On Tuesday I posted about the big spring showcases and which ones performed the best. In today’s post I am diving deep into both the top and bottom performing games.

My hope here is to help you figure out how you can get the most out of these showcases and avoid some of the factors that might result in lower conversions from the showcase.

The targeted showcases

Same as in the earlier blog post I am looking at the 4 showcases that aired during the Spring 2025 season. This analysis is built from the data collated by ​Seyed Nasrollahi​.

Top performers

What games did well in these festivals? I have highlighted many of the games here in this chart. Here are a couple deep-dives into the games and what their trailer and genre can tell us about doing well in a showcase.

Tempest Rising (+5320) (Galaxies) 

Number 1 game across all showcases. It is a retro rps nailing the vibe of Command & Conquer (even having the same composer). RTS is hard, bu this one pulled it off. 3D Realms had a number of big hits in these showcases (like Painkiller)

Note however, that the extremely high follower count increase is most likely due to the game also going into Early Unlock on the day of the Galaxies video (April 17th) and Full launch on April 18th. That means that a lot of the follower growth is due to Steam algorithm magic in the form of Popular Upcoming / New & Trending AND the influencer push they did. So good for them, but their appearance in Galaxies is just part of their success (But it is like I said a good use of the 3-legged-stool strategy).

Frostrail (+2341 followers)  (triple-i initiative) 

Popular genre: coop open world survival craft is HUGE. Also a popular setting (Snowpiercer vibes). This was the world announcement of the game so they also got into an IGN featured video and several other influencer videos talking about the game. Always good to pair a new game announcement to these showcases. 

Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core (+2321) (triple-i initiative) 

This was the 3rd highest earning game across all showcases. 

I think the biggest driver of the success is that this came from:

  1. It was the second video in the showcase.If you look at the youtube viewership chart on hover, it looks like the first three and the last 4 trailers have much more visibility. 
  1. It is a well known studio with previous hits (Ghost Ship Games), and the game uses IP from 2 other hit games Deep Rock Galactic and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. 
  2. Popular genre. Shooting, crafty-buildy, mine-y. 

Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 (+1545) (PC Gaming show)

RPGs are huge. Remake of a popular game from one of the most well known brands in gaming: Dungeons & Dragons.

What I find fascinating about this is with this pedigree you would assume it would be the #1 earning game. But the 3 games that earned more than this are all indie-scale games. Big top tier indie, but the gaming audience is hungry for new experiences and they aren’t fooled by just the biggest brands in the industry. This is why I am still confident about indie games our chances as small indies to succeed. 

Neverway (+1510)   (triple-i initiative) 

One other thing to notice about these trailers is that many of them don’t start with gameplay. They often start with slow pan environments! They do the slow cinematic shots that I always say NEVER DO! Well there is a no-gameplay-opening exception for showcases. You have my permission to do slow pan, cinematic, “in a world,” no gameplay trailers here because you have a captive audience that is sitting through the whole show. They won’t click away to screenshots or swipe to the next video on social media. 

Neverway threads this needle quite well. They show vibes but also some gameplay indicating this is a top down adventure game. 

This was the first trailer shown at triple-i and it did very well earning wise. 

Railborn (+2232) PC Gamer show

Popular genre builder and trains are so hot this year (see Frostrail). I talked to the games creator Chris McQuinn and here was his recommendation for getting a trailer that performs well:

hook matters. We started making Railborn in a known crowded genre but were confident in our vision for the hook. Then we showed the hook. I know it sounds simple, but it is so incredibly easy along the way to get diverted with other ideas, try to copy what others are doing, or lose focus of what you were originally making. I think that’s natural because game development is such a creative craft yet not helpful when it comes to marketing. I just have a sticky note on my monitor that says “Hook”. The PC Gaming show was a huge boon for us, no question about it. We were so grateful for inclusion, and the extra exposition they gave the Railborn trailer. I’ll add that we had a huge outreach in conjunction with the showcase – so it is hard to tell what part of the momentum ball was due to this or that. We hit about 140k wishlists in our first week.

Chris McQuinn

Lowest performers

I show this data not to shame these games but just so you can see whether or not it is worth it to participate and pay all that money. All these games look fun and are high quality. So be nice! By showing them I hope to give you an idea of maybe your game is not a right fit for showcases and save you $15,000+.

Endless Legend II (+1130)  (triple-i)

Endless Legend II did fine when it released 3 days ago! It also launched this week and has over 4200 CCU at the time I write this. Even among showcases if I rank its 48 hour follower increase as a result of triple-i, it’s in the top 15% of all games across all festivals. 

However, I am interested in looking at this game because if you look at the triple-i showcase’s viewer graph you can see a remarkable decline in viewers. I have highlighted it here in red.

Why? What’s wrong with this trailer? Well, it’s an ENDLESS series of slow panning environment shots while a British man reads lore to you. There is barely any actual gameplay. 

If you have limited funds and this showcase is one of your big moments, show gameplay. People just don’t like these slow panning lore dumps. 

Tears of Metal (+987)

That’s a sharp decline too. What’s going on with this trailer?

That is for musou-style scottish battler Tears of Metal. The trailer actually gets right into gameplay and it looks fun. Maybe people don’t like bagpipe music? There is a ton of bagpipe music. 

So maybe cool the bagpipes?

OPUS Prism Peak (+702)  (triple-i)

The next dramatic decline in triple-i viewership was for this trailer for OPUS Prism Peak.

This game does show gameplay but stylistically it is Anime and narrative using a camera mechanic similar to Pokemon Snap. 

Maybe it is a mismatch of genre? Maybe people just don’t like the mechanic? It could be that overall these showcase favor more hardcore PC audiences?

The Alters (+722 triple-i) (+392 Pc Gaming) 

The Alters gets the big money award because they were in two showcases with two different trailers each much much longer than the typical 1 minute trailer. 

triple-i is a whopping 3:23 and pc gaming 1:30. Assuming The Alters got the market rate they paid $52,000 to triple-i and $105,000 to PC Gaming. 

If you look at the triple viewership graph you can see people steadily getting tire of the long trailer and skipping ahead

However the PC Gaming version of the trailer is much more appealing and didn’t have the same dropoff.

If you notice though, despite triple-i showing a dropoff for the longer trailer they had much better results at +722 followers($72/follower from triple-i and only +392 for PC Gaming.

Just consider the cost effectiveness of the two festivals. The Alters earned followers at a rate of $72/follower from triple-i vs $267/follower with PC Gaming. 

Again, triple-i is an amazing value. 

Also, despite all the money The Alters spent, they are not the top-earning game of the festival. It is amazing how if you have the right game in the right spot you can out-perform well funded, big-studio games.

What genre do best at these showcases?

Looking at the top 5 games from each of the festivals 

  • Open World Survival Craft 4
  • FPS 4
  • Dude with a sword adventure 4
  • RPG 3
  • Sports / Racing 2
  • Farming 1
  • RTS 1
  • Rhythm 1
  • Strategy 1

Note that Simulation games are hot, but they don’t show up here in the numbers, tower defense, building games, idle. 

triple-i

  • Frostrail 4682 (OWSC)
  • Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core 7813 (Coop action FPS)
  • Neverway 5550 (Pixelart RPG / lifesim (and student of Wishlist & Visibility Masterclass)
  • Over the Hill 1855 (Racing)
  • Morbid Metal 1633 (Dude with a sword adventure)

PC Gaming show

  • Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights 2 3091  (RPG)
  • Railborn 2232 (OWSC)
  • Mandrake 2006 (Farming)
  • Morbid Metal 1993  (Dude with a sword adventure)
  • Berserk or Die 1506 (2D Dude with a sword adventure)

Galaxies

  • Tempest Rising 5320  (RTS)
  • RuneScape: Dragonwilds 3316 (RPG)
  • Lost Skies 2214 (OWSC)
  • Covenant 1495 (2D Dude with a sword adventure)
  • UNBEATABLE 1053 (Rhythm)

Future games show

  • Painkiller 2637 (FPS)
  • Romestead 1740 (OWSC)
  • FBC Firebreak 1686  (FPS)
  • Frosthaven  1523 (Strategy)
  • Pioner 1508 (FPS)

What games underperformed?

I truly believe that the biggest limitation isn’t “visibility” it is making the right game. 

For each showcase I looked at the 5 games with the lowest growth in 48 hour follower growth. Then looking at the genres you will notice there are fewer of the “popular” genres of RPGs, FPS, Open World Survival Crafts, Dude with a sword. But there are so many more of the underperforming genres like puzzle, party game, platformers.

  • OWSC 3
  • FPS 2
  • Action Adventure 1
  • RPG 1 (Pixelart)
  • Platformer 1
  • Party Game 1
  • Rhythm 1
  • Puzzle 2
  • Sports 1
  • Visual Novel 1
  • Dude with a sword adventure 1
  • City builder 1
  • Survivors like 1
  • Automation 1

Even when you give all the visibility in the world to a puzzle game, it still underperforms. Genre matters.

Another thing that impacts how well the showcase converts is the type of announcement. A trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide free update for a game released in 2022 did very poorly. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor a hugely successful game had a trailer about its latest update and it only got 74

The world premier announcements are what perform the best. 

So here is the full list of underperforming showcase games

PCGAMING SHOW

GALAXIES

FUTURE GAMES

TRIPLE-I

Summary

So if I sum up everything I have learned about this here is how to do the best.

What works well

  • If you have a 3D game with a ton of explosions in genres like Open World Survival Craft, RPG, or a dude carrying a sword going on an adventure, this festival will do well for you. 
  • A trailer that gets right to the gameplay
  • A big announcement preferably a world announcement of a new game

What can hold you back

  • Pixelart  (but not always)
  • Puzzle games, Narrative and visual novel genres, Platformers
  • A trailer for an already released game and you are just reminding people of a DLC or a new content pack
  • Lore heavy trailers without gameplay
  • Longer trailers don’t mean better, 1 minute is fine and there is no bonus to making the trailer longer.