely rule out aesthetic similarities being a possible factor, especially if the games are available on the same platform. I.e Foamstars gets a lot of comparisons to Splatoon and if it were on Nintendo's system it would probably not gain a lot of traction. However, as a PlayStation game it could have a better chance at (moderate) success, provided the gameplay is solid and some marketing effort is there, because very little of that type of game exists on PlayStation in the combination of game type, genre style, gameplay structure and aesthetic.
So yeah, gameplay loop & structure are the most important factors, but aesthetic/style similarities also play a big part into it IMO.