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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tapdance" data-source="post: 8042277" data-attributes="member: 6971203">Overall it's a nice and thought provoking article <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />  Though the "luck" discussion has probably been more or less settled, I'll contribute that while hard work and needed skills are a must, and talent is preferable, true success really requires some X-factors (or luck if you will) to collaborate.  Wrong place and time, and the product won't sell.  Bad selling skills and insufficient marketing, and the product won't sell (enough).  Crappy layout and/or finished quality, and you screw your rep and don't survive long term.  Any number of random events happening, and the product won't sell.  Pick the wrong people or manufacturers to work with, and you'll screw your rep or end up being unable to make enough money to survive long term.  And so on.  Like the story about the guy that set up a welding shop at a lakeshore, just when 5 years of drought were about to hit, I was told a story by a professor at my old University, about a start-up he mentored.  Company was about to be shut down due to lack of success, when one of the founders end up talking to a guy he's taking a leak next to in a restroom in the theater.  Turns out the guy is the CEO of a large company that at just that point in time, is looking for a supplier that offers exactly what this start-up is offering.  The large company becomes a customer of the start-up, and they survive and end up thriving because of this freak event. Imagine just how many random little things that could have changed that outcome, or prevented that conversation to have taken place as it did.  It's obviously not exactly the same as the RPG business, but every day billions of little things happen that shape our reality, and some of these end up aligning in such a way as to ensure that some people become successful, while other people with the same baseline of ability and effort etc. don't.</blockquote>

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