I’ve been paralyzed for months.

Every pixel, every line of code—nothing feels good enough. I’m treating my indie game like Opera, trying to out-execute AAA studios. My programmer friends optimize frame rates. My artist compares our sprites to Hades. We’re chasing perfection in a game that will never be perfect.

But I finally realized: I’m competing in the wrong market.

The Opera Trap (The “Execution Market”)

In 1981, Sherwin Rosen defined the Superstar Economy: markets where small differences in talent lead to massive differences in reward.

The ultimate example is Opera.

Why? Because the software is fixed. Every tenor sings Nessun Dorma. The content is identical, so the only variable left to compete on is Technical Execution.

You can objectively rank tenors based on who hits the High C perfectly. If I want to hear Nessun Dorma, I will listen to Pavarotti (The Best). I have zero reason to listen to the 2nd best, because the cost of accessing the best is near zero (Spotify).

Being “Good” in an Execution Market is a failure state.

The Counter-Thesis: Games Are Not Opera

Many indie developers (myself included) suffer from “Opera Envy.” We try to compete on Execution: pixel-perfect art, optimized code, AAA polish.

But this misunderstands the medium.

This is where I got stuck. I saw my programmer friends optimizing frame rates, my artist comparing our sprites to Hades. We were chasing Execution in a market that rewards Ideas.

Indie Games are an Idea Market.

  • Differentiation > Execution: Unlike Opera, we don’t all make the same game.
  • The “Jank” Factor: In Opera, a cracked voice ruins the show. In Indie Games, “Jank” (clunky controls, weird art) is often forgiven—or even celebrated—if the core Idea is novel.

Papers, Please looks like a mess, but it succeeds because the concept carries the weight.

The Esports Exception

There is one exception: Competitive Multiplayer (Esports).

League of Legends IS Opera. The map is fixed. The rules are fixed. Players compete purely on Execution (APM, reflexes). In this niche, “Winner Takes All” applies. Nobody watches the 50th best LoL player.

But most of us aren’t building Esports.

The Strategy: The “Romance Novel Exception”

If we aren’t building Opera (Esports), what are we building?

We are building Pulp.

Romance readers (and Otome/Visual Novel players) are voracious. A reader might finish a novel in 2 days. The “Superstar” author writes one book a year.

  • The Gap: The reader has 363 days of hungry demand.
  • The Result: They move down the list. They buy the 2nd best, the 10th best, the 50th best.

My Pivot: Pond Superstars

My paralysis came from trying to be an Ocean Superstar (Call of Duty / Opera).

My new strategy is to be a Pond Superstar (Cozy Witch Farming Sim).

  • Old Goal: “Mastery” (being better than everyone else).
  • New Goal: “Specificity” (being the only one making this specific game for this hungry group).

What This Means for You

If you’re stuck like I was, ask yourself:

  1. Am I building Opera or Pulp? Are you competing on Execution (technical perfection) or Ideas (novelty)?
  2. What’s my pond? Who is the hungry, specific group I’m serving?
  3. Can I ship a B+ version today? Or am I polishing for an A+ that doesn’t matter?

Stop trying to be Pavarotti. Be the pulp writer who ships.

Context:

I wrote this because I’ve been paralyzed working on a narrative game with an anonymous collective. I caught myself trying to “out-code” and “out-art” the AAA studios—treating it like an Opera.

But we aren’t Pavarotti. We are pulp writers.

This note is my permission slip to stop polishing the “high notes” and just ship the “damn book.” We are pivoting to test this theory in the wild: can a B+ game with an A+ niche outperform an A+ game with a generic premise?