Steam Next Fest is over and I had a chance to talk to Xalavier Nelson Jr. about his company’s latest game I Am Your Beast and the strategy they used to propel it to the 16th most-played-demos during the June Steam Next Fest 2024. In less than a week I Am Your Beast earned over 60,000 wishlists.
Interestingly enough, his strategy runs counter to my typical advice! He did Steam Next Fest immediately after announcing his game instead of waiting until the last Steam Next Fest before launch. Let’s take a look at how his team pulled this off.
Background: The combo that gets you to the front page of Steam Next Fest
There are basically two paths to get to the front page of Steam Next Fest:
- You have the most wishlists at the start of the festival. By my estimation of the 2024 Summer Next Fest, that minimum is probably around ~170,000 wishlists. Doing this, means you get featured in the “Most Wishlisted” tab of the store.
- You have the most “viral” game which means you earn the most wishlists in a short period just before the start of Steam Next Fest. Doing this, means you get featured in the “Trending” tab of the store.
The double jump
I am nicknaming this technique the “double jump” because basically you are pairing two quick marketing beats within short succession that when combined propel your game to a new height. It is a double jump.
The sequence to get a trending game
Step 1) Spend years building up a reputation for making insanely interesting games rapidly.
I Am Your Beast is Strange Scaffold’s 15th game when it ships.
Step 2) Create a great game in a very popular genre.
FPS is one of the most popular genres on Steam. I played through the demo and it is frantic, hard, bloody, violent, and that is exactly the type of game Steam players love.
Step 3) Don’t announce your game yet
Just wait for a big moment to do the “announce.” You can use the announcement of your game as a special beat to get featuring by content platforms like IGN, or PCGamer.
Step 4) Sign up for Steam Next Fest
June Steam Next fest applications open in March soon after the February Next Fest. Just opt in at this point. You can always opt out a couple weeks before the event if things don’t line up in your favor (see the next step).
Step 5) Have PC Gamer reach out to you before the show asking if they had anything interesting to share.
I know I know, this is a hard ask for studios.
PC Gamer came to Xalavier and said “Do you have anything cool you would like to feature in our June show?”
You just have to wait for PC Gamer to showcase you? However, remember step #1. By building a reputation for making interesting games and always having something new, the industry has learned that someone like Xalavier probably has something interesting. And they were right. Xalavier showed them a number of the games he had in the pipeline and they thought I Am Your Beast would be perfect to showcase.
Now even if you don’t have Xalavier’s reputation, months before June you can reach out to these showcases with your game and see if they would be interested in showcasing you. Often for free. The big showcases reserve a bunch of slots for free featuring if they really like your game. If they like your game (but not enough to give you a free slot) expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000 – $50,000 dollars. If you are AAA, expect to pay even more.
Last year, Simon Carless published this research showing which E3-ish showcases had the biggest impact:
Here are the 2024 showcases featured by Valve.
Step 6) Make a great gameplay-focused trailer
Their trailer is amazing: Gameplay starts in 6 seconds, someone calls you a “B*tch.” Classic trailer moves. Xalavier hired his long-time trailer maker to work on this one. Again, by releasing a lot of games you find out who the great collaborators are.
Step 7) Launch your Steam page as part of the big show
Xalavier had his Steam page approved by Valve earlier but left it unpublished. Then he hit the Steam page “go live button” exactly 10 minutes before his trailer ran on the PC Gamer Show.
Here is the moment Xalavier introduced his game to the PC Gamer Show
Also the team shot off posts on every single social media platform they have a presence on. They also linked to the game from all of their previous game’s Steam pages.
Step 8) Launch your Demo as part of the show too
After the page went live, he realized the demo was not attached to the page. So he fixed that within 10 minutes.
Step 9) Steam Next Fest 24 hours later
The combo of the PC Gamer Show, amazing trailer, and demo earned I Am Your Beast 15,000 wishlists within the first 24 hours. The PC Gamer Show happened to occur 24 hours before Steam Next Fest. This means that I Am Your Beast had one of the greatest wishlist velocities among games participating and was therefore featured in the top 10 trending games at the very start of the festival.
As a result, the game earned another 16,000 wishlists in the first 24 hours of Steam Next Fest.
So in 48 hours I Am Your Beast earned 31,000 wishlists. Strange Scaffold’s previous hit game (El Paso, Elsewhere) took more than 2 years to earn the same number.
Bonus benefit
With all the attention I Am Your Beast earned, players were excited to learn more about the developer. Xalavier saw sales for all their games increase in the wake of the new game’s announcement.
So wait? Was I Wrong?
At this point after seeing this amazing strategy, you might be thinking, “Chris! Are you now changing your mind about the recommendation to participate in the last Next Fest before launch?”
No.
There is just another option now.
Basically, you must satisfy all of these conditions for this new strategy to work:
- You think your game is interesting enough to go viral.
- You can have a demo ready at the same time you announce the game.
- You are an experienced enough dev to make sure that your demo isn’t going to be a buggy mess because you can’t do widespread beta testing before the announce.
- You are prepared to announce in June. I don’t think this strategy would work for the February or October Steam Next Fest because there is no big showcase immediately proceeding them.
- You can get one of the top 4 showcases to feature you and have the luck and talent to get a free spot or enough cash to afford a paid spot.
If you can do all that, then you might be able to do the Summer Showcase + Steam Next fest announce strategy. BUT if any of the factors I list above don’t occur, I don’t think you should announce your game and then immediately enter Steam Next Fest. Instead, you should use the basic strategy of waiting until the last Steam Next Fest before you launch.
Note that another one of the top 50 most played demos from Steam Next Fest was Tactical Breach Wizards. That game is using the traditional “Last Steam Next Fest Before Launch” strategy. They have had their steam page live for at least 6 YEARS. That game went viral by also getting featured by the PC Gaming Show. Just because the steam page has been around for a long time doesn’t mean that it can’t still go viral. People do not get “tired” of your game if it is good. Gamers are always fully rested or fully caffeinated or both. They do not get tired.
Strategy Summary
So many new indies say “I am horrible at marketing!” or “I love game dev but hate the marketing side of things.” After digging a bit deeper I often find developers say they hate marketing because they feel that being “good” at marketing means they must be gregarious extroverts who are the life of the party. One whole aspect of marketing is called “SOCIAL media” afterall! That “SOCIAL” word alone scares enough introverted developers into hating marketing.
In today’s blog I hope I convinced you that marketing is primarily strategic. It is about using your resources at the right time to play off each other. In fact, it kind of reminds me of playing Slay the Spire where you must lay down cards in certain sequences to create a chain reaction of combos that multiply each other to create outsized effects.
Marketing is a tactical science.
I want you to walk away from this realizing that victory goes to the most tactical developer, not the most bubbly and social one.