What Makes a Game High-rated? Towards Factors of Video Game Success

As the video game market grows larger, it becomes harder for games to stand out from the crowd. Launching a successful game encompasses different factors, some of which are not well-known. In this paper, we investigate some factors that affect game scores, considering high-rated video games from a dataset of 200 projects. Results show that smaller team sizes are often linked to higher scores. On the other hand, the level of freedom given to developers, as well as genre, graphical perspective, game modes and platforms do not correlate to score. Additionally, teams from successful games also experience more crunch time while fewer problems with schedule and budget allocation. Further analysis shows that team, technical, and game design factors should be the main focus of the game developers.