Final Summer Q&A session

Hello, hello, hello. I am live here. Let's see what I can do. Let me see if I can turn my screen share on. I am I would love to be with you live in person, but my camera just died on me. Something setting is stupid here. So, I am here to talk all about Steam, Steam pages, about uh top games of 2025. Oh, and my summer sale, the summer sale. So, let me uh let me just turn on my screen here. I can share my screen. I just can't be on camera. I'd love to be on camera to dance in front of you and to tip my hat to all of you, but I can't do that. So, what I'd like you to do is say hello. Uh just say in the in the chat here uh where you're calling in from. I want to see the locations and then maybe your game. So, link to your game and where you are. Uh I'd love to see it. I always like to see where people are coming from. So, um, yeah, please share that.

All right, let me share my screen. Uh, all right, here's my screen share. Um, this is it. I've gotten the screen up. I hope you can see it. Okay. Um, can you hear me? Okay. Yeah. All right. From Tunisia, from Stockholm, Austin. I love it. Orlando. Yes. Okay. So, um while you're calling in from Chicago and Brazil, um this is the summer sale. It ends in an hour. In one hour, and I am here just to answer any questions you have about marketing your game, about the course itself, anything. All the courses that I've got on sale. Um I'm here for you. I'm gonna answer every question that you have. I'm sorry I can't be here like physically. My camera just doesn't work. I don't know why it's not working. Um but um so the sale ends again like in an hour I've

got to turn everything off at the top of the hour. So I just count down the time. Now here let me tell you the special thing that I'm doing. So at the top of the hour I'm going to shut off the stream. I've got a hard stop in an hour because everybody who bought this this master class which is now in 3.0 everybody who buys it even if you buy it like right now I am doing um a live Steampage review. So, you buy it and then you go into the curriculum. You'll see once you buy it, I'm going to scroll down here. You'll see this thing. It says 2025 live steam page critique. If you buy the course, you can go there and submit your Steam page. Even if you buy it like five minutes before the end of the hour, I will review your Steam page. Uh, but it's only for students and you can only watch the live stream if you are here. So, uh, like if you buy the course. So, it's a secret private secret thing. It's secret. Well, it's not secret because I just told you about it, but it's private for the the mascot. So, that's just one special thing. And anybody, like even if you bought this thing a couple years ago, you can still

um do it. You can still sign up for this, take them, you know, like let's say you bought it two years ago, you can still submit your Steam page and I will review it. So, I've already gotten If you've already submitted your Steam page, I've looked at them. I'm going to do the critique. We'll go through them all and I've got ideas. So, don't please resubmit your page if you already submitted it because I I carefully went through. But, um, if you submit it now, it's not going to be the best review because I haven't had time to look at it. I'm going to go right off the top of my head, but it's still there. All right. So, I'm going to answer some questions. I only answer questions that have posted in the Q&A tab. I'll be answering those questions. So, please pop those questions in there. I already see one from Rohan. Rohan, good to see you again. Um, how important is localizing your Steam page? Capsules screenshots. Steam page is very important. Capsules not as important and your screenshots not really. I mean, I think you can, but it depends on your game. like if you have a lot of UI text,

maybe it's good to do the the screen the the screenshots, but definitely definitely definitely your screen uh your Steam pages because um translating that stuff can affect your placement on store pages and stuff because Steam only surfaces games that have been localized into those languages. So like the people in Germany don't see German games unless they opt into seeing English games. So you should definitely translate very much translate your Steam page. You can do chat GPT or whatever. Um, it's it's it's fine. Okay, next question from Brady. Oh, and the next question is, "But what if I don't translate my game?" Steam automatically flips this little switch that says like, "If your game's not translated, but your Steam page is, there's a little popup on the Steam page that says this game is not fully translated. Just head FYI." And I think most players understand that. Okay. So, go just translate your Steam page no matter what. No, you don't have to do the capsule. Don't have to do screenshots. Great question, Rohan. I'm gonna move you to the chat. I I after I answer your question, I move you to chat. Okay. What's the characteristics

of a good game name? What should I consider when naming my game? I actually like game names that sound more familiar. It's not like you have to have the most unique game name. Um like uh like if you're making a deck builder, you should probably have something with a word like hand in it or deck or card, something kind of in that way because I think it's good that it it sets your genre. It's a great way like if you're making an idol game, you definitely should include the word idol or passive in that title because it just it just tells people, "Oh yeah, that's it." Especially for like a hit genre right here. Um I don't like games for some reason. Always it's always shadows, echoes. I always hear like echo, shadow, lord, echo, zoom, shadow. You always see those words in very cliche games. I don't know. Sorry if your game has echo or shadows in there. I just find those those games I'm like, "Oh boy, here comes a dude with a sword game." Um, you know, they always sound like gamer names. I'm sorry, but I just I don't

like those games names as much, but uh they just sound so generic. They sound like generic chachi generated game name if you have the words echo, shadow, whatever, something like that. Um, but again, I kind of like including a couple keywords that hint at your genre. I know I'm so lame because I want people to stick to their genre lines, but I think that actually helps you because it helps people go, "Ah, I bet it's this type of game." And it is. And they're like, "Yay." But other than that, I don't think the game name I wish people spent as much on thinking about the game they're going to make as they do the name. It's one of those things where it's like, I don't think the game name matters as much, but the genre super duper duper matters. So every hour that you were going to schedule to design define what your game name was going to be, just shift that time to um to talking about what genre you were going to make. The genre genre genre. Okay. Um when posting a horror

announcement trailer, how do you pick up initial traction without a partner? Are paid ads a decent way of kickstarting it? No, I don't think ads maybe. No, not really. Here's the thing, folks. Horror games just take off. They just do. I mean, you can share it maybe on some horror Reddits. Try some stuff, but share it with social media influencers, that kind of stuff. But here's the thing is the YouTube algorithm is actually really good at sharing stuff. If it's taking off, if people are like, "Yes, this is awesome." They're liking it. And so if you posted your trailer and it just didn't take off, that's probably a sign there's something wrong with the trailer. Here's the thing, folks. Visibility isn't as big of a problem as everybody thinks it is. It's a, you know, market right fit problem. I just think that on YouTube, if you have a horror game that is hot, it just takes off. It just does. And people are like, I don't even know how this took off. And it just does. And if you went to those people, like I said, IGN or influencers,

and all the influencers went, "Nah, that doesn't mean that visibility, I mean, visibility is hard, but that is probably a sign something's missing in this trailer. We should beef up this trailer." So, hire a trailer editor, maybe make a second trailer. That's typically what I think the second. All right, Kyle. Um, it's not, again, it's not a promotion problem, it's a product problem. And it's like, why isn't this horror game taking off? Most horror trailers go crazy. All right, Kyle says, "A cozy, wholesome game viable for a first game?" Um, yes, but here's the thing is it's got like wholesome is not a genre. It's a It's a kind of vibe. And there are lots of wholesome types of games. And sometimes there's like wholesome wandering around a forest games where it's like a first-person game. There's wholesome platformers. I think if you're making a wholesome game, the best type of game to make is what's a what's called a management game where you like

run a cute bakery or you run a cute store and you have to stock items and sell items. That's wholesome. It's the management games or you're taking care of an animal of some sort or a creature collector. Look up Manami Lane. Look up Kabuto Park. I just talked about both of those games on my uh blog post that I just posted. The best first type of game to make for a wholesome game is management. Crafty buildy. You've heard me say this. Crafty Buildy. Idol games are also a good wholesome game. But the word just saying a wholesome game. There's wholesome is like the coat of paint that you kind of put on. I mean it is also the vi like what you do in the game. Like it's not violent. But I've seen people they make wholesome games that have killing in them. And I'm like that is not wholesome. But they also pick the wrong genres. It's usually a game where you're controlling the menu. So that's my if you really want to make a first game, Kyle, make a game where you don't control the character. You control a menu. You like push the up button and more bakery supplies are

ordered and then you push the bake button and then you bake that thing. So it's you're controlling a menu, not the character. Same goes for idol games. Idle games are all controlling menus. So that's my advice to keep you online because you do not I don't think an a a wholesome game where you like explore a cute town. Yes, it's fun to make, but those are a lot harder to do, right, than a good management game. So, make a management game that's wholesome. Okay? And don't kill anything. There should be zero killing in your in your wholesome game. I know it sounds funny that I have to say that, but I have seen some wholesome games where there's like guns, dynamite, and killing. And I was like, um, just because the character has big eyes doesn't make it wholesome. You just killed somebody. All right, next one. When it comes to capsule art, what factors beside quality are important for click-through? Thanks. It's not just about click-through. It's also about setting expectations. It's also about getting content creators to cover you. And it's the genre symbols. Watch my course uh or not my course, my I just

did a whole um I posted on YouTube. It's a whole live critique of capsules. And the main thing that I think surprised people was the genre expectations. You actually want your capsule to look like other games. You don't want to be the most unique capsule out there. I know it sounds weird. You want to be capsules that say like these little secret things. You know how I said with the title like include the word deck, include the word um this or that. Uh like card if you're making a card game. The same thing like you want your text to have a little uh flare that says this is a deck builder or something like it's got cards fanned out or there's cards flying around or the A in the whatever. If you have the letter A in your game, that A should be like an ace card. It's stupid, but that's what does. You have to do the symbology, the symbolism. Some people hate it when I say symbology or symbolism, the cryptic clues that say I am this genre or not? So, that's a great question, Chase. All right, Luke asks, "In your horror road map, you mentioned

a 20,000 threshold for a successful announce trailer. Is that number for games projected to be million-dollar games or that bare minimum odds at getting into real Steam?" It's real Steam stuff. So, um, one thing that I've done and Luke has a a great thing, a great question here. So, what I did was in the new master class 3.0 because I update it every year. I have these road maps. So, if you are making a uh horror game, I have a road map. It's like step by step how to market a horror game because marketing a horror game is a little bit different than these kind of gotom market strategies. And I mean, if one of the things I say is you got with a horror game, it takes off with a trailer. The trailer is so key. And if you don't take off with the trailer, there's probably a sign that the the the the monster or the vibes or the scenario just isn't interesting. And yes, and

here's what I say in in the towards the end, Luke. Watch towards the end. And I say like it's up to you to decide. Um like if it didn't take off like there's no one number, but that 20,000. So I just kind of said this thing like hey if it takes off a 20,000 wish list that's a good sign. Now anytime I put out a number I like to be specific because it it doesn't allow wiggle room for people. It's like people convince themselves of these things. But the but the thing is it's like I want you to see that so that you can say like you know what I probably shouldn't quit my job for this game. It's not that hot. It just gives you that all right my game is now has a resting rate of about 400 wish list per week. 50% 50 60 per day. I've gotten about 6.6,000. Oh my. This is a very long question. Uh um I I plan to short questions please folks. Short questions. Um, sorry. Uh, bye-bye Ocean. Just, um, what's the question? I'm trying to find a question

in here. Just if it really helps folks if you just post a really quick question. Um, share in September, but given the momentum, would it be better to wait for wishes to build up more and potentially lose? Oh, okay. This is I think you're asking a momentum question. I do not believe in momentum. I don't think momentum is a thing. I think it's just people um, humans like to find patterns and and stuff like clouds and stuff. I don't believe in momentum. It is better to build up wish lists. Wish lists. We do not generate enough momentum. Even if you're like covered by Splattercat and you launch the day Splattercat covers you, it's I'd rather you wait and build up wish list. It the building up of wish list is the momentum. When you build up the wish list, when you launch those wishlisters get the email and that converts. So, I do not believe in in momentum. Do not over subscribe to momentum. It's a fake thing. Okay? I know it feels awesome and you're doing good, but it's the wish list. You want to get that wish list count up. I don't believe that's it's a PR term. It's PR marketers use it and

they probably worked for a big company before. Momentum matters if you're a big company, not if you're an indie. So, don't don't freak out about the momentum thing. Okay, y'all can hear me. Okay. Wait, can you hear me on the chat here? Can you hear me? Uh, can somebody post whether you can hear me on the uh on the live uh Q&A now that I switched to phone mode? I'm sorry about all this. I just hate it. I wish I could do something better. I wish I could just show up at your house, all of you, at the same time. But okay, yes, you can hear me. Okay. I wish I literally could show up at your house and just like just tell you this stuff. I can't. So, I have to rely on this crappy software. I don't know. All software sucks. Okay. Um, so that's that's the world we're living in. Okay. Anyway, uh, let me continue on here. Um, I'm just going to keep going through the Q&A that I hear, but um,

yes, please, um, I can see all your messages on Discord. You don't have to message me. I'm I'm following. I've got the moderators here telling me this stuff. So, don't worry if I go if I crash again, I'll go somewhere else. I'll find it. I'll find out. Okay. Um, regarding Kickstarter play test, what um, let's see here. Sorry, I'm now on my phone, so everything's really tiny. Regarding play uh, Kickstarter play test, what do you think is the best strategy? Giving keys to the backers when they back the project. I don't know Kickstarter. I'm sorry. I just don't know what Kickstarter I I just don't know the optimal Kickstarter strategies. I'm really sorry. Shadow Beneath. Um, I I saw your game. We're going to review Shadow Beneath later. Shadow Beneath. I don't know Kickstarter. I'm sorry. Um, could you talk a bit about naming your game? Is it really important? Can I change the name of the Steam page lately? Really, I'm at 7% of your wish list class. Yeah, you can change your name on your Steam page. I don't think it's that big of a deal uh to change your name of your Steam page. Companies

do it all the time. Typically, it happens like some indie has a great game but a terrible name and then they get hired by a publisher and the publisher is like, "Let's change that name. It's It's like Echo Shadows Lord and we're going to change it to something better. So, um they do that happens all the time. You can change your game name, but it doesn't matter that much. It really doesn't matter. And thank you for buying the master class. Okay. Does Steam factor in global traffic, wish list, playtime, or is it localized by region when making games on the event pages? PAX West. It's different for every festival. Every festival figure can figure out how they're going to sort stuff. Okay, Trevor. I think. Let me see if I can get through this. Can we keep the questions very short? I'm sorry, Trevor. Okay, this is a very Trevor. This is a very long one. I'm gonna see if I can find um uh one of the new legend social media helmets section. Um this would require have a lot of content. Um

okay. Should I have enough content? Should I be holding off on posting to social media until I have enough content to be able to pull off helmet? Um, I think you need enough content to No, you can look at Tiny Glade. They shared like the tiniest little things. I think you can share more in progress stuff, smaller character designs. You just got to be creative. Just be creative and share little things. I I think a lot of people are expecting these very high finish production things. go back to Tiny Glad's earliest Twitter posts and go look at those and see what those look like. Okay. When launching a tiny game, just for the experience of launching it to Steam and to end, what marketing would you prioritize, if any, deprioritize? Um, look, I mean, this my master class has a whole section on how to do tiny games to ship quickly. But I think the best thing is drop social media. It doesn't matter. Social media just really doesn't work as well as everybody assumes it does unless you

have a social media pretty pretty game. Like if you if your graphics are so amazing and you have to go viral to be considered amazing. You can't just say, "Oh, my mom says they're amazing." No, I think you can mostly drop social media in favor of content creator reaching out to content creators and festivals. Okay. From pirate Teresa, I'm sorry. Um Oh, no. Oh, sorry. Uh, Pirate Teresa, sorry if I cut off when I was telling you why should you buy the course. Okay, hopefully this still works. Um, here's the deal. Um, the reason you should attend, you should take the class is all the content I create is crazy. It's all over the place because whatever like all the free blogs and YouTube videos, it's a different topic. Whatever I'm thinking about that week, um, it it it's all over the place. Okay. Um, and so there's no rhyme or reason. But what happens in the master class is it's all organized based on actual how you would do it. And so

it's just so much better organized. You can just go through it and it just works because if you go down to the testimonials, you can see on the testimonials people were saying like uh the guy from um Micro Civilization said this is the best investment I made. And so it's like it tells you exactly how to do all this stuff. And so it's like if you want that sanity, you want to be able to like just open it up, get your job done, do your marketing, and move on to making your game, the master class is for you. Okay, that's that's what it is. That's that's what we're here for. Um so uh a great question there. Um um pirate under the seas. Okay. Um, let me keep going down. Um, let's see the next one. Um, I'm just I'm just going through going through all this stuff. Um,

let's see here. I'm just keep going down these questions. Um, let's see here. Just just keep going down. Okay. Um, okay. Next one from um, okay, I'm gonna ask answer story paintings. I think I got cut off. So, story paintings is um, do tiny games work for any genre or just wholesomes? It has to be wholesome. It has to be horror idol. Look up how to market a game my blog on AAA games because AAA games. just search the word AAA games because what I did was I was giving advice to AAA developers who may have gotten laid off and they're making their indie game and I list what tiny games look like and small games. Not every genre can be a tiny game like a tiny RPG. Everybody would hate that cuz they're like why is this game so tiny? I want a big like 30hour RPG. I know you're going to somebody like what about this tiny game? But for the most part,

fans of certain genres want them to be long, like 4X. They hate tiny simple. I've seen people make, "Oh, we're making a casual 4X game." That is not what that genre wants. The Forex fans want a super duper duper deep game. Okay? That's just what they want. So, I'm sorry. It just won't work. It's got to be certain genres. That's why you follow this stuff. That's why you got to understand those genres. You got to play a lot of games. Um, because that's it. Okay. When reaching out to influencers from different countries, should I write it in their language? No. Use Google Translate. Translate it, but put a little thing in the top of that translation. Translate to their language that says, "Sorry, I'm using chat GPT or whatever to translate this. I'm sorry if it's wonky. Below it's in English." Because that YouTuber may speak English fine or whatever your language is and be able to read it. And so that so I would translate, but I would just have the same message twice. Once in the Google Translate and one in your native language. Andre, is having too many game genres a problem? VR sim wholesome.

Should I prioritize only two of them? Um, they make sense design-wise. Are you sure they make sense design-wise? I think there's too many genres. I I do. I really think you got to stick to one genre. If you could drop any genre, maybe that VR, because VR games, I'm so sorry, Andre. VR games just don't sell on Steam. If you could prioritize a genre, prioritize the one that's not VR. I'm sorry. they just don't sell. Uh, but anyway, yes, I do think you can over complicate a genre because fans of one genre don't like the other genre and then you've you've made something that they don't. Look up my Steam um my blog for something called mixing genres. I think mixing genre is overrated. I think it's too hard. You end up making like four games at the same time, which is hard. Just I my advice for most devs is just stick to one genre. It's so hard. It's so hard to stand out with multiple genres. Just uh Okay. If our goal is 2000 wish list before October public demo, which single

lever would you pull first? Store page upgrade with a new trailer, region targeted localization, micro influencer research, or what concrete benchmark would you tell us lever before the demo? I would run a play test. Run a play test. You didn't list that, but I'd run a play test. A beta. A play test. And don't do micro influencers. Do big influencers. do macro influencers. Alexander asks, um, "Spoke to a marketing rep from Reddit. She said, "Add spend to hit the communities I want to hit is a $3,000 a month. I realistically can justify one for two months without really knowing how it works. How do I make that go the distance?" Don't I I don't think ads work for everybody. And that's a salesperson trying to sell you on stuff. I just I I she doesn't know the full context and I don't know the full context. Here's the thing. Spending money on ads does not solve problems. If you're not getting any visibility

without ads, you're not going to get visibility without it. So, with ads, it's just throwing money down the pipe. I would just save that money. Like, does your game really work? Is it getting wish list by itself without anything? Like, if you reach out to content creators, are they playing your game? all that stuff. Ads, I wouldn't spend ads on a game until I've already seen traction. Like, people are playing my game without prompting. If not, save that money for your second game and make a second game that has that oomph. You need your game has to have oomph before you spend ad dollars on it. I just It sounds like if you can't do 3,000 a month, you don't I You're spending $3,000 for two month. I No, I I don't like ads. I don't think ads fix problems. Alexander, don't if you're if you're tight for money, don't do ads. You can do this for free. You can just get free publicity if your game is good. And so that's why I'm like, spend the money to make the game good. Maybe a new capsule, maybe maybe a trailer or maybe

art assets. I just I don't know. I'm worried about that, Alexander. Okay. Um, thank you, Alexander. Um, let's see here. Um, and what do you think about Okay. Um, what do you think about using pre-orders on Steam as a way to crowdfund your game? You can't do pre-orders on Steam. You have to have a big game. So, that's impossible, Yousef. You cannot do pre-orders. Um, Ryan asks, "Is Wish Invisibility the best course for someone who is still working on a vertical slice and doesn't have a Steam page?" Absolutely. You're awesome. I tell you every stage. I tell you how to launch your Steam page because when you launch your Steam page, you have to do things right in order to launch them. Look through that course curriculum and it tells you exactly how to launch your game. It is best. I have people coming to me like, "I've already launched my Steam page. Is it right?" It's it's right for everybody. I do step by step at every stage. Every single stage.

Okay. Um just popping in in case you left and came back because I was gone. This is the last 15 minutes. I have a hard stop at the top of the hour to review Steam pages. Okay. Um I hope I can do this because I don't have a microphone for right now for some stupid reason. Um but um I will figure it out. But I'm reviewing Steam pages. If you buy the wish list invisibility master class, even now like right during this hour, I will review your Steam page in the following hour because I'm going to switch over to a Q&A. Okay? and we're going to review Steam pages live there. Okay. Now, it's not going to be the best review because I won't have much time to look at your Steam page. It's going to be like a live off the top of my head Steam page. So, what you do is you buy the course at the very top once you log into the course after you bought it, there'll be a little thing that at the top that says um live Q&A for uh Steam page review. Click that Steam page review. Register through that. How to submit your Steam page. That's how you do it.

So, if you buy it, you've got 15 minutes left to get on the cheap price and then I'm going to review people's Steam pages in the next hour starting at 10. I will still do it. If you're on this and you bought the Mass Quest, I'm going to rig up I have to rig up a USB mic and stuff. So, it's going to it's going to be a little tricky, but I will do it. We will be there. We're still on. Even though like I'm like a I'm like a bomber that has like both engines shut shot off. I've got like one engine left. I'm coming in for a landing, but I still got it here, folks. All right. Uh, Mad, is paying influencers worth to grow the game? No. Like, if your g Here's the thing for paying, folks. This goes for everybody. If your game has it, like you can get thousands of wish lists daily, hundreds of wish lists daily. If people are playing your game, you're getting into festivals, all that stuff, that's free. Money doesn't fix problems. If you're like, man, I reach out to influencers and nobody wants to play my game. I reach out to festivals and nobody wants to play my game. I post on social media, nobody wants to click my game. That's a game problem. That is not

a promotion problem. If your game is fitting the marketplace, people will find it. Money, paying influencers, paying for ads, that only multiplies. So, if you have zero visibility on your game and you buy ads, you are going to multiply times zero, which is zero. So, don't spend money on games if they're just not getting visibility. Fix the game and then get visibility. Okay? Osman asks, "What's the average response rate for a mailing list? I currently have a 100 email addresses and every two weeks I send out a small gift during an update. Two days ago, I asked them to fill out a one question survey and 10 people responded." Yeah, that's actually pretty normal. 10 people, 10% is pretty good. That's That is pretty good. That's pretty good for um a mailing list. So, you're doing good. Um clickthrough rate is typically open rate is my mailing list open rate is 50. uh click-through rate is like 15 to 20% and then actually taking action. I think 10% is actually really good. Okay, good

job Austin from Oliver. I'm working with Oh, Oliver. Uh that's a very long question. Um I like the shorter questions. Um should I really think you're asking game Oliver? This is a very long question. I'm sorry. this question. Um, no. You're asking if you should launch a free to play. Read my latest blog post. How to market a game.com. Not the latest latest, the one from two weeks ago. Free does not fix anything. Charge money for your game. Free is a shortterm fix. See, the thing is, when your game is paid, you can discount it after the fact. When you make your game free, you have one shot at promotion, and that's to go viral right off the bat. But when your game is paid, you can always discount it and reinitialize the people who wishlisted it. Okay? So, I don't recommend free. Charge money for it. Charge like $5. If people don't buy it,

you make your next game. It's going to be a lot of You got to make a lot of games, folks. Your first game is going to fail. It just will, everybody. Your first game's going to fail. I'm sorry. The first time you got on a bike, you failed. The second time you got on a bike, you failed. And I hate the word failed, but you just fell down. You got to get back up and you gota you got to make like 10 games. Little games, fast games. Get them out. Get your games out. All right. Question from Nicholas. If I purchase the course, would I be able to get a Steam page review in the future? Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry for the cough. No guarantee. I mean, I run Steam page reviews regularly on there, but if you're not ready for this, I don't know. I I I like in other words like oh I can't get my Steam page up now. Sorry, excuse me. I might sometime I don't know it's too too far in the future. Nicholas um okay um Dan said you've talked about

climbing the steam algorithm ladder in the past and timing mates. How is that different from than momentum? Um let's see. uh climbing. Okay, momentum is this generic thing that people say like, "Oh, I'm I'm" And it's never defined what momentum is. This is why I don't talk about I don't like the word momentum, uh Dan is it's just like everybody's talking about me. No, they're not. You're an indie and nobody's talking about you. When I say climbing the algorithm, what I'm saying is in timing marketing beats, you are timing that beat within a small window. So, you're trying to do a bunch of stuff in a very small window because you can get wish lists. Wish lists are what it's after. That's the metric. Okay. Momentum is an ambiguous thing that PR people like to use to make you spend more money on them. They're like, "Oh, man. We're going to turn your momentum into money." No, it's just wish list. And the reason you time your marketing beats is it it

our our visibility, we as indies, is so tiny. We are a tiny match in a tiny cold dead universe. Okay. We cannot do enough. And so what happens when you time the marketing beats is even your best beats, you're going to get like 3,000 wish lists. That's not a lot. That is not momentum. It's good, but it's not momentum. You can't do anything with that. The only thing you can do is collect those 3,000 wish lists and then do another marketing later and get 3,000 wish lists. Then that is not momentum. That's just you got 3,000 wish lists. Momentum is this ambiguous thing. People are like, "Oh, I should do all this. Um, I should do this and then this and then this and and if I stop I won't I'll my momentum will run out. Your momentum is not going to run out. You're just banking wish list. So that's what you do. I hope that explains it, Dan. I just don't like the term momentum because it's this ambiguous thing that people have and it makes them do stupid things because they get worried. They're like, I'm going to lose momentum. I'm going to lose it. But you're not. You're not going to lose it. So stop freaking out. I I just don't like the momentum thing because it makes people freak out

and get worried and then they make dumb decisions. Like they're like, "We got so much momentum in NextFest." And I'm like, "What does that mean?" And they're like, "Momentum, you know, Mojo, we got it in NextFest. So, we should launch right now because we got momentum." No, no, no, no, no. It's it's not it's like ambiguous. The the algorithm and the ladder that I'm talking about, like, oh, uh, if you get this many wish lists a week, you'll show up at the top of Steam NextFest. That is velocity. That is like a trackable metric we can track. We can say if you get a thousand wish lists a day, you're probably going to show up on this widget. That is like a trackable real thing. Momentum is this ambiguous thing that like I said, it's just like a la term that people use like I should launch because I got momentum. Like what do you mean? No, I'll explain to you. I hope that I'm trying to answer the question, Dan, but I just don't think momentum is a good word. Anytime I hear the word momentum, I'm like, "Oh, no. You've been talking to a PR person, haven't you?" I love PR people, but PR people get a little weird. Okay. Um,

Adrian, what do you think about the indie game development state of the industry now and predictions going forward? The hardest thing to predict, Adrian, is the future. So, I don't know. Um, the thing is indie game development is um, it's an ambiguous term because there's a lot there. Like publishers and funding I think is overvalued. And I'm not that's not my expertise is funding and and publishers. Um I think what happened the reason there's so many layoffs is that people got there was a lot of money that came into the industry. So people hired up like crazy and built at these giant studios and they'd never made a game before. And it's like that is crazy. And so all that was crazy. That's a different thing than any game development. Like if you're a a couple devs and you release lots of games and you're good at it, Steam is still really doing well. Like um there were more games that hit that real Steam metric that I always track in 2024 than in any previous year. Like Steam is giving more visibility to more games and paying more games more money. But on the

other side on the business and studios and how big the publishers are, that is where the craziness is. So when you say indie game dev, is that are you talking publishers or are you talking a person trying to publish a game on Steam? a lot there, Adrian. So, it's like as far as Steam and selling a game, you can make more money, but if your studio is huge, that can eat the cost of you making a game. So, I don't know. It's ambiguous. And Adrian, that's my best explanation. Okay. Can strong marketing for in for middle games disappoint my audience and result in less interest, trust in future releases? Don't Paul, people are so worried about this stuff. Um, can strong marketing just try your best? I don't know. Don't just disappoint my audience and result in less interest? I don't quite know this question, Paul. I don't quite know what you mean. I don't know. Strong market market your games. I I just don't know. I don't know what

strong marketing means and I don't know what disappoint means. Um, don't worry. They They I don't know what loss of trust. I don't know what you're worried about, Paul. You seem to be worried about something. I don't know what it is, Paul. I'm sorry. Um, we'll try our best to get there, but just just market your middle games. Try your best. You're a small indie and if it fails, Here's the thing. People forget developers. Here's the thing. Everybody thinks Paul, I think I figured a way into your question. Here's the thing. People over assume how much they follow us developers. We We're not like musicians where people follow every album we make and everything. People don't know who we are for 99% of cases. Um, like I have seen devs have failed games and their next one's a hit. If your games a hit and fun, people are going to like your game. It's not like, "Oh, I love this game, but that developer was such a sleaz." No, I just I just don't believe that. So, don't freak out, Paul.

You're going to be okay. Just make a middle game. Try and market it. Hopefully, it does well. And if you have a hit game, people won't care because it's a fun game in the future. So don't freak out. Don't let your future self hold you from your dreams. All right, Glenn, if I were to launch with 10,000 wish lists, how do I how many do I need when I enter NextFest as my final festival? If I want to launch with 10, how many do I need? Nobody knows. There's there's a blog post that I wrote called um just search up nextfest, Steam NextFest, and search um a benchmark Steam NextFest on my blog. Um and it tells you exactly how to uh what the the levels are. Like in other words, like if you go in with this many wish lists, you're going to get this many wishes. There's a whole table I put together from that. Okay. Um I'm just going to I got to call it. We got two minutes left. This is the end. This is the last chance to buy the course. The course discount ends. Okay?

So, if you buy the course now, we will get you um fill out the form for the for the Steam page review and we'll get you there. Okay? Um I'm sorry I couldn't get all your questions and I'm sorry for the technical difficulties. I hate these technical difficulties more than you do. Trust me, I hate them more than you do. The internet sucks. This stuff sucks. Okay. So, if you are going to be joining me for the uh Steam page critique, if you bought my master class, I thank you so much. This is how I make my living. This is how I keep can continue to release these free reports and free blog posts is because of the master class. So, if you supported me, you bought anything, any of the courses, I appreciate you. You are the wind beneath my wings. You are the reason I'm able to do what I do. So, I thank you so much. You are a true supporter. Um, if you are going to be going to that Steam page critique, I will be on in just a minute. What I

have to do is dig through my closet real fast and find a USB microphone and directly plug it into my computer because for some reason um, my microphone and my camera decided to just die today. So, I don't have anything left to do. Um, and from Trey, where do we find recordings of these Q&A calls? Do they go on YouTube? No. What you do, they do go on YouTube. But what you do is you join my mailing list. how tomarketame.com/free is the mailing list. Everything goes to the mailing list. Discord sucks. YouTube sucks. If you want to know where all the YouTubes live, I put out a list as soon as all these are uploaded. I'm going to put out a long list like here's how to watch them all. I'm posted on how toarketame.comfree on my mail mailing list. Mailing lists are so cool, folks. You don't even know how cool mailing lists are. So, you should join the mailing list. Don't follow me on YouTube. Don't do the Discord. Discord and YouTube suck. You know what's awesome? Mailing lists.

Mailing lists don't fail you. Mailing lists rock. So, you the you will see links to all the Q&A calls through the YouTube uh through the mailing list. So, sign up for how toarketame.com/free. And if it doesn't work, it's because you got ad blocker software because ad blocker software sucks, too. So, turn off your ad blocker software and sign up at how tomarketingame.com/free. All right. Um, everything about the internet sucks. Thank you so much. And bye-bye.