At least once a month, I get an email or feed about the growth potential of the gaming market.  Sometimes the market might be casual and other times it might be discussing the resurgence of PC games.  What I can’t stand however, is when these articles profess by example.

“Look at WoW, and how many users they have!”
“Look at Farmville!  They are swimming in hundred dollar bills!”
“Look at that 1 guy that made $1M from an iPhone Tetris clone!”

I can’t stand it when we just stare at the #1 spot like it is any kind of reflection on the genre, as a whole.  Okay, look at those successes; celebrate them, but don’t bet the farm on the fact that these companies happen to strike a lucky break or hit the market at a perfect time.  Once the momentum is in their favor, reaching #1 seems almost inevitable.  But what about the rest of the industry?  Take a peek at the #2 MMO on the market and you will see a stark difference in active users.  The same goes for casual developers other than Zynga; have a gander at those mildly impressive numbers.

I don’t mean to sound like a Debbie Downer here, but I think that it is important to look at the entire upper bracket, and not just the #1 success.  Obtaining a statistical Median is a better estimate of what to expect than a Max function.  When we look at the Median MMO only sustaining a hundred thousand users or so, it puts your success rate into more perspective.