Friday Steam Next Fest Q&A

Hey everybody, I'll be right back. It's coming soon, starting just a moment.

Starting just a moment here. We're just Hey everybody, I'm just looking at chat, just making sure everything's good to go. Can you hear me okay? Just tell me if you can um if you can hear me. I just had to set everything up. Uh we'll be starting just a minute. I just uh I don't want to be late for y'all. You got games to make. You got games to make. All right. Uh so yeah, just just comment in the chat if you can hear and see me okay. We're just making sure I got to got to put this on the big screen here. Let's see. Should work. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Just making sure that there's no hitches or video problems. Um Yep. Yep. We can hear you. Okay. I know it's I know it's shuttering cuz I'm like switching up like a hundred video

settings here. So just give me one sec. Okay. Let's see here. All right. Should be good to go. We got Steam Next Fest behind me. I hope you're in Next Fest. Leave a comment down below if you're in Next Fest. Um we'll kind of we'll kind of do that. Um Yep. Okay. Yep. All right. So yeah, just uh leave a comment down below if you got a game in Next Fest. If you want to link to your game, I don't care. Just link to it right below. We'll be starting in just a minute. Let's see. We got 4 minutes before we officially start. Want to give everybody a chance to uh to come do it. Let's see what we got. Let me just straighten this up so we don't see these little seams here in the video. Get it ready for those people who come in a little late. Yeah, just post your game down below and uh we'll see it. Let's see here. Let's see. I don't know. I don't know if

there's not a lot of people who will do Next Fest. You would you'd be surprised, but uh it's all there. So what we're going to look at are some what the charts are showing, you know, what what the the top games are of Steam Next Fest 2025. We're going to um we're going to look at day one versus day last. Uh maybe I'll look at a Steam page. Maybe. Maybe. I want to hear about your stats. I want to hear about other things like that. Um Let's see. We're also going to maybe look at some other stuff. Let's see here. While we're waiting, don't forget for Steam Next Fest. Um I've got Let me just switch over to this. For the exciting world of Steam Next Fest to celebrate Next Fest day, we've got black screen on.

We've got the course sale going on right now. This is just until the end of Next Fest, so on Monday. When Next Fest ends, the sale ends. So this is why I call it my Next Fest sale. So as long as Steam Next Fest is up, the sale's good. Save a hundred bucks on the master classes, the two master classes. The other stuff not on sale, but they're good. They're good stuff. They might go on sale for the Black Friday. Black Friday's going to be uh I'm coming, but that's a while away. So we got this here. Um But uh yeah, this is uh this is what we got, the sale. Let's see here. Yep. If only you could do in it save world. Yep. Um So we've got that. I think we're about ready to start. We got 1 minute to go. Uh then we're going to look at the Next Fest stuff. We're going to talk about it. Um but yeah, you just to get to this, go to howtomarketagame.com/ courses or just go to howtomarketagame

.com and then just click right up there. This is far as I can go cuz my my screen's just a little low. Let me see if I can just drop this just a little bit. There we go. There we go. Yep. So And then the other thing we're going to look at is benchmarks. So let's look at the benchmarks while we're here. Again, be sure cuz this course sale ends on uh on Monday cuz the it's only live when Steam Next Fest is live. Speaking of which, here's Steam Next Fest. How many wish lists can you expect to earn during Steam Next Fest? Now, what we're going to look at is this is all the data from several several games that I've uh studied uh last February, I think it was when I did this one. So two Next Fests ago, I sent out a survey. And the other thing I didn't point out, I love this survey because I said, "How many wish lists did you earn?" Look at how smooth this chart is. It is like very smooth. There's a little bit of a hiccup here. It looks like I'm maybe missing some games that kind of fell in this range, but I think that's also algorithmic. That's not necessarily

uh an a a lack of my data. But you can see I really got a very representative survey. Like I covered just about every game's performance from here on out. There's not like huge gaps where it just jitters. Look at how smooth this line is. There's nothing. I I captured every type of thing. Now, here's the thing that uh that that kind of came from this um this latest thing that a lot of people got glommed onto. They really liked it. I think I I this is one thing that I learned from what you guys like was this chart right here. And uh this is the performance and this is I I made this chart cuz I showed that if you're bronze tier, you can see where basically Steam drops you. You can see where Steam's like, "Thanks for playing. No more visibility for you." and they just drop you. Okay? That's what this chart was here to show. And a lot of people will just use this as a tracker to see how they're going. And they're like, "Do you think I'm silver or gold?" Here's the thing. The

data's here. This is what determines whether you're silver or gold. Let me go up. The rating is based on how many wish lists you earn at the end. Okay? So gold is the 7,000 to 10,000. Silver is 1,000 to 7,000. So that's that's what determines whether you're silver or gold, not whether you align to that chart. It just means that you can see that a lot of the um the data here, you can kind of see based on it maybe project. But the I think the main thing, a lot of people when they're new to this, they don't realize how kind of predetermined everything feels. Like I've done this and I can see pretty quick like, "Oh yeah, you're you're on this trajectory." Or you're on this trajectory or you're on this trajectory here. And it's like, "Yeah, there's no surprises." And I think when you're coming from the other side, when you haven't been here before, you haven't seen the data, everything still feels random. So if you're on this uh bronze tier, you're like, "What?

Steam must be doing something weird. But I think there's a problem with my game. Valve's not showing it. I think there's a bug in Steam." And it's like, "Nope. This is actually very common to see this type of thing." I mean, it's your first game. You're not going to You're just going to learn. Maybe you picked the wrong genre. Maybe you're making a something that you shouldn't be making. All games are are a miracle, but there are some games that just Steam doesn't like. And it's not a problem. It's totally expected. Okay? And I think this is the kind of reassurance that I wanted to show with this thing. Okay. So now that we've started Next Fest, here's what I want to do. I want to answer questions from the audience. Okay? So here's how we're going to do it. You've got to post your question in big bold stars because the the live chat just streams really fast. And so I need a big bold all words, maybe even throw in an emoji that says question, and then ask your question. Okay? Because that's how I'm going to see it. I'm just going to scroll through the chat to see who's

asking the questions during this live chat. I'm only going for an hour, and that's because you shouldn't be watching so much YouTube. You have games to make. Or if it's if you're in Europe and it's the end of your day, you've got you've got to get out there and have fun. Go outside. Get away from the computer. Get away from your phone. Get off social media. Go have fun. If you're in Europe, go visit a castle or something. You've got beautiful stuff out there. I love going over there. You've got beautiful rivers. Go look at a river. Okay? I want everybody who's in Europe to go look at one of your beautiful rivers. Okay? So um ask your question with big bold text. And I'm only going an hour, and then I'm logging off, and you should, too. Don't hang out on YouTube. That's Watching YouTube is not working on your game. Okay? You've learned enough. After this, you've learned enough for the day. You don't need to watch another YouTube to get inspired. Just either start working on your game or go enjoy your weekends. All right? So let's do it. Let's look at your big questions here while we're waiting. Okay. Let's look at this one. Six Riz

has a question here. It says, "30,000 minimum wish list required to get success to be on new and trending?" Um no, it's sales, not wish list to get on to new and trending. So, when you launch your game, there's a widget called new and trending. And my best estimate is it's about $5,000 earned within the first 24 hours. It's based on dollars, not wish lists. Okay. Now, but the more wish lists you have, the higher probability that some of them will convert to that $5,000 minimum. That And again, I'm not entirely sure. It's also based on other games that are launching at your time. So, I don't know if it's a ranked, so in other words, like if you hit 5,000 and there's a lot of big games, they'll rank you out, so you won't get there. Um but I think it's about $5,000. And if you go to a publisher, they're going to be like, "We're going to get you 30,000 wish lists." They're doing that because they know if they get 30,000

um people to follow you, that a certain percentage of those are converted. And if you have a low percentage of conversion, which is like five and below, the more wish lists you have, the better your conversion of that. 5% of a 30,000 is better than 5 % of 10,000. See, that's but it's not based on wish lists. It's pure dollars. Once your game goes on sale, this is for everybody. Once your game is available for purchase, even if you're free, the algorithm changes. It's no longer about wish lists. It's about pure dollars, because you cannot game dollars. That is a dollar that hits Valve's bank account, and so they make so many judgments based on that. All right, so just start thinking about it that way. All right. Great questions coming in. Um Game Dev, how are you? Great. Next question. Uh Spectrum of Sounds, is it good to publish my demo in November to participate in the Steam Next Fest in

June? Yes, I think that's a great thing to do. Publish your demo nice and early when there isn't too much stuff going on. I think November is a good time. So, definitely do it then. I mean, definitely, but when it's ready. It's got to be good, though. Make sure that maybe even run a play test. If you've run a play test before, just to make sure that it's really ready, because you want to get more wish lists, so that when you publish your demo, you can do push the email wish lister button and get on to new and trending free and ride that visibility wave. Okay. Question from uh Passmanot. Are we aware of any changes in October compared to February? Not really. Um we'll look at the list. I'll look at the list. I'll take a little break of from questions a little bit. We'll look at the list. Um but I don't see any big algorithm changes. Some people are saying that some of the um more uh you know, bronze tier games are still showing up in in the charts. We'll look. We'll see. Make an assessment. I don't know. Um maybe they're allowing this

See, it looks like, you know, day one, if full day one. This is actually day one, but it starts at 10:00 a.m., so you lose half the day, basically. Full day one, full day two in the old Next Fests, they started cutting you earlier. Maybe they've extended this and they give you a little bit more visibility for longer. Maybe. That's what some people theorize. But nothing else. It's not like there's a new widget or anything else like that. It's it's pretty bog standard. I'm I'm not going to run a survey, probably, for the games, because I don't see much of a difference. Everybody on my Discord, how to market a game dot com slash Discord, we have a channel where people were posting their charts, and their lines are pretty much aligning with what we've got here. Now, there are a couple See, this this thing is really a big gap. There's a lot here. This is median. And the And the variance here is one, because there's not much data. If you look at my data, um the When you get up to the super diamond tier, you'll notice my data doesn't have a ton. I don't have

because there aren't that many games. It's hard to find these games, and most games that are at this level are very well invested, and so they don't like to share their data as much. I mean, the sample size is like five way up here, and then maybe like eight down here. So, the sample size is not that big, not compared to silver and bronze. Look at how many entries were in the bronze and silver. I've got a lot of data there. There's not a lot of data here, so there's more What do I say? Variance and stuff like that. It's just not as big of a sample size for those higher things. And so, this is a So, some people were seen posting in their sub in my Discord, their lines were kind of like in this area. Diamond tier has a very high variance, because I just didn't have a sample size. And this is median. Um I did a median thing. So, there could be just 50% higher than this, 50% lower. And same thing with this, or 50% gold higher, 50% gold lower. This is Remember, median is the very middle point. So, you know, there's a lot of variance that can happen in there. So, you might be out there, but

this is generally what it looks like. So, I didn't see anything that was like, "Oh my god, the things have totally changed." It's the same old same. Stuff doesn't change as much as everybody says. Everybody's like, I always see these articles like, "Steam changes so rapidly. You got to You got to screw out your old marketing plans every day, because marketing changes the industry." Slow down. It's pretty much the same. Pretty much the same. It's I It's kind of slow. I don't think it changes as much as everybody complains. I think the main thing is people are like, "I'm new to this. I didn't know how to market my game. Now I do need to know." So, you feel like it changed, but it's really you changed, not Steam. Feel that. Feel that. Okay. Uh Pumpy Tube, "Does wish list to follow rate can be indicator of ti- of ti- of tier? Nah, I It's two two different wish lists to follow. Don't over obsess about the data. Don't I don't I don't think it's a it's an appropriate thing to obsess about. Don't

Don't deep dive into the thing. Just look at the How many wish lists did you get during this fest? And this is not you. I'm not talking to you, but I see in general, if somebody has a weaker performance in Steam Next Fest, they start turning into like data conspiracies or like It's like looking at clouds like, "Oh, that cloud looks like a tiger. That cloud looks like a bear." You start looking at the data. You spend too long in Steamworks back end, and you're like, "Well, my day one wish list to follow rate is this, and then the wish list to follow rate on the day five is this, so that must mean I'm actually improving." They get like really They They start losing all meaning, and they start picking cherry picking little data spots to show that maybe something went okay, or it wasn't as bad as it I don't know. Don't do that. Just like keep it super dead simple. No No crazy ratios and stuff. Do the number of concurrent players in the demo count to what extent? Um we don't know exactly. So,

I For this, you know how I said, "Oh, it cuts you your data." Um Steam in I went to the GDC presentation by Valve, and they said that they just use a machine learning algorithm to determine, you know, how which games stay and which games get promoted later on. And people were asking like, "Well, what kind of data is in there?" And they're like, "We don't know. We just throw everything in the machine learning, and then it kind of does a soup." So, I I think concurrent user is part of that. I do think that it is. And we'll talk about it when we look at the charts. I just did a quick preview of the top games. They're all um kind of friend slop multiplayer endlessly replayable. So, their concurrent player count is much higher, which I think does signal to the algorithm. So, I do think it matters a little bit, the concurrent users. Um do you feel like uh another question from That's Me. Do you Do you feel like this Next Fest is somehow different exposure-wise from previous ones? Again, no. I don't I

don't see many changes. Again, look at my Discord, how to market a game dot com slash Discord. People were following right along with this, and people were saying, "Man, this actually tracks really well." So, this chart very similar to what we saw in the previous one. So, no different. Not too much different. Again, Steam doesn't change as much as people who complain on Reddit think that it does. All right. Um Let's keep going for the questions. This is great how you flag the questions. I'm loving it. Nice, tight, consistent questions. Really easy to read. Y'all doing awesome. Okay. Um I'm looking. Let's see here. I'm trying to I looking for it. Question, "Do you feel like this Next Fest is different?" "Which should be prioritized for Next Fest, Steam page or demo?" Demo, because people play the demo. So, make a good demo. Just make a good demo. Just make a good game in general. "Some games that have

7,000 wish lists are getting less impressions than games with 2,000 wish lists. Do you know why?" Yeah, the game's better. So, if you got And it depends on your timing. So, if you got 2,000 wish lists So, you're saying games that got 2,000 wish lists did better than the games that got 7,000 wish lists. If it took you a year two years to get to 7,000 and you enter Next Fest, that to me tells tells me uh this game's not as exciting to people. People don't like it. But if the game's got 2,000 wish lists in a month, that's really exciting. Like they just announced before Steam Next Fest, so their velocity is much higher. Maybe they debuted a day or two before Next Fest, and so their velocity is much higher. That means to me that's not that the algorithm likes velocity. It's just like, "This game's exciting to people." When somebody sees this game, they're like, "Well, that looks cool. I'm going to wish list it." That's what I mean by velocity. Don't overread velocity too much. And so, that it depends on how long it took him to get that. So if it's a really exciting game that they got seven maybe they got 2,000 wish list in 24 hours. That's

awesome. That is really good sign. So that means people like this game. So that means more and more and more people are going to wish list it throughout Next Fest. That's what it means to me. Um question bad visibility on Next Fest good median play time 20 minutes of player. What What next? Um I don't think 20 minutes is that good. I'm sorry. I'm sorry 20 minutes median play time. If you go to my benchmarks 25 was like the absolute minia minimum. You'll see the games that do very well um and you'll see it in my Discord. People mention in the Discord median play time. The really good ones like these diamond tier games typically have two hour median play times. Two hour um an hour and a half median play times. I'm sorry but 20 minutes just isn't that great of a median play time. I'm just going to be totally honest with you and I'm I mean that compassionately. That means maybe there's something with the demo. Maybe the tutorial's too hard or too easy too boring too fun. No you can't be too fun. Uh but anyway you got to figure out what's wrong. Like why is it only 20 minutes?

Beef it up even if you're like well it's a short narrative game. Well short narrative games typically typically don't do well on Steam. Okay? Typically. And we'll look at it when we look at the top charts to look at that. But um yeah 20 minute median play time is not fantastic. All right. I have a demo. It's a single stage and and look at my benchmarks. So this is benchmarks and I do a median play time one. There's one for bench if if you click benchmarks up here and then I do how long is a demo median play time you'll see. And it's it's typically the 40 minute ones are better. Um better to release early access and later full release. Do we get visibility boost each? Okay. Um I've I've written a lot about this. How to market a game then search this early access. Okay? Search early access. Lots of great articles. Very good deep dive. Please read. Read. Books are cool. Reading is cool. Reading is much better than YouTube. YouTube sucks. Don't subscribe. Everybody who just subscribed don't. Unsubscribe. What I want you to do is go to free stuff right here. Click that. Sign up for the newsletter. Much better than YouTube. YouTube sucks.

Okay? But anyway search here and read every article I've written about early access. It's a complicated question but basically if this is your first game and the the nature of you asking this don't do early access. It does technically it does a little bit of a boost in visibility technically. But the bigger like if we just purely that but the bigger problem the reason I don't think first game should be early access. Read the articles. Read the articles. The reason I don't think first game is early access is cuz most likely your game's going to not do great. And when you do an early access game that's not great you get into this upside down cycle where you release a game early access reviews are bad sales are poor and now you the people who did buy it are like why aren't you updating? Why aren't you updating this game? This game sucks. This dev is the worst dev who has ever lived and he is worse than cancer. This dev is cancer. And you're like what? I just released a game for children for fun and I'm I'm getting yelled at. Why? And so but your sales are terrible and now people are yelling at you to update

and you're like well I do the math and it's there's no benefit for me making this game anymore because I'm not selling anything. That's bad. Whereas if you're in that scenario and you just released it full and people like this game sucks and you're like okay bye and you can make another one and you don't have this other monkey on your back which is somebody yelling in your ear about how much it sucks that you're not updating your game every single week and doing a dev update every single day with a list in a in a road map. Early access sucks almost as bad as YouTube. Okay? So I don't recommend early access for your first game cuz you don't know how to dev. You just don't. The reason you do early access the re the decision of whether I should do early access or not is nothing about marketing. It's not like oh I get a double boost of visibility cuz I can launch twice and blah blah blah blah. That's not the reason you do early access. The reason you do early access is because you have such a deep complex systematically driven game that you need thousands upon thousands of players to tell you what are the next steps. How where do you

drive the meta game of your game? Like do you add more buffs or you nerf something or add this or whatever. That's why you do early access. It's a co-development and for most developers they're making the wrong type of game for that and they're doing it. So I don't recommend early access but please please read. Please read the article. It's much more in depth. YouTube sucks because I can't explain everything. Just read it. Reading's so cool cuz it's so dense with information. YouTube is very light in information. I have to be entertaining and I have to keep engagement up. But I don't when I write a blog. I can go deep and give you the real answer. So please everybody YouTube sucks. Reading's cool. So join the mailing list right there. Okay? Because I have to like I have to be like a little circus clown dancing for you to keep engagement up. I don't have to worry about that with a blog. I can actually be real. Okay. Steam page launch wasn't great. Game can still recover? Steam page launch if you just mean you turned on the Steam page and it yeah you can do fine. Um it's the demo. The demo is the biggest time

to um to really see if your game's got it. A lot of games just don't look attractive. So don't worry about it. Again look at benchmarks. I have one on what are your first two weeks. I give the whole explanation about how you don't have to worry if your Steam page launch wasn't exciting. Okay? So please read benchmarks again. Please read. Reading's cool well YouTube sucks. Okay. Um I'm doing Steam Next Fest and a week later Scream Fest. Any data on what I can expect? Um no. Well I mean see how you do on Steam Next Fest and then see I don't have anything on on that just anticipate just the thrill of anticipation. Instant gratification dulls your senses. Just embrace the uncertainty. Life is uncertain. So just embrace it. If you did well in Steam Next Fest you're going to do well in Scream Fest. So it works. All right. Um embrace that unknowingness. Sit with it. What should be prioritized for Steam Next Fest? Steam page or demo? You I already

answered that. Demo. Make a good demo. Is there a East Shade? Welcome East Shade. I know you. Is there ever a concern that doing a large play test would cannibalize some of your audience that would be get you to trending free when your demo goes public? I don't think so because most people if you've seen the charts I'd have to look it up. You know that Venn diagram that I play I show where it's really a thin sliver of people that actually play and wish list your demo. It is such a thin slice of people that actually play a demo that I don't think it cannibalizes cuz there aren't that many people. What really happens folks this is what happens. You're when you end Steam Next Fest when this is all over Steam gives you this chart and they say number of people who played but did not wish list. Number of people who played and wish listed. People who have wish wish listed and did not play. Okay? This is for you data

detectives who are going to over analyze it. It doesn't make any sense. There's no good or bad. I've seen bad and good. Search here for Steam Next Fest. You'll see this Venn diagram where I did the median and I did the game that did fantastic. It sold fantastic. It had a fantastic Next Fest. If you just looked at the Venn diagram the number of people who played and never wish listed is huge. And you would think looking at this Venn diagram you're like this game's going to fail but it didn't. And so my my answer to you about play test cannibalizing real sale of the the demo launch the most important thing is to get that get you make sure your game's good and get that early wish list thing. Those people you could throw them away. Like all those people that played during the play test if your play test was good and a lot of people played it and the wish list were good that means you've got a good game. That's the important thing. Do you have a good game? You could just delete all those wish list those people the theoretically. Write them off because you now have a good game and good games just perpetuate new games and new games and new players

and new players. Steam I I hate it when devs have a um a scarcity mindset for players. Steam is infinitely infinitely infinitely infinitely deep with players. So even if everybody played your play test that was interested in your game and they were like I am done with this game if your game is fun and interesting when you launch the demo all that stuff is going to come back again and you're going to get there's all new people because your game's good so word of mouth will get out. I'm very confident about this. So please folks in general don't have a scarcity mindset of oh my god if I do this it's done. I've I've used up everything. You can never exhaust it. We are in the in the teeny tiny indies. We have no visibility. So please every time you're like oh my god I think I'm going to overexpose myself throw that and run away from whatever you just thought. Just like pull that part out of your brain and throw it down. That is the worst mindset to have when you're doing indie dev is like oh my god I think I overexposed my game.

You are the tiniest indie who has ever existed. Get out of that mindset. Okay. Our game Shock gathered 13,000 wish list before Steam Next Fest. Now four days after Next Fest we just have around 800 extra. That is considered low. Is that bad news? Well I I can't do math right now. In the benchmarks it could be I mean there's several factors about why. I mean look at your resting rate. Do people play it? What are content creators? There's a lot of things a lot of metrics that go in together. Just one bad Next Fest is not bad. Look at median play time. Look at your resting rate way after Next Fest. Look at how many people you contact to play your demo and do they play it? The content creators. Um when a content creator plays what's your wish list rate, all those things kind of combine to kind of show whether it's great, but I do think it's a pretty strong signal if you went into Next Fest and there was nothing major that happened like, "Oh my god, there's this

one thing where our game didn't work for 4 days." If it was pretty good, like no major problems, but your wish list rate is low, that's that's a sign. That's that's the sign that it's not great, but that doesn't mean you should just all just like die. Go deeper and like look at it. What's your median play time? Look at content creators. Are they playing your game? Other things like that. Uh, what metrics should I try to achieve to get my demo on the widget? I think you're talking the top things. You need a lot of wish lists, like we're talking hundreds of thousands, or you need like thousands in the days leading up to Next Fest, okay? That's typically what it needs. That's what it is. Pretty much simple. It's wish lists. Um, I started Next Fest with 120 wish there. Oh, that's not a question. You got to write Sorry, folks. You got to write big bold question to get them, okay? I'm going to answer a couple more and then I'm going to take a break and we're going to look at Steam, okay? And then I'll still answer some more. I played a couple of demos of some of the more popular Next Fest and they were all

buggy crap. Hey. Hey. Easy. We're all developers. This is a safe space. Somebody's trying hard. Don't call crap, okay? Easy. Easy. All right? Everybody's trying their best. All right? Could be buggy. Buggy crap? Come on. We're here to support each other, okay? All right. It's a strategy for developers to just be in the Next Fest for the wish lists? Listen. Game dev is hard. All right? First off, nobody wants to release buggy and it's hard. This is a hard thing to do, okay? Um, if you play the top demos, sometimes it's like the game is so fun, people will put up with the bugs, okay? If it's a fun concept, it's a hot genre, which is we'll look at them. The one thing I saw that was a lot is that friend slot multiplayer co-op games are very popular. They're doing very well, okay? All right? So, that's what I'm thinking is like and so I just don't like the crap aspect that

you just brought up because it's like maybe you can be like, "Oh, I Look on the positive side of things. Hey, this is buggy. If people are willing to play it even though it's buggy, there's something here. Why is this fun?" And then go in with a positive mindset of like, "Ah, this is fun. Okay, yes, they're a little rough. Okay, that's That means there's a lot of interest in this type of game because there people are willing to put up with the bugs. That's the mindset to have, okay? Can we aspire more traffic in at What? Can we aspect more traffic on the weekend? I Can you expect? I think that's what it was. No. I I This is what it is. Uh, let's let's go to chart here. This is what it looks like. Typically it looks like this. Now, you do see one on I think this is Saturday. I I don't remember. There's a slight bump. You'll see a little bit more, but it's not much more. The top games, see what I think it is. See how the top tier, the gold and the diamond, they get a bump. I think cuz they're at the tops of the charts and so by then the bronze is removed and the silver's kind of

holding steady, so there's more room for Steam to prioritize the diamond and the gold games. And so they will see it because a lot more people play on the weekends, but it's not a huge bump. It's not like pretty much, folks, it's it's pretty much I think I I I haven't done the math in a while. I'm It used to be on Next Fest your first day, you just multiplied your first day wish list by five. That's what you got, okay? It is It's pretty much nothing really changes. After about this day, that's why I did it was this day. That's why I did this thing on here because this is Thursday. This is Friday. I I want to do Friday because you're probably feeling what happened here. This is what This Whatever's happened on by this day is what's going to happen for the rest. That's why I'm checking in on y'all. I'm like, "Let's see what happened on your Thursday, which was yesterday." cuz the data is now in cuz you're always a day ahead of the data. So. Okay, I'm going to do one more question. I'm going to stop at the half an hour mark and then I'm going to go We're going to go look at Steam a little bit.

I'll answer some questions in a little bit. And then at the top of the hour, I'm cutting the stream. No more stream because you've got work to do. You have games to make. You have rivers to look at. You have your weekend to enjoy. No more watching YouTube. YouTube is a waste of time. You can read. Reading's good. YouTube is Stop watching so much YouTube. Work on your game or go enjoy life, okay? It's just too much too much YouTube. All right. Do you know if the click-through rate for the Next Fest goes down, my game Don't look at click-through rate. Click-through rate is it's a false It's one of those, "Oh, I see a tiger in the clouds." It's one of those metrics where you can over-obsess and like this and that. I just don't think click-through rate matters because here's why. And I'm sure of this. I haven't done like a specific one, but this is similar to all the other ones. See these diamond tier games? These are impressions, okay? These diamond tier games are what you want to be. If you could pray and wish upon a star or a monkey paw, you would want to wish to be a diamond tier game, okay? This is what you want to be. I haven't looked at that data, but a

diamond tier game is going to have the lowest, crappiest, worst click-through rate in the entire in Like we were to rank all these, these games would have the worst click-through rate and these would have the best, the bronze tier, okay? You're obsessing about a metric that is actually inversely proportional or inversely inversely correlated because when you are diamond tier, Steam thinks you're awesome, so they put you on the widgets. And everybody looks at the widgets and so this impression rate is so high, but when you're on those charts, a lot of people are just like, "I only like, you know, um, idle games. So, I'm looking for an idle game." And so they're going to pass by these diamond tier games, but they're getting all the impressions, so their click-through rate is on the floor. E- Everybody, that click-through rate stuff, pull it out of your brain, throw it away. Just don't even worry about click-through rate because it it's inversely proportional. And it And sometimes it is proportional just cuz your game's so bad. So, you just click-through rate just doesn't matter, folks. It's it's just It's one of those metrics you're going to obsess about and it just

means nothing. Okay? Question. Some small games were released during Steam Next Fest without participation in Next Fest, in which case it could be a good idea? Release during Yeah, I actually think um, well, we'll pull this up. If you look at the gap, watch this. The gap. See, in general, I find people's intuition about when to release a game is totally ass-backwards. Um, when I look at, um, games released, or let's look at the hype. Let me look at the hype chart. You'll notice per day. Okay, the number of games that are actually good, which is 50 plus hype. This is Read the article. Again, I can't go into context. Reading's cool cuz you get more depth, okay? Steam Next Fest, the number of games that are considered decent, like will show up in popular upcoming, is very low on the first day of Next Fest. See? It's actually better if you're

going to release a game like on the first few days of Next Fest. Even though every indie's like, "Oh, everybody's going to be thinking about Next Fest and not thinking about our games and all that stuff." No. No. Look at this. It's a very quiet time in the days before Next Fest. And then every indie's like, "I'm going to outsmart everybody. I'm going to release immediately after Next Fest." When the most games Look, this is called the gap. At the end of Steam Next Fest, a huge number of people release games right after Next Fest cuz they're like, "I am smarter than the average indie. I'm going to release a game when nobody expects it." Everybody's expecting it. See? Like That's why you got to do the data. You got to read articles. Go deep in the data. Look, ironically, the best time to do is at the start of Next Fest. Your in Most indie's intuition about when the right time to launch a game is is totally ass-backwards. You should be doing it like when a big AAA launch is. You should do all this stuff. You got to understand this stuff. It It's not until you really dive into the data that you realize, "Oh my god, our gut feel is often wrong." Often. Not all the time. Sometimes you got to use your gut, but after you got

to study a lot, okay? All right. Let's see, which months are best for releasing a game? Search my blog. I write all about that. It's It's not But in general, people overanalyze this stuff. When the perfect time to release it. All that thought process should be thrown away and instead be spent on what is the right type of genre to make, what is the right type of game, and just making a good game. The The perfect day, month, week, hour, second that you launch a game doesn't matter that much. It's overanalyzed. Way overanalyzed. But indies pick what game they're going to make at the most random stuff without any thought process behind it. I'm like, "Why did you pick this game?" They're like, "I don't know. We just thought it'd be fun." Really think about what type of game you make and forget about what day and week. Just pick one at random. Throw a dart. That's your day you're going to launch. I don't know. I I think people overanalyze it. Okay. Um, Okay, we're at the top of the half an

hour. Okay, I'm going to switch over. Um, I'm going to We're going to look at Steam. While I'm doing that, don't forget uh, course sale. I put my courses on sale. My master class is on sale during Next Fest. When the When Next Fest is over, the sale is over. So, I'm discounting all the courses by 100 bucks, the master classes. Discounting the master class by 100 bucks. This has uh, the wish list visibility class. Teaches you the order of things to do. Like it's the road map. You just get it and I actually go in If you click on this, um, I actually go in for how to, um, like I do several genres cuz some genres have a slightly different marketing strategy. I actually did that's what's new. Um if you look at the curriculum, I give a step-by-step um example of how to do these things. Like here's the curriculum. Uh the road maps, go-to-market strategy, that's what I call them. And they are step-by-step. Like if you're making a horror game, here's the marketing strategy for a horror game. If

you're making a rapid release where you just make a quick game in a like month, here how how to market that. If you're making a wholesome game, I have a road map for that. If you were like, "We did no marketing. We're going to release in like a week." I've got a marketing strategy for that. It's like a detailed step-by-step plan. Um that kind of stuff, all kinds of stuff. I also do interviews with developers who've made awesome um demos. I just said that. Why did you make this demo this way? Like I play the demo with the game developer who made the demo. I'm like, "How did you make this demo?" And these are awesome demos. How did you craft it? And uh if you're like, "Who is this Chris? Who is this good?" Look at this. Tiny Glade thought my course was so good, they put me in the credits. That's not That's actually says special things, not essential things. Chris Zukowski from making excellent marketing courses. They took my course. This game launched with a million wishes. Micro Civilization. I started with proper strategy, email pitch. Learn how to do it. All these games, look. It has been amazing resource that we

have helped us achieve over 75,000 wish lists. We couldn't have done it without your incredible work on the masterclass and blog. Boom. I'm telling you. And if you don't like it, if you buy it, 100% satisfaction. You don't All you have to say is, "Chris, please refund the course." I will refund you, okay? That's how confident I am that this is the most amazing course. Anyway, let's go over to Steam Next Fest. I'm going to switch over um and we're going to look at some some games. Ah la la. Let me just do this. And then let me pull up Steam. Actually, I'm going to pull up strangely Photoshop where I've done this little collage. Let me pull up Photoshop. This little crazy collage I made. Let me just pull it out. I forgot that I always forget that OBS does not like to stream um does not like to stream Photoshop does not like to be streamed. They always I don't know why. I probably should figure

it out. Um but I'm going to I'm going to do this thing. I just got to export real quick. Desktop, delete. Da da da. Um Okay, hang on. Okay, I just got to pull this up. Um ba ba Okay, this might this is probably going to blow up everything. Desktop, delete me. I'm what Okay, so what I'm doing here is I'm pulling up um I'm pulling up a rank of the games on the first day versus the games uh that were on the last day. And what that's going to tell me is um okay. What we're going to do with that data is we're going to see what's changed. And I was actually gobsmacked. I was gobsmacked by what I saw today. Uh let me pull it up. Uh uh um okay. So, um let me turn this on. Boom boom. Here we go. There it is. Okay. So, what I did was a Photoshop. I tried to do this in Photoshop. I just mashed together

so it was nice and pretty and I didn't have to type everything. This is day one of Next Fest top demos, okay? I like looking at the demos because it's just the demo. It It has less to do with the outside marketing and how many wishes you have. Just like what are people actually playing? What are streamers playing? And then I photo merged in Friday, today. I did like 5 minutes before the start of this festival, before the start of this call. I just mashed them together and we can see what's moved. And I was gobsmacked. I was like, "Where did this game come from?" Let me zoom in. Let me enhance. Look at that. Zoom in. Enhance. Half-Sword right here. What the heck? Where'd this game come from? I haven't seen this game on the list. I wake up, it's on the top of the list. Okay. It beat a Hooded Horse game. So, here's Hooded Horse. Here's Might and Magic. Boom. Hooded Horse This game got to second. I didn't think this was going to happen. But then when I was looking at it, it

started to become clear. This is pretty cool. So, these are top demos. And you're you're going to notice the top demos as of today are all multiplayer co-op type of games. Now, I normally don't say do co-op games. Or I normally don't do multiplayer. Chris is like, "Well, you wrote a whole blog about don't do co-op or multiplayer. Sorry. Co-op is good. Friend slop where you just have your friends and the game's kind of built around friend slop. You In other words, when it's multiplayer and it's open lobby, that is very risky. And I don't recommend it. But if it's friend slop where it's like you don't need a lobby, you just need friends and you just call up your friends on your Discord phone and you say, "Hey friends, let's play Friday night." And they go, "Yeah, let's do it, dudes." And you're like, "Yeah, okay." And that's the lobby. And so it doesn't matter if the lobbies are full or not, as long as you have enough friends to play these friend slop games with, you're good. You're good. Whereas if it's purely random games to fill a lobby,

not good because if the lobby's empty, even if you love the game, you're like, "This is the best game. I love this game." If the lobbies are empty, you you can't play the game. And then you're like, "God, I love this game, but the lobbies are empty." Or if you're not up to date and you're constantly patching bugs that hackers are exploiting to cheat your game, then you're going to hate it. So, it's a huge undertaking to do a pure multiplayer. So, if you're making a multiplayer game, please, oh dear lord, please watch out, okay? Please please please please don't do that. Um but so what we're going to look at are some of these games. Now, I'm going to play some of these uh later. Not not live on stream. Later, this weekend. But Half-Sword, I think it's just an open lobby thing. Now, these are good. I These It's good for them to do this right now. But here's the the risk with multiplayer games. I analyzed all the games up to date that have released in 2025, all but one multiplayer game is dead now. Like the servers are dead and all the reviews are saying, "Dead

game, dead servers, full of cheaters, blah blah blah." So, here's the the this is the false promise sometimes with these games that are not friend slop, pure open lobbies, people join lobbies, is uh they have a big flash in the pan, big, and then it fades out. So, if you're one of these games, I I love you. Good job. But I'm also kind of worried and concerned a little bit. Whoa, that is zoomed in. Okay, so here we have Here's the thing. All of a sudden all these games showed up at the top of the charts. So, um of course the Hooded game is on top, but this Half-Sword is a kind of multiplayer game. And what I think is I'll have to look into it. I My theory is that a content creator, bunch of people played this content creator. It shot up. I didn't even I don't even think I saw this on the list on this day. I haven't looked. We'll look if we see it. But it shot up to the top. Final Sentence, I played this game. This game is fun. I won. I got first place. It's a um typing um arena game where you're you're all typing together and whoever's first and it's like it's kind of like Battle

Royale, but typing. I won. Got to I got to go good word sport. The the secret is slow down. I have a really good fast typing speed, but this game um really penalizes you if you make a mistake. And so slow it down. My word per minute I actually dropped it about 10%. And but I was able to get to front because I wasn't making mistakes. So, um that's my tip for that. So, good. I What you find out is like you're an above average typer. I mean I That's what I learned. I don't know about you, but that's what I learned. But see, Final Sentence actually did pretty well from So, again, this is Friday. This is day one of Next Fest. So, you're seeing this stuff. So, Star Trek Voyager down. Um but if you'll notice a lot of the ones that are at the top of the charts on Friday I'm going to zoom out just A lot of the ones that are on the list are um friend playing games. I think this is a co-op. I don't know if this one's co-op, Midnight Walkers. I'll have to check it out. But you'll see a lot of co-op games. See, online co-op, multiplayer horror. You're going to see

a lot of horror co-op moving up to the top of the list. And I think Next Fest is really a bunch of people going, "Let's play free games with our friends." And so a bunch of friends come to Next Fest and they're like, "Let's all play together." And then So, they just see this as a free weekend of just fun games to play with each other. That's my theory of where Next Fest is going. And that's not like Next Fest is changing. That is the public changing. That's the big thing that I saw when I opened it up today was like, "Whoa, people are just seeing this as a fun arcade." And I did a study where I went to PAX. The only time I've been to PAX, I went and I I contacted people who were just regular ass gamers, not developers. I said, "Can I just follow you as we walk the show floor?" I did. I didn't actually publish this. I I've got video footage of this. Me just following around a like random gamers and then I was like, "Can I just watch what you do?" And they what games you pick on the show floor. And I was like, "Why did you pick this game?" They're like, "I You know, like show floors, like in-person show floors. I was like, "Why did you pick this game?" They're

like, "I don't know. It's fun." I was like, "Are you going to buy it?" "Oh, no. No." People when they go to There's why I do not like in-person festivals. Like where you pay thousands of dollars for a booth and then you set up your games and you have a nice banner. And you're like, "Hey, do you want to play my game?" And then people come back and the developers at the end of this uh in-person show are like, "Oh man, so many people played my game. People were lined up to play my game. I'm going to do awesome." And then it it falls flat when it releases. And the reason is when people go to a show floor like PAX and they're looking around, they in their brain they're thinking, "This is the world's biggest free arcade. I can just play free random arcade games. I can just walk up. There's no limit. They can just like play it, go to another one." They're in a different mindset than when they're on Steam ready to play a game where it's like $20. Do you want to buy this? And they're like, "Nah. Nah." So, the games that do well on a show floor are very fast-paced arcade games that they can play with their friends. And so, I'm

thinking that this Next Fest is kind of picking up a similar vibe where a lot of people are like, "Hey, it's a free game weekend. Yeah." So, one thing to be a little worried about. That's my theory. That's one theory. But, you'll notice, again, um look, this is a co-op blue-collar job simulator. Car service together. Together. Like, all this stuff. Um Crash Out Crew. Multiplayer. Long Drive North. I don't know if this one's co-op, but Oh, co-op. See it? This is co-op. So, open-world survival craft. Huge, especially with friends. Road side research. Online co-op. Driving game. I think it is multiplayer. Don't know. Got to look I'm just looking at tags. Look at This is Okay, by the way, this is why I love indie games and Steam and stuff. Look, Star Trek Voyager fell down the charts. This is a I don't know who made it, but at least double A with a big IP, and it still was out-competed by a game that looks like this. And I'm not saying Road

Side Research is crappy. I'm just saying like, look at this. This beat one of the biggest sci-fi IPs. That's what's awesome about Steam. That's why I'm always still confident about Steam. Anytime somebody's like, "Uh Steam is just loaded up with crap." Like, we're beating this. We can beat IP. All this is original IP. All this stuff is original IP. I think. Yeah, all this is original IP is beating the old guard. That's what's awesome about Steam. It really is. Okay? But, a lot of this stuff at the top co-op games. You'll see a lot of these things are co-op. So, that's That's my big revelation. Uh Sheep um It used to be Ultimate Chicken Horse. They they released a sequel or something like that. Here's the other one. I played This is actually a pretty cool demo. This is what's cool. This demo is short. It's a puzzle game. Servant of the Lake. But, what's awesome about this game is that um it is a team that releases a lot of puzzle

games, and they've built an audience. All their puzzle games are very similar. And what this tells me is, you can survive making puzzle games if you stick with it and your first ones are interesting. It's I've seen a lot of point-and-click adventure games from studios who release a lot of them. The Beholder series. There's a Beholder series. Not the Beholder with the eyeballs, but a different type of Beholder. Um they um they release a lot of puzzle point-and-click adventure games. They have to. So, I think point-and-click adventure games are a long game. You should be planning to make five, six, seven, eight point-and-click adventures, and they only get there. The other interesting thing is if I just mentally go back to when I did this again on Tuesday or Wednesday, Servant of the Lake started low, went high, and then came back down. And that's just because I think I mean, I don't know relative. They did well, no matter what they did. But, I think it's either all the puzzle game fans have played through, cuz you can play through it in like 15 minutes. Whereas, and this goes back to the people who were asking Somebody was asking about median playtime. You start up higher. But, these games have really long playtimes. Like, these

these games, these multiplayer co-op games, very long median playtimes. And I think that just pushes everybody else down. You got to have these. The We talked about this game. I played this game. I'm really bad at it. But, it's a multiplayer racing game. Um but, yeah, that's the big stuff. But, again, Karen I've kind of been talking to them. They did a good push early before they went on Steam Next Fest. They got into a couple festivals that really launched them with good momentum into Next Fest. That sort of stuff. Um But, anyway, that's generally what I saw here. Those are the things. I'm going to go back and ask questions. If you have questions about this, here's the thing. Since I've been talking a lot, and I missed a bunch of questions, I'm going to go back down all the way to the bottom when you ask the live questions. And then I'm going to read those first or the the most recent questions. I know there's going to be a gap where I went down this way, and now I'm going up this way. Ask your question again if it's a really good one. Okay? But, in general, that's what I saw. And again, a lot of crafty buildy strategy simulationy friend slot.

Friend slot is a big asterisk there. But, you'll notice, see? They're all crafty crafting games, um tower defense, stuff where you build random things, where you're building things. Not You don't really see any linear first-person. The one exception is Servant of the Lake, puzzle game where it's like a very linear experience. Steam is all about these crazy crafty buildy strategy simulationy games. Okay? I'm I just look at it. And this Somebody asked me I said that, and I saw in the comments of a a different YouTube that I was talking about. And they're like, "Well, this is cuz your preferences are filtered for those kind of games, cuz that's what you like to play." No. No. No. No. No. No. This is top demos. There's no filtering here other than language. Um the only filtering is these are top demos across Steam. These are top demos. So, no matter which way we slice it, crafty buildy is the type of game that Steam promotes because high playtimes, not a lot of content, so small teams can make very deep, strategic, complex meta

games. All right, I'm going to go back down to the questions. Okay. Uh let's see here. Um again, I'm going to I'm going to end this in 10 minutes because you have games to make or weekends to enjoy, not watching YouTube. So, when we're done with this, I want you to step away, buy the course, then step away, close YouTube, and do something. Get some work done, go look at a river. I don't know. Just hanging out on YouTube. Ugh. Who would want to do that? Okay. Um Chris, thoughts on doing Next Fest with the missing middle strategy? What is the next What are the months? Well, in my course, I talk about the missing middle strategy. You should do it. Like, here's the thing, folks. Even if you had a poor Next Fest Next Fest Next Fest you still those are wish lists you would have never had. So, even if you're a bronze tier, that's not bad. Those are wish lists you would never have had it anyway. So, don't feel bad if you got bronze tier. That's not a wrong strategy. So, if you're the strategy is still pretty the same. Even if you're

making a middle tier game, when you make it real fast, still do Next Fest. It's not probably going to do as well because you just can't get as much velocity. But, that's not bad. It's free. Like, you get it You're paying for this by giving Steam 30%, Valve 30%. Do it. Just don't forget about it. But, again, my course goes into I do a whole lecture on the missing middle strategy and how to do it and get the most out of it. Okay, we are thinking of participating with our demo in Next Fest and releasing 6 months later. Would you do this? Um I got to do the math, but Yeah. Yeah, I mean, no. Well, see, 6 months is That means there's another Next Fest, cuz Next Fest is every 4 months. So, you always do the last Next Fest before you launch. So, if you're doing Next Fest and then launching 6 months later, there's a Next Fest in between there. So, you should have done the last one. So, really, you should always be launching in the 3 months basically, cuz you want to skip a couple weeks right after Next Fest, cuz every indie dumps their game after Next Fest. So, the weeks after So, you should always be within 3 months of the last Next Fest you do, because if you do the math of

like how much time you got. So, that's my advice. Always do the last Next I stand Always do the last Next Fest before you launch. If you wait 6 months, there's another Next Fest that's in there. Um how much does demo reviews turn on affected wish list Next Fest? My game has a negative mostly helpful review. I don't have data on it. If it's mostly negative, probably. Um Valve, I don't know if this is the true for um demos, but Valve has said mixed and above does not affect the algorithm. There's no for for released games. I assume it's the same for demos. There's no penalty for mixed or above. If it's negative and below, yes, the algorithm will actually punish you. Mixed does not hurt you in the algorithm. But, I think there's a psychological shopper mentality. If they see a mixed game, unless it's very, very big. I do think I don't have firm data on this, but I do think shoppers are kind of going, "Ooh, mixed. Maybe. I'll put it on my

maybe pile." That's what I think they're doing. Because And I'm going off of some anecdotal evidence that a lot of devs tell me where they're like, "When we hit When we hit mixed, sometimes when we bob between mixed and full or What's the next one up? Positive or mostly positive? I always forget which one it is. They can see their sales kind of like match what happens with mixed or not. And I think that's just players going, "Mixed? Okay, maybe." They're they're a little cautious. Okay? Um next. Are How important is exclusivity for announced trailers? I want to premiere in my YouTube since I have a decent number of subscribers, but it will make it harder to get into festivals. I prefer festivals. Your audience Yes, you might have a lot. It's still festivals always are better. I mean, unless you're like one of like a Jonas Tyroller or something, I do think exclusivity is better than your YouTube channel. I I don't think YouTubers I YouTube sucks in general. But, I don't think devs should spend a lot of time building up their YouTube channel. I know. I know about Jonas Tyroller. I

know about that uh the Danny guy. I know. I know about Megabonk. I still think that is a one-off case. I think most devs are more It's better to spend your time to log out of YouTube, work on your game, make a lot of games, and use the audience of somebody else's YouTube work. Some other bozo who spent too much time building up their YouTube channel. Who would want to do that? Uh you go off of their YouTube audience that they wasted all their time with. And you go off of them. I still think that's a better bet. Okay, so I I don't think you should exclusive yourself. You should exclusive with a different audience. All right, does slice of the visual novels have player base? Does slice of the life visual novel have a player base? Yes, they do. Um what are they called? Rusty Lake or Lake Rust or something? It's a company I went I would did some research cuz I hadn't heard of them. I usually track people who've made a lot of games. They release a game basically every 3 years. They have a big audience big audience so I don't I've got to do

some research to see how they activated their audience but they do have a big one. I think that is the main reason the only puzzle game there's one puzzle game that made it into this list and it's life and they've been making puzzle games since 2016. So they've almost been doing this for decade a decade of puzzle games released and they were high quality in the beginning to get them on the top of this list. That's what it takes folks. If you want to make a puzzle game wait 10 years and then your 10th one after 10 years will do well. Okay, car wash spikes from festivals like Screamfest shock the system into giving more visibility. Yes. Are there still things you can do while next fest to make it go better? I don't think so. I don't there's no tricks. It it your cake is baked. I really think it's like you you bake the cake you're you you mix up all the ingredients and that combination of ingredients is it and then Steam next fest is putting in the oven and closing it. And you just watch it and there's nothing you can do. As soon as you open that oven to touch it your souffle could fall or something bad could happen. You

just other than the fact of if your game's like got a game crashing bug or some big bugs, yeah, update that. But there's nothing I I you can do to influence it because I mean theoretically you could reach out to a content creator and a content creator could play it. And that would be a good effect. But most content creators have decided what they're going to cover already. Like they've got it all lined up. They've they've done the work and they're like lining it up. And so if you come in like today and contact a bunch of content creators I think most of them are like, yeah, I've already got them all scheduled and it's too late. Um so your cake is baked. It's just you're just sitting there watching it rise. That's all you're doing and if it didn't rise make another cake and hope for the next one will be better. There's just nothing you can do. I'm sorry. Um I'm going to answer as many as I can real fast. How much does demo reviews Oh wait, we talked about that one. Since the 10 reviews are important, why don't we see games launch for free at first and then set the price? Because if you launch for free this weird hack thing

that people think works the 10 reviews Valve actually has caught on to people trying to do this. So if you launch for free get 10 reviews and switch to paid Valve deletes those reviews so they don't count towards you and then you're back at the beginning again where you've got to get 10 reviews now that you are paid. Don't do it. Don't try and game the system. Like here's the thing if you can't get 10 reviews it doesn't matter. You've got a you've got a problem there. Like the thing is there's no tricks. Just the trick is make a good game. If you can't make a good game there's no trick that's going to fix that. Just make a good game and if you make it and you do the right marketing stuff mentioned in my course you're on the right path. There's no like weird trick that you can do to gain the 10 reviews. Just just make a good game. Okay. Um thoughts on doing next fest with the We've already talked to that one. I'm I'm just going backwards through time here. Um just looking for my questions questions I'm scanning. We started next

fest with zero wish lists we're now at 1300. Does that this mean we broke out of bronze tier? Not exactly because I was actually bronze tier was about let me look it up. Let me look up the benchmark. Let's see. Let's look at the benchmarks here. The benchmarks Steam next fest I mean the thing is watch. Bronze is about a thousand maybe barely broke out of it but watch. See if we look at bronze tier this is where you were. There are the median is 460 and the most turned was about that. You kind of did okay. I mean that's it's fine. It's good. Median that means half of them. You are in the top tier. I mean I did see somebody last year that got 4000 like that's kind of expected. You typically get I mean zero 150% over zero but I mean you did okay but it's still you would have done even more awesome if you'd done it with a little bit more. Cuz see what I mean? It's just like yes even if you outperform what's typical but it's not

15 What did you get? 1800? It's not way outside that. It's still just like see that a typical like median silver is still like right around where you are. It's like I just I mean you did good. Good job. Congrats. But my advice still stands. Go into Steam next fest with as many wish lists as you can. Um okay. Um I mean you did good. I don't want to diminish what you did. You did awesome. But it's not like I I don't think that that like totally um breaks um what we're expecting. Are there still things you can do? I'm still going through the questions. We entered Okay, we entered our next fest with a co-op game with 9000 wish lists and are now on 11,000 impressions are 35 What does it mean? I I don't know. I I can't do math live on stream. Just watch my benchmarks. Reading's cool kids. Just read this whole thing. Some people like cherry

pick the skit sections where stuff is explained. Read the whole thing. Shut off YouTube. Put some earplugs in. Read the whole thing. That's that's my expectations reading. What I think of what you did read this whole thing. I kind of context it within the benchmarks. Um since the first 10 reviews are quite important why don't we Okay, we did that one. Went to next fest after a month of organic promotion 120 wish lists went up to 225 turn-based RPGs is that positive doubling wish lists? Again, the benchmarks are here. howtomarketgame.com/benchmarks scroll down to next fest click that. Um Will a game with 5000 wish lists usually do better than a game with 2000 or is it all the same as long as you have 2000 or more? I mean it's it's chances and this is where it's some guy yelled at me for causation correlation and then they got into a fight and it's like why are you fighting in the comments? Go work on your game. You just I don't know. It's just like it's not I just randomly I just picked a box. I just it was like, well look there

it just gets more bubbly over here. So I just drew a box and that box ended up at 2000. There's nowhere in the algorithm that says 2000. I shouldn't have even done it. Every time I was like, maybe I'll just do that. There's nowhere in the algorithm that says 2000. I'm starting to see this on Reddit. There's nowhere in the algorithm that says 2000. It was just like just drew a box and my data point says like this looks a little bubblier here on this side. So I don't know. Just just get a lot I I don't know. I don't know what to say. Anything I say I'm going to get yelled at. So just don't freak out. All right. I'm going to answer one more question and then I'm going to end the stream because you all have games to make or weekends to enjoy. You got lot you've got a log out of YouTube. Okay? So let me ask the last question let me answer the last question before you log out of YouTube and um sign up for the course and then join the mailing list cuz YouTube sucks. Don't subscribe to me. I do not want to see subscribers on my YouTube channel. I want to see subscribers on the mailing list. So click free stuff. YouTube doesn't give you anything when you subscribe to me. You just get you push this button it says subscribed. Yeah. When you join the mailing list you click

this free stuff you get a free book. See how much better reading is? So YouTube sucks. Don't subscribe. Join the mailing list. That's what cool kids do. All right, I'm going to answer one more question and then you're just going to log out of YouTube so I won't see you for another 24 hours cuz you're not going to be on YouTube anymore. Um Let's see what the last question is. I'm just trying to look for it. Um Okay, can one pay one get organic reviews by just putting a game on demo Steam and letting their algo take the wheel? Can one game get organic reviews by just putting a game or demo Steam and let the algo take the wheel? I don't understand the question. I I don't understand I'm going to pick another question. I don't understand that one. Um How many wish lists do you recommend before entering next fest? I kind of talked about that. I'm going to I've got to find this stuff. Going to go to benchmarks. Are there still things you can do while next fest? How can you get wish lists

visibility with short production time? Okay, that's a good one. Okay, how do you get wish lists with a short production time? Content creators. Get that demo out as soon as you can. As soon as you can and reach out to as many content creators as you can. And just give them a demo. A slice of that demo just give them the key to the demo. Just do it. Just do that stuff. Still do next fest. Even if you don't enter with 2000 you're working on a short production time which I value. I think that's a very smart thing to do early in your career is to release smaller games faster. Reach out to content creators. They're going to drive your engine. A demo with content creators and cut cut your time on social media. Cut your time on YouTube. The only time you should be watching YouTube is looking for content creators email addresses and then if they play your game watch their YouTube channel. But cut your YouTube time. Cut your YouTube Tik Tok social media X time and spend it all on the demo and reaching out to content creators and

then if you go to I don't have a link to it. But how to marketagame.com/festivals is a list of festivals. I know it's like your short production time but still look for festivals that are open and apply for those festivals. You might not get into them but it's worth a shot. So it's festivals and content creators. That's it and make sure that demo's out and keep it out. Keep it good. All right, thank you so much for showing up. I really appreciate all of you being here. I like all of you. I don't like YouTube, so please log out of YouTube. I know some of you think that like, well, I like to have it while I'm working and then I'll have it in the background. Studies have been shown you cannot multitask. That is a fallacy. What you're doing actually is you're you're rapidly task switching and you think that you're multi-threading, but you're not. Human brains can't multi-thread. So, you're actually doing both poorly because you're rapidly task switching and task switching has a tax. There's a tax to task switching. So, even though I know you think that you're being more productive by listening and you're like, I needed that. You're not. So, don't just log out of YouTube. Get focus 100% on your game.

Get that game out or focus 100% on enjoying your weekend. Go outside. Go to the river. Enjoy yourself. Just bask in being alive. Play some Another good thing that you can do play some games. That's what I recommend. Go on to Steam Next Fest. Pick some of those games. You should be playing demos because you need to see A lot of people ask me about like, oh, what goes into demo? How do I cut it? How much time should I put? Play the top demos and just get a feel for what those demos are. Like, what do they feel like? What does it How long are they? How do they call to action to do wishlists? And do all that stuff and then play some demos that are mid-tier. Like, go into pick a genre that you like and deep dive. You can filter for those genres and pick ones that are kind of like on the lower side. Things that kind of look a little janky. Play those and you see like, oh, look, they're not doing what the big boys do. Okay, I can see what's missing from this demo cuz this is study your genre. Play What you should be doing is whatever genre you're making this is your homework. Log out of YouTube and play all the demos on Steam

Next Fest that are genre. Even the ones that are jank-ass, janky jank with AI graphics. Play them. Cuz you need to get that just sense of what is different between a janky demo and an awesome demo. So, play some janky-ass crap. All right? And with that, I'm going to sign off and I'll see you all later on the news