2 Hours of answering Steam Questions (Please don't watch this you have games to work on)

Um, see when you launch a demo, you got one shot. This is new for 3.0 is you have one shot to launch that demo, right? One shot because trending free is you got one shot on that. You can email everybody who wishlisted it to say new demo one time. Okay, there's a lot that happens one time with the demo. But you need And so what you want to do when you launch your demo is you want to get as many people on at the same time to play it. And so you've you got to fire off the wish list email. You got to get people to wishlist it. And the way and this is to that other question about the play test versus demo. And here's another thing that I didn't mention. Way Steam Works is a bunch of curators, secret curators out there and they look at your game. You I show you who to give your your game to and then it's up to the curators to go, "This is good. We're going to feature this." But if they if your game just doesn't have that oomph, that goodness, then the curator's going to go, "Let's put this in my pocket. maybe later. That's the difference.

That's why I never guarantee 75,000 wish list because you have a part of this. It's not just me. You and me, we fuse together. When you take this course, you and me mentally fuse. Okay. So, uh, version 3.0 of the wish list in visibility masterass is now live. So, the Steam algorithm is constantly changing. Not as bad as everybody thinks, but it's changing. And so, I have to update the course. So, I redid the whole course and um I show all kinds of stuff here. Let me show you my favorite stuff that's new. Okay, so what happened was um let me find it. Okay, so the most important thing for your marketing I think in the new world is a demo. A demo is critical. It's crucial, crucial, crucial. But I'm not a game designer. I'm a stupid marketer who doesn't know anything. I have no taste. I have no appreciation for the arts. I'm just a craft marketer. So, what I did was I interviewed devs who have made

awesome awesome demos. Okay. I got um BlackTabby Games. They made Slay the Princess. What I did was I got their demo and I played through the demo and then um I had the designer, the developer of it on a call with me, watched me play the demo and I just commentated. I was like, "Oh, what am I doing here? Why is this why did you add this button here?" And they just told me exactly what it is. I also got Tom Salah from Bull Work do his and then I did Tiny Glade folks, folks from Tiny Glade. And what you'll see is here's all the new stuff. Um this is just the curriculum. You can you can scroll through it. So, that's my favorite new feature. Oh, I don't think I can do that. Um, I gotta do it through here. Um, if you expand it, you can see it. But, um, I I'll find them. I'll find them. But, there are live It's kind of hard to do. But, there are live interviews. Each one's like an hour because I'm playing through their demo. I'm like, "How long do you make a demo?" Because this is the

question I always get. How long do I make my demo? How do I not give too much stuff away? I asked these developers who made awesome demos. So, it is like three plus hours of content of me just playing the demo while the developer tells me why they did. It's like director's commentary. It's awesome. It's all up there in the course. That's the newest new feature. Um, but I also did all these new courses, uh, these new uh, classes within here like what social media hell month is. If you see a blue mark, that means something new has been added to this course. So, I've redone so much of this course for the new thing. I also got new branding because before it was boring corporate branding. I had um John of uh I can't remember his company's name but he did um witch hand and stuff. He designed some new character art for me and I'll be talking about that in a little bit. Okay, that's it uh for all the jibber jabber. Let's get to your questions. I don't want to I don't want to burn this up just talking about me. Let's talk about your game.

So, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go through shortest questions, get the best answers. Should we wait to announce our Steam page with an online festival or only do that uh for the demo and drop Steam version? No. Your launch of your demo is very important. And uh one thing I did updated with the Steam course uh this course here is I I lined it up so that you could have the best announce of your Steam page because the announce I find can get more sway with like um with festivals or trailer hosting YouTube channels and stuff. You can do a lot with announce. So I think you should hold off on the announce. And what I do is I I I give you some some guidelines on how to do it and I bracket it and I say don't do too much. bracket it in and what you like don't wait too long but what you want to do is do a little I call it the sniff around and you go to a bunch of people and tell you how to reach out to these people and say can you host the announce steam page and there's a whole thing there um and they they do it the other thing that's new

for this course is road mapaps so it's timing is of the essence you know it's like oh do this and then this there's all this priority stuff so one thing I added to this course are these spreadsheets these these sheets where you can um drag You can look at a timeline and I give you the step by step of how long should you wait, what other things you should play with. So I give you timelines and I do it for various types of games like wholesome games, horror games, if you're making quick release three month games, all that's there. So um I do think that you should wait Aaron, but it's it's there's a lot of factors that go into it. Okay, great question. I'm going to um mark his chat. After I answer your question, I mark it as chat just so I can make sure I don't answer the same question multiple times. How to approach launch discounts 10%. That's how you approach them. Do a 10%. All right, good luck. Uh the main thing is you just don't want to give too low and I think 10 is enough. You want to make it exciting so people like I'm going to jump on in anyway. 10%. I do 10%. Save your 20% after you've launched for a while. So that's your launch

discount. Good question. Uh key difference between Steam play test feature and Steam demo feature. Well, a play test is private and you can pull it away as fast as you want. Now, the way I advise in my master class is to use your play test as a practice demo. So, use the same content that you're going to put in your demo. Do it for a play test. Play test is a great way to do it so that not everybody can see it. You can control it. You can download keys and distribute just keys to a secret private group. So, play test is a much more controlled, much smaller way to get feedback. And then your demo is the launch. And I go through all this. Let me just show you. If you look at um this here's so to the question about Steam page launch I give step by step everything you need to do for Steam page launch and then see watch this I do a beta I have a whole section on how to run a beta so I explain what this is so I beta play test they're basically the same thing and then um and then we do post demo like how to launch the demo so that's uh it's all there all there ready

for you all that stuff. Okay. Uh, great question. Um, Mark Ash chat. Okay. U, what is the adequate good wish list ad per day for a niche game? It doesn't matter if it's niche or not. The Steam algorithm doesn't care. The Steam algorithm just wants money. So, it doesn't say like it doesn't have a separate thing for a niche game. It's not like, oh, this game's niche. We should we should give it. There's no curve. You're not graded on curve. It's like everybody is judged by the same eye of Steam. So, it doesn't matter if it's niche or not. Um, I say because here's the deal. You want to get to 7,000 wish lists so that you can get on popular app coming. Now, I think the main thing is the other thing that's important about Steam is it comes in leaps and bounds. It goes it's not it's not like, oh man, if I just tweet every day, I get a couple wish lists here and there, tuck them away, and I'm good to go. No, you are trying to get huge jumps in visibility. That's that's how it works. That's how Steam works. It's not like you just grinding away. It happens fast.

It happens in big jumps. Um, now what happens is after you get a jump, that typically means afterwards you get this nice high wish list rate. And so the the games when somebody emails me and they're like, I'm getting 100 wish lists a day. I'm like, good on you. You're doing good. You're hot. Um, that's what I typically see with the games that the algorithm loves and Steam players are excited about. You're typically seeing about 100 wish lists a day or more. And typically what happens is you launch your demo, you get covered by streamers, and those streamers are like, "This game's awesome." And then you just see like 100 wish list a day after that hopefully. And that's coming through the demo. So again, it's not, and this is the thing, folks, you don't grind your way to victory. It is, it comes in these big moments, and that's what this whole master class is all about. How to get these big moments. Okay, great question, Elena. All right, let me make you ask completed chat. Okay, elf, we've been told puzzle is a

bad genre for Steam, but how about puzzle simulation games? Think mini motorways or mini Metro. Okay. Um, here's the thing, folks. Um, I'm not going to I'm not going to answer too many genre questions that are like, "But what about this game?" It's I don't I don't know. I can tell you general genres and and so one thing that I'm going to avoid. I will skip your question. I'm sorry if you're like we're thinking of making a rogike. Is that a good idea? I don't know. I don't know what your your your genre is. I don't know how good your graphics are in in Rogue or whatever. These genres are huge. Okay. Um uh so I can't the genre and the type of game like some people have different definitions. So we're we're just speaking different languages unless I can play it and talk through it and various things. So, be careful folks. I'm going to give you some light answers about genre, but I can't I'm not going to answer any questions where you're like, "Chris, we're thinking about making a game with a cute character. Is that gonna be doing well? I don't know how cute it's a character. How am I

supposed to know?" Okay. So, my general thought on puzzle, like you said, the the puzzle um simulation. Again, I don't know what that quite means. Here's things that I've seen that are problems with that thing. Some people think they're making, and this is why I can't answer this in an easy way. I've seen several games, like one that was a train one, and I I'll I don't like to throw the person under the bus. So, if you really want to DM me and I'll tell you what I mean, but this game was like a a train game, making train stations, and people love making train stations and like tracks and stuff on Steam. They love it. It's like a simulation train builder. But then the game was actually a puzzle game. It was like here's 10 tracks and you have to pick those 10 tracks. It was turns out it was a puzzle game. There was like one solution, one solution only. and it was like, "You have to use the right tracks to get to the station. Can you solve the puzzle?" That made fans mad because it looked like a simulation game. And when they're like, "Great, I get to do whatever I want. I get as much track as I want. I get to

build whatever I want. I get to change terrain." And then they open it up and it's a puzzle game that's like, "You have 10 tracks and there's one solution." They're like, "Yuck." See, simulation fans want to do whatever they want. And it's getting me a little scared when you say it's a puzzle game because a puzzle game usually means one, maybe two solutions and then there's like a third star solution that's like super smart when I say simulation games. Players just want a sandbox. They want like five tools and no rules. Like here's my five types of tracks. I don't tell me what I can do and what I can't. I want to do this. That's my fear and that's why I can't quite answer it because I don't know what you mean by puzzle simulation. Try those games. See how they do. My advice to you is just play a ton of games, even the ones that failed, and see what where they are. You just got to play more games, Elf. So, that's my advice to everybody. If you're asking me genre questions, just play more games. Just literally like um what here's one of the things that I learned when I was uh doing the the commentary. I was talking to the Tiny Glade folks. I had both of the Tiny Glade folks. There's two of them. And we were going through and I was like,

"That's such a great idea that you did for the demo. They added some cool like uh reporting stuff when you had a bug." And it was it's a really cool thing. You'll see it when you get it. Um and um I was like, "How did you get this idea?" And they're like, "Oh, every next fest we play 50 demos between the two of us." I was like, "50 demos? I don't even play 50 demos." Let me tell you, the top game designers, the ones that make the big games that do very, very well. They play so many games. And I I've seen this from other devs that are successful. I'm like, "Oh yeah, how'd you find that?" "Oh, we played like a hundred games and we just wrote down the best ideas from each one." I was like, "Really?" And they're like, "Yeah, in the genre, we looked at the failures and the successes, and we just wrote it down. You have to play hundreds of games." Okay, hundreds. You're just not playing enough games, everybody. Okay. What feedback do you have? This is from uh Roderick Lucky. Have on an unknown developer starting a Steam page with a teaser trailer instead of a gameplay trailer. Make a gameplay trailer. Hold off. Hold off. Don't launch yet. I give you all the steps here on how to do it. You want a real trailer, a gameplay

trailer. Hold off. You want to go with a bang. And that's what I give in this class is all the things you need to do because your trailer is very key to getting that early visibility. A teasy trailer. I don't know what that quite means. Definitions are different, but gameplay is critical. And it's got to be a good trailer. A good trailer. Even if it's your first game, and even if you're like, "This is my first game." It's even more critical because when it's your previous game, you can use tricks to kind of get more onto your page, but more viewers onto your page from your old games. If you're a first-time dev, nothing, wait. There's no rush. There's no rush. Get a good gameplay trailer. Hold off, Roderric. Hold off. But if you're wondering, um um just the master class gives you because that trailer is key and I tell you exactly what to do with that trailer and how to use that trailer and show it to the right people so they cover you and then you get that first thing. It's like it's one of the best ways to get your initial trunch group of wish lists is

from that gameplay trailer. All right, Petari, can you explain trending free? Should we delay our demo to get more wish list and hopefully guarantee a spot on trending free? Yeah, so that's one of the new things that I added for 3.0 was how to get onto trending free. And I don't know exactly exactly how many wish lists. Okay, I don't know exactly how to get um uh the number of or I don't know exactly the number of wish lists yet, but what I've done in my research is I've seen it's right around 90 concurrent players. And so what you want to do when you launch your demo is you want to get as many people on at the same time to play it. And so you've you got to fire off the wish list email. You got to get people to wishlist it. And the way and this is to that other question about the play test versus demo. And here's another thing that I didn't mention. Um see when

you launch a demo, you got one shot. This is new for 3.0 is you have one shot to launch that demo, right? One shot because trending freeze. You got one shot on that. You can email everybody who wishlisted it to say new demo one time. Okay. There's a lot that happens one time with the demo. But you need to practice and get feedback on your game. That's where the play test comes in. You can do as many play tests as you want. You could do tons of them, 10 of them, 100 of them, doesn't matter. There's no impact. And so the new thing for this launch is you have to be very careful with your demo, but you can go crazy with your play test. So to the previous question about um whether a play test is important or like what's the difference between play test and a demo play tests are where you go crazy and what I show you and I give examples and case studies in the new master class for three 3.0 O is um you can get wish list from your play test. If you play your cards right, you can treat your play test like

a demo. Most people don't realize they don't understand. And so you can you can use your play test to get wish list. So if you're if you're coming in with low wish list, play test play test. And this gives you the thing. Okay. Um I'm going to I stopped here. I want to show you this. This is also um new. Um I just updated the sales page with all this new art and stuff like this. These are people who took the master class. They they took the master class here. Um one, this is Tiny Glade. I included this because I'm in the special thanks section for Tiny Glade. Look at this. For the most excellent marketing courses, this course is so good. I ended up in the credits of Tiny Glade. And you know how many wish lists? And this is no joke. Tiny Glade launched with one million wish lists. I'm not saying this like, oh, they launched with like a million bazillion. No, they literally launched with a million wish lists. Here's their testimonial about how awesome it was, how much they loved it. Look at this. This is a quote. Anastasia, I asked her, I was like, "Can you give me the quote? You put me in the credits. Can you give me context?"

Honestly, this course has no right being this good, but it is. Literally, folks, I literally cry how much content I put in this. Like, I it is so much. I I literally do not know anything else. Everything I know about Steam, I put in this course. Okay, it has no right to be this good, but it is. I don't know. And so look what they did. Within the first two days, it received 26,000 wish lists. Okay, now here's another thing. Uh to the people asking, "Oh yeah, I want to launch my page." Here's a case study from Momento. Uh they also took the master class. Look at this. Um it achieve we achieved a super successful Steam page launch with over 75,000 wish lists. Now, all these games are good, but your game is good, too. I can't guarantee I you'll never see a thing where I guarantee you're going to get 75,000 wishes at launch. But I know the the minimum things that you have to do to get there. And so that's to that question of like, oh, should I launch with a gameplay trailer or not? I can set you up for the path to get some of

this stuff, but it's up to you because the way Steam works is it's a bunch of curators, secret curators out there, and they look at your game. You I show you who to give your your game to and then it's up to the curators to go, "This is good. we're going to feature this. But if they if your game just doesn't have that oomph, that goodness, then the carrier is going to go, I just put this in my pocket, maybe later. That's the difference. That's why I never guarantee 75,000 wish list because you have a part of this. It's not just me. You and me, we fuse together. When you take this course, you and me mentally fuse. It's your game, my strategies. Boom. And if that's that synergy turns out good, good stuff can happen. like I teach you how to get 75,000 wish list in 6 weeks. Again, I cannot guarantee that, but that's how it is. Um, also Micro Civilization. Look at this. Um, they got their 30,000 target. Look at this. This master class was without any doubt the best investment in my entire

project and it made so many things apparent which were invisible to me before. That's what I'm doing. That's what the master class is. is like I'm like here's all the little secret things that you can do to try and get eyes on your game. That's that's what the master class is. All right, I'm going to go to do some more questions. Oh, and just a reminder, if you showed up late, if you buy the master class during this hour because this is the live call. If you buy it during this hour, I'm going to give you the free 2025 inside conference. So, every year after GDC, I find people who are cool and I say, "Hey, do you want to uh speak at my conference?" And they're like, "Yeah." So, it's basically like GDC in your bedroom right there. You don't have to get out, go to San Francisco, buy plane tickets, all that. I bring it to you, okay? I bring the best speakers and I will give that to you for free. If you buy that this this hour, like during this Q&A, if you buy this course, I will just give it to you for free. It's like 50 bucks, I think I charge for it. Free 50 bucks if you buy it right now. So, if you're like, I don't know, should I buy

this course thing? Buy it now. You get the 50 bucks course for free. Okay. If you wait after this course, after this Q&A, I don't give away that thing. Now, just a heads up, it's a uh I have to uh wait. I have to do this after the thing. I have to go in manually, do a filter and say everybody who bought it during this hour and then I just go in manually and add that course. So, it's not going to show up right away. Don't freak out. Don't email me. Say, "Chris, I didn't get the thing." If you still don't see it in 24 hours, email me. Okay? You're like, "I bought it, but I didn't see the conference. Get added." You will. Okay? All right. Next one. Is it worth signing up with a publisher without funding or better find a marketing PR agency without strings attached? Great question. Um, I think if it's your first game and everything, you've never done this, don't go with a publisher. I I just don't see the problem with the publisher is they push you so high. They want you to do really big numbers. And so, um, if you're not needing the funding, a

publisher is just going to take a huge percentage. And you know what they do? They do everything I teach you in this class. Like, I used to work for publishers, so I know what they're doing. So, they, it's not like publishers have super secret things. The only thing a publisher can do that this course cannot do is um, some publishers like a hooded horse or something. Um, a hooded horse, what they can do is they have an in with Steam. So they can go, we're going to do a a publisher sale with Valve. And so on Steam, because some publishers have made so much money, um they can just go phone up Valve and go, can I get a publisher sale? And Val's like, "Yeah, you've made us millions of dollars." And then they'll put your game on that publisher sale. And that's worth like, you know, you can get like 5 to 10,000 wish list from that. Um they do have some connections like some like PC gaming show and stuff like that. Those are the big connections they can do. I can't do that in the course, but I can tell you how to get into that stuff. Like I can't tell you to get a publisher sale because you need hit games, but I can tell you how to get into PC gaming show. And so basically my

thought is if it's not one of these platinum tier publishers, like ask your publisher that you're thinking of getting, can have you ever had a a Steam sale? Have you ever had a franchise sale? Steam sale. If they say no, see you later. I think the the publishers that are best for you to go for are if they're very strong in a genre. Like if you're making a visual novel game and you have a visual novel publisher that only does visual novels, that's a good thing. Hooded Horse is like only strategy games for the most part. Um, Coffee Stain is pretty much only open world survival craft, so they have that legacy. Those are the publishers that I think are worth it. The other thing with uh PR, if you aren't, Here's the thing that people always throw their money at. PR cannot solve an interest problem. So, I think a lot of people are like, "Hey, I Chris, I've reached out to hundreds of streamers just like you told me to and none of them are interested. I think I need to get higher PR." What PR is going to do is they're also going to reach out to hundreds of streamers and the streamers are going to be like because it it depends on the curator. Remember

how it was like the curator goes, "That's a good looking game. Yeah, I'm going to play that." The a PR person doesn't magically make those people go, "This is not an interesting game, but that PR person reached out to me, so I will play it." That doesn't work. So, a lot of people think that I'm not getting visibility, so I need to hire PR to get visibility. A PR company can only multiply visibility. If you're if you are you're doing a lot of marketing and you're like, man, I'm getting so much visibility. I need to double this. Then you should get a PR agency. I think you should only get PR if you're already seeing visibility. So, if you're thinking of being buying a PR person or signing away 30% or more to a publisher, consider taking the class because the course, again, everything a PR company does, everything a publisher does is outlined in this course. Like, there's no other secrets. I know all the secrets that PR publishers do other than that Steam sale thing that where they can like, you know, they can do those. They they have an in with Valve. You can't go to Valve and say like, I took Chris's

class. Can I have a featured sale? They're going to be like, "Get out of here, kid." I wish I had that power. I would sub that course for a lot more if I could do that, unfortunately. So, um, so that's my advice for that. Great question. I'm going to keep going here. Nick, prior to a demo, how do we get people interested in our game? Play tests. You got to do the play test and you launch your uh your trailer, your announced trailer, and you do all of that in a very special way that I outline in this course. It's basically all the people you reach out. I have a list of all the people and the strategies and the emails that you write to people who host trailers and you get your trailer seen. Um, you do all that stuff. So, it's the trailer and then once you have something playable, it's the play test and then all of that brings wish lists hopefully and then you get your demo out and then you hope that the real wish lists come because that's the thing, folks. That's what I really want to teach you is I look at Reddit all the time. I always search Reddit. I don't know why just to make myself mad. I just have to stay up with what the questions are. That's why I always

browse Reddit. And people like, I tweet and I tweet and I post on Reddit like once a week and I'm not getting anything. Let me tell you folks, you don't get to 10,000 5,000 wish lists, that minimum bar that I recommend without by just tweeting. You don't you it's not you tweeting that get you visibility. You have to the way you get these big numbers. Like if you go to share your numbers, if you pull up share your numbers in my Discord and you look at it, you don't you those people that are like, "Man, I got like 10,000 wish lists last weekend." That doesn't happen from tweeting. It happens by you reaching out to a curator and the curator going, "This looks cool. Yeah, I'm going to feature this." Like either it's a YouTuber or a festival organizer or one of these big shows like Jeff Keley. Those are what get you the wish list. Okay? And so that's how you do it. That's how you do it. Um that's um that's how you get that stuff. So that's that's actually how you market. You don't just like tweet five times a day

and the person who's better tweet six times a day. That's not how you do it. You cannot tweet yourself to success for most games. Okay. Um so that's uh that's just what it is. All right. Next one is Kristoff Red. Can you explain what wish list velocity is? Yeah. Okay. So this is a number that there's no like number here. Basically, I'm trying to figure out which which angle to approach what wish list velocity is. There's no like metric out there. It's just like how many wish lists do you get a day? That's it. And it's not like, well, how many do I need a day? Here's what it is. Let me go back to that thing where curators come to you. When a curator says like, yeah, I'm going to play this game on my stream. Like if you go to one of the big guys like um um if you're making the right type of game for what's that mechanical guy the um he he real civil engineer. Real civil engineer. When that guy plays your game, you're going to get

like 5,000 wish list in a day. That is what I call a wish list velocity. You got a huge spike. And remember how I said told the other people, it doesn't come in a slow dribble. It comes in huge spikes. That is a huge spike of velocity. And so there's no special thing. It's just like when you see a big velocity like that, that is awesome. And Valve does, they say they don't really look at this number. I kind of think they something happens. But when you get like 5,000, all these things happen like you get this better ambient velocity where it's just like a even after uh like let's say two months after a real seven engineer plays your game, you just have this higher velocity. And so my thought is like you'll just all of a sudden be getting hundreds of wish lists a day for no reason. you didn't do didn't do anything. It's not like you even tweeted today. And that's wish list velocity. And so here's the thing is like it's more correlation than causation, I think. And so when people come to me and they're like, Chris, I have 100,000 wish lists, I think we're going to do well. And I'm like, well, how long did it take you? And they're like, well, it took us

20 years to get to 100,000 wish lists. That is, if you divide 100,000 wish lists by 20 years, theoretically, that's actually a very low velocity. It's just like and it's kind of what I mean by correlation is when your game is hot when every streamer you show it to goes yes and they play this and then every festival you apply with your game the festival is like yes we want this in our festival. You will notice that just getting in you get lots of these big spikes which increases your velocity and means it's impressive and so you just get so many wish list in such a short time and it it's kind of this is what I mean by correlation. It just means a lot of pe your game is awesome and all these people like this game's awesome and so when you launch all the people all the Steam shoppers like this game's awesome. So wish list velocity is more a correlation that your game's awesome like people are excited to play this and when people are excited to wishlist it, play the demo, play this play it on stream, they're also excited to buy it. And the the opposite of that is low wish

list velocity is when you share your game to a 100 streamers and all of them go I yeah maybe and they just put it in their pocket they said maybe one day if I'm not busy I'll play this game that see how there's no excitement and you apply for festivals and the festival organizers are like I don't know and they just they're like nah we'll put them on the maybe list. Put them on the maybe. Yep. Honey. Um, Susan, put it put it on I don't know why they called Susan. Honey, Susan, put it on the maybe list. If if somebody drops out, we'll move that game on there. That is low wish list velocity. And it's not there's no metric. It just means everybody's just kind of like, is that bad? That's it. That's wish list velocity velocity. It's not like a formula. It just is like, are people excited about the game or are they not? And that's what I mean by all the stuff like we launched with 75,000 wish lists in six weeks. That is awesome. that is that you know and like this stuff like 26,000 we launched it we got 26,000 wish list in

our first launch that is indicating a su like this excitement and so what I this is why I can't promise success with this thing it's like your game has to have this genua I don't even I don't for from our friends in France please do not yell at me for that um it just has to have something and what I can do is I can show you everybody to show your game to and then it's up to you and your exciting game to make people go, "Yeah, let's do it." So, I can't guarantee, but I can show you everywhere to go. That Kristoff is wishlist velocity. I hope that worked. Um, let's see. These are great questions. Great short questions. You all do are doing fantastic. Um, I'm trying to think of um any other there. So, um, one some of the cool stuff that I added for this wish list in velocity class, which is on sale for the summer sale for the next two weeks, but if you buy it this hour, you will get a free course. I'll just add on a free conference attendance, which costs 50 bucks. We will do it. Um,

but the other cool thing, like I said, is this timeline. And I I broke it down like this is what you have to do, and then this and then this and all this. And it's it depends on what type of game you're making. And I made I broke it down to certain types of games. And if you're a established dev, you're like, "Chris, I've launched like five games. I don't think I need your course." I got you. I have a special road map that you need to use to uh wish increase wish lists uh through that uh that you can you have special powers because you've launched previous games that you can use to launch your next game. So I cover all levels, beginners, experts, and then like super experts who might not know everything. They sometimes they don't know. Okay. from Mary. What's the best tip you could give to people into your uh to get people into your beta and wishlist the game? Best tip, reach out to content creators with an early access of your beta and say, "Hey, you want to be the first one." Content creators, if your game's interesting, love to see an exclusive. They're like, "I want to be

the first person to play this." They play it and the call to action, you tell the content creators like, "Hey, we're signing up for people for the beta. You get the first shot. tell them to join the mailing list to get to reserve their spot and I go through exactly how to write the the thing for your This is exactly what Tiny Glade did. Tiny Glade used this strategy to get a ton of wish list subscribers before they launched their Steam page. And so I call this the um um beta like how to use how to set up that signup that I said. Um let's see where's there's a mailing list. How to set up your mailing list. um mailing list. But anyway, uh let me see. Let me find It's really hard to read this stuff. This is why I don't the mailing Oh, there it is. How to set up a mailing list. It's right down here. There it is. Um I have spec it's 42. It's 42 and then this one's 24 minutes long. I go straight on how to set up your mailing list because what you want to do is you want to get people to see this streamer playing this awesome beta

and then sign up for your mailing list and then you distribute keys for your beta through that mailing list. It's like this is what Tiny Glade did. This is what a lot of developers do. I know people are like, "This mailing list is still there. This is still I don't I don't even read a mailing list." You will if there's an awesome demo associated with it. Trust me, this works. This is tried and true. That's that's the best way. That's how to do it. How to get that uh beta. And what that does is that leads to people who wishlist it and then you get a lot of wish list in anticipation of your demo. Okay. What are your thoughts on Steam's play test? They're awesome and that's why I dedicate exactly a strategy on how to use those play tests. So yes, you should definitely definitely definitely definitely use the play test. Okay, next one from Forest Strategy sustain longtail sales in first and second years after release. Make an awesome game. This is this is the hard thing and I don't know your scenario and this is where I I do I don't just

promise the stars. Okay, folks, here's the thing. I am honest about this. Um, and here's what it is. I call these um, and people know these once you join. You will know these. They are called, what do I call them? Um, um, real talk. So, real talk, post demo grind. There's real talks. And here's the deal. If your game does not reach isn't exciting and it doesn't hit sales numbers within the first month or so, the Valve Steam algorithm is basically like there's an opportunity cost here. And if they promote your game and it converts low, they're like, "Well, we could promote this other game and it converts high." And so, and this is the real talk. This is where I I I give you honest real talk, all this stuff. There's several sections in here called real talk where I'm just like, listen, if you're not hitting these numbers, they'll cut you loose and you're yes, you're still on Steam, but they do not

promote you. So, the best way to get long-term sales is to have a successful game. And I know it sucks and I and I've written long blog posts about this and I give you the numbers in here. If you're not reaching the numbers, there's nothing you can do because your visibility comes from Steam. And this is the hard truth, real talk. And if Steam doesn't think it's worth their time, they're just not going to do it. So, the best way to get long-term sales is to have a lot of sales. I'm sorry. I wish there was something I wish there was one weird trick, but there just isn't. So, if you're not hitting those sales, and basically my thought is if in the first month you do not have 250 reviews that correlates. It's not the cause. Don't Goddard's law this. It just is a sign that sales aren't fast enough and Val's gonna be like, I can do better. I can find another game that's better than yours. That's That's the hard truth. That's not my words. That's Val's words. Not really words, but that's what their algorithm words are. And your best bet, move on to your next game. Um, you can do discounts. You can try to enter festivals, but if your

game just doesn't have that janisqua, French speakers, I'm sorry. Um, there's just nothing you can do. Unfortunately, I wish there was. I am sorry, Arthur Gonzalez. Oh, wait. No, Arthur Gonzalez, that's not your question. Forest. Forest. Okay. Okay, Arthur Gonzalez, I will get to you. All right. Um, I'm making a an artsy 2D hand animated game with rim world building crafty systems. Okay. You had me scared there. I I heard the first three words and then you I was like and then you said crafty building systems. I was like, okay, let's see where you're going, Mr. Zorgus. Okay. What makes sense to con makes sense to combine those? Okay, I don't know. This is where I can't you can't just tell me a genre and say is this going to work? I don't know. What I do in the course is I tell you everything to run it by. I don't know how artsy. Maybe maybe it's not artsy

enough. Maybe it's too artsy. I don't know. It's a hard question. I don't know. All I know is people like open systems on Steam where there's just no rules, crafty building. You can go whichever direction. That's what Steam typically likes. Probabilistically, that's what they like. I don't know. But you'll see things. The way this campaign is built, the strategy is we try and expose your game as much as we can early to determine is this game a winner or not. And I can't contribute it. I if I say yes, that doesn't mean anything. The people you should be asking is not me. You should be asking the fans on Steam. That's who you talk to. Don't talk to me. So ask everybody else. Okay, I'm sorry. I I can't give you a good answer cuz I there's just not enough there. I and I can't tell. Okay, thank you. Good luck, Gazer. Gazar. Gazers. Okay. Any tips for how to verify if the idea genre for a game is going to perform well on Steam before starting development? Yep, I do. Look at this one. Is H.io. I do

not have an H.IO chapter on here. I will someday, but I don't yet. But I do this. I have this new chapter. It's got the blue dot. It's a new one. I call it social media hell month. And I tell you exactly how to totally stress test your your stuff before you even have a game to play. And I call it social media hell month because you were going to take a month of hell and do social media for hell long. And then I tell you, here's some benchmarks. What is viral? And I give you this is what I consider viral. If you hit these numbers, good. This is a good sign. If not, so um not all games do well on social media. And so the other one is H.IO. Search my blog for H.io because I don't cover it in this class. Search H.io on my blog and I tell you what good numbers look like on H.io. But that's what I would do. Just just do a free game on H.io built in the browser and see if it works. That's what I would do. Tomz, any non-gamedev books on bisdev marketing you recommend? Um,

let me see. Let's see. This one is good. Marketing metrics. the divine the the definitive guide on measuring marketing. That's a good one. Um I would say that's a good one. Here's another good one right here. How customers think. This is a good one. It's a good one there. Um and let's see here. Let's see if I can find another one. That's a good one. Um I don't have it here. I think it's up by my bedstand. Harvard has this textbook out on marketing and how marketing works. Um, I think that's a good one. I just don't know the name of it. It's like the most generic textbook thing. It's like the marketing systems of um systems. I don't think I have it. I think it might be. I literally keep in mind my bedside just, you know, it's a good bedtime reading. So, those are some good marketing books um that I would recommend. Yes, I think that's good. Uh, that's what I'd recommend. And I thought

I had another one that was really good. I just can't find it right now. But yep, that's that's what I would recommend. Good luck. Happy reading, Tom. C. Um F. Why premium model with free prologue and paid full unlock game doesn't work on Steam? Okay. Because um the premium model with free prologue and pay to launch. Okay. Because here's the thing. The reason people don't buy your game is not actually visibility. That's the thing. People always think, "How do I get more visibility?" That's not the limiting factor. The limiting factor is, is your game fun? Okay? And um, [Music] sorry, I talking a lot. Here's the thing. The way you get visibility on Steam is you prove that you are a seller. Okay? I'm I sell money. And the the reason you pay Valve 30% and Steam,

why Steam is so awesome that even EA and Ubisoft have to come crawling back and Sony to put their games on Steam. Like you would think Sony could just open up a website and buy like be like buy our games on Sony.com because we we have PlayStation. They can't do it. They still have to put their games on Steam because Steam has curated an audience that trusts Steam so much that if they just put your game on the front page, people are going to buy it. That's that is amazing. That is why people like, "Why do I pay Steam 30%." Because if they put your page your game on the front page, you will get sales. It's just magic. And here's the thing. Um, Valve only puts games on the front page if they make money. They want to make the money. And so this is why it's really hard for a free game to do well and why freeto play doesn't work as well. Free to play games on Steam, for the most part, 99% don't work because

Valve's like, um, I want money. Like if you put a free game up, Val's like, yeah, you got a lot of downloads, but we want money. And so if you put a premium game up, Val's like, "That's making money. Step aside, Junior. We got you from here." And they and you step aside and then Val's just like, "Boom, boom. Here's this game. Boom, boom." And they're just showing the game everywhere. Okay. So, the limiting factor is not it's free because Steam players love to spend money. And so, if they see a free game, they're like, "What's a catch? That's gross." But if they're like, "This game's good and it costs money." Yes. And they will just spend money. So that's essentially it's a little bit more complicated but that's why fremium doesn't work cuz fremium is for mobile. Mobile is full of people who don't play games don't like games. They don't like to spend money. And so that works but on Steam you are talking to the hardest core. It is a refined this is the good Okay Steam has the good And what I mean by good

is customers who are like they throw money around like drunken sailors. And Valve has just concentrated this group into a very tight ball. And so these people are crazy about games and that's how it all works. So the the limiting factor is not visibility. It's not the limiting factor is your game's not good enough. I hate to tell you this. I'm just being honest. Real talk. What do you think about the realistic capsule art for a pixel art game? I love it. I love realistic pixel art. I I love realistic titles for pixel art because I don't have it's in the closet. Look at Nintendo games. Trust the legacy. What if people have Nintendo used to do pixel art on the cover in their first generation of games like Excite Bike and they're like that was a dumb idea. Nobody wants to see pixel art on a big box. They want to see beautiful pictures of Mario flying over a world that says Super Mario World and there's dolphins and stuff and they're well drawn. That's how people have been trained to see pixel art is beautiful illustrated top

capsule and then box art and then you start it up and it's pixel art. It's just the way it is. I know you're going to quote, you'll be like, "Well, Chris, Into the Breach has pixel art." I know sometimes it works, but 99.99% the history, the legacy, everything that Nintendo has done and trained people to see is beautiful illustration pixel art game. So, I'm I'm sorry. You got to hire somebody to make some cool art. You got to do it. I know you're going to be like, "But Into the Breach, you got to do it. You got to get it." I'm sorry, Mr. Gonzalez. Okay. All right, Luke. Link to buy pricing and pitching and funding. Oh, okay. Thank you. Um, hang with me. I might have to change in a little bit. Uh, I knew something was going to go wrong. I will fix that. Thank you for that. Um, side note on that. If you go to the main page, there is a Jason class there. Right below Jason Daroka, who's an awesome guy who does publishing and stuff. He does not

uh he I will also do this offer where if you buy a course during his hour, I will also give you the thing. So check there. Let me see if I can fix it right now. Um let me see let's see if I can live do this. Um let's see if I can do it. I'll I'll let me see. This might be the worst television um you've ever seen. Let's see if I can actually patch this thing. Um let me see. Let me see. Sorry folks. I'm still here. I'm just going to try and patch a link really quick. Thank you so much, Luke. Um, it will work and I will honor if you buy it after the thing. So, let me see if I can do it. Uh, let me see. Okay. Sorry, I'm still here. Ah. Ah. Sorry. Sorry. uh trying to trying to troubleshoot

stuff. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put the nastiest link that'll be on there and I'm just going to do it. So, it'll be the button. It's just Let me see if I can do it. Let me just one second. Let me see. I'll fix it. I'll fix it. I'm I'm live fixing a website here. The other thing that happened to me this morning, I woke up and my website didn't work. I don't know why. It had nothing to do with me. It was just my host. Hosting sucks. Um um but um um um god I got to turn on bookmarks. Just a second. Um and it was just some I because I just migrated my site. Um and when I migrated my site, there's like some HT access thing that they had to like for some reason that just stopped working. It was not my fault. It was the hosting provider did it. I was like, "What the heck?" By the way, if you're wondering, I'm going. I'm still going. I'm going to I'm just going to keep doing this. I know why I said an hour. I think this um this

live call I'm going to get through all your Q& A's, okay? I'm going to do it. Um I think the thing actually kicks me out after two hours, but it doesn't stop at the half that one hour. I just have to I just have to be powered by Coke Zero and I'll I'll stick with it. I also have a Cowick for some reason. I'm powered by Coke Zero and Cowick. So, just give me one sec. Um, but I will stick around as long as it takes to get your questions answered. So, don't fret. Don't be like, "Oh my gosh, there's only five minutes. Kristen, get my question." I got you. I got you. Just give me a second. I just have to edit HTML live on air. I'm not going to do it. You're not going to see the live editing of HTML. Let's just because you're probably gonna steal my password or something. Um, so let me let me just see. Um, let me just give me one sec. Get to So, what I'm literally doing is going to my courses page, editing it. Uh, just go to how tomarketing.com courses refresh and I'll update the

link. Let me just do it. I'm sorry. This pitching thing I had to do this like literally Okay, let's see if this works. I'm going to try and do it. Um, let's see. I think I may have patched a website live on a call. You did not think this was going to happen today. Um, but um I think I did it. I think I got it. I think it worked. Okay. I I'm pretty sure. So, thank you so much, Luke. Just refresh the courses page. Go to how toarketgame.com/courses. Refresh it. I'm 90% sure that that link works now. Um, so I just patched HTML live on air. All right, so the other things that are going to be happening. Okay, so a couple surprises here. There's just some surprises I'm doing. So I'm doing the Q&A now. There's another Q&A that I'm doing for people in Australia, China, the basically the Pacific Rim. That's going to be tonight, 700 p.m. my time, Pacific time. So if

you want to get a double dose, you can do it again. Uh, you can watch it again. I'm also doing a couple interviews with some cool people, some surprises, with some friends. Um, the other thing that I'm doing is um um the other thing that I'm doing is um um what am I doing? Okay, this this one is cool. Okay, so this kind of goes to the question. I'm announcing this here. I don't have any links. I don't even know I don't even know the day exactly, but to the question, should I illustrate a capsule for pixel art? You damn right you should. Everybody should have an illustrated capsule because YouTube creators love illustrated capsules. They don't love pixel art because the main reason you do illustrated capsules is so that content creators can use your art that you spend some good money on for their thumbnail for their YouTube video and that gets a lot of views on your game. If you have a pixel art capsule, pixel art looks horrible on YouTube. People on YouTube do not like it. That's their words, not mine. I love pixel art. And I think the main reason, there's two

reasons why people are like, "Do I really need to get a capsule? Can't I just use my pixel art? Two reasons. One, it's cost money." Totally understand that. It's expensive, but fine art requires good money. Two is people are stressed out about how to talk to an artist. You are having to hire somebody. You're having to hire an artist. This is where I got you. I got you. Okay. So, I needed to update my masterclass site. Okay. I was like I just pulled up my in version one and two I I downloaded the worst I just downloaded like unsplashed art. I was like you know what I'm going to learn how to make I'm going to show the world how to make a capsule. So I hired John and I said I want um I want to make capsule art for my course and in the meantime I'm going to document the process. So, I will be uploading a video that I built with John who made this, John of Witch Hand, and I document how I went

from a concept, an idea to hiring him to paying him and working through and how we developed this artwork here together and how you can work with an artist. live videoed how I talk to John, how I critique his work, how I give him feedback, how I get art back from him, the duration of the process, dayby day. It's like it'll say like day 14. No, it'll say like June 10th conversation with John. And then I show my conversation with John. It is fully documented. It's a YouTube video. YouTube sucks, but I'm still going to put it on YouTube. So stay tuned for that. I'm going to show a video just documenting my process for this and some of the things that I did. like this is um this is how to raise a community. I thought of raising a community like raising an undead army as a necromancer. So I talk about how we do all this stuff. So um but yeah um so all this artwork is new for 3.0 because I love like he I got him to do all this stuff. So I got him to make me capsule art for

my course uh because I don't make games anymore but I still wanted to show you all how to do it. So, if you're nervous, if you heard that that I said you have to make art, you have to hire an artist to make a capsule for you, don't stress out. I'm going to tell you how to do it. So, stay tuned for that. Join the newsletter. When it goes live, you will hear, you will know. Um, but I I'm That's why I ask people like, "What are your questions about um how to do capsule art?" I got you. I'm going to I'm going to work with an artist. So, stay tuned for that. Um hopefully that works. Um so, just stay tuned. He'll come uh sometime in the next two weeks because, you know, I'm trying to really I'm trying to I'm trying to show the world how to make art. And um that's it. So, let's go to the next chat. I know it's past the time. Oh, the other thing is yes, this is recorded. I I just checked it's still being recorded. This will also go on YouTube and you will all get a link. Don't worry, this is being recorded. So, if you have to drop off, you're like, I got to pick up the kids and Chris is going over. I I didn't get my question answered. I got you, too. I'm recording this. You will eventually be able to do it. If you asked a

question in the Q&A, I got you. I will get you to your question answered and you'll be able to see it. Okay? Just double checking. I'm still live. So, if I disappear, like if my internet crashes and you can't see me anymore, it's still being recorded. I got you. Okay. I got you. All right. So, don't worry. It's all being recorded. Everything in my life is recorded. Okay. How um Okay. Alex asked how to price the game uh for sales. Um you want to do as much as the market will allow. Um basically you what I recommend is play all the games around your play remember how I say you got to play games. Play all the games that are in your similar quality level. Average out the price and then pick one that is 20% higher than everybody else that's in your quality circle because we need to bump our prices up. Folks, indies are underpricing their games. People are thinking, "Oh, I got to make a free game. I don't care about money.

Charge money for your art. You're devaluing the market. We should be charging more for indie games." So, even if you're feeling uncomfortable about it, you're like, "I'm not so sure about my work. I don't know." Charge money for it. Charge 20% more than you feel comfortable. All right. Um, let's Good question there. Marcus chat. Alex, when you announce your game, should you release a trailer first and then a demo or both a trailer? No. Separate those. That's why in this master class, when you look at the curriculum, there is a long sectional difference between the demo launch and see it says beta demo, all this stuff super separated from launching a Steam page. There's like four chapters between that. That's how far apart you should make them. Okay. When you have a demo launch and a Steam page launch, you're trying to make Christmas and birthday be the same day. And if anybody has a birthday right around Christmas, you know, you don't

get as many presents. And I'm here to maximize presents because you know what are presents in the world of game marketing? Wish lists. We're trying to maximize wishes. And you combine those, not as good. You don't get as many. You get two dips into the well of wish lists when you announce your page and then you do a demo. That's a double dip. You get a dip twice. So we I want you to dipple dipple dip twice. Dipple it. All right. Okay. Um Okay. Uh Carl, so the price of the master class is 325. We shouldn't buy it now even though it says don't buy. Refresh your page. Refresh it. I said I changed the page. Look, I changed the page to say buy it now. So maybe you have to refresh. See, everything says everything's buy it now. I think you just have to hit F5 refresh because this this is live. This is actually live on my page. Um, everything I'm seeing here's this take the free class. So, I think you

just need to refresh. Just refresh the page. I think it Oh, maybe this one. I didn't get this one. Um, I didn't have time. I was like trying to get on the call. This one still click it. I think that'll I think I just didn't update the text. I might have to update HTML. That one works. Um, I think it's the sale price. Yep, that's the sale price. Um, I'll just say buy it now. I'm just going to do some live editing right now. Um, but it should be live. Just refresh your page and everything should be up to date. So, let me just say buy it now. But, yep, it as long as it's on how tomarketaggame.comcourses, it should be live. So, uh, let's let's I did some more live page editing here, folks. Let's see how my live HTML editing did. Um, oh, let's see here. Maybe I have to don't buy it now. Live page editing. Save. Let me let me make sure I save over here. Says saving. Saving. Wait. Wait. I know. I know. I know what's going on here. Wait. Hang

on. Save. Save. Okay. Sorry for my live HTML editing. I told you I'm a oneman band here. I'm like the guy that's got a drum and he's got like symbols on his knees. It's a oneman job here. That's how you keep costs low. It's a oneman job. No employees. Living the dream. Keeping prices low for you so that you can get as many wish lists as you can for as cheap as possible. Okay. Um, okay. Wombart, if we bought the wish list course before V3, do we need to buy again? No. Let me show you. If you bought this course, and this is this is my guarantee to you here. Let me let me go forward here. Look at this. I have this at the bottom. Whoops. Let me go this. Hang on. Okay. 3.0 right here. Let me go all the way to the bottom. That's a great question. Look at this. Lifetime access, constant updates, pay once. This is version three. I've been updating it since 2022. New case

studies, updated strategies. If you bought it, just refresh your thing. Like go in, log in. If you bought it previously, you got all the new courses. Um, there's still some that have to be updated, but look for the little blue dot. You'll get it. And that's this is my promise for all of you. Like, you will know. You don't have to buy this over and over again. You buy this now, you're going to get 4.0. When I go to 4.0, I will do it. I've been updating this class since 2022. Okay? Every year, basically, I do a new update based on the new algorithms, the new tricks. There is nothing that doesn't like everything that I know about how to get a wish list, I put in here. If I find something new, some new technique that works, I throw it in here and I don't charge you. This is lifetime access. I don't make you guys buy this stuff over and over again. I'm honest. I try to keep cost low. I I do this as is there. So, lifetime access. Everybody who ever bought this course in the past, you got the 3.0 stuff. Okay, great question. The other thing is uh I should also mention this. Zoom down here. 30-day money back

guarantee. Okay, here's and here's my promise to you. 30 days, no questions asked. If you're like, "Chris, I was drunk when I bought this. I'm sorry. I can't do it." You don't even have to say you're drunk. Just like, "Can I have my money back?" You don't, no questions asked. I don't ask why you're drunk. I don't even need to know that you're drunk. You just have to say, "Chris, can I have a refund?" That's it. And I I promise there's just a button. The way it works is on my side, there's just a button that says refund. I just push the refund button and then you get your money back. Okay? It's not it's it's the service that I buy. Okay? After 30 days, that button doesn't work anymore. I push the button and it's grayed out. Okay? That's why it's not me just being a hard ass for like 30 days. It's just the service that I use. It's called Teachable. Okay. So, that's why it's 30-day, no question asked. Okay, here's the thing. If you buy this course, you know how I said if you buy the course, I will give you that um um that free uh conference. It's like $40. If you refund it, I won't take that course away. Like that uh free I you'll lose access to this course, but I will not take away the conference. You can just keep it. Okay? It's my gift to you. All right?

You just you just buy it. Don't abuse this. But technically, I won't ask. No questions asked. You could buy this course right now. I give you that free thing and then you can immediately ask for a refund. I would cry, but that's how you could get a free thing out of it. But I trust you. This is the honor system. I trust that you won't abuse that. But technically, yes, I would cry, but I won't stop you. You could get a free conference pass from last year for free if you did this little shenanigans where you bought the course then refunded it right now. But I don't care because I want you to succeed. So anyway, so that's it. Uh, yep. Satisfaction guarantee right here. And you get lifetime access. That's what you get. So no reverent speed. Oh, wait. Wombart, you do not have to reby this. That's a long question for this. Okay. Um, Marcus chat. Okay. I'm gonna speed round 10 of these. I'm gonna try. I'm

getting hot. Just get all worked up. Okay. Um. All right. How important is audience discovery? How to convey your game will treat a sensitive project with appropriate care? That sounds a lot deeper than me. I don't know. I just I don't know. I think you're thinking too hard about it. Just show your game. I audience discovery. You show your game. I show you how to show your game and if people like it, they like it and if they don't, they don't. I don't know. That's kind of a deep question there, Reverend Speed. I don't know. I think I think that's above my pay grade. You're you're asking the deep questions. Did you go to college? That sounds like a college question. All right. Um Armana Man. Okay. Would you recommend small indie developers to release their games right before or right after a major Steam sale like winter sale? Yes. Do actually I'd say before and during. I'm I'm still doing some research on this, but we found that if you get enough sales right before a big Steam event, like a summer or winter

sale, you actually get into new and trending. So, I think it's actually better that you do it just before. Um, but for the largest part, it doesn't matter. There is also a thing that indies always do, which is stupid and I tell you not to do it. I give you the data when you buy the course. I tell you not to do it. A lot of indies like do Steam NextFest and then they immediate launch their game. They think they're being clever, but every indie has that idea and they do it over and over again. And what it does is it jams the pipe full of all these games and you're all competing against each other. That's the one thing I say. Don't launch your game immediately after Steam next. But then I know people are going to be like, "But velocity momentum doesn't matter because everybody has velocity and momentum because everybody just went through Steam next. So it doesn't matter. They all cancel each other out. So don't launch immediately after Steam NextFest. I've got data for that. Um I think it's it the day you launch largely doesn't matter for the most part. 99% of the days that you pick just fine. So don't worry about it. Don't overthink an area, man. Just don't overthink it. Um, Marcus chat, next one. Mike, if an itio to launch is mid but fixable, should you

update the existing page or take it down and make a new page? I don't know what mid but fixable is. Is that cool kid talk? Mid. Are you being cool? I don't know. If an itch to if an itch.io launch is mid but fixable, should you update the existing page or take it down and make a new page? Are you talking? I don't know. Specifically, I don't think it matters. Itch is like it's the game. Like the launch of an itch page doesn't matter. Itch does not have all the rules that Steam does. Steam has very specific rules about when you launch a demo, you can only do it once. When you launch your game, you can only do it once. Itch, I think it's a wild west. They don't care. It's the It's a pink colored wild west. So, I don't think it I don't know specifically. I don't know your specific question, but I I don't think it matters. Um, the usual advice is to release a game that relies heavily on multi.

Um, okay. Your usual advice is to release a demo early. What about a game that relies on heavily on multiplayer? Is it smarter to release a demo closer to NextFest a week before and mark it hard from there? No. Multiplayer games, one very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very hard. Very hard. Two, multiplayer games need even longer to have a demo out before NextFest. Okay? You need that demo out way, way before, and you need play test. And look up on my blog battle bit. Um, that's what it's called. Battle bit. They were in demo open play for two years. Two years. I think it was even longer than two years. Years. Years. This is why multiplayer is so hard. I said I'm not going to give demo advice, but multiplayer is so hard. This to years. Okay, Carl. You need years.

Years. Years. Okay, multiplayer is so hard. Okay, Mary, I'm a first- time dev. Congratulations. And already published a page, but without a trailer. Can I still make it out of announcement trailer? Yes, you don't have to tell it. If nobody saw that it was in a trailer, then you didn't technically announce your game. Announce it. And I give you here. I give you the steps on how to actually announce your game with a trailer. And yes, folks, all of you watching, you need a trailer. Launch with a trailer. I don't I don't know why people do that, but please folks, launch with the trailer. I give you all the steps you need to launch with the trailer. So, you can still do it. Steam is not as it's a little You might not get the same amount of punch, but you should still launch with the trailer, and my course will tell you exactly how to do that. Okay, so um qu good question, Mary, and good luck on your first game. Um and that's what this whole course is about. People make mistakes all the time. I've seen them

all. I've seen all the mistakes and I tell people how not to make the mistakes. That's what you're buying. That's like people are like, "Well, why am I buying your course?" So, you don't make dumb mistakes. You know, uh it's the best. This master class was without doubt the best environment my entire project investment investment in my project. They were invisible to me before. This is from micro civilization. That's what I'm doing here is like this stuff doesn't make any sense. If it's like people are like, "Well, why?" And it's like, "It would take me an hour to explain why Steam does it this way." Steam people always like the worst marketing advice I sometimes hear go around is like just do what you think. Do what you feel, you know? Just like think how you want to be marketed. That's the worst advice because Steam makes no sense. There's these little secret rules. There's these little secret traps. And if you don't do it in the right order and you do the right things, you can bork your launch. Okay?

I'm serious. You will bork your launch. I'm not I don't throw around the word bork lightly. You will bork your launch if you don't do it right. And so that's what my course does. It tells you all these things you need to do like don't do this, don't do that, you know. Um so that's why that's what it is. Okay. Uh question regarding multiple play tests for demo alt also positioning in an emergency emerging genre such as cozy wholesome games. Thank you. Uh question regarding multiple play tests for demo alt. I don't know what the question is. Yes, you can do multiple play tests. If that's a question, yes, you can do multiplay multiple play tests as many play tests as you like. Just you got to be careful with your demo. You can do multiple demo launches after, but you're you can only launch your demo one time and then you can patch your demo after. So, I hope that answers your question. And I specifically in my road maps, let's see if I can find this. I don't know if this updated, but I do have a section in here. So, I did these road maps. Oh, I

didn't turn them on. They're there. They're just I didn't refresh. This is the list of all the courses and stuff that's in here. So, it's a little shorter. I did a whole section on road maps. I have a whole section just for how to market a wholesome game because wholesome games are kind of special. They have a special way that you should market them and I do a road map just for wholesome. So, you should check it out. There's a special wholesome thing. It's not there. I just have to push a button so that it shows up on this list. Again, I'm editing I'm not going to edit that HTML here, but again, there's a special like system for how you should market a wholesome game. So, I hope that helps, Suzanne. And yes, um, multiple play tests. I think you should do it. And I think I chat I think I'm the one that was emailing you earlier and I said, "Join the thing." If I didn't answer your question, email me again and say, "Yes, that was Suzanne." I don't know if I answered your question, but yes, you want to do multiple play tests and you want to do

multiple demos, but you can only do one demo launch. Okay. Okay. The price for the master class is 407 for me. Is that right? It is not right. It should be Here it is. This is what it should be. Refresh. Go to how tomarketingame.com/courses and hit refresh and make sure you go there. It should be 325. Now, I don't know where you live. Now, there's one other thing. It says 325 here. Okay. I'm in America and there's VAT tax in Europe and if you don't do it um like there's also currency adjustments that happen and I can't control that. So sometimes your price might be a little bit different, but I promise if it says if you went on how tomarketing/courses and you pushed the button and you came to here, this is the price. It might be slightly different because of currency conversions and all that stuff. I'm sorry I can't control the world's financials. That's the best I can't. And this teachable auto applies currency and

VAT tax. One other thing, be very very careful. I should have pulled this link just before. If you are in Europe and you want VAT tax because of your business and stuff, be very careful when you're going through the checkout process, there's one small check box that says business ID. Check that and then type in your VAT ID. If you need your VAT ID applied, that is the only time to apply it. I'm sorry, I don't control this. I don't This is teachable. If you don't enter it there and you buy it, I can't apply your VAT tax later. your VAT tax ID later. I just can't and I'm going to have to refund it and then you're going to have to buy it again and make sure you get that VAT tax. If you need VAT tax ID and you're watching this, be very, very slow in your checkout process and look for that thing that says business ID and check that and enter your VAT. I can't do it after the fact. I'm sorry. I love the VAT. I hear it's a good system. It just sucks for my course because I can't I can't add it

later. Now, what somebody else told me who is from Europe says, "Chris, just tell that person if they do it wrong that when you file your taxes, you just have to remember to add my course in there. You don't need this special invoice or something. You just have to you just have to do it and you claim it later. But if you want the thing to show up here right away, you got to do it. You got to do it at that special thing. So, watch out." Okay, Elena. So, I hope that um uh I hope that helps. Okay. Um um I don't know Rob Dimmitri I don't know what you're looking at because there's another thing I do the bundle. There is a bundle. There is a bundle that has everything. So if you go over to here and you go to the bundle it you can get everything. That's the summer sale bundle super price. you get um what you're I think if

you're looking at this this one right here if you buy that what you're getting is everything. See why it says super bundle price. You get all my all the conferences. You get the master class and you get the pitching and funding. You get everything. You also get the inside conference. It is everything in the superale. If you just want one of the other ones, you just scroll down and see here's 3.0. Here's the pitching and funding. You can buy them individually if you want, but that's maybe that's what you're seeing, Dimmitri Robin. Maybe check it out. But if you're still curious, just message me, Demetri, and say, "Demetri, I had a question. The price looked weird." Message me and I'll help you out. I'll still honor the fact if you buy anything during this hour, any any of the courses. I mean, if you buy the bundle, you already get it. But if you buy anything during this hour, I will credit you back this insight conference from 2025, which has some great speakers. I will credit that back to you um because you bought during this magical two hour where answering questions. Okay. Um are there any benefits to a separate demo

page? Oh, there are tons. You get reviews and I talk about what you should do. You should do a separate demo page because you get reviews and you want reviews. I know it's stressful to get people to yell at you. You want it. I I there's no doubt in my mind. Some people are like, "Oh, what about this?" I without question, I say you want a separate demo page so you can get those reviews. there's no traffic difference, but you want the separate demo page so you can get reviews because you need to hear from people. You need to hear why your game sucks and people will do that in the reviews and then you patch it and you make it better. Okay, Matthew, do games that stick to one genre tend to do better than ones that branch out or the optional tag separate via multiple or that's a very hard question. I don't know. My general feel is genre. I say there's I don't have data. If you're like, "What is the show me the stats?" I I can't, but my gut says it is better to take a game and change it 20% a genre. I think that's better. I I think it's it's too risky when people like, "Ah, mixing a dance game with a farming game. You

dance and you farm and I'm mixing in a dating sim and I'm mixing in a RPG and I'm mixing in." When people throw all these mixins, I don't think that's great. That's my general thought. If you're like, "Well, Chris, show me the stats." I don't have it. It's just kind of a gut feel. That's why I look through Steam all the time to look through things. There's search um maybe mixing genres is bad on my blog and I have a whole essay about why I think it's bad. But overall folks, I think the safer bet is to take an existing game with a great genre, change the setting, add new kind of rules and stuff, but it's still like that genre, but now it's on a boat. It's that genre, but now it's like in a haunted mansion. It's that genre, but now it's like underwater. That's that's or now it's pirates. You know, that is the safer. If we're playing the stats, I think my gut says that's the safer bet. If you announced your game's name and showed concept art, is it still okay to call your first trailer? It is. Yes, you can. I

typically advise, and if you watch the course, I typically say don't say the game's name. You just say, "Hey, a fun project I'm working on. Hey, here's something that's cooking in my brain." I I I recommend against naming it, but yes, you can still do an announce trailer and do all their reach out and all the stuff that I advise here. Um uh if you've said the name, but I just from now on out, I wouldn't really say it. I'm just going to keep it low. I'd keep the game's name low. Okay, good question, Tanya. Um, Su, um, what to do if we launched the Steam page without contingent press round one to two months ago. Contact them now. Why not call it the announce? So, try it. I I I cover it in here. Stuff you can do. You can still try it. It's just not as exclusive. See, when stuff's exclusive, you can get people to do stuff for you. So, um, you you kind of lost some of the punch, but it's

still possible. And it's not over. The big thing, folks, here, here's the thing. Get the demo out. The demo is where wish lists are really going to come from. Okay, that's the thing. I've just seen it over and over. Most games, yes, they can do an announce, but it's the demo. That's why I did in this new wish list master class, I have hours of interviews with devs who've made awesome demos and we w I play their demo while they commentate over it and it's awesome. So, uh, watch those. That is what really gets you. It's the demo. The demo is where you get wish list now, folks. Okay. Osman, my team consists of seven people. If each person finds 10 friends and they all purchase the game on its release date and leave a nice review and receive 70 reviews within the first hour, do you believe this wouldn't be enough to get into the new and trending section? Um, no. I think it's Well, don't do that because you're gaming the Steam system. Do not do that. Steam gets smart and they've actually caught companies doing stuff like that. Don't

do that. It's not the number of reviews, it's the dollars earned. And my theory is it's about $5,000. If you can earn about $5,000 within the first 24 hours, that's the lowest I've seen. And it's competitive. It's it's um it's how many other games are launching next to you. It's about $5,000. Do not game the system and get all your friends to purchase in like here's what I do. Here's the system to game. Make a good game. That's my advice, Osman. Don't do that. Don't game the system. Just make a good game. All that effort that you were trying to play in that, take all that effort and instead invest that in making a good game. Don't try and game the Steam system. Okay? I only preach white hat good things to do on Steam. Do not game the system. It's just going to hurt you. Instead, instead of gaming the system, systemize your game, man. Make your game awesome. Okay? Just make a good game. Okay? That's my advice for everybody. Just please, for the love

of God, make a good game. That's the secret. There's one secret to Steam. Make a good game. Okay. No tricks. I don't I don't like tricks. Okay. Stephen, will additional languages, Steam achievements, certain features make any difference in wish list? Languages are make a big difference. Translate your game partially because like popular, upcoming, new and trending, new and trending, free. All those are um region based. And if your game is not like in Japan, they don't play as many. If it's English only, they won't play your game as much and you won't show up in the Japanese lists. So, translate your game. Translate your game. Translate your game. Achievements, do them. People will complain and give you bad reviews, but translate, translate, translate. That is the most important thing you can do is translate. Translate. Translate. Of all those things you said, translate. Okay. Uh, Pam Andre, do you know if the AI generated content tag? I don't know. I haven't studied it. I I don't think there's enough data. I don't know.

Okay. Um I don't know anything about the AI tag doing good or bad. All right. In about two years, I've gained 6,250 wish list. I had a few peaks um festivals, but otherwise I am more of a silver game. Do you have data on mid-tier or most of the data is on the two extremes? Um, I I hate to say it, but that's not Silver is not mid-tier. That is low tier. I'm sorry. I'm just I'm honest. I don't promise like, "Oh, yeah, it's instant success." I don't I promise real real things here. I don't think that those numbers aren't great. And so, my general advice is try your best. I don't know what you've done. It sounds like you did festival, so your demo's out. This is a hard business. This is a hard business. and it takes a lot. Um, so it might not happen with this game. Try it. If the demo's not out yet, get that demo out.

This is usually the demo is what tells people what the real numbers are. Those numbers are not mid. Those are like on the lower tier. Midtier is like like having 30,000 wish lists. 15 to 30,000. That is mid-tier success. That sometimes leads to mid-tier success. I wish you the best, but those numbers are very on the lower side. I'll just be honest, okay? I I I I don't try and BS for the sake of making everybody um do it. I'm not I'm not going to promise you, oh yeah, if you just take my course, I'm going to get you thousands of stuff. Yeah, I'm honest. Like, I'll be honest with you. Try the stuff. Now, I will try. If you've tried everything, I mean, I do show some things, but typically, you know, typically you know if you've gotten into a festival how the numbers are looking. Okay. You've mentioned that horror does well. Does this does that include narrative stuff? I feel like YouTubers will play it, but no incentive for viewers to play. This is what

happens. Here's here's how if somebody horror, yes, linear narrative horror does well. I mean, co-op does even better, but linear narrative horror does well. And here's what happens. Even if a YouTuber So, this is what happens on YouTube. It's never a linear thing. Sometimes a a streamer will play a game and I I did this when I did my user research on Steam. Um people will see a streamer played a game, they're like, "I love this streamer." If they recommend it, if they played it, they won't even watch the stream. They'll be like, "That person played it. That game looks awesome. This game looks exactly like my type of game. I'm not going to watch the stream and I'm I'm going to go buy it." Because people actually want to play games. They do. They want the thrill of your game. So, if they see a streamer playing a game and it looks cool just by the thumbnail and the little description they read, they're like, "Yeah, I'm going to do this. Yeah, let's do it. Let's buy it." They will buy it. Even though they didn't watch the streamer, just the fact that the streamer played your game is enough for people to

actually go buy the game. It sounds weird. It sounds weird, but that's what works. Now, sometimes people watch streamers, and I I knew another guy who watched horror streamers because he wants to be current with what games are popular, but he is too scared to actually play horror games. So, the remove of watching somebody else play a horror game was enough. So, you can see like there's no linearity. It's not like if you get covered by a streamer, this is the conversion rate because it's wibbly wobbly. Some people watch streamers because they know they're not going to buy it. Some people don't watch a streamer because they know they're going to buy it. That's it. So, yes, you should still reach out to streamers even if you have a short narrative horror game. Those can still do well. There are tons of examples of this. And I actually have a specific road map in the wish list class, new one for how to market a horror game. Uh, I have a special one because horror games are very special in the way they're marketed. And so, I have a whole road map just on how to market horror games. All right, Osman. How

often should we email influencers in the press? Every day. Every time you eat, you should email a press person or an influencer. I email the same person, same people once a month. Should I do it more often? Not the same person. I say three strikes out. If you contact a streamer three times and they ignore you and they don't say anything, stop emailing them. Stop it. Don't be creepy, okay? Do not do that. What? Give them three strikes like, "Hey, just checking in. Did you see it?" "Hey, just final offer. Did you see it?" And if that doesn't work and I show you how to keep track of all this, then you just mark them in red and say, "Stop contacting this person." Do not be creepy. Do not contact people that often. Now, you should There's so many streamers out there. There are more. I talked to some um people whose job is to reach out to content creators and they said they reach out to a thousand 1,000

content 1,000 unique content creators in a campaign. A thousand. Sometimes when I talk to new indies, they're like, "Yeah, I contacted so many. I contacted like 50. It was like a lot. I contacted 50." I was like, "50? You got to bump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers." So, don't contact the same person more than three times, but you got to reach out to lots more. Okay. Is it good for marketing to have your own Steam curator page, eg to show the game's interest? Doesn't matter. Curator pages don't matter. Forget it, Dan. T doesn't matter. I mean, you can create if you want. You don't have to create it. Doesn't matter. All right, Ricardo. I am wanting I'm wanting to focus on doing some play tests. By the way, these are great questions. Did I tell you I love how short you guys questions are for our upcoming game before releasing the demo later this year? Is it a good idea to post the game on it for play test more feedback before releasing more polish demo? That is a great idea. Definitely do that, Ricardo. Definitely do that, Ricardo. Good job, Ricardo. Um,

from Marcus, what is the deal number of streamers to contact prior launch? I just said that thousands. We're talking somewhere between 300 and a thousand. Most devs are not doing enough. Most devs just do not reach out as as many streamers. Okay, do it. Do a lot, more than you think. From Bryce, you've said before that you wish people would spend a few weeks picking what genre and art style the game that more than a week. Um, they're going to make, what tactically should someone actually do during that time in order to decide? Obviously, look at the last year's top selling games. Look at your analysis and breakdowns. Look at SteamB. Yes. Here's what I would do. play games like okay I would say like you know hopefully you've got some idea of what you've read the analysis and you kind of know you're like Chris said crafty buildy I like trains or I like base building and you just go through and you play you you go on Steam DB and whatever game you're like I kind maybe

you start with a single game you're like you know what Chris said crafty build strategy games are big and he said citybuilders mixed with tower defense are big and So, I would go, this is what I would do. Get VG Insights. Pay for like a month of VG Insights. It's like $15 a month, I believe. But it is so important. This is the game you're going to spend possibly years working on. You could spend $15. Okay, you can spend $15. So, spend the money on VG Insights. I don't get paid by them. I like I just like them. And then you figure out like Nine Kings is the most recent citybuilder/ tower defense game that I think of and a little deck building. and you just get those two or three tags like citybuer, tower defense, and you just find all of them and then filter by the last five years and you'll just get a list of games. Then what I would do is just buy all of those. Wait for a Steam sale, okay? And buy all those games and play them and look at how much they've

kind of earned, okay? and you see that amount and then you go play them and you're like, be honest with yourself. Could I make a game at this quality level, this depth, this like could we actually achieve this quality level? And you see that and you've got to be honest with yourself and you're like, yes. And then you just take all those genres and you use your artist brain. This is where it's not just it's not science. You can't say like, well, I found if they include this feature, there's a 20% increase in thing. No, it's art. This is where the art comes in. You've now played like 20 50 games that are in this kind of genre blend or whatever. This this genreesque thing and you're like, "Okay, I think I see where the genre is kind of going. It's kind of going in this direction. I bet if we added this mechanic, I liked this one. I liked this game, but I hated this mechanic, so we'll take that mechanic away. I love this mechanic." And you're like, "Yeah, yeah. What if we did it in this world?" Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's how you

get there. And then you make it in one month and you upload it to itch and you see if people like it and if they don't you do that again but for a different game and you work on it for that whole thing but for a different game. Then you work on it a month. You upload it to itch and you see how that one does. And then if that doesn't work you do that again but for another one. And you upload that one to itch. And then you got three games on it. You can compare the numbers and you're like this one did really well. This one did exceeded our expectations. And then you make that and you spend a short period of time, not too long, and you make a game. And then you make another game and you make another game. It's not just one game, folks. Nobody survives off of one game. You got to make lots of games, Bryce. Lots of games. You got to play a lot of games. You got to make a lot of games. That is how you detect the market. Now, the other thing that you can do is search, it's an older video, search on YouTube, um, Zukowski, how to spy on your audience. You can also go to how tomarketaggame.com and in courses. Let's see. Yeah, I don't want to do that. Um, just search on I have a thing called talks and appearances. List all my appearances. Just search spy on that

page. It's on the top bar. It says talks and appearances. Click that. Then search spy. There's a talk I gave about how to spy on your audience. That's the other way. That's the long version of that. Good question. Play test of streamers uh streaming yourself. Is it a good idea? Um, streaming yourself? No. I don't think I don't think devs should spend time on YouTube. I don't think they should spend time streaming their own game. I think it's a waste of time. People think, "Yeah, I'm deving and I'm I'm on Twitch streaming my game." No, it's a waste of your time. Mentally, you cannot stream. Like, I can't I can barely edit like HTML live on this stream. I can barely do that. You can't make a game. And I find that devs who like do Yeah, I'm just like live streaming and deving with everybody. They're doing a half-ass job of live streaming and a halfass job of game development. Focus. Just put earplugs in. Turn off YouTube. Turn off everything. Focus on your game. Make your game. Then give it to people. This streaming YouTube garbage, it's garbage. Stop that. Stop all this like YouTube streaming delogs. If anybody asked about

YouTube devlogs, I don't think you should do it. It doesn't work. Just make the game. Make a demo and focus. Just folks, focus. The amount of people like, "Oh yeah, I I listen to your master class while I'm working on my game." Like, don't. I want you 100% focused on this. This is people like, "Oh yeah, I listen to the master class while I'm on my run." Don't like I I show complicated data and this is a complicated thing. I want you the ideal be like have a notebook watching my lecture writing down notes thinking about it thinking about while you're watching it you've got nothing else on focus folks stop all this multitasking search anything like search multitasking fallacy people cannot multitask they think they can they do a worse job of everything so just no no dev no play test no streaming you're probably watching too much YouTube I mean you in the general folks everybody's watching too much YouTube. Okay. Planning to launch a demo in tandem with a suitable festival. If we

don't get into a festival, should we launch demo before festival, during, or after? Good. Good policy, good thought to time it with a festival. Uh, just launch it when you're ready. Do it early. Do it do it as early as you can. At that point, it doesn't matter. Just just launch the demo. It doesn't matter that timing stuff. People over analyze. Oh, yeah. Well, what if I bounce it off the moon and then I'd stream it after? There's a one day gap between. It doesn't matter. Most of the time that stuff doesn't matter. So, don't overthink it. Just get that demo out as soon as you can. I mean, I do think it's good. Here's the thing. Um, I think it's good that you're thinking get into a festival. That is a good strategy to try and get it in a festival. But after that, if you can't get a big launch partner for launching a demo or something, just get it out. Don't overthink like, well, there's a AAA game coming out and the Olympics are going to be on and then there's this movie that's coming out. What if we timed it to hit on this day with all this? No. The only thing that matters, did you get into a festival or not? Did you get a streamer

to play it when you launch? That's the only thing that matters. All this other stuff is you're overthinking it. Stop overthinking it. All right, Florian. What is a good rev share with a publisher if you already within about 15,000 wish list? Wait for Jason Delaroka. He is the funding publisher expert. It's at 11:30. 11:30 is when he's speaking. It's going to be in about half an hour. If you go back to this, let's go back here. Um, oh, I didn't put it. After this call, I'm going to do some more HTML editing. I'm going to link to it right here. Jason is going to be giving a talk at 11:30 Pacific time, which is basically in 30 minute a little bit more. It's basically an hour. 50 minutes. It's in 50 minutes. I'm doing math and HTML on stream. It's about 50 minutes. Jason Delaroka, who's the funding and publisher master, he made the master class. Ask him, Florian. Come back for

that. I hope you ask him. Um, but I it's going to depend because there's all these clauses. I'm just going to tell you it depends on all the clauses. Talk to a lawyer, but um talk to him. Depends on how much funding you're getting, all these other things. So, Florine, come back when Jason's on. Okay. Josh, should my studio stick to a single genre for brand awareness? Um, I think it should. I I think devs Here's the thing. It's not brand awareness, it's expertise. I feel like devs just there's a saying where it's like um if making games were like if making movies were like making games, you would have to reinvent the camera every time you wanted to make a new movie. And dad are like, "See, that means how hard games are." I'm like, "Well, why are we reinventing the camera? Stop reinventing the camera." Like, if you've made a game in a genre, just just just make a sequel or a spin-off or another one that uses most of that code. You just spend all this time making all this code in the genre. Just make another game in that genre and

then you save so much code. I know it's not that simple. I know. I have a computer science degree. I do know, but I just feel like Dez are like, "Well, I spent all this time researching and developing this big complicated device Yeah, I'm just going to throw it away after I'm done. Like, why? Why did you just throw They're just like, I don't need this anymore. I'm tired of this thing. And they just smash their camera. I'm like, all you have to do is just pop this off, put on a new lens, and it looks like a new game. I don't understand why devs just like like, why did you hate that? Why? Just pick this up. There's so much good stuff here. Why did you do this? Why? Why? Hold don't throw away all your code. Just so it's not about brand awareness. It's just like, why did you get rid of all this code? This code is good. You did good. Don't Why are devs so mean to their code? Josh, make another one. Don't Don't move on. I know you're you think you're bored, but just you worked so hard on this. Just Josh, my man,

be nice to your old code. All right. F. Does Steam offer some free visibility for the Steam page launch? It does not. This is like people often misinterpret this on. Okay. There is no section on Steam that's like newly announced pages. There is nothing there. Now, when I one thing I said which I think people over interpret is I said there's like a natural thing. Like if you launch your Steam page, I can look at the numbers and there's some baseline that people get on like it just is. I don't know how it's like solar rays come in and wish list your game. I don't know what it is, but somehow people find your game. And it's not because there's some Steam algorithm or there's some default visibility. It's just somehow people find a game. And so that's when I say like there's some baseline. I was like, "Ah, look at this number. This is bad. If you're getting this baseline of wish list and people over interpret that like, oh, so there must be a widget or something, the

baseline algorithm that gives you visibility." No, it's just like I don't know. They just like some games just get wish lists and so there is no free visibility when you launch a Steam page. It's not I I've talked to Valve and they're like there's none and I totally agree with them but the launch for your Steam page is important because you can do things like go to the press and go show our game it's new and because you go it's new these journalists and YouTube channels go oh it's new so I will cover it. That's it's a people algorithm, not a Steam algorithm, which is this default visibility. Let's see how many I have. I do I've been doing this for two I think I have 15 minutes left and then I'll be at this for two hours and I do have to I think that I think my stream will cut me out. These are great questions. I'm going to try and turbocharge it again even though we're past the hour. If you buy anything from this summer sale, which you get how tomarketaggame.com/courses, if you buy anything here over the next

two hours, I will go in and I filter for the two hours because you were here at the live stream and I will credit you the live conference, the live mini conference that I do every year. I will give you that that summer one. I will just credit to your thing. I have to do it manually. So, don't yell at me if it's not there. You're like, "Chris, I just bought a class. I don't see it." Just give me a sec. I have to go in after this and I have to go at it. Okay, just I will be there. Okay, so um I think slow mirror I think I fixed it. Just refresh. I think this might be an old comment, so refresh it. If it still doesn't work, um reach out to me and I'll get it to you. But I think I fixed it. I think just refresh this page and I think it worked. Rishi, how far from the release date should we get an embargo for YouTubers? Um I it's like a week and and and what you're doing is you're just you can go all the way up to it and it's not an embargo. It's not like oh I have to

do this thing. What you're just saying is like hey this is our launch date. We'd appreciate if you didn't do it on right at the launch date like maybe do it on this time. You're just telling them a date. It's not like you have to get an official like sign this document to say you're embargoing it. It's just you're giving them a date to say, "Hey, um, we're launching on this time. So, if you could, would you like to do it during this time period?" And I'd start a month out. I'd do a month early, a month earlier. And just kind of reach out to them and be like, "Hey, we're going to launch at this time. It'd be great if your video could launch at this time." That's what when we do uh exclusives. You don't have to like, "You must not follow this." Okay. What if Alisa says, "What if the game doesn't hit the 250 reviews in the first months, but it is an early access release? Any chance it can recover?" I hate to say it, it cannot. I've done the analysis. Um, I talk about it in a real chat, but search on my blog. Search right here. Search early access and I've done the math. I think if you don't I think the number I found was if you do

not hit 100 reviews in the first month, you have there were like 5% of games later went on to do well. Even early access early access. search early access. Here's the thing, folks. Like, when you launch your Steam, when you launch your game, if it does well, the way the Steam algorithm works is they look at little bits and they're like, "Whoa, that did well." They they give it to like a little audience and like, "Whoa, that did well. Whoa, it's still doing well." And they just keep growing your audience and they keep showing it more and more and more. And it's like, and what happens is when people are like, "But I, well, I didn't hit the numbers, but I think it'll do well. Steam showed a little bit." And they're like, "Oh, the numbers aren't good." Okay. Well, we're not going to show it to anybody else. And it's like, you can do some other things, but all this other marketing stuff like streamers playing it and press and YouTube and all that kind of stuff. They all tried it and they're all like, I don't see, that's where I'm talking that excitement and wishless velocity that I was talking earlier. I my thought is you can tell real fast if your game's

got it. You can tell real fast. And in general, like there's just it just doesn't happen. Everybody's like, "But what about in Among Us?" I found one game that beat the odds last year from 250 reviews that did better. One one. It just doesn't happen. I am sorry. I could sell a course who was like how to bring back your game. But I'm not like there is no way. I I really don't think you can do it. It's just the Steam algorithm is very good. People like I wish I had exposure. Steam does a great job of exposure. It's just they expose it a ton right here. And they're like, nope. Uh, we exposed it a ton in this mount and didn't get it. There's nothing else we can do. That's the thing is people always like, "How do I get more exposure?" I was like, "No, Steam gave you all the exposure. You just didn't do much with it." That's it's it's hard to hear, but it's it's kind of true. It's kind of true. Okay. Matthew asked, "When marketing your second or third game, how much of the process is completely starting from scratch? What can you gain from your first launches?" Well, here's the thing,

Matthew. in this road map in my thing. Um, I actually have a specific road map just for you in your scenario. And basically, you can crossromote from your old games. If you did well enough, you can get Steam to feature you. I'm doing all that stuff. You'll have a special road map just for you in the master class. But there's a lot of stuff. Basically, it's you're using the existing Steam visibility that you have to crossromote to your new one. That's what it is. That's what it is. And and you have existing streamers. Like if you got streamers to play your old game, you have this existing relationship. People forget how much that relationship stuff matters. Like, hey, you played our last game. Do you want the launch of our our first game? You you did so good with our previous game, Mr. Streamer. Would you like to play our sequel? That is like so good. And uh that's again, it goes back to the thing like I spent all this time on this thing, so I'm gonna throw this down and I'm gonna start a totally different game, a totally different genre. It's like don't don't do that. Why Why do you hate your old self so much? Okay.

All right. Jupa asks, "How can you prove you're not just another how to become rich guru?" Um, I can prove it because one, I just told a bunch of people they're not going to be rich. I'm like the worst get-rich guru if I just told a bunch of people that they're not going to get rich. I keep telling people like, "I'm sorry, you just don't have it." Um, two, I have, if you scroll down on the master class thing, um, I have these testimonials. I have more, but I just, one, I ran out of time. I'm going to add some more on here. Um, but like these are actual games. Like you can look up Tiny Glade and you can buy You don't even have to buy Tiny Glade. Here's what you do. Go to Tiny Glade and get the demo. If you search Tiny Glade, look at the demo and then look up the special thanks. I am in there. Now, I I went and I checked. They did add two more moms. There's two more team members and they added their moms, but I'm under like a couple more moms. And look, there it is. Most marketing class like this game followed my

strategy and they did awesome. Okay, here's this game. Look at Micro Civilization. Just Google. I I think I I'm I'm not going to edit HTML live on call from this. I didn't do it. But search on Steam Micro Civilization. Like here it is. Here's the strategy. We're right here. He's like this worked. the master class without doubt the best investment in my entire project. Okay, that's it. This stuff actually works. Like Momenta, if you look them up, they're they haven't released yet. They're sitting on 75,000 wish lists in six weeks. I have more stories. I just didn't have time to put them in there. I will. I will still add some more stories. And if you buy it and you're like, "This is just Chris and he's just rambling and it doesn't make any sense." You can just immediately ask for your money back. You're like, "This is all BS. This doesn't actually work." As long as you do it in 30 days, I have no You don't even have to tell me it sucks. You're just like, "Chris, can I have my money back?" I won't even say like I'll just go boop. There's literally I just go to this one page and there's this button I push and then you get your money back. That's it. So, as long as you do it in 30 days, I am totally fine. So, if you doubt it, just

go buy it and I will give your money back. And if you buy it right now, I will literally um um I'll give you that free thing and you could keep it even if you're like, "This Chris is a scammer." Like I I've been around for a very long time. Like I have no problem. This is a third 3.0 version of this course. I've been doing this since 2022. Three versions. I'll be here for a long time. I'll be up to version 10 someday. This is the best marketing class. Like it just is. Um you can search Reddit. Just search Zukowski course. I mean there's a couple people just sell those courses. But if you see the people, there will be a couple comments. Search the comments for Zukowski course and you'll see a couple people like this course is actually really good. and from a Redditor to say that that is like 10 times. So just don't don't even trust me. Just just look on Reddit Zukowski course and you'll find it. Just search in the search bar and then do comments. And yes, there's going to be like these guys Chris is like all these marketing guru Well, that guy didn't take the course. He just has a theory

about me. But like seriously, I have no like and if you want extra like and you can just message me on Discord and I'll send you those other case studies. But again, these are very successful games. And I post their thing and I asked them, I was like, "Can I share your name and stuff?" And they're like, "Yeah, yeah." And they're like, "Can you just do it to my blue sky?" So there's their blue sky. The I'm in the credits. I'm literally in the credits. If I was a scammer, they wouldn't put me in the credits. So just go to the demo. Tiny is a fun game. Anyway, click the demo and then look at the credits page and you'll see my name in there. Like I'm not making this stuff up. All right. So thank you, Jupa. I hope you find what you're looking for. And again, if you're still like want to yell at me, do it. I will um I'll show you some other case studies. I just didn't have time to write them up and find the screenshots and stuff like that. I was up till midnight getting this stuff ready, folks. It was it was a a lot of stuff. John K, I'm making a sports game and getting interest from pros, but I don't want to announce it until they're officially signed. Is it risky to contact them now knowing they might leak it? No, don't worry about

leaking. And I don't know what you mean by pros. Do you mean like streamers or like pro athletes? I don't know what you mean by pros. I wouldn't risk it. I mean like I don't I don't think you have to risk it. Just like hey this is really important that I launch on this date. I announce my game on this date. It's not going to be a big deal. Like maybe they would say like on a podcast. I don't know what you mean by a pro. Um but just I mean I I don't quite know but I don't think you have to worry. It's not like people are being malicious or something. Um just be very clear with them like hey I trust you but I just really need to make sure that you do not announce it until this date. So, I would just be clear with them and it's not that big of a deal if it happens. It's not that big. All right, Adrian, what are the specific checkpoints to look out for in order to ask Steam for a special deal? For instance, when hitting 150,000 u pre-cut revenue, you can ask Steam for a daily. Yeah. In fact, for you folks, if you've gotten um I would even we saw some games I I tracked this there's a couple games that got they have like a hundred reviews and they ask for a daily deal and they got it. Sometimes it's like Steam just has an open slot and they

like your game and they'll do it. Just ask for it. Just even if you don't think you're going to get it, just ask for it. The worst I can do is say no. It's it costs nothing. So, but it's typically 100 reviews or more. I don't really see much below 100 reviews. So, Adrian, just try for it. See if it works. Um, next one. Okay, I did get the alert that I think it is going to end like in 5 to 10 minutes when I was ask answering that question. I am sorry. Okay. So, here's what I'm going to do. This stream may cut out, okay? The stream will cut out, but I am recording this locally onto my computer. So, I will disappear, but I'm still going to answer your questions and you just have to wait for the YouTube uploads because I'm going to take this Q&A and then I'm going to upload it to YouTube. Okay? I will upload it to YouTube. And so, even if cut off, I will still be answering your question. So, if you asked a question and you didn't and I didn't get to it, wait like a day and it'll be on YouTube and you can look at the bottom and it's there. Okay. Um, wombat. So, the V3 wishlist course will

still have part about missing middle strategy. Yes. Um, I can see the blue dots. Yes. When you look at that strate, it does have the missing middle strategy. I promise. I recorded it. I so the missing middle strategy is get a game out fast and it's like I say a dev time of three months and I give you a strategy of three months of dev time and about four months of marketing after that I break down I even have a special thing of like here's dev you know here's when the dev here's a the core game loop is set I promise it's in there I may have to like turn it on I was uploading stuff until midnight last night so I may have just forgot to check this thing I promise it's there and if you're not happy with it again I've got the 30 day come back And if you're like, I saw the strategy, Chris, and I hate it. You don't even have to tell me that. No questions asked. You just say, I want a refund, but I promise. Just give me at least a day. I may have to go in and uncheck something and maybe there, but I I know I recorded it. It's there. So, I do the missing middle strategy. It's got the whole road map for how to do missing

middle. I give it there. Um, okay. Uh, so I'm gonna mark as chat. Good question. U Nomad. I wonder if this is Nomad idol. If it is, Fox Knox, good to see you. If not, uh, solo dev, usually very busy with developing, designing, and marketing beats. How do you recommend finding influencers, content creators? Um, yep, I think I have a whole thing that you go down here, but um, here's a here's the fastest way to do it. I'll do this for because I'm trying to get through. Okay. Hopefully, you know your other games. You got to know the other games that are similar to yours. It's critical, crucial, crucial. Um, take that and search you. Find out when that game, that game that you think is most similar to you launched. Okay? and then go to YouTube and you click a couple things or Google search. I think you got to do it through Google search. There's a thing called tools drop down and you can filter the dates. So you filter on either side of that game's release like a month on either side. Search the game's name and you'll see all the content creators that played it. And you can even do some filtering of size and all that kind of stuff. And so then you just find them and then you do what's called add it to the CRMC. How to create a CRM. CRM is customer

relationship manager. That's what that means. Customer relationship manager. It's just a giant spreadsheet where you keep track of this data. And see how I have a whole section on who you add and all this stuff. And I tell you exactly how to do it. I give you the spreadsheet template that you use. And then you just add all these people from all these games that you find and all those YouTubers. That's how you do it. And then you can see their you their um email address from there. So that's basically how you do it at Nomad. That's it in a five minute window. Okay. It says it's going to end in five minutes. So in 5 minutes I'm just going to disappear. But I'm still here recording in in this warp zone that I'm in. Okay. So, um, just it was great seeing you if I disappear in five minutes. Again, you have to buy the course now because this is the last chance. Um, otherwise I don't give you that special thing. I mean, you the course is still going to be open for another like two weeks, but you won't get the special free course like the free thing. Even if you're you're doubting it, you're like, I don't know, just buy it. I give the 30-day warranty to give I'll just give it back

to you if you're like, h, nah, I don't want to do it. I I I changed my mind. to talk to my wife and she said no. You don't even have to tell me that stuff. Just ask for it and I will just refund it to you and you get to keep the free conference. Okay? So just if you're doubting, buy it. Um I hope to see you again. There's there's another talk with Jason Delaroka. Same format Q&A. We're going to be doing that in 30 minutes because he's at 11:30. So in 30 minutes I'm jumping on another call with Jason. We're doing the same thing. You can also buy any course during that that window and I will credit you that thing. So anyway, I only have minutes left. I'm still recording. I'm just going through this. Good luck everybody. Thank you so much for attending, but I'm going to go to questions and then I'm just going to disappear. So, I just want to say thank you for showing up. Thank you for being part of my community. Thank you for considering buying this thing and thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the people who did buy it. So, I appreciate you. All right, Glenn. Is it better to launch with a festival you manage to get into like a strategy festival? I do. I think it is good to do that. Yes, I think it's good. Okay. Um,

uh, from Stefan, would you share your thoughts on the Peak on the game Peak and simple simple co-op games? I think they're awesome. I think it's good. Um, co-op games are very hot. Very hot. I think you should do them. Um, simple. They they have a very short marketing runup, but don't just think Will Peak did it. They are a very established dev with lots of industry connections. So, I don't think a lot of people like it just came out of nowhere. Well, they're from the Angry Crab folks, so they've got a lot of networks and and influence that they can do. Okay. Okay. So, it's not just like, oh, I'm just going to drop my game, shadow drop it because I'm cool. You can't shadow drop your game. Please don't shadow drop your game. Please don't. Okay. Um, uh, Mark as Okay, next question from now. I was going to announce the game before June and I couldn't because the key art wasn't ready, but I miss lots of festivals. Have you seen that a lot of festivals in the middle of the year? I'm in a short game, so I cannot wait till next year. Yeah. Like, okay. So, there are things like if you get into a festival, if people accept you into a festival, forget the capsule. You could

just do text like I you have to weigh the things like there's ideal strategy where it's like yes get a capsule but if you got into a festival that's more awesome like there's an order of effect like getting into a festival or a streamer covering you that's awesome it might not be as perfect it would be even better if you had the capsule but you have to weigh those two options and so I wouldn't have made that choice I'm sorry I would have just made a capsule that just had cool text it was like a cool effect and then some text I would have even done a pixel art capsule even if I said, "Oh, no. It's not there." So, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. So, you have to weigh these things. There's no perfect strategy, okay? There's no perfect strategy where it's like, "I'm waiting for this to be perfect." No, you got to jump on what you got. Um, okay. Love the one you're with. Okay. Sabahi, uh, Sabari, um, I worked as a developer using Unity uh, past years. Any tips for someone to make a commercial indie game for the first time? I've made several non-commercial games. Um, make a crafty strategy simulation game. Don't make a platformer. Don't make a puzzle game.

Search my blog for genres. U just search um AAA devs. Advice for AAA devs. I list all the types of games that devs should make if they're new to this. Even though you might not be a AAA dev, I would still look at that. The and don't make an education game. I find a lot of people like, "Oh, I'm going to make a game for kids in education." Those don't sell on well on Steam. Be very, very, very careful about what type of game you make. All right. So, good luck, Sabari. Um but yeah, search that blog. I talk about common genre mistakes. Gonzalez Arthur and I'm gone. So, I'm still recording. I'm just waiting. I can't read the questions because it's like refreshing, but back on it. Thank you. I'm now on the other side. We're just talking to the void. Okay. Um, should I make a public private servers? Do you think multiplayer games? Should I make a public private or do I need LAN option two? I don't know about that that specific. I think you just need a public server. I think you just need servers, but I'm not a game

developer. Search what other games do. Okay. Okay. From Nomad. Um, Nomad says, "Are you going to have a list of what are the differences between previous versions and the new versions?" I don't have a list of them. Basically, what I do is anything that's new, I put a blue dot. So, if it's got a blue dot, that is new. If I don't have a blue dot, that's old. Other than that, I don't. So, if you've bought the previous versions or something, just go to the blue dots. Follow the blue dots. Okay. Um, Alisa says, "People see different prices for the course at the moment." I know it's probably because of the VAT. So, Alisa, I'm sorry. That's just uh the way it is. Okay. Sabari, I'm waiting for my regional discount coupon. Do I get a free course if I buy the wish list? Yes. Um just message me, Sabari.

Message me, Sabari, and I'll I'll help you out. I'll just write you down, Sabari, so that I remember that you're there and that you are there. Um Okay. Um um James asks, "Sorry, I'm just going through all the last ones." Marcus chat, "Uh James, you say don't launch after NextFest. What about other Steamfest or current release date is the day after the Animal Fest?" Yeah, Animal Fest doesn't matter. The problem is the reason Nextfest is so bad is because every developer is in NextFest and every developer has the idea of, "Oh, I'm going to launch right after NextFest because I'm hot." I think it's because NextFest is so big. I don't know this Animal Fest how many games are in there, but it's probably not as big as NextFest, so it probably doesn't matter as much. Um, it's probably not as bad, but again, for the most part, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't like it. We're

talking like a tiny increase. the the the main thing that people should be worrying about is what type of game should it be making? That's the bigger choice. All right. Oleg, if we're planning on it to release after a nextfest, how far should we release from it so that we won't get killed by the other games? I talk about this in the course and the launch. I call it the gap. Um it's there's a section here all about launch timing. Don't overthink it. I think it's just like the the thing is everybody launches the three to four days after next. But you can look this up. You can look it up on Steam DB to see all the releases. So just just don't do it right after. But again, folks, it doesn't matter that you're overthinking it. You're overthinking it. Don't think too hard about the release date hour thing. I know it seems important, but it is not important. It is not as important. Um Steve, any specific advice for idly incremental games? post to idol. There's an idol I can't remember what the Reddit

is called. It's called idle fans or incremental fans. I can't remember what it is. There's a subreddit that's very active and they let you post your game. That's a big one. And get a demo up because incremental games look best in demo form. They they don't do well on social media. Get that demo out and keep that demo out. So that's my advice, Steve. Good luck. Idol fans love idol games. So um look at that. Um, from what is the recommended way to find play testers? Are specific platforms better than hinds? How much priority? No, the way you do play testers is first you go to similar games on Reddit and reach out to them and say, "Hey, I'm making a game." And then another way is uh um uh you go to streamers like Alpha Beta Gamer and say, "We're making a beta." And get them to cover it. And then you have a link that says sign up for the beta. And that's how you do it. you get a play test out and or um you do a marketing beat around the beta and I talk about it right here. There's several options on how to do that and

it's right up here. See beta somewhere down here beta talk about it grind pre-demo betas and I find how what was it beta beta preparations and then it tells you exactly how to get people to find your beta. So uh okay. Um um from Nomad, you had suggested um you had suggested that we localize the Steam page first to see if we get traffic from it. Do we need to push for their social somehow? I think this is natural visibility. You just wait for the natural visibility. Um, that's kind Steam actually is the one that recommends that. I don't recommend that as much. The thing because you look at the numbers, you're like, I don't know. Is this good? And Val's like, I don't know. And I'm like, why do you always recommend that? It's mostly Valve recommending say like, translate your

page and see what the numbers look like. I don't know what you look like, what you look for in that. I just say translate. Just translate. Um, from John Bruce, thoughts on free with microtransactions furl game. Don't do that. I think I already answered that. John Bruce, don't do free. I free just doesn't work. Just make Here's the thing that works. Making a good game and charging real money for it. If it'll work. It'll work if the game is good. There's no secret tricks. It's not a weird trick. Um Suzanne, do you have recommendations on making the most of a Discord community page? I don't. I think Discord is mostly overrated. Um I don't talk about Discord. It's like if the game is doing well, a lot of people come into your discord and then it does well. That's it. I don't think there were used to be some things like, oh maybe add a game to your discord that people can play in your discord. That's distraction. I don't agree with that discord. If the discord if the game is good, the discord will go well. So I

don't think improving your discord is going to have much of an impact. It's the game. Focus on making a good game and then everything else follows from that. So I don't I think Discord is mostly overrated. It's good for support. If people are having problems or people are wanting to chat to to do a multiplayer server or give feedback, that's good. But Discord by itself is, I think, overrated for marketing. I really do. Uh, from H, for a co-op horror game, would you would only having the host purchase the game be an effective strategy encourage the spread of the game after launch? I don't think you can quite do this. Again, this is kind of one of those gimmick hacks. I don't think it works. Just make a good game and keep the price. I think co-op games have to be kind of low. Um, I don't think this is kind of one of those weird strategies that sounds good, but I don't. Just just put the game up for a good price, see what the other co-op horror games are going for, and then increase your price

by 20%. Um, I think that's just generally what you got to do. Um um I know the demo playthroughs. I just got to activate them. I just I didn't go through and activate all this stuff because I was waiting for the launch day. I just have to go do it. I promise they'll be there. They're there. Just give me a sec. I got to turn them on. Um if you're watching this, they're already on. I promise. As soon as I'm over, this is this is on there. Um what is your take on price plans for services like key mailer lure kit? I don't like key lure kit. I don't think they work very well. So, my advice is if you've got money to burn, do them, but it's not going to get you anything. They just don't work. The thing that works is reaching out to content creators directly. Um, those those people that I talk to that are professional uh influencer outreach people, they're like I'm like just Lurkit and Key, they're like, I don't know. I just kind of throw some money at it and then it does something. But it is not it's like a a sprinkling you do at the end like I

don't know. Let's just do it so that I could say that I did it. It just doesn't it doesn't really work. Just doesn't really work. I don't think it's worth it. Um Osman, when I share my game on Reddit subreddits or similar games, I get 50 to 100 up votes. Probably thanks to this, I get 10 to 20 wishes per game. Is this a good sign? No. Amen. I don't think it is. Like 10 to 20 wish list. Like I said, you're not going to get to success by getting 10 to 20 wish list. That's just too small. And and I talked about this in hell month. The thing that is good is you post it on the subreddit and you get like 5,000. You get I got I I I have a case study for a game. They got 11,000 wish lists from a Reddit post. 10 to 20 wish lists are not worth the effort. They just that's not a good sign. I'm sorry. I know they get hundreds of up votes. The games and I give benchmarks here. There's a section here about benchmarks. And I'm going to be honest with you, you

got to you got to look at the benchmarks. The benchmarks, what is viral? We're talking like 75,000 up votes. Not 100 up votes, 75,000. And so I just don't think those numbers I it's good that you're trying, but I just don't think it's it's not the level that that you need. Okay. Um, two more questions. Two more questions. How can you be sure your data doesn't have survivorship bias and there aren't games with the magic that didn't succeed? I know because like that if you looked at that study where I said um I looked at all the games um that's that got 150 reviews. I looked at every game that launched on Steam and I went back and I said every game how many reviews did they get in their first month and none of them. So I looked at the both sides. I looked at the games that succeeded and the games that didn't succeed. That's how you do survivorship bias. It's survivorship bias if I just looked at the succeeding. But I didn't. I looked at both sides. I looked at the games

that didn't succeed. In fact, that's most games. So, I think anytime you talk about something working, people like, "Well, that's survivorship bias." It's like, "Yeah, but just because something worked doesn't mean that's survivorship bias." You look at both sides. And so, I every year I scrape all of Steam, all of it. And then I look at the percentage. So, if you look at the percentage, I can see what percentage didn't succeed. And that's the thing is like I looked at every single game that released on Steam in the past year and then I can see all these games didn't succeed. I I I don't know what else to tell you. And and here's the other thing. We're not curing cancer here. So like when you're doing entrepreneurial activities, you have to take risks. You're never going to find perfect absolute 100% market tested data that's perfect because if you wait for that sample size to be appropriate. You will just never launch. And so being an entrepreneur, taking a risk and making a game, you're going to have to take a risk. You got to use a little bit of

your gut. You have to use the best data available to you and then you have to take the leap. But I can guarantee you, I look at all games, not just the ones that succeeded. I look at every game on Steam. Like I scraped I literally I worked with uh VG Insights who scrapes a game every year and I every game that's on Steam and we scraped and then I wrote a script within that to just scrape every game. Every single game that launched, not just the winners, every game. Okay. All right, David. Considering your middle game theory, which is better, release Steam page with a festival or on your own? Oh, always with a festival. um you try for a month and if you don't get in in a month then you launch on your own. That's the best you can do. Um if you wait wait wait wait wait wait it'll never happen. So you just have to take a risk. So you try for a month and if you don't get in then you launch on your own. And that is the final question. So once again um I'm talking to the void but I'm now talking to YouTube people who are watching this. Here is um my master class. I have this

is version 3.0. Let me let me do it so you can actually see that it says 3.0. I've been around for a while. I've been blogging since 2015 14 somewhere in there. I've updated this class since 2022. It is the most uh like it is the best master class for marketing a game on Steam. There is nothing else like it. Again, like I am here for the long haul. I'm on version 3.0. If this was a fly by night operation, I would not have three versions. I've been doing this since 2022. Games have succeeded with my strategies. And I don't make this stuff up. The way I get these strategies is I have this community that shares their data with me. So, I just look at all the games and all the games that succeed and all the games that fail for survivorship bias and I build the strategies based off of that. And I don't invent this stuff. It's not like I came up with this stuff like I have the answers. I only do.

Other people came up with these ideas. I just curate and I collect them and then I explain how they work and I line them up in a nice convenient way for you. And that's what the master class is. I just conveniently go through it all. So, um Oh, I I do still have it says don't buy my course. I should leave this. Um but anyway, so that's the master class. So, thank you so much. Again, if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm sorry you didn't catch the little special thing where you bought it. If you buy it during the YouTube, I'm sorry it doesn't count. I'm sorry I you have to see it live. This is post. So when I say that special offer doesn't work. Um it's only for the people who watch me live. I'm sorry. Sorry. I just can't I can't give it to everybody for all the time. I have to make it special. So um that's it. I'm I'm really sweaty and I have to get a drink and I have to eat some lunch. So I just want to say thank you so much for watching and I hope you consider this. Again, even if you don't buy it during my special hour 30-day, no questions asked refund. I promise I will

give it to you. Um, as long as it's been those 30 days because then the button disactivates. Not that I don't want to, it's just that the button doesn't work and then and then I don't know how to get you the money. So, it's all that button. I just have to it just disappears. All right. Good luck out there. I hope you have a good day and thank you so much for listening. Bye. [Music] Papa papa papa papa papa p pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap papa pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap papa pa pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap pap papa [Music]