Happy New Year.
I want to start this year looking back at 2022. This is easy because Valve Released this really great tool called Steam Replay. The tool looks at your play history from 2022 and generates a report of the games you played and how you rank compared to the rest of the Steam user base.
I don’t think you could learn much from looking at my replay because I am not a typical Steam shopper. I am just a crass consultant who has lost the magic. I am just kidding. But my replay still isn’t very representative of what is actually happening on Steam.
To fix this gap, I reached out to some of the most engaged streamers to look at their Steam Replay. I picked Splattercat and Wanderbots because they seem to really have a finger on the pulse of the typical indie-game playing Steam audience. If these streamers seem to be having a good time playing your game on their stream you will see hundreds even thousands of wishlists pouring in. That isn’t typical of all streamers. Many Streamers can get views but the people watching it are there to watch their favorite personality, not to learn about the games. That is not the case for these streamers. That is why I think looking at their most played genres can really show us what is hot and where things are going.
But first a warning about overinterpretation
The plural of anecdotes is not data
Unknown
This article is not a comprehensive quantitative look at all Steam’s data. This is just information from 2 people who play a lot of rogue-likes. Just because they don’t play a genre doesn’t mean it is dead. So don’t make any big assumptions from this. I just thought it was interesting to deep dive on some information from some people that really have captured the interest of SOME steam players.
Splattercat’s year
Here is the full Replay for Splattercat in 2022
Number of games played: 377
Percentage of games that were new: 74%
Most played games:
Here is his genre breakdown:
Lots of Action Roguelike and Space games. But why is “Board Game” so high? Is this a new potential trend?
Nah it’s because I played a ton of Nemesis Lockdown. I spent months hammering on that game
Splattercat
So what were the big trends last year that he saw in his own playing behavior?
Lots more rpgs this year (2022) a lot less survival games. Survival is kinda on a downswing, rogue like card games and grand strategy seem to be on the rise from my perspective
Splattercat
Wanderbots’s year
Number of games played: 518
Percentage of games that were new: 74%
Most played games:
Here is his genre breakdown:
So what were the big trends from 2022 that he saw in his own playing behavior?
The most obvious thing I can think of is the meteoric rise of Vampire Survivors and its successors, which I’ve definitely sunk a ton of time into. In parallel, there has been a pretty large uptick in high-quality inexpensive roguelikes (that aren’t VS clones). These have generally performed better on my channel than higher production value games, though that might owe a lot to audience preferences.
Wanderbots
What in his opinion isn’t working as well?
Regarding Roguelike Deckbuilders – I’ve definitely slowed down on the genre, though it’s almost entirely due to lower audience interest than quality available games. Slay the Spire pretty much carried the genre & hype, and its successors can’t seem to capture peoples’ interest in the same way. Or they just can’t escape its shadow.
Wanderbots
Analysis
Reminder: be careful about reading too much into this. It is just two streamers who both play a lot of roguelikes. This doesn’t mean that visual novels, or 4X, or horror games are dead genres (these guys just don’t play them).
I liked looking at these charts because it shows what happens behind the scenes. Although both of these guys are dedicated indie game players (hundreds of games played every year) they go back to big tentpole AAA games (Destiny, Eve Online) as their main games.
I truly think indie games are the mortar between the AAA bricks. Our games are the diversion when someone needs a break from spending hundreds of hours playing a AAA game.
Also what about their comments about roguelike deck builders?
Splattercat says “rogue like card games and grand strategy seem to be on the rise from my perspective” and Wonderbots says “Regarding Roguelike Deckbuilders – I’ve definitely slowed down on the genre, though it’s almost entirely due to lower audience interest than quality available games.”
I feel like the entire year people have been arguing whether Roguelike Deckbuiliders are dead or not or oversaturated. I will take a look at this in an upcoming post…