Know Your Market Making Indie Games that Sell Erik Johnson Infinite Monkeys Entertainment Background 2 Background 3 4 5 Why Does this Matter? ● It’s not all about the money • But being able to pay your rent is nice ● It’s about having realistic expectations 6 Make Something People Want 7 Selling Indie Games on Steam Right Now 8 Techniques 9 10 Steam Reviews ● Purchase Type ● Steam Purchasers ● Other ● Language ● Positive / Negative 11 Boxleiter Method ● Players ~= Reviews * 50 ● 95% interval is 17 to 158 12 Resources ● Steam Reviews - store.steampowered.com ● Steam Spy - steamspy.com ● Is There Any Deal? - isthereanydeal.com ● Steam Charts - steamcharts.com ● SteamDB - steamdb.info 13 Trends & Factors 14 Quality “Just make a good game!” 15 Quality - Life Goes On ● Awards include: ● PAX 10 Selection ● Famitsu Magazine Gold Award ● 96% positive Steam user score ● 77 Metacritic ● Significant quality bump from Done to Death update 16 Spearman’s rho = 0.31 17 18 rho = 0.44 19 Genre Or: Should You Make a Puzzle-Platformer in 2018? 20 21 25 20 15 10 5 0 FPS Rogue-like City Builder AcAon RPG Metroidvania Puzzle-Pla-ormer Multiples of Estimated Median Revenue22 Visuals ● Graphics and art define a game’s first impression ● Visuals really matter to a lot of players 23 24 25 26 Visual Distinctiveness ● Michal Trněný’s masters thesis research: ● Used machine learning to predict market success from a game’s Steam store page ● The average saturation and number of distinct colours of a game’s screenshots were one of the top factors in predicting success 27 Tone Does the Steam audience prefer darker and grittier games? 28 29 rho = 0.45 30 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 E E10 T M Multiples of Estimated Median Revenue! for Games with ESRB Ratings31 25 20 15 10 5 0 Dark Crime Colorful Lovecra;ian Dark Fantasy Family Friendly Survival Horror Puzzle-Pla4ormer Multiples of Estimated Median Revenue32 Playtime ● Long average playtimes are surprisingly valuable! ● Contributing factors: ● Seeing what your friends are playing ● Steam’s discovery systems ● Streamers playing a game 33 34 rho = 0.55 35 rho = 0.55 36 Streaming – Player Response ● YouTube and Twitch are huge ● But value isn’t universal 37 38 39 Multiplayer & Community ● Can a community get involved? ● Level editors, mod support, leaderboards? ● Do your players spread your game? ● Multiplayer? 40 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 Moddable Level Editor Team-Based 4 Player Local Online Co-Op Puzzle-Pla4ormer Multiples of Estimated Median Revenue41 Takeaways ● These are only broad trends to consider ● But you should be aware of them! ● Are you making something that people want? ● Is it a fit for the marketplace? 42 What About Targeting a Niche? ● Yes, find an audience that wants what you are making! ● Be sure it is big enough to meet your commercial goals ● Is your niche saturated? 43 44 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Puzzle-Pla/ormer Programming Multiples of Estimated Median Revenue45 It’s Not About Cloning ● This is not the path to success! ● Lots of room to appeal to the market creatively 46 Be Aware of Market Trends 25 20 15 10 5 0 FPS Rogue-like City Builder AcAon RPG Metroidvania Puzzle-Pla-ormer 47 Questions to Ask ● Are there recent examples of successful games in your genre? ● Have you looked at unsuccessful games in your genre? 48 Epilogue for Life Goes On ● We’ve continued to support the game ● Localizations have helped a lot ● Constantly looked for opportunities 49 Learn More! ● The Clark Tank on YouTube ● SteamProphet.com ● The Co-Optional Podcast on YouTube 50 Thank You! ● Twitter: @erikejohnson ● Reach out, I’d love to talk! 51.