How's Steam Next Fest June 2025?

Hey there. It is Steam NextFest time. So, let's do what I do for every Nexfest. Let's just look at the front page. The reason I do this, this is day one. It's been about 12 hours since NextFest started. And I do this just as kind of a record so we can look back maybe next year's NextFest or some other time and see what's different, what's the same, what we're trending on this. See if we can just have a record of what's going on. So, I'm just going to spend about 15 minutes. It's going to be real fast, real, real easy. We're just going to kind of go through this top of the mind impression stuff that I see. I took some notes here, like, oh yeah, we should look at this thing. So, let's take a look here. I'm just going to I'm going to pull here and uh let's just start with the basics. If you're not uh familiar with Steam NextFest, uh this is sort of the new thing, Discover NextFest. It's just trailers. They call this trailer TV and it just shows clips of gameplay uh from various trailers. I don't from different games. I can't

remember what it is. But the key thing to hear to remember is gameplay, game play, gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. Because if you've got a slow roll trailer that is not action, not gameplay, it's going to be some stupid panning that says like in a world seven keys of Mtusler have been lost. It's not going to be fun. You want to show gameplay in that. That's why I harp about gameplay. So, your first trailer always should have gameplay. Uh, but let's just keep going down here. Now, this is the front page section. They do on your wish lists. Um, there's games that I've wish listed that have gone here. Now, recommended for you. I love this because you kind of see how the algorithm works. Couple of the things that I saw was it is very heavily weighted to your latest games like this underwater game. I've been playing some Subnotica. Subnotica. Subnotica. And so all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, you must love underwater games and open world survival crafters." It's just like it is really up to what's the latest

game. Now, what that tells me, what we need to take from that is I'm not saying you just try and make a game for NextFest based on the most popular game because Subnotica's years is it's not a decade, but it's years old. What I'm saying is make sure your game is accurately tagged because what Valve does is they go look at play history and they try and pair your game up. You don't want the most uh you know common tags. You want tags that are specific to your genre because if somebody's playing Subnotica, they're like, you know what, I've been really loving that Subnotica. I'm going to play an open world survival craft. That's the way the Steam algorithm works. So accurate tags. And what I always say is what's the number one game in your genre that you're closest to? just copy their tags without stealing something that doesn't exist. Like don't use the multiplayer tag if your game has mult it doesn't have multiplayer. Don't lie. But pick the tags from the number one game in your genre that you're most similar to. It's probably a hit. Don't don't take tags from a game that's just not, you know, popular because what what are you even

doing? So, yep. Uh same as last. So, this has not changed. This is actually what in general what I'm seeing here not that different from last year's Steam NextFest. It's very similar. Uh the one in February, not much change. There was a big change in February, but so far this is all looking very similar. And then they just have this long scrolling list. And this is fun because Steam NextFest, the new model that kind of popped in February, I think it was the first year they did it. They were like, "We don't care. The first two days, everybody gets the same baseline number of impressions. We're just going to serve all the games up." And so if I just scroll down here, this is kind of randomly generated. I'm going to see some weird stuff. And journalists see this and they freak out. They're like, "Oh my god, Steam is full of AI slop." And you know what? It's just these games. This is their one shining moment. Okay. So, you're going to see some questionable capsule choices, some handmade art, some just

like if you like outsider art, day one and day two are your time to kind of look at what's going on here. So, scroll down, you're going to see some stuff. Um, I wonder if that's just the dude that's the creator and just put a mask on himself like that. Snack roach. It's weird stuff. Weird stuff you're never going to see. Uh, you do see some big stuff. Dead. Dead as Disco is a hot game that's kind of uh popped up recently. Um, so that's that. And we could just go on and on and on. This is not as important. Couple other things that I saw from this list. If we just keep going back up. I am kind of wondering about this game. Let's see. What is this one? Pterodon is a handdrawn 2D action RPG. Okay. I'm just just curious what this one is. Um, I've never seen pixels on a capsule that big. Um, okay. One thing that's interesting right here. Right there it says uh 2,498 matches. Um let me get rid of this. I don't know why it says hide ignored games. I think for the stream I

turned off anytime I'm on stream I always turn off the NSFW just so that I don't know if it's going to just like people would just demonetize me or something. So I turn that off. I'm just just for the sake of this I'm just going to turn off this just to see if that number changes. It doesn't. So, it's about 2500 games in Steam NextFest, thereabouts. Um, people freak out about anytime there's a number. I actually, uh, the October NextFest is always the biggest, and I wrote down the number of what it was in October Nextfest. I think it was 3,300. So, it's not Steam NextFest doesn't just exponentially rise. it. I feel like we've kind of reached a equilibrium point where October NextFest is always the biggest because everybody's trying to get their game out before the end of the year. So, a lot of those October games, but you would expect this to be really really high. So, it's not not as big as October Nextfest. So, again, again, folks, don't try and time this too much. Don't be

like don't make your decision about whether you should which NextFest you do should do because the October one's the most crowded. Doesn't matter. It's about you. You should pick the next fest. That's the last one before you launch. I think that is more important than trying to worry about what everybody else is. And this goes for life, too, folks. Don't worry about what everybody else is thinking. Worry about yourself. Worry about what's in here. Not this. This is my logo for my website. Worry about what's in your heart. Okay? And I think that goes for Steam Nextfest. So, just when your game's ready, that's when you do Nextfest. Don't overthink this. will always try and reverse engineer backwards backflip algorithm. When's the least populated? That doesn't matter. It's about your game. So, just make the best game you can. Now, all the other tabs up here. Um, see how it says for you, by genre, by theme, by feature. These are all kind of the same grab bag. They're not that interesting. Again,

it's kind of based on tags and what am I playing? Not as interesting. I mean, it's cool. That's how games get surfaced. People probably use it. But what I like to look at is this one right here. Charts. This is where we can see new and trending. Uh the trending games, most played. Let's take a look see what's charting here. This is what I like to look at. Okay, so there's three big categories here. And this is the exact same as it was in October. They really didn't change too much this year. Um look at this one. Trending upcoming. Now, if you just hold your your cursor, hold your horses, hold your cursor on top of it, it'll tell you what that is. Trending upcoming. See, they always say by trending or recent wish list counts, only includes games not yet releasing basically. And this is what we never know. I've got a couple calls out to some people who I saw in this list that I know. I was like, how many did you get in the last two week, one week, 24 hours? If you are one of these games, email me. You know my email address. I'm Chrisowskygmail.com.

just email me and tell me how many wish lists, but not but only if you're on this chart. I don't care. I mean, I kind of do, but we'll do a survey at the end. I'm just kind of curious about this thing. I I don't know what the time limit is. It's different every year. Some people are saying it's now two days or something. You got try and get trending trending. And so, these games are kind of just trip the the algorithm. They probably got covered by some streamers in the couple days before Steam NextFest. Um, anything that I see here? I haven't done any analysis. You can go back and look on Steam DB. You should all install the Steam DB um uh plugin. I'll show you what it looks like in a second. And you can look at how many wish lists they got just before. And usually what happens here is some big streamer covered them. Or in this case, we've had a lot of summer festival things. We had Wholesome Games, the E3 or the E3, second generation of E3, the like Jeff Keley Summerfest and stuff. So, a lot of these games probably most likely showed up, were in that festival, got a huge wish

list influx. Those festivals kind of get you about 10,000 wish lists, something 10 to 20,000 wish list if you show up in one of those big things. It's PC gaming show, Jeff Keley show, whatever it's called, Steam or it's just called GameFest or whatever or wholesome games and then your game will show up in here. Um, typically typically so uh that's a lot what you see there. Um, some of these other games like people always wonder, oh, have I released my demo? This Clover Pit, I know the folks um who are I think publishing. Let's see. I think it's Future Friends is publishing it. I don't know if they're publishing it or actually making it. Um, um, it doesn't say on here without me clicking. I don't want to click it right now. Um, they had a hit demo out a couple months ago. It did really good numbers, so it's still getting good numbers. They probably did a big campaign behind it. Um, so folks, that's a big thing. People always ask me, "What if I release my demo right before NextFest?" Yo, you can release your demo way, way way, way before. In fact, that's what the best strategy is.

Release your demo way before NextFest. You do not want to debut your demo during NextFest. There will be a couple games that do that. You say, "What about this game?" That's that's the rare case. And I'll show you a couple cases of that. Uh, also, Ninja Gayen, I Ragebound. I wonder if that's a reminj on the original Xbox 360. It was 360 or was it just Xbox? I think the original Xbox One. One of my favorite games. One of my favorite games was the original uh the original 3D Ninja Gaden. It was so fun. But anyway, it's cool to see. Might have to try. I'm gonna put it on my wish list because I love the Ninja Gaden games. Um I beat it. This old man can steal game kids. Anyway, um so next one, the other thing that I saw here. Oh, that was top demos. Oh, did it just cycle while I was talking? I don't know. Um okay. Oh, you know what? I think I was on top demos, but I was hovering over trending upcoming. So, let's see. Let me look at trending upcoming. Let me let me just look at trending upcoming just to scroll the list. And here's my This is the reason I'm doing this. Okay, so again, this

list, these are all games that had a recent influx of wish list. I don't know the time. Could be two weeks, could be a week, could be days, I don't know what it is, but I have a feeling a lot of these games were in those summer showcases. So, I'm just going to scroll just so we have this record. I'm doing this so we have a record of what games were on here so that if I ever need to compare stuff, uh, we can. Um, this list here probably will not change because I find that Steam NextFest kind of locks things in amber. Uh, basically what I mean is whatever you had at the first day of NextFest is what's going to happen at the end on these these charts here. Just these specific three charts. I'll show one that doesn't typically change too much. So, it's still looking good. Still. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's it. Okay. Nothing nothing too surprising here. I ne neat games. I'm saying all these games are neat. Neat. Neat. Neat. Um let's go to the next one. Um what was Morso? There was something I wanted to see about Mors. Anyway,

um but all these games uh had a big influx probably in the recent days. Popular upcoming is total wish list. It just means who has the most wish lists. So, these are your big big games. And typically, you'll see these. There's always a couple multiplayer uh shooter games up at the top, and they're usually double A studios, sometimes AAA, who actually kind of put their game in Nexus. Most AAA games stay away from Nexus. I don't know why. I don't I don't think it's because they're egalitarian, and they're like, you know, we got to give those a chance. I think they just don't know about it and they're like, why should we make a a demo? Demos don't work. I saw this thing about it on Xbox. I saw this guy give a talk. TripleA is always slow to learn stuff. Um, okay. Um, so very you'll see a lot of the same games that have a ton of wish list also had a huge influx. It's just because you got the hotness, when you got the magic, everything just happen. So you're going to see a lot here. Clover Pit, this game really good demo. Kind of a horror kind of a a um a gambling game. Gambler mixed

with horror mixed kind of a rogike. Try this game. This is This is a hot one. It's not on my wish list. It should be. Uh, so try Clover Pit. This is good. So, and by the way, folks, see, I'm doing this. I'm saying, "Oh, I'm definitely gonna play this. You know what? I'm probably not gonna play these." You know, and this is what most people are doing. Most people are doing exactly what I'm doing, and they freak out. They're like, "Oh my god, nobody plays my demo, but they're wish listing. That must mean it's garbage." No, this is what Next Test does. You get a lot of exposure even if people don't play your demos. So, how it goes. But if you didn't make the demo, you wouldn't show up on this list. So, even though most people don't play your demo, you still got to make a demo. And you still got to get on Nexus. People are always looking for an excuse not to make a demo. They're like, "Well, I've got a game that's an hour long. I shouldn't make a demo, right?" No, I should still make a demo. I think everybody should make a demo. Even if your game's linear, this Cast and Chill. This game popped up just a few months ago. I think just like a month ago. Really cool looking game. Pixel art. Crafty dildy strategy simulationy. Uh there's Ninja Gayen

again. This UFFL. What is What is UFO? Um pur football. That's all I know. Soccer football. I don't know anything about that. Um, and then I think after inc. This one's a cool one that's uh from the guy that did um plague inc. It's got a new postapocalyptic strategy crafty strategy simulation. Guys, if you don't believe me, the craftability strategy simulation games do well. Look at this list. I mean, Ninja Gaden is not, but that's a double A game. Double AAA. It's from Sega. I think that makes sense. Konami. I think Konami makes Ninja Gaden. Anyway, so again, just just do the math. Just count up how many are crafty strategy simulation. A lot of them are a lot of them. The hot top games are crafty strategy simulation games. This backseat drivers that this this capsule looks not great. Don't it doesn't look the best. But I have some a feeling something cool is happening with this one. It's probably made by Devolver. Looks like a devolver kind of game. Anyway, Neonabus 2. That's a pretty cool

platformer. um pixel art platformer but rogike inflicted. Um okay. So that is the list of games with the most wish lists. Let's go look for this next one with top demos. These are these are most played demos. And so it's just how many whatever concurrent player count some metric they use. Um so these top two again multiplayer strategy co-op games always do very well in Nexfest. Now, will they do post launch as well? We'll see. But a lot of people are like, "Hey, bros, it's free game. Let's go play tonight. Let's do That's why these always do too well. Very well. It's co-op games. You bring your bros. It's free. You can play some free games for the week. That's why these top games always do pretty well. That Dead is Disco. I when I first saw the pitch for that game, I was like, I don't think this is going to do well. It's music game because games about being a musician, about being some sort of cool

musician just they they kind of hit or miss. I feel like I feel like most gamers don't care about being a cool musician or being punk rock or something. Most guys are most uh Steam players are just just nerds. They don't have they don't have visions of being a cool punk rock musician or something. But every once in a while, one of those will do well. U but indie devs love making games about being a cool musician. I don't know why, but they I'd say it's like it's very risky to make a game where you're a cool musician. But anyway, let's keep going. So, the interesting thing here, there's a couple, let me look at tell you a couple interesting thoughts that I had about this one is look at this one there. There's Clover Pit again. Um, guess who I saw? Baby Steps. Baby Steps is that Benfat game, the guy who invented um, you know, we all know Ben. He he he invented the uh rage games, the modern in incantation. Anyway, the new type of uh the new generation, let's call it the new generation of um of rage games. And

I think this is the debut of the demo. He did the thing where he just debuted the demo. He did not show up in as many uh let me just keep going and I'll talk a little bit while I talk about this. I just want to get to the bottom. I'm I'm trying to record all of these just so that I have a record of where these games move because these games will shift a little bit throughout the year or through the week. Some of these games that are kind of at the bottom, like barely on here, will drop off and there will be a couple that come up. And I just always like to monitor before and at the end of NextFest just to see what they go. But I'm going to look at um Bennett Fod's game real quick. And here's the interesting thing is it only showed up in this list. And if we know anything about Rage Games is they are total streamer bait. streamers love to play these games. So, my thought is maybe Baby Steps didn't do as much of a campaign leading into NextFest, so they didn't show up in trending. They didn't show up in most wishlisted. Maybe they just don't have as many wish lists as some of the other games, but they are showing up here. And that tells me streamers streamers were really liking

this game. So, let's see. I want to kind of just see. And this is the other reason I benchmark this stuff. Let me pull up Baby Steps. And I know people are going to be like, "See, Chris, you always tell me not to uh just grab a screenshot." But this is a rage game. Rage games have it a little bit different. Your rage games can have kind of crappier capsules because the whole thing is like this game's janky and it's just silly and the the text logo isn't very cool. It's cool. The rage games have a different set of rules. You can kind of do this, but people are always looking for reasons not to um uh to make a capsule like but baby subs didn't do it. And I was like, I know, but it's a different it's a different type of game. You're not benefit. Here's what I want to check. I always recommend that you install this uh this is a little uh Steam DB plugin. Just search it. It's called Steam DB. Um we all know Steam DB. But what I like to click on this, click on this and we'll go to the Steam DD DB

page. And I'm going to scroll down to the bottom here. Um, what I'm looking for is charts. I'm looking for follower counts. Why do I not have follower counts? What am I doing? I don't know why it's doing that. Oh, that's the demo. The demo Steam DB does this weird thing with the demos. It's only at 74%. That's kind of interesting. We'll have to check that out. I don't know why it's 75%. Who knows? Um, it's because it's the demo point parent app. You want to go to parent app, then you can get the follower count. So, let's go back down. Let's look at the charts for the the main game. There it is. So, look at this. When did they start their uptick here, was that um that was like June. They tried really hard. I can't I didn't see was Baby Steps in one of the the festivals like that. Hey, comment below if you did if you saw baby steps in one of those like E3 like conferences because I do see a big uptick right at May 26th which is

you know it's about a week a little over a week ago right so they did a marketing push but let's see let's see if I can do some math real quick so it looks like 3493 349 all my math 34 so they got like 200 so they maybe like increased their wish list count by maybe like 3,000. So, that's not a huge uplift. That's what makes me wonder, did they get into one of those E3 shows? The answer below. Maybe I'll search to see if they did. Maybe we could see it on their Steam page. Um, and what that tells me is that's not that much. 3,000. I'd expect if you got in one of those shows about 10,000, which means you'd probably increase your follower count by a thousand. They did not. So, we'll see. Maybe they did. Um, but the other thing is they're probably they're like at 36,000. I always just add a zero on the end. So, they're at like 36,000 wish lists. Typically, games that I see on the top charts are at least at 8,000 followers, which translates to about 80,000 wish lists plus. So, if you want

to be most wishlisted, it it's we're looking at 80,000. That's why I like to look at this game, Baby Steps, because it got on one chart, but it didn't get the other. So, we can kind of parse what that is. That's why I'm interested in looking at that. Um, let's take a look real quick at Baby Steps. I want to see what their Steam page says. Um, let's see. How do I always do this? Um, let me just go back back and I'll just go to Baby Steps itself. Okay, here's Baby Steps. Let's see what they're I'm I'm a little like um 75%. What are they saying? Dumbest game. Maybe it's just people who don't understand rage games. I'm just curious. I'm just curious. Like I'm curious to see if that they're like, "Oh, Bennett Fies failed." I don't know. Currently waiting for the game to release. Still waiting. Exactly how I expected to play except for the fact that it's been experiencing extreme. Hi. Oh, it's just laggy. I guess I don't know. I'm trying to do something but not quite there yet. In my opinion, it's riding the coattails of getting over

it. I don't know. It's only two reviews. I think there must be in other languages. So, it's either I was trying to see was it people hating it because it's a rage game and people don't understand what rage games are or is it something like it sounds like it might be a mix of those two. Like I'm seeing some stuff about performance. And again, these kind of performance things. This is why I always recommend you get the demo out nice and early. Solve those problems before NextFest and then by the time you get to NextFest, it's feeling real good. Let's see. I'm going to look at their thing. Oh, there it is. There it is. Baby Steps featured in future game show. So, we know they did get into the Jeff Key thing, so it didn't get them that many wish lists. Um, they didn't get that many to kind of boost them up on the charts. I don't know, maybe the game's too weird to be um to be liked in that. It's It's mostly streamers that that that lift those type of games. So, maybe the audience for a future game show is not as into it as some of the other uh types of games. So, interesting. Interesting. Let's go back

and keep browsing. Um, any other thoughts I had from Steam Nexfest? Let me let me just look at uh some notes that I took that see if there's anything else that I want to mention to you all that I saw when I was looking at it. Um, I am doing this at this time, but the peak time when most people are on Steam is at 7 a.m. Pacific time, but at 7 a.m. Pacific time, Steam Next started at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time. So that's just kind of an interesting thing that means to me is that, you know, as the full world has time to look at this, some of those things might shift around. Some of the games in those three top trending charts are going to kind of move around. Um, uh, let's see. So I always watch the bottom of those lists because those are really where games pop off and new games pop on. So we'll see how they do uh throughout. Um, a couple things also I noticed when I was looking at top charts. Um, yes, crafty, crafty,

strategy simulation games are are big, but within that a lot a lot of store merchant shop simulators. Not just those like grocery store simulator, but just in general like Moonlighter, you manage a shop. Um, what's Millennium Dream? Horror game. Um, no, I don't mean that in despair. I like horror games. I think every every indie dev should make at least one. Um but I saw a lot of like um let me show you what I mean. U there's uh let's see what was it. Um this is top top charted. Um let me find some of them that I saw. I saw a lot of them. Um let's see where is it? Town to city. That that's more of like a city builder I think. Uh let me let me just find Cast and Chill is a fishing game. Um, let's see. What is morsels? No. No. No. Trolley. A little puzzle. There's always like one. No, it's not a puzzle

game. No, it's no puzzle games on here. Last year, um, this one kind of reminds me of um, is that seat taken? Is this seat taken? A puzzle game. I don't see any puzzle games so far. Rich Tycoon. Um, what I'm looking for is a couple. I did see a higher than normal amount of games that are you run a shop. So, maybe not in this chart. Which one is this? Top demos. Maybe. Which one did I end up on? Um, oh, total wish lists. Um, let me look at this one here. Pop up coming. I think this may be where I saw it. Um, is this one? No. Maybe this is a puzzle. No, it's base builder. crafty building strategy. Something like that. I thought that one might be a puzzle game. It's not. Um, Moonlighter. Is that um room management or shop management? Tiny bookshop. Here's one. Is that what is that? Management. Yep. You're kind of managing a bookstore. A lot of retail. There's a

lot of retail games that I'm seeing. Let me show you. I I swear I saw some I saw like a whole list of them when I was going through this just before this call. Um, Rue Valley is this one. Point click and RPG storyish point. That's on there. Um, let's see here. I swear so. Um, let's see. There's a a a a renovation simulator. Not quite a store simulator. Let's see. Where is it? I know. I saw some I know I saw some um easy delivery. That's something else. Maybe they already dropped off. I swear I I I swear, folks. I saw a like I was saying like three or four shop simulators. I have screenshots. I did pull some screenshots. I when the when Steam Next first started, I grabbed a screenshot, but I wanted before I did this live playthrough, I wanted to do a lot of stuff where I just showed it. Um, escape from Dookov. I swear this game's been in earlier next.

I swear I played something this. Maybe it's another another duck open world um extraction shooter type of game. Let's see. Where is it? guess. Man, maybe they fell right off. I found a lot of Now, now I'm looking dumb here. Um, okay. Here we have box bakery. Okay, run a bakery. So, we've got you run the bakery. There was the one where you run a there was one. I saw this one. Town to see. That's not it. Um, uh, there's a back rooms game. One only one backgrounds game. Back rooms game. I feel like that one might be a little too small. There's Moonlighter. There was one that I saw and it must have already changed. Already changed. I saw one that was like an antique store simulator where you manage an antique store. Um I saw there was another one that was like a competitive Was that Pigface? Maybe it

was Pig Face. No, now I'm just Now I'm just blabbing. Um, I swear I saw a bunch of managing a shop simulators and maybe they've already fallen off. Waterpark simulator is cool. That's not that, but um, interesting. Interesting. I' I've seen a lot pop off for waterpark simulator. Anyway, so what what does this mean? Maybe you're not on this list. Here's one thing that's that I think with Nexfest, maybe you're going to be in the next N NextFest in October, the one that's the biggest one every year. Here's the deal with NextFest is I see it as like a big multiplier multiplier where it's just a big box that multiplies your wish list by five or something some number. Don't don't quote me on five. It just is a number. It multiplies anything going in. So, if you come in with a 100, you go into the times five machine. Again, don't quote me on the five. I'm just picking number five out of there. You go in with a 100 wish list, you come out with 500. If you go in with a th00and, you come out with 5,000. Okay? If you go in with a

100,000, you come out with 500,000. That it doesn't work that way. It It's not exactly five for everybody. But what I'm saying is NextFest, from my experience doing this the last couple times where I asked for numbers. Next never shifted things where it was like, man, I was going slow and then I went through NextFest and all of a sudden I'm big. No, it just preserves what you were already doing. It just notches you up a multiple. Okay? That's all it does. That's all Nextfest does. It's not even the best conference, the best online festival. There's other ones that are more specific to specific genres. Like a lot of people are saying turnbased fest that just recently happened. Turn-based Thursday was really good if you had a turn-based game. Those genres do those do better. Uh those genre specific festivals. Um whereas this one, again, don't treat NextFest as something amazing that's going to fix things. It doesn't fix things. All it does is just bump you up another level from where you already are. So, if you're not if you're having trouble getting wish list, you're not going to get a lot from Next. I mean, you will you'll get a lot of wish

list, but it's not going to change your course. And a lot of people treat NextFest like, oh my god, this is going to turn things around for us. We've been having some slow times. We're going to turn it around with NextFest. Or they're like, I just created my Steam page. I really want to kickstart the momentum with NextFest. It does not. If you don't have momentum, NextFest doesn't turn it around and give it you like, oh, you got momentum now. That kickstarted things. doesn't kickstart visibility. It just preserves what you've already got. Okay? And I just wanted to dispel these myths because people get so stressed out and worked up about NextFest. Next doesn't change that much. It just it's not even the best festival. The reason people get so worked up is you are guaranteed a spot. So, everybody gets into XFest. There's no no question about it. So, if you are mandatory to get into it, people think about it a lot more because you're going to get into it. Really what I'd recommend the best things for your game apply to all the other festivals. You go to how to market aame.com and then just do on this side do a slashfestestivals

on the end and you'll see our list of festivals. Those do better than next for many games. But not everybody gets in. That's that's the hard part. And the other thing is reaching out to streamers. Just reach out to streamers and say, "Hey, can you play my game? I got a demo." Those two things do better than NextFest. Next is good. I'm not It's free wish lists. I'm just saying it's not going to change your life, folks. So, don't what and basically what I'm trying to say is don't stress out. Don't stress out. Don't stress out. Don't worry about if it's 2,500 or 3,000. Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Okay? What you should freak out is how many games can I apply to at how toarketame.comfestestivals. That's what you should freak out about. Okay? So, with that, uh, how toarketame.comfree is how to join my mailing list. Don't subscribe to this YouTube channel. It's not worth it. YouTube sucks. Okay. What I want you to do is go to how tomarketame.comfree. Join the newsletter. You get a free tip. I'm gonna do a blog post just tomorrow on Tuesday. New blog post coming out. You're going to get it. How to

marketame.comfree. Don't subscribe to my channel. And what I want you to do at the end of this thing, just hit the big X, close this browser window. You've watched enough YouTube for the day. Okay? Watching YouTube is not working on your game. I just want to be clear. Even if you're programming and you're watching this on the background, turn it off. They've found they've done studies. We cannot multitask. You can't have something running on the background and be working. Your brain just can't do it. No. Read look the studies up. Just search chat2. Multitasking studies. It doesn't work. You just can't. You do both worse. You don't listen to me very well and you don't do your coding very well. So, you're wasting your time twice as much. Okay? You're double wasting your time. So, please close this. Either put earplugs in, no sound, work, work for an hour, get up, walk around, fresh air, and then maybe watch a YouTube, one YouTube, not all of them, because the algorithm wants you to keep watching, watching. You don't want to do that. Okay? That's what I'm saying. Close this browser window. Just right up here. I think it's over here. Hit that X. Just close me out. Bye. Nothing else is going to happen up here. Just Just

click the X. Close this browser window. You're done with YouTube. All right. See you later. Have a good YouTube. I'm not doing anything else. I'm just closing the browser. There's nothing else here. Close YouTube. I just have to do this. I just have to like click up here. There's nothing else. I just have to hit the stop button. Here's the other thing about YouTube. I don't edit these videos because YouTube sucks. It's YouTube does not deserve my time to edit these videos. I just literally I record this and I go straight onto YouTube from here. So, um, YouTube sucks.