Steam has been rolling out a new presentation trying to dispel some more myths that people keep spouting about visibility, wishlists, sales, and “the algorithm.” They actually posted the new presentation slides here which you can read and download here. I heard the presentation and I wanted to provide some Continue Reading
What is the Discovery Queue?
How games get real visibility One of the negative side effects about my writing about amazing success is that developers who are just starting out can see games getting 100s of wishlists a day (that is not hyperbole) while they are stuck getting 1-3 per day. To a new developer Continue Reading
Estimating Early Access success
A couple weeks ago I presented a very high level look at Early access. What I found was that for some games it was actually better to release in Early Access (and go full 1.0) that it was to just launch in full you can read the full analysis here. Continue Reading
Frequently asked questions about Steam Next Fest
I just left a Zoom call for Valve’s 3-times-a-year pre-Next-Fest Q&A. It is a great service Valve does to support developers before before the big show (Next Fest starts in October 9th) and I would recommend you attend them if you can. I have been to just about every one Continue Reading
How to get wishlists using Twitter game aggregators
So everyone knows the CanYouPetTheDog twitter account. However, from multiple developers, I have heard that getting tweeted by them doesn’t really move wishlist numbers (well not enough to justify the hours it takes to add the code and art assets necessary for a pet-able dog). However, recently, multiple developers have Continue Reading
Should you do Early Access?
This post is Part 1 of my series of articles looking Early Access. To read part 2 all about Estimating EA success based on your EA launch numbers, click here. People always ask me, should I do Early Access? For first time developers, I almost always said no. Just release Continue Reading
Was 2022 a bad year for indies?
In January of this year (2023) I did a little thought experiment: “how many games each year got at least 1000 reviews?” The Steam algorithm is basically a giant filter. When a game launches Steam looks at early sales and if it likes what it sees, the algorithm determines that Continue Reading
Where visibility comes from
But first a word from the author This Thursday July 13th I am launching version 2.0 of my Wishlist & Visibility Master class. Here is a preview of the new class. The new version will launch at a deep discount. So you should definitely pick it up when it goes Continue Reading
How to market a multiplayer, the Battlebit Remastered story
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