Discovery
CompanyJapan
Documents about Discovery
What Do Players Really Want From New Games, Anyhow?
The 2022 PC and Console Insights survey, commissioned by Google for Games, provides a comprehensive analysis of player preferences, discovery habits, and consumption patterns.
- Video platforms and social recommendations are the primary discovery drivers, with 40% of players using YouTube and 38% relying on friends and family, compared to only 16-17% influenced by platform-specific dashboards.
- Gameplay videos are a critical conversion factor, swaying 45% of players to try a new title, while 51% of players are primarily motivated by their preferred genre.
- Player engagement is highly fragmented, as 84% of gamers play multiple titles simultaneously, with 20% managing four or more games at once.
TikTok: Practical Advice for Big Discovery Wins
This analysis explores modern game discovery trends, focusing on the strategic use of TikTok for marketing and the financial viability of niche mobile game portfolios.
- TikTok serves as a potent discovery engine, with one case study demonstrating 120 million views resulting in 60,000 Steam wishlists.
- Success on TikTok requires a 'messy' and personal aesthetic, prioritizing 1-3 second hooks and on-screen captions over high-production trailers.
- Viral engagement on social platforms does not guarantee financial success, as evidenced by a project that only slightly exceeded its $50,000 crowdfunding goal despite millions of views.
Who's Winning Game Discovery on Discord?
This analysis examines the evolving landscape of game discovery and performance metrics, focusing on Discord community engagement and Steam sales predictors.
- Daily follower growth on Steam in the 90 days prior to launch is a stronger predictor of commercial success than total wishlists, showing a 0.87 correlation with initial sales.
- Discord discovery algorithms now prioritize recent net growth over total server size, leading top-performing communities to aggressively prune inactive members to boost online-to-total user ratios.
- Low wishlist and follower counts on Steam are reliable indicators of poor financial performance, effectively precluding a title from becoming a commercial success.
Avoiding Ineffective (or Scam!) Discovery Interactions with Influencers
The primary objective of this analysis is to address the prevalence of fraudulent influencer interactions and provide strategies for developers to navigate the complex landscape of game discovery.
- Approximately 95% of incoming key requests for Steam titles are illegitimate, often originating from scammers seeking keys for gray market resale or personal collection.
- Scammers frequently employ sophisticated tactics, including spoofing the identities of prominent YouTubers and using bots to artificially inflate follower counts on platforms like Twitch.
- Developers should implement proactive filtering, such as removing generic contact emails from Steam pages and using hidden HTML 'honey pots' to trap scraping bots.
Who Are the Top YouTube Influencers for Indie Game Discovery?
Securing influencer coverage is a critical driver for the success of independent video games, as organic reach often spreads through a delicate network of content creators.
- Influencer coverage is the primary driver for indie game commercial success, as demonstrated by the performance of titles like The Mortuary Assistant and PlateUp! in August 2022.
- Developers should prioritize 'streamability' in game design to effectively leverage the four key influencer archetypes: variety streamers, long-term engagement streamers, genre specialists, and emerging diverse content creators.
- To avoid being overshadowed by discounted AAA titles, developers should strategically schedule game launches to avoid dates immediately preceding major Steam seasonal sales.
Sony's Multiplatform Future and Its Discovery Effects
Sony Interactive Entertainment is undergoing a significant strategic pivot, shifting its focus toward live service games and multiplatform expansion.
- Sony is pivoting toward a multiplatform strategy to reduce reliance on console hardware, targeting a jump in PC revenue from $80 million in FY2021 to $300 million in FY2022.
- The company is aggressively transitioning its first-party catalog to live service models, leveraging the acquisition of Bungie to gain expertise in recurring monetization.
- Digital add-on revenue, including DLC and in-game purchases, has become a critical growth driver, increasing from 5% of PlayStation Store spend in FY2016 to over 25% in FY2021.
How TABS Creator Landfall Got Discovery Right!
Landfall Games, the Swedish developer behind Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS), achieves significant market discovery by prioritizing visual legibility, user-generated content, and unconventional release strategies.
- Landfall Games successfully kickstarts multiplayer player bases by offering titles for free during the first 24 to 100 hours, resulting in three million downloads for Totally Accurate Battlegrounds and one million for Knightfall.
- Visual legibility and physics-based interactions are critical for market discovery, as they allow games to go viral easily through short-form video content like GIFs and YouTube clips.
- Sandbox and survival genres provide smaller development teams more flexibility than AAA genres because players prioritize creative experimentation over the high-polish standards required for competitive shooters or MOBAs.
How Ravenous Devils Made a Killing and Earned Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars
The success of the indie title Ravenous Devils serves as a case study for effective market positioning and Steam visibility strategies for small development teams.
- Ravenous Devils achieved a strong commercial launch with 18,685 sales from wishlists and an additional 42,430 direct purchases, resulting in a 18.4% wishlist conversion rate.
- The developers successfully leveraged a 'hook-driven' strategy by combining popular cooking management mechanics with a distinct horror theme, effectively targeting a specific sub-community rather than attempting broad genre mashups.
- Maintaining a public Steam demo for a year served as a critical 'fish hook' for influencer discovery, leading to significant organic coverage that drove visibility and sustained interest.
Switch Game Discovery Success? Tell Us More
This analysis examines the competitive landscape of the Nintendo Switch eShop and the ongoing legal challenges facing Valve’s Steam platform.
- Nintendo sold 235 million software units in the 2021-2022 fiscal year, with first-party titles driving approximately 80% of that total volume.
- Digital downloads accounted for 66% of Sony’s total software sales during the 2021-2022 period, reflecting a broader industry shift toward digital distribution.
- The indie title Arise: A Simple Story sold 10,000 units on the Switch in eight days by utilizing a $9.99 launch price and cross-promotion to stand out in a market with over 30 weekly releases.
The Best and Worst Ways to Pitch Media for Game Discovery
Effective game discovery in the modern market requires a strategic approach to media relations and social media engagement.
- Consistent TikTok posting, ranging from daily to several times a week, can drive significant growth in Steam wishlists, with one developer reporting an increase from seven to thirty-two daily wishlists.
- Successful media pitches require concise, functional communication, including short subject lines and layered key art without logos to facilitate editorial use.
- Developers should avoid generic pitches, disingenuous claims of familiarity with a journalist's work, and pitching non-newsworthy updates like standard sales or Kickstarter launches.
Should User-Generated Content Be a Key Game Discovery Focus?
User-generated content (UGC) has evolved from a niche hobby into a primary driver of game discovery and long-term player engagement.
- User-generated content (UGC) has transitioned from a niche modding hobby to a primary driver of long-term player engagement and game discovery.
- Premium titles like PUBG and Fall Guys have demonstrated that transitioning to free-to-play models is a proven strategy for achieving massive year-over-year revenue growth.
- Console discovery is increasingly driven by curated 'mod drops' that function as weekly engagement events, while monetization models are evolving from community patronage toward integrated, full-scale marketplaces.
Hidden Discovery Insight: Analyzing Player Review Word Length
Analysis of Steam player behavior suggests a strong correlation between review word length and player "casualness."
- Review word length serves as a reliable metric for player persona, as casual games generate a higher frequency of one-word reviews compared to complex, niche titles.
- Long-form reviews are strongly correlated with 'core' player behavior, characterized by larger Steam library sizes and higher average in-game playtimes.
- Tencent’s global gaming investment strategy reached a massive scale of $32.4 billion in 2021.