This is a showcase:

They usually take the form of a video, posted online, often broadcast live. They feature back to back game trailers played in a somewhat random order. Sometimes these showcases are hosted by a gaming celebrity who you are tangentially aware of because of their appearance in a AAA game, sometimes there is a dev interview about how “excited they are to finally being able to share this game with the world.”

Also, these events often have a correlating Steam page. 

These showcases are some of the biggest stages that you can use for major marketing beats like announcing your game, a demo, DLC or a release date. The downside is they can be very expensive. Typically in the $15,000-$250,000 USD per MINUTE range.

WAIT HOW MUCH?

The actual data from these events is leaked online and can find it if you are good at being a detective or if you reach out to organizers you can find them. 

Here is one official data sheet.

Click here to see the actual pitch document trying to sell you on buying a slot

Full list of events and prices

Note these prices may be different going forward or may be incorrect because they were leaked online. But you at least get a ballpark idea of how much they cost. 

Costs PER MINUTE:

  1. The Triple-I Initiative: $15K
  2. Galaxies Gaming Showcase: $27K (£20K)
  3. Future Games Show Spring: $35K (£26K)
  4. Future Games Show Gamescom: $47K (£35K)
  5. Future Games Show Summer: $51K (£38K)
  6. PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted: $54K (£40K)
  7. PC Gaming Show (Summer): $70K (£52K)
  8. Opening Night Live Pre-Show: $121K (€102.5K)
  9. Opening Night Live Main Show: $242K (€205K)
  10. Summer Game Fest: $250K

One caveat is that many of these showcase events give FREE slots to small time indies that they think are interesting and deserving of the spotlight. For instance, Summer Game Fest often gives a few free slots to promising indie games. 

The developer of Choo Choo Charles and the upcoming Cuffbust details how Summer Game Fest organizers tracked him down to give him a free slot:

I have also heard that if you are going to pay for a slot you can negotiate the price down a bit. So if you don’t get a free slot, at least TRY to bargain them down. Nobody pays retail I am told. 

Additional costs

To do well in these events you need a good trailer. You will also have to hire a professional trailer editor and the good ones can cost $10K for a 30 sec to 1 minute trailer.

The data on whether they are worth it

Many of my posts about successful games that had major wishlist inflection points found their initial visibility at these big showcases. 

But but but…. repeat after me…. “But that is survivorship bias.” 

To fix that, we need to look at all games that appeared in these festivals and determine how MANY hit it big.

Enter game developer Seyed Nasrollahi who was wondering if any were worth it for announcing his upcoming game so he used the Gamalytic API to check the follower increase for every game that appeared in the targeted showcases. He was gracious enough to share the data with me so I could pass it on to you.

The dataset

Seyed picked out 4 showcases that were big enough to generate substantial traffic, but were slightly smaller than the ones put on by Geoff Keighley (those run at an exorbitant $250K+ per minute)

He picked 4 festivals that occurred between March 20th to June 8th)

The targeted showcases

Seyed compiled a list of every single game that appeared across all of these events. He collected how many followers each game gained in the 48hours after the event.

Then he subtracted out the baseline daily wishlist rate by sampling the number of followers earned in the days before the showcase. So for any data that shows 48hr follower increase, that is the number of followers gained by the game ABOVE their typical daily earnings. 

Remember follower count correlates to wishlists. I typically just multiply followers by 10 (the math is just easier) even though the exact number is closer to 9 . But all data here is listed in followers gained. 

In the end there were 214 games across the 4 festivals that were in this data set.

The results

So here is every game across all the festivals in one giant graph

If I find the median earnings you get this

Other details

Here are other details about the showcases featured in this study.

Note all 30th, Median, 70th percentile numbers are the 48 hour net follower increase above baseline.

ShowcaseList price per minuteNumber of games featuredBack of napkin gross revenue30th percentile Median 70th percentile Median Dollar per followerNumber of +
Galaxies$27K (£20K)53$1,431,0005780238 $3370
Triple-i initiative$15K ✔36 ✔$540,000444✔889✔1245 ✔$16 ✔6
Future Games Show$35K (£26K)49$1,715,000209336526$1040
PC Gaming Show$70K (£52K)76$4,104,000255.5395694$1770

I probably should have titled this “Should you apply to showcases and why is Tipple-i the best?” It is amazing. They had the highest median gain in followers and also the cheapest price.  I sure hope they don’t increase their prices after reading this blog post.

Notice that they don’t even have a host! It is just trailers back to back. Love this comment from one of the viewers

Also interesting is Tripple-I puts straight up trailers in the front, and then dev commentary segments at the end. If you look at the youtube-provided viewership graph you can see most people just watch the trailers. 

Players just want to see games! No fluff! They don’t want to see expensive talking heads ham it up for the camera or flashy stages that look like a game show. Just show the games.

Here is the official statement from the FAQ over at triple-i

“We’re simply a bunch of studios banding together to share exciting news to our players, in a short show packed with back-to-back trailers. That’s it – no extra fluff, no ads, no host, just games. We’re talking world premieres, exclusive gameplay, launch dates, demo drops and more!”

Don’t ever change Triple-i.

So for most showcases you are paying exorbitant prices to hire a spokesmodel that most game shoppers wish would just get out of the way so they can watch the gameplay trailers. 

So are they worth it?

If you just look at the wishlist earnings for the median game, it doesn’t seem like it is that good of a deal. 

But that is assuming that the event is the only marketing beat at the time.  

In my opinion these festivals are good if you think of them as one leg of a 3-legged stool. When you pay for these festivals you are getting guaranteed visibility on a date. Then you can coordinate other activities that correspond at the same time that benefit from that boost such as launching a demo or getting on the front page of Steam Next Fest. 

They also carry a bunch of prestige with them that you can leverage for other visibility. 

For instance, We Harvest Shadows did Opening Night Live AND paired it with an IGN trailer featuring AND launched a demo to get on the front page of Steam’s Free Trending Tab.

Similarly, the I Am Your Beast developers paired their PC Gaming showcase with a demo launch and Steam Next Fest. 

3-legged stool.

Summary: should you pay the big bucks for a showcase?

  • If this is your first game and you don’t have an artist and cobbling it together with store bought art and you are making your own trailer because you don’t have one, no. Do not enter into a showcase.
  • If you have already seen some interest from the teaser content from your game. Maybe you went viral on TikTok with just a 10 second clip. Yes, assuming you can also line up other opportunities like IGN trailer featuring. Also maybe you can get a free slot because you bragged about how you went viral on TikTok. 
  • If you have the money and the $30k-50k cost is just one part of your overall marketing budget. Yes. (Just don’t blow your entire marketing budget on one showcase – that is too risky).
  • If you have a rich dad or a rich government that gives you free money. Yes. Do it.

Part 2 coming soon

Later this week I am going to do a bonus Part 2 blog post looking at individual games that did really well or underperformed to see if we can determine any trends. 

Stay tuned.

If you participated in any of these showcases I featured and want to provide additional background information, contact me at chrisz@howtomarketagame.com or zukalous on discord.

Additional reading

Consider Game Discover Co’s blog post looking at summer showcases