This is a story about how 3 developers managed to make a massively multiplayer online shooter that gained over 800,000 wishlists before launch resulting in over 87,323 simultaneous players. In the 2 weeks since they launched, they sold 1,800,000 UNITS. This is one of those amazing successes for an indie Continue Reading
Marketing your Steam game before you have a Steam Page: The Tiny Glade story
Tiny Glade In December of 2022, Anastasia Opara and Tomasz Stachowiak launched the Steam page for their beautiful castle building sandbox game Tiny Glade and earned 10,000 wishlists within 24 hours. Within 4 months, they earned even more and are now one of the top 50 wishlisted games on Steam Continue Reading
Launching a Steam Coming Soon Page the right way
IMPORTANT: In early July I am launching Wishlist & Visibility Master class 2.0! To coincide with the exciting launch in July I will be putting the course on DEEP DISCOUNT. So, if you can wait, don’t buy it until July. Join my mailing list to find out the moment it Continue Reading
Respect player’s time by making longer games
There is this phrase that people use a lot online that goes something like “I am making a short game, you know, a game that respects a player’s time.” I am not sure where that phrase “respects your time” came from…there was this 2015 Kotaku article by Patrick Klepek called Continue Reading
Why 1000 True Fans doesn’t really work for games
I had the honor of getting interviewed by the legend Keven Kelley for his Cool Tools Youtube show and podcast. In my interview I talk a little bit about games marketing at the end, but it is mostly about my love of optimizing my trip through an airport. If the Continue Reading
Tape To Tape: How an indie sports title generated amazing sales
Here is what I love about Steam and why I write so much about this platform – you can be a completely unknown dev (a twitter following of just over 3000), working on your first game, but if you target a long forgotten video game niche, you can quietly make Continue Reading
Steam’s themed events are huge opportunity for visibility and sales
Last week was Steam Puzzle Fest and for the games that participated they got a ton of sales and wishlists. Here is puzzle and solitaire game guru Grey Alien Games reporting their success. The festival also showcases upcoming games and I also got to see some wishlist data Game Wishlists Continue Reading
What is the difference between a Steam Wishlist and a Follower?
We tell fans to “wishlist and follow.” We send them to this button. But really what do these buttons do after someone pushes them? The various ways that fans can interact with your game, your company, or your publisher is so complicated, I made this chart to try and explain Continue Reading
What if Valve Didn’t Take 30 Percent?
Let’s do a thought experiment: Most indie games make almost no money and what money they do make, Valve takes 30% for everyone and actually takes a lower percentage to games that earn $10 Million and $50 Million. I see a lot of people suggest that Valve should just wave Continue Reading
What happens when the mainstream media covers indie games?
Here are two stories about what happens when the news for normal people covers indie games. Does it matter? Does it drive wishlists? TL;DR: No it does not help you to get covered by regular news. But please read because these are kinda funny stories. Story #1: What happens when Continue Reading