A new study reveals the biggest flops in video games of 2022, with indie game Martha is Dead emerging as the most underwhelming of the bunch.
Although it does not reflect any given game’s sales figures or overall commercial success, the study by Casinos Crypto utilizes AI-driven social media ‘sentiment’ data to analyze how players received each game – what the informal reviews, feedback, chatter, and buzz around the game were like at the time of its release. They then amalgamated the data to draw up a list of the most underwhelming games overall, as well as the worst-rated for each major gaming platform. By looking at the number of positive and negative blog and social media posts and web search volume around the month of each game’s release, Martha is Dead comes out on top (or bottom) of the pile, with over 31% of social media posts about the game being negative.
In 2022, the gaming industry maintained an audience of over 3.2 billion, with the global videogames market estimated to generate $197 billion. As the development costs of video games increase, those considered a ‘flop’ can become extremely costly. With this in mind, the study primarily aims to provide data for the industry itself, to be fed back into decisions made by investors and publishers. The study will have at least some effect on what games get a green light in the future.
Casinos Crypto indexed the data from the various criteria used to score for each major category. Martha is Dead scored the lowest overall across all platforms, having been mentioned in 33,552 social media posts so far this year, 31.30% of which were considered negative. It was also the lowest-scoring on all major gaming platforms besides Switch, the only platform listed on which it did not release.
Below is the list in full, with the game’s score in parentheses.
Multi-platform:
1. Martha is Dead (0.2871)
2. Recipe for Disaster (0.3215)
3. Monark (0.3462)
4. eFootball 2022 (0.5848)
5. DNF Duel (0.6569)
PlayStation:
1. Martha is Dead (0.2806)
2. Monark (0.3566)
3. eFootball 2022 (0.6303)
4. DNF Duel (0.6756)
5. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel (0.7135)
Xbox:
1. Martha is Dead (0.2921)
2. Evil Dead: The Game (0.7900)
3. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel (0.8146)
4. Microsoft Flight Simulator: Top Gun Maverick DLC (0.9437)
5. eFootball 2022 (0.9467)
Switch:
1. Monark (0.537)
2. Hindsight (0.685)
3. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (0.781)
4. Don’t Starve Together (0.891)
5. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel (0.892)
PC:
1. Martha is Dead (0.2889)
2. Recipe for Disaster (0.3249)
3. Monark (0.3458)
4. eFootball 2022 (0.5844)
5. DNF Duel (0.6624)
While Martha is Dead, published in February by Wired Productions, has come out as the ‘top’ of the flops, it received a somewhat more positive critical rating, with its lowest Metacritic score being 58 for the Xbox One version and 73 on PC.
Source: Casinos Crypto