the review accumulation question is really a community behavior question

what i keep coming back to with this forecast is that raw popularity and sustained review growth are different mechanisms... a game that spikes at launch and a game that compounds slowly can end up in very different places by september 2027. the compounding games tend to have structural reasons for players to return, discuss, and post again, roguelikes especially, because each run is genuinely distinct. narrative games can have devoted audiences but the behavior pattern doesn't reproduce the same way. the genre isn't the ceiling, the community loop is.