Polish publisher and developer PlayWay wisely realized that nobody actually knows which game is going to be a best seller or why, so, their business model is centered on quickly creating a bunch of Steam pages for half-baked game concepts. Then they only spend resources developing the ones that get enough of a response.
The one thing I really respect about this approach is they are honest about the fact that they don’t know what makes a hit game. They have no pretension, they don’t claim to have secret knowledge, they just put themselves out there and see what connects.
This strategy has largely worked. Yes they are spamming Steam pages but they are creating ideas that can go viral. Stef Rappeneau created this great chart showing that the publisher with the most wishlists is not cool guys like Devolver or edgy Raw Fury, nope it is boring, old, slightly cringe, PlayWay! They have 29 games in the top 1000 wishlisted games list.
And the games that do go viral and get developed do incredibly well.
Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 has over 21,000 reviews.
House Flipper has over 74,000 reviews
Now other aspects of PlayWay’s business practices are less-than-ideal. There have been accusations of plagiarism, spamming store pages, and Simon Carless did a great Job here outlining the overarching problem with them. Side note: PlayWay actually has more subsidiaries also using this technique. For the purposes of this blog I am focusing only on the games published by the PlayWay proper.
I wondered… if PlayWay is spamming out a bunch of games to see which genres and themes work, what ACTUALLY is working?
A good scientific experiment
Most of PlayWay’s games have a similar art style, which basically, is no art style. It is just realistic without anything flashy. People are realistically proportioned, they are basically “Sims-esque” mannequins.
Similarly the UI is minimalistic and usually looks like they use Asset Store icons.
The environments are basic and don’t really stand out. These games don’t look like a concept artist or an environment artist had full creative control. They are servisible games with basic, functional art and don’t draw attention to themselves.
This is the most typical PlayWay screenshot I could find. It is basically a mannequin ready to perform a financial transaction with you with the least dialogue possible. If you need to understand PlayWay games, look at this:
This screenshot is from Used Car Simulator (one of PlayWay’s fastest growing titles).
Or here is another PlayWay game Cooking Simulator 2: Better Together. It is clean looking, there are nice reflective textures on the equipment, it is realistic, gets the job done, doesn’t get in the way or call attention to itself. It is functional.
The PlayWay scientific experiment
Think about it, PlayWay games are an almost perfect lab-grown experiment that will allow us to examine how well certain genres and themes do:
- Art Style: mostly the same across all games, so that variable is controlled.
- Promotion and marketing tactics: All games are run by the same company with the same marketing team so that variable is controlled. (In a separate future blog post I will be taking a look at how they do it).
- Promotion period: The games have coming-soon-pages for YEARS before they are finally released so we know a game’s success isn’t because of some freak “lucky-break” such as they announced or launched at the right time. So that variable is controlled.
- No hype: You will never see Geoff Keighley get up on stage at the next Game Awards and say “And now, the next hotly anticipated trailer from that studio we all love… PLAYWAY!” All the PlayWay visibility just comes from being on Steam. Nobody looks forward to what PlayWay will announce. Their games are ambient. So we know their popularity isn’t coming from crazy-hyped up PR promotions like having an “in” with Geoff Keighley or buying some expensive placement at a big event. So that variable is controlled.
Because all of these basic promotional tactics are “controlled” in the science-experiment sense, we can focus on what IS different among PlayWay’s games and that is Genre and Theme.
And in my experience, Genre and Theme are THE most important things that determine whether your game will be successful.
In today’s blog I am going to look through 100 unpublished games in the PlayWay catalog and see if we can suss out any trends that are working or are not working. If you want to see the full 100, I list them in Appendix A.
What is connecting?
Here is how I analyzed the PlayWay games:
- Using SteamDB I filtered down to just the unreleased games assigned to publisher PlayWay S.A.
- Then I checked each unreleased game’s follower count (Follower count is a public number and closely correlates to wishlists which is not publicly available)
- Then went in and looked at how long each of those games have had a coming soon page live on Steam. (PlayWay will let a game simmer for YEARS before finally releasing it.)
- Then I divided the number of followers by the number of days the Steam page has been out. This is the number I called “Growth Rate” (A game that has 1,000 followers after 3 years is a lot less impressive than a game that has 1000 after 1 day.)
After doing this I get this graph. Each bar here is one of the PlayWay titles. The height of the bar is basically how many followers they get per day.
I removed the game Used Cars Simulator from the graph because it only launched 1 month ago and already has 2,917 followers. While that is impressive and indicates a potential hit, the growth rate will probably come down as the months go on.
Remember, a Steam follower typically correlates to 10 – 12 wishlists. So a growth rate of 20 would mean every day that game might be getting about 200-240 wishlists.
I maintain an ongoing list of Steam performance benchmarks here and in my experience, wishlist velocity correlates to eventual revenue breaks down like this:
Wishlists earned per day:
🥉 0 – 6
🥈 6 – 17
🥇 14 – 100
💎 43 – 430
Note that there is some overlap between the tiers. That is because the Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond rankings are based on total revenue that developers reported to me. Sometimes games that have lower wishlist growth rates end up with gold tier 🥇 revenue.
So looking at the PlayWay upcoming game list it kind of looks like this.
Note that I just blended the Silver and Bronze bars because there is a lot of overlap between those tiers.
Interestingly enough, none of the upcoming PlayWay games show Diamond Tier growth rates (which would be around 43) but there were a number of gold tier titles there. Let’s look at them.
Gold Tier PlayWay games
The #1 game on PlayWay’s upcoming list is Used Cars Simulator which I excluded from the chart
| Followers | Growth Rate | Genre | Theme | |
| Used Cars Simulator | 2,917 | 83.3 | Management | Vehicle |
| Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders | 27,072 | 25.5 | First Person Builder | Medieval |
| Builders Of Egypt | 36,222 | 22.7 | City Builder | Historical |
| Cooking Simulator 2: Better Together | 3,912 | 21.1 | Job | Contemporary |
| Mr. Nomad | 1,238 | 17.4 | Base Builder | Contemporary |
| Celestial Empire | 16,695 | 13.0 | City Builder | Medieval |
I keep telling people that City Builders are among Steam’s favorite genres and you can clearly see it here. PC gamers have loved city builders since SimCity launched in 1989 and they will probably still like them 20 years from now. It is one of the most durable genres on Steam.
Here is Builders Of Egypt.
Silver Tier PlayWay games
| Followers | Growth Rate | Genre | Theme | |
| Ship Builder | 20,410 | 12.8 | First Person Builder | Pirate |
| Dubai Builder | 794 | 12.4 | City Builder | Contemporary |
| Builders of Greece | 15,445 | 11.8 | City Builder | Historical |
| Deconstruction Simulator | 1,641 | 9.9 | First Person Builder | Contemporary |
| Beer Factory | 7,412 | 9.4 | Management | Contemporary |
Again, City Builders dominate. The other popular genres are First Person Builder. I made up the name for this genre because there are no tags for it. But you see it all over PlayWay’s catalog. Basically it is a first person camera and your primary action is to go around and add new elements or destroy them or improve your environment. Thus, First Person Builder.
Here is an example from the game Deconstruction Simulator where you rebuild an old derelict house.
Lowest performing PlayWay games
Every PlayWay Steam page is an experiment. And it wouldn’t be an experiment if things didn’t work sometimes. And there are plenty of games in PlayWay’s catalog that just don’t connect. Based on the growth rate these games probably earn 0-5 wishlists per day.
| Followers | Growth Rate | Genre | Theme | |
| Barn&Farm Renovator | 447 | 0.47 | First Person Builder | Contemporary |
| Ink Studio: Tattoo Artist Simulator | 492 | 0.45 | Management / Job | Contemporary |
| Locksmith Simulator | 473 | 0.44 | Management / Job | Contemporary |
| Specialist’s Vengeance | 488 | 0.43 | First Person / Job | Contemporary |
| PsychoSimulator | 541 | 0.39 | First Person Management | Contemporary |
This is the genius of PlayWay’s model. I would have expected Barn & Farm Renovator to do well. Farming is popular (See Stardew, Roots of Pacha, Farming Simulator 22). Similarly the genre is the same as the popular game Deconstruction Simulator (90 wishlists per day). But, Barn & Farm probably only earns 5 wishlists a day. Both are First Person Builder games about rebuilding things. See how tiny changes in theme can have a big outcome on attention? I guess people aren’t interested in Barns.
It is stuff like this that convinces me that nobody can predict what the game playing public will like. You just have to put it out there. And if people aren’t interested in what you are making, it is best not to invest more in it because there is another, very similar idea out there that is probably much more interesting to people.
Crafty-buildy-simmy-games
When you look at enough PlayWay games you will notice that they almost always fall into one (or sometimes two) of these categories:
- You have a very specific but uncommon job (Locksmith Simulator, Ink Studio: Tattoo Artist Simulator, Forester Simulator)
- You have to build or rebuild some big structure or vehicle (Deconstruction Simulator, U Boat Mechanic Simulator)
- You have to drive somewhere and maintain your car (Offroad Survival, Route 66 Simulator: The Free Ride )
- You are in a horrifying situation (Asteroid Impact Survival, Flight Catastrophe)
- You have to build a city or civilization (Builders Of Egypt, Builders of Greece)
- You have to manage a business (Beer Factory, Supermarket Manager)
- You have to survive in a hostile environment by collecting resources, crafting items and hunting things (Viking Frontiers, Egypt Frontiers)
There are a couple games that don’t fit these genres and feel more like traditional indie games. They are not doing as well as their other Crafty Buildy Games
A First or third person shooter: Phantom Doctrine 2: The Cabal (3.0 growth rate)
An RTS: Mythos: Build & Survive (2.0 growth rate)
A VR game: Prison Simulator VR (0.89 growth rate)
But you will notice looking at the list, that they only make a couple FPS, RTS, or VR games because through experience they know that Steam prefers Crafty-Buildy-Simulation-y-Strategy games. Steam LOVES deep endlessly replayable games. But instead of spending years trying to make these games work, they just seem to move on to games that do work.
What themes perform best?
I went through each game and did my best to classify each of the 100 games by a theme. These are my interpretations based on screenshots and trailers
The Animal theme games are the ones with the highest follower growth rate.
Top examples are
and
I gave a talk a few months ago and at this specific moment (18:30) I told you Horse games are secretly a very very potent genre.
My Horse: Bonded Spirits is probably earning 90+ wishlists a day. I have a blog in the works for next year, but the horse game audience is tragically underserved. If your team is arguing about the next game you will make, cut the meeting short and decide to make a horse farm management game!
HORSES!
Instead of mixing Genres, mix themes
PlayWay is so methodical in testing every combination of theme and genre that you almost think they create a giant grid with Genre on one side and theme on the other and then invent games where they overlap.
To prove this I tried to create such a chart:
You might think this is dumb and we should make fun of PlayWay for doing this. But I think this is VERY smart.
There is this crazy thing that indies do where they try to invent new games by mixing existing genres. For instance every time I publish a list of top performing genres post and say “City Builders, Horror Games, and Roguelike Deck Builders are huge” some dude trying to be funny always leaves a comment like “Huhuhu I am going to make a City Builder crossed with a Deckbuilder, where there is a eldritch Abomination chasing you huhuhuh”
I know he is joking, but that is actually the wrong mentality. You will alienate City Builder fans AND Deck Builder fans AND Horror Fans. It is like saying “Oh the most popular foods are Hamburgers and Ice Cream? Well I am going to make Hamburger flavored Ice Cream!”
Instead the correct response is oh, hamburgers are popular? I am going to try to sell a Bacon + Swiss Hamburger, a Blue Cheese Hamburger, a Hot Chili Hamburger, a Carolina BBQ Hamburger, and an Italian Herb Aioli Hamburger.
OR
Oh Ice Cream is popular? Ok, I will make Mint, Chocolate, Rocky Road, Peanut Butter, Bubble Gum flavors of Ice Cream.
It is always better to stick to the core of what makes that food a food and innovate with flavors.
In my opinion, the same goes for games. It is better to stick to a specific genre (don’t try to mix it) and innovate across themes.
For instance you might see that Steam already has a top selling Medieval City Builder, and A Post Apocalyptic City Builder, but nobody has made a decent Pirate City Builder.
My hunch is that fans of a genre are more excited when you change the theme instead of when you add in a different, secondary game genre that they don’t really like.
What is the best PlayWay combination
So after looking at top genres and themes what would be the best combination?
I would say Open-World Survival Craft mixed with a Historical Theme
The PlayWay game Viking Frontiers is basically this. However I think there could be room to have an open-world survival crafting game set in Medieval Europe where you build a rustic settlement in the woods.
The First Person Builder genre is also very popular according to PlayWay’s numbers and is really the bread and butter of PlayWay. Basically you are dropped into a run-down environment and it is your job to slowly upgrade, repair, and renovate it.
Examples are
- Garage Flipper (A contemporary theme game where you renovate a car garage)
- Uboat Mechanic Simulator (A military theme game where you renovate a sub)
- Chinese Frontiers (A historical theme game where you build a wall to protect your settlement)
- Haunted House Renovator (A “fantasy” theme game where you renovate a haunted house)
Practice making your own?
It is a fun design exercise to fill out the grid with your own combination of genres and themes
Let me try it: Take the First Person Builder genre and try some theme combinations:
- SPACE THEME: Repair a derelict Spaceship and turn it back on after it was destroyed by a space zombie invasion (similar to Danny Boyle’s film Sunshine)
- ANIMAL THEME: Repair an ugly urban apartment rooftop into a cool urban farm. You build chicken coops, set up beehives, and grow corn. You have to water it, buy seeds, talk to the other residents in the apartment. Urban farming is a thing.
- VEHICLE: Restore a rusted out passenger train. Paint it, add beautiful upholstery, and turn it into a luxury streamliner. Buy additional cars like Dining car, an observation deck, and sleeper cars. Then hire the best staff to operate the train.
Will any of those work? I have no idea! Neither does PlayWay. But they just throw it up there and see if anyone is interested before spending a ton of money developing the game.
The faster you realize you don’t know anything the better
If you ask me if your game will be a hit, I will tell you I don’t know. I cannot look at your game design document and be able to know. Nobody does. Publishers don’t know either. Neither do the people at Valve, or investors, or government sponsored art councils, or the people who curate those online festivals or hand out awards.
There is no formula. You cannot crunch enough numbers, you cannot build enough spreadsheets, or scrape enough Steam data to be able to conclusively say “If you make a game starring a red-haired protagonist battling against a post-apocalyptic zombie army it will perform 30% better than if you had a brown-haired protagonist battling against a medieval black magic cult.” Video games are an art and there are a thousand tiny artistic decisions that must be made and if just one of them is changed your game can go viral on TikTok and get you 10,000 wishlists or will languish and earn 3 wishlists a day.
Nobody knows whether a game will be a hit.
HOWEVER
I do think that we can be pretty confident that there are definitely genres that Steam buys more than others. PlayWay has done a great job identifying these:
- Job Simulators
- Building and Vehicle rehab simulators
- Driving and maintain your car simulators
- City builders
- Business management and Tycoon games
- Open world survival crafters.
However, the magic comes from the alchemy of Themes and Genres..
This is why I say Steam loves “Crafty-buildy-simulation-y-Strategy games.” I can’t tell you specifically what will be popular just that the whole region is. These types of games just get more wishlists, they get more streamer play time, and they sell more copies but I can’t tell you specifically that YES, YOUR game will specifically be a hit.
Summary: The number one lesson indies need to learn from PlayWay
There are many devs who make Crafty-buildy-simulation-y-Strategy games and they still “fail.” I wrote about one such case here.
But I see many of these “failures” as just steps in trying to locate what Steam fans actually like.
The sad thing I see is that indies make a decent (aka not buggy) game in a genre that is “hot” but get discouraged when it fails and throw out all that code they built and start on an entirely new genre.
Instead, take that engine that you spent so long on, change the art, try another theme, deepen the simulation, and try again.
And if that fails, try another theme.
You are not failing when you do this. Nobody knows what type of game will succeed. You just gotta keep trying until the right combination of themes and genre gel into a game that people are super interested in.
Today’s blog is late this week because I have plumbers installing new water lines in my house. They needed to find a good path for the new pipes to travel and had to drill several pilot holes. It took them several shots to find it. The plumber didn’t drill one hole then turn to me and say “couldn’t find your pipe man, I failed, I am going to pack up and go to the next house.” No he just kept drilling until he found it.
If you made a crafty buildy game, don’t give up after your first failure. Just drill again.
What NOT to do like PlayWay
Do not spam out Steam pages for every game concept you have. Other developers have been penalized for this behavior.
Instead, try just making mini trailers and at the end say “Join my mailing to get access to the free beta when it is live.”
Whatever game concept gets the most subscribers, that is the game you work on.
Side tangent explainer on why Crafty Buildy Games are an indie-friendly genre.
If it is true that Steam loves “Crafty-buildy-simulation-y-Strategy games” then why are the top selling games Baldur’s Gate 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2, and God of War which are story-rich, somewhat linear, adventure games starring a protagonist. Those aren’t “build-y-crafty games?”
You are correct. There are a lot of Steam fans who enjoy linear, adventure, games similar to the ones listed above. But those fans are VERY discerning. They have a very very low tolerance for jank, graphics that are not cutting edge, or lower production values. Basically the only companies that can possibly build those types of games are AAA studios. If your game cannot match AAA quality standards, those specific fans will not play your 2d pixelart linear adventure game. Also those fans don’t buy many games each year. They only buy the top 3 biggest games of the year.
However, there is a pretty sizable population on Steam who has a completely different set of standards. They don’t mind janky controls, and lower fidelity graphics. They also don’t really care about the game’s story as much. But they have high expectations for the game to deliver on emergent gameplay, deep deep systems, and the ability to completely mess with the simulation presented by the game. These fans want to play deep “Crafty-buildy-games.” But by a strange quirk in the nature of game production, a small, cheap, possibly inexperienced, indie development team can make a game that is deep enough, and has juuuuust enough graphical fidelity to satisfy those “crafty-buildy” Steam fans. Those people also buy a bunch of games.