To me, its a good lesson not to put your eggs all in one basket.

Though having skills and realistic goals helps you avoid the first project failure, it does NOT guarantee success. If your overall strategy is about just the one game, profits you'll make from it to pay your staff, then your plan is doomed as ANYTHING could ruin your project (most of which is even out of your control). So it's best to assume that your first few projects will fail.

It has been said that very successful indies had to ship on average 4-5 projects before starting to get afloat. It IS a harsh market to start in, and it helps to know your way around, but by no means does it guarantee success, and a careful strategist would need to assume failure, and even consider an exit strategy.

Is It Really That Nonsensically Impossible To Have A Successful First Game Project?

Its not impossible. If thats what you wanted to hear. You can most certainly come up with a contrived scenario in which such thing would be possible, but that would only prove your imagination skills rather than the probability of actual "success".

I dont really know what you're asking here. You know what we mean when we say "your first project will fail". You know that discussing possible/impossible is just semantics. There is nothing to discuss really.

Its not that its impossible given the right research, team, and discipline -- its that only rarely do those big dreamers have any of those things. And even when they do, its still not a sure bet. If you manage to have all of those things, you still need to develop the right kind of connections, gain the right kind of attention, and bring it all to bear at the right kind of time in the market. Success doesn't follow a formula, you can do everything right and still fail for no apparent reason, or you can mess up some things and be wildly successful for reasons mostly beyond your doing or understanding.

The best you can really hope for is to do your best to stack the deck in favor of your success. Doing that means being on your game all the time, always being in position to take advantage of favorable winds. And your team needs to maintain that despite what life throws at them, and--without funding--for an uncertain and uncompensated future, all while doing whatever it is they do to feed themselves or their families. Its a lot to ask for, and only a very small chance of a worthwhile payday in return.

By all means reach for success and do everything you can to tip the field in favor of achieving it, but don't place real or emotional stakes that you can't afford on success alone, especially a big success. Small successes in service of an eventual bigger success are often more achievable and even failures in service of that goal are often more palatable than betting all your hopes and dreams on one singular push.

It is probably good to go into making your first game making project with the mindset 'I don't mind if it fails.' as it takes the anxiety out of equation, and makes you aware of this possibility, and you can develop a fallback option for it.

Otherwise, saying 'your first game will surely fail' is on the same level with saying 'your third game will surely succeed', i.e. both sentences leave no room for statistical considerations.

Otherwise I agree with first two commenters after Tom Sloper's comment.

Ok, now I'm very insecure about all this.

I talked with my team and they agreed to release the game only with the minimum content enough for the game to be fun, and then we release updates (or free/cheap DLCs) that adds all the other features we planned.

Another, and maybe better, solution is to release an early access demo. That way we can have an idea of how would the reception be, and if positive, we release it with all the features.

Ok, now I'm very insecure about all this.

I talked with my team and they agreed to release the game only with the minimum content enough for the game to be fun, and then we release updates (or free/cheap DLCs) that adds all the other features we planned.

Another, and maybe better, solution is to release an early access demo. That way we can have an idea of how would the reception be, and if positive, we release it with all the features.

I combine early access and episodic, and the amount of feedback I got was nothing short of great.

But the early access demo should stand up well on its own and only advertise its current features, not the promise to add new features. Early Access had too many games which were Greenlit based on promises alone and then the developer vanished, leaving them with a half-finished product.

However, the probability of having a successful first project is about the same as winning the lottery.

Not necessarily true. Define success.

A good definition to work with might be sustainable success; successful enough to properly fund further development.

Ok, now I'm very insecure about all this.

I talked with my team and they agreed to release the game only with the minimum content enough for the game to be fun, and then we release updates (or free/cheap DLCs) that adds all the other features we planned.

Another, and maybe better, solution is to release an early access demo. That way we can have an idea of how would the reception be, and if positive, we release it with all the features.

Releasing an "early access demo" *is* a release.

Most successful new projects do not have a single launch. They have a small launch and attempt to get a few people, and if they don't make it big they fix what didn't work and launch again. Then find more things that didn't work, change them, and launch again. And again, and again, and again. Until they've removed all the big dealbreakers and people start buying.

For games that cannot have multiple launches (such as physical discs and cartridges), they start with experienced teams who know how to leverage what they've already got. The experienced teams will launch for internal groups until the biggest issues are resolved, then launch for focus groups over and over until the focus groups are happy, bring in external playtesters, get external reviews, and do as many mini-launches and tests as they possibly can, and also rely on their existing infrastructure to remove barriers and get people to start buying.