Stephen
josefit's weird to me that Terraria is one of the best selling games of all time. like, i can definitely see that it was a successful game with a fun mechanic, and most of my friends had a copy at some point, and we played together a dozen or so times for a few months when it first came out, and i really enjoyed it. but it definitely doesn't have the same level of 'mindshare' as games it hugely outsold. e.g. i've personally never met Terraria Megafans where the only thing they're into is Terraria
i suppose it was cheap, and very similar to minecraft, so whatever factors saw that become the best-selling game ever apply to it too. it's one of those games that's somehow just in everybody's steam library by default, which gives me the peggle/wii-sports type huge sales boost vibe. but still, the fact that it outsold all but one mario game, all but the first gen pokemon games, every GTA other than GTA V, every elder scrolls, zelda, sonic, half-life, call of duty....
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 👽@jk So Terraria is the Avatar of videogames.
@mdhughes this did cross my mind! but it IS quite a lot better than Avatar
@jk I've had it since early days, and made a few houses & dug down, but never killed one of the big bosses. Grinding little mobs is fine, just giant ritual/demon things, nope.
Just like Cameron can't get anyone to buy merch or Avatar novels or whatever.
Flandere@jk it's probably because it's exactly that kind of game where you don't have megafans, only casualfans, that it reached so many people.
It's easy to pick up, it's goal-oriented, but you still have sandbox freedom. You can play by yourself or however many friends you want. It's unreasonably cheap, especially during sales. They kept adding more and more content to game, for free, long after its full release.
It's a lot of things adding up to its success, I think, and some of them started compounding. 
@flandrescarlet yeah, it's interesting, I guess i'm used to the Huge Because Of Casualfans type of game being a mobile-oriented thing, or a licensed sports game, or a very mainstream shooter, or some bundled game like wii sports? it's odd seeing the same kind of appeal from what looks and feels like the "charming but deep indie cult classic" archetype
@jk it probably also helps that Terraria predates a lot of the more popular indie games and when stuff like Steam greenlight started happening.
These days there's so much getting released on the major platforms, it's harder for an indie to become as massive of a hit as e.g. Terraria. 
@jk people like me definitely helped. I bought it for $5 during 1.1 days and played the hell out of it and have like 300 hours in it. I’ve bought copies for 5 people since then in the hopes that someone would play with me. Still no luck.
Moose Jolly Holcomb@jk I got it for free from Xbox Live Arcade back in the 360 days, and I wonder if that and everyone else who got it then count as "sales".