Hi Happy 2024. 

This blog is really just me documenting what I am thinking and studying in the Steam marketplace. As they say, the best way to learn something is to teach it. So today I want to look back and see what I learned. 

How much did I write in 2023?

In 2023 I published 45 blogs for a total of 107,921 words. To put that in perspective, according to this graph from Reedsy, I basically wrote a sci-fi fantasy novel last year about Steam. And if you read every one of my blogs, you read a novel! 

In 2022 I published more blog posts (51) but they were shorter. I am getting wordier I guess. Or maybe I am covering deeper topics that need more explanation?  

Most popular posts?

These were my 5 most popular blog posts from 2023

The missing middle in game development

How to market a multiplayer, the Battlebit Remastered story

John Romero on his book Doom Guy and developing games at a small scale

14 Reasons why every indie game developer should make at least one horror game

Killing the myths behind Steam’s visibility

Here are my thoughts on each one:

The missing middle / John Romero interview

Article:

The missing middle in game development

And

John Romero on his book Doom Guy and developing games at a small scale

I guess gaming celebrity interviews from the likes of John Romero really do get a lot of interest. Those two posts also got so many views because it was linked to by several places like Hacker News. 

But I admit that mentally I return to the content of these two posts more than any other blog posts because it really is about the fundamental problem affecting indies and the indies in general.

The basic premise of these two pieces is that because in recent years a few indie games earn MILLIONS of dollars that becomes the expectation for anyone starting out. Too many indies start out on their first game expecting that it will be a major hit. BUT that is rarely the case. In reality, and for most of the history of game development, games made somewhere in the range of $5000 – $20,000 (and yes I adjusted for inflation.) And people were happy with that back then because that was the max they could earn. You couldn’t make $1,000,000 from a game. So because there were no million dollar sellers, nobody spent YEARS working on a game. They made quick, smaller, games just to try a bunch of things. 

This was what happened in the shareware years and the flash portal years. Those middle games were a great way to learn game dev. The current market expectations are to make $1,000,000 or it is a failure that is hurting everyone. We should structure our studios in the early days to make $10,000 revenue games. 

One of the things that a lot of people misinterpreted about my “missing middle” article is they think that I am saying indies need to learn how to live on $20,000 per game. Or that this is forever and you can’t make bigger games. That is not it at all. The reason I call them “middle” games is because they take up the “middle” of your indie game dev career. They are a stepping stone. You can’t have a middle without having an end. You will have a large game some day. Just not right away.

  • Starting games are game jam games or are those tutorial games when you are learning the game engine and take a week or two of development time. 
  • Middle games where you build out your tech, your brand, your skills. They should take 1 month to 3 months each. You will not be able to become famous making middle games but they are what prove that you know what you are doing. 
  • End games: after making a bunch of middle games THEN you can scale up and make multi-year projects that can make $1,000,000. 

We should stop calling games that only earn $10,000 failures. That is just what most games earn. That is normal.

So please, don’t make your first game a multi year project. Design and scope your games with the expectation that they will make $10,000 from it. 

If you are like “Chris, you can’t make a game in 2 months” that is impossible!” At the bottom of the article I list dozens of games that were made by solo or small dev teams that were made in less than a year. There are lots of types of games that can be made in short periods, we just forgot how to make them.

Battlebit

Article: How to market a multiplayer, the Battlebit Remastered story

People really do like reading about huge successes. That is why I write about them. That is also why popular gaming blogs only review games that are already hits. People like to read about the hits. 

Side note, the press covering your game usually is a result of your success, not the cause of it. 

But I really liked the Battlebit story because it proves how hard it is to make a multiplayer game. I don’t think indies realize how much work it is to make a live multiplayer game. It took the Battlebit guys YEARS of open development and community building to even fill a single server with players. 

If you are making, or even THINKING of making a multiplayer game, please re-read the Battlebit article to see how absurdly hard it is to make an indie multiplayer game.  

Horror

Article: 14 Reasons why every indie game developer should make at least one horror game

I have been pitched a lot of games, read a lot of “my game failed” reddit posts, and I have walked a lot of video game convention floors, and I think the biggest reason so many indie developers “fail” is because they are making games in a genre that doesn’t have an audience on Steam. 

For some reason indies keep making puzzle games, platformers (both 2D and 3D), puzzle platformers, huge sprawling RPGs (for their first game), twin stick shooters, and RTSs even though over and over again the Steam players have shown that they just aren’t interested in them.

Looking at that list of games you might be saying “no platformers? What other genres could there possibly be?” 

Horror games!

I know you might not be a fan, you might be too scared, you might think they are beneath you, but I argue that every indie developer should try to honestly make at least 1 horror game. The post outlines a long list of reasons why it is the best genre for people just starting out. 

Basically horror games have faster development times, the game design isn’t as complex, the fans are super excited for them, the social media marketing is easier. I can’t think of a better set of factors that can help you establish your studio. 

And yes, you can move on and make other genres, but please, consider the horror game. 

Wishlists don’t matter, except they actually do

Article: Killing the myths behind Steam’s visibility

In 2023, the business team at Valve started giving a talk explaining how the Steam algorithms work to surface games. You can watch that talk here.

My blog basically provides meta commentary on that talk reading between the lines, cutting through “brand speak,” and providing additional context to what Valve said.

One of the biggest misinterpretations indies took away from Valve’s business talk and my blog post is that they think they heard Valve say “Wishlists don’t matter!”

What was actually said was something along the lines of “Wishlists are one of the many factors we use to evaluate game success, but we really care about how much money the game makes.”

In order to get all those sales (and dollars) you still need to collect wishlists. The misinterpretation is like saying “In Basketball, the only thing that matters is who has the most points at the end of the game, so I don’t have to dribble the ball because it doesn’t matter.” No, dribbling the ball sets you up to make a bunch of baskets and get points. You still need to learn how to dribble. 

In short, the Steam algorithm has a hierarchy of signals that it trusts to try and figure out if a game is successful. That hierarchy goes like this:

Dollars earned (best signal)

Wishlists earned (medium signal)

Views earned (lowest signal because can be influenced by bots)

Basically before your game goes on sale, Valve does not have data on the dollars earned by your game (because it isn’t for sale), so they have to rely on the second best metric that they can see which is wishlists. In that talk, Valve admits that wishlists aren’t the most reliable number because, for example, a really pretty game with a great concept can earn a ton of wishlists BUT upon release everyone realizes that it controls terribly and is full of bugs so it has lack-luster sales.

So I am sorry, just because Valve said dollars are the most important, you still have to go out there and ask for wishlists.  

Other important things I learned about Steam this year

I wrote a bunch of posts that I learned a lot from. Here they are, I think they are super important

Discovery Queue

Blog post: What is the Discovery Queue?

AND

What does it take to get into the Discovery Queue?

Indie developers selling a game on Steam are not nearly as obsessed with the Discovery Queue as they should be. For best-selling games, the Discovery Queue (or DQ as cool kid0s call it) drove 50% of their traffic. It is how Valve “blesses” your game and promotes it for you.

The post explains what and how the discovery queue works but the most important number you need to learn is in a short period of time you need a lot of wishlists. How many?

This table shows the results. It presents how many Visits and Wishlists a game earned during the 7-day period before a major Peak in DQ Traffic aka (B) in the chart above.

VisitsWishlists
Average3455313840
Median112023583
Lowest number that still triggered the DQ4347524

The Prologue Trick

Post: How to use the Prologue trick to potentially earn thousands of wishlists

If your game is “hot” and has a lot of energy behind it, you can use a free prologue to essentially double your wishlists. BUT It only works if your game is exciting to people. I document how this trick works in this post. 

Steam event sales and festivals

Post: Steam’s themed events are huge opportunity for visibility and sales

Official Valve-run festivals can earn you thousands of wishlists and sales. But the trick is getting into them. Sometimes Valve is a bit too strict about letting in games so in this post I explain some techniques to change their mind and let your game in.

Early Access

Post:

Should you do Early Access?

Estimating Early Access success

Early Access Tips Part 3

For some reason everyone thinks they want to do Early Access (EA) so I spent 3 blogs looking at whether it is actually a good idea. My conclusion is a very slim portion of games benefit from it but for the most part, devs are better off if they just release the game fully. 

Basically, Early Access amplifies what your game will do. If your game does well it will do better in Early access. If your game is going to fail it will do much worse in Early access.

The reason many people say they want to do Early Access is because they want “player feedback.” I argue that you can use the Steam Playtest, or use a closed Beta, or use your Demo to get feedback better than just putting your EA game out there.

Your EA launch is your launch! You still need at least 7000 wishlists before you do EA. You still need to market it to do EA. Early access is not “Testing it out to see if this game is a good idea.” EA is your launch. 

This is the chart that solidified this thinking for me.

Basically if you have a poor EA launch, you have less than 2% chance of turning that around and having a 1.0 launch that is “successful.” Read more about it here

Repeat after me, your EA launch is your launch. Don’t do it lightly.

Steam players don’t get tired of us 

When I say “get your Steam page up ASAP” some indies counter with “well won’t they get tired of me?” 

NOPE! Steam players don’t get tired.

They are fully rested!

They have all the energy in the world.

They do not get “tired” of you.

If you look at the cohort conversion rate for Zero Sievert and Cosmoteer (4.5 years on steam) you will see that someone who wishlisted the game right when the steam coming soon page went live converted at the same rate as someone who wishlisted the game 3 months before launch.

Cosmoteer:

Zero Sievert conversion per month:

As you can see by the Zero Sievert data, the thing that affects conversion rate the most is what promo activity is happening. Wishlists that come from a popular streamer like Splattercat convert much better than during a month when you are doing no promotion.

Now if the game isn’t what Steam wants, and they don’t like a game, then it will have lower conversion rates. But those lower conversion rates are not because they are “tired”, it is because they just don’t like the game.

So don’t worry, Steam is not “tired” of you.

AAA Launches don’t affect us

Blog post: The other game that succeeded during the Starfield launch

I have always suspected that the conventional wisdom of “Don’t launch when a AAA blockbuster is launching” was not right. AAA games are so big and Indie games are so small we are almost not in the same universe. It is like Quantum Field Theory vs Special Relativity. You need two separate sets of equations to even analyze them. 

This year I had some confirmation about my hunch with the successful launch of micro indie game Chillquarium which released on the same day as mega blockbuster Starfield.

Basically because every other game was scared of Starfield it left the field WIDE OPEN and a little fun game like Chillquarium could sneak in and find success.

The lesson here is you don’t have to be the #1 game every week. You just have to be one of the top 10. And when everyone else is too scared, it makes it easier to be #2.

Post mortems

I love doing post mortems of games. There is just something about looking back at how a game got to where it is. Anyway here is a list of all of the ones I did:

Happy new year

Good luck! I have some neat ideas for 2024.

I have some more data on games that didn’t convert very well.

I have some stories of a game that did well on Mobile and Steam

I also have that long awaited story on Horse Games. I can’t wait!