How To Make Money From Your Game In 2025 w/ Chris Zukowski — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 025

but I've been wanting to talk to you since you started doing this and it was probably back I think it to be precise it was probably when I met David Wy um and I think he emailed me at some point in like 2017 and he he just kept name dropping you and I was like who is this Chris guy so who is this Chris guy who are you what what do you do I'm I'm a man I'm a man who lives in Arizona I uh I write this website how tomarket a game.com it teaches you how to write and do everything is related to marketing at how tomarket a game.com it is how you Market it's just that's it and I only do Steam and I only do Indie Dev I don't talk about AAA sometimes double A depends on your definition but uh I I just go deep deep deep in the very myia of how to Market a game and so uh every week I publish a blog post uh of all different topics all around steam I don't do mobile I don't do Kickstarter I don't do anything else it's just steam game marketing so how Market agame.com

free is uh how to sign up for that so every week you're going to get a free um free newsletter from me there's so there's so many people listening right now who oh man if they just knew how to Market their game it would help so much and I want to get into I want to get into 2025 because I just released a video called um what's it called it's like is indie game marketing still relevant in 20125 because there's this I've heard this from people I won't say their names I've heard some game developers say look if your game is good it's going to sell and I guess that's yeah that's the first question for you if your game is good shouldn't it just sell itself um here's what I like in it too this is this is the analogy it's kind of hard to say to answer you with a yes or no here here's here's how I think about it okay um paper airplanes you know like you make as a kid um everybody can make a paper airplane well okay so the different designs of paper airplanes you

know there's all these different folds that you can do those are like the games the paper airplane is the game and um some some games need like you really have to throw it hard and then it'll go some games you need like you know some games that'll swoop really low almost touch the ground then swoop up yep games are crazy like paper airplanes where it's like I'm never quite sure how to do it but you always know if I go to the top of my if I stand on the roof of my house I know when I stand on the roof of my house and throw that paper airplane it's probably going to go further than if I were standing on the driveway and try and throw that paper that's essentially what marketing is is you're just standing taller so that you can throw that airplane and it'll probably go further I mean some people make terrible paper airplanes but they Market them well so they're standing on the roof but it's just like a balded up ball of paper and they throw it and then it falls in like see marketing doesn't work it's like oh yeah you kind of you made a bad paper airplane made a crumpled ball of paper and some games and it's and it's weird sometimes it happens you will be on the driveway and you'll throw that

paper airplane and it just Soares and you're like see marketing doesn't matter I just threw this airplane but my kind of the way to think about it is well okay you did great standing on there think of how much further if you had sold if you had thrown that paper airplane on the roof you would have gone twice as far and you already did great so that's kind of how I think of marketing It's a combination of how the airplane is built and then how high you go when you throw that airplane okay can a great game I asked this question I think I've asked this question to every single podcast guest and I don't know if I've ever agreed with anybody and let's see if I agree with you can a can a great game uh using your analogy fail Can it can it crash and burn on the pavement I mean yeah if you don't Market it right really I do think you need to Market it see I've heard some game offers say no it's it's like the you trust the steam algorithm and it just it'll just it'll just project you up no I think there's some there are some decent games that didn't get marketed right yeah I I think

it's always like it there'll be games where it's like man if they just marketed that game a little better they would have done so much better I see that a lot where why is that because okay so the steam so I'm gonna I'm gonna drop some analogies left and right here love them I they they help me so much so please keep doing it okay so here's the here's a different analogy it's kind of like basketball or let's do trying to think of okay so it's like the steam algorithm is just a bunch of rules people algorithms it's just rules Y and there are certain rules that you have to have that that are kind of there to play the game of steam and think of it as like basketball and some people show up and they might be really good at sports like they could be good at basketball but they start playing soccer like they start kicking the ball and you're like no no no no that's that's not that we're playing basketball you have to hit it with your hands and like no I'm playing soccer here and you're like it's actually illegal to kick the ball you have to you have to hit it with your hands and they they're like no didn't come here to play basketball I

was like well you paid the entry fee you're paying 30% to play basketball why don't you follow the basketball rules they're like no that's not my vision it's like okay well what are you doing here and so I don't remember the question but the analogy is basketball I guess the question was my thought is like yes you do have to Market and you have to kind of understand the rules of the game that you're playing and the rules of the algorithm of steam have some certain things so I think you should play them and there's some strengths you know if you're like a good outside shooter you should probably go for a bunch of Threes you know you should probably stand back here and start launching the ball cuz you're really good at at that distance and I see a lot of devs I'm like you're really good at this why don't you do this thing and they're like no it's not part of my vision I was like you're really good at it though and that's the frustration I see is I think to your question of like well a good game that's not marketed right it's like man you're not working at your optimal level for the rules that we're playing here well the way that I sort of interpreted your answer um is and the basketball analogy which is I'm

it's the second analogy of probably a 100 which is amazing I want you to do as many analogies as you can because it helps me so much that's right the the the if I were to use an analogy for an algorithm a lot of well it's not God that's that's my analogy is a lot of people see okay that's very smart the algorithm is not God okay all right meaning it's not perfect and omnipresent and it knows that your game is great right it's it's not it's it's going to pick up the good games as best as it can but some good games some great games you need to poke the algor you need to pray to that God right you really need to like poke it and say Hey listen this game is good it's got 10,000 wish list it's got 50,000 wish list you can't get away with not poking that Genie or that God you have to you have to tell it right yeah I'll just like okay we're getting theoretically here for thas whoa

whoa whoa whoa so so um I am no Theologian I I uh let me let me let me just I'll just bring it let let me just give you some examples I'll break it down to to specific levels okay um so there's a game and um I think it's called I think it's called Terminus survivors and it's this Korean Dev he's he Korean and it's a great game and it's done pretty well like he's my mark for a good game like whether it's succeeded is if it gets a thousand reviews like the steam algorithm to get to a th reviews within the steam algorithm is very tough it's very hard and this game I I scrape I look at every game that has ever made a thousand reviews every year because there's only about I'd say six to 700 of those and of that a smaller subset are indie games and so I look at every game that reaches 1,000 reviews and I found this one it was this game called Terminus survivors I think that's good it's either Terminus survival or Terminus survivors it's this like really

Pixy pixel like it's not it's not the prettiest game it's it's endearingly cute uh but it's a zombie apocalypse survival it's Terminus Zombie Survivors is what it's called that's that's it so this is a great test case now the game the guy it's an early access game and the guy went to Early Access launch he just went from Early Access to 1.0 and that bump got him a lot of sales I haven't checked recently but he did a very good transition I was like Wow cuz the game I scrape all the data and look and this game had a terrible very slow up and then it succeeded in Early Access transition to 1.0 the the algorithm picked it up and put in front of every 1.0 at 1.0 okay and the guy launched with everything I say not to do the guy launched with like like maybe a 100 wish lists because I can go back and look at his data and stuff and I asked him I interviewed him he he was one of the block I wrote a Blog about this guy because I was like man who is this guy yeah he launched in Korean only the game only had Korean

at at um at its Early Access launch which is death death and like everything and despite all that he grounded out and just started adding languages and and patching it and doing this stuff and it slowly took off okay and after tons of patches and all this stuff I I consider this a successful Financial game and he violated every single rule that I say back there and so people are like see marketing doesn't work and it's like yeah but just the analogy this is back this a new analogy I'm going back to analogy number one it's like the airplane thing he just happened to have it but like a good airplane you could throw on the on the driveway and do well this guy could have done so much better if he just climbed up on the roof and thrown it like and here's here's the straight up this is hard facts like okay he launched steam will give you visibility when you launch your game okay when you launch the whether it's early access or 1.0 when you launch not post a steam page that's a different thing that's called coming soon when you launch your game valve will give you

free visibility I mean not free CU you're paying 30% so I'm always like take as much of that 30% as you can this guy did not use all those tools and the tools are if you get around 5,000 to 7,000 wish lists they'll put you on the front page and then if you convert those 5 to 7,000 they'll put you on the new and trending list right and then if you get they give this thing called Discovery queue once you hit 10 reviews they put you in the discovery queue and then they put your game all over the place right uh well in other words they give you free visibility it's called The Discovery que you're probably not paying enough attention to it everybody listening the discovery que is um if there is a God it is the Discovery um and then that would also give you lots of visibility but because he launched in Korean with no wish lists he he essentially forfeited all that visibility and I know based on how good his game is it would have done fantastic when he did that early access launch and then he would have started so high he would have earned so much money at that point that it would have given him so

much development funds that he could just funded this game for a while and then when he went to his early access to 1.0 transition so much higher on top of that and so it's not an argument of like is this game good is it the marketing good or that it's just I just see it as a mised opportunity yeah it's such a missed opportunity that this guy because he didn't know the algorithm and stuff like that he just missed out on and it's like that's an example of what I'm saying where it's like here's a good game that was marketed wrong I was like man you would be I know you did so well you're you got a thousand reviews you're doing awesome but you would have done so much better if you just followed the rules knew the algorithm I got woried uh the the algorithm God or whatever we were going to talk theologically um but that's that's what that's how I think about marketing when I this stuff and the way that I think about it and I think this is sort of a good sort of start to this podcast honestly because it's we're really what we're trying to do right now for everybody listening is we're trying to justify marketing like is it worth your time as an because there's so many things you got to do as an IND game developer the big question is does it

does it is it worthy of my time and the reason it's a yes from me and so my sort of conclusion here to that question is number one if you have a great game you can make a gang busters game if you Market it well so it's just more fuel for something that is already doing well but you can just maybe double the profit right the second reason is if you're a if you have a me medre game and let's be honest I would say 99.9% of people listening right now you have a mediocre game to to just an awful game I'm being honest and real and I'm actually talking to myself as well I've always said my games are mediocre if not just like okay games yet yet with a mediocre game if you Market it correctly you can make 100K easy is that true I about the easy part on 100K I don't

know about 100K easy but um yeah I mean I think you can it's kind of like the local Maxima as I see it there like every game I think we'll get theoretical theological here every game has a amount that it it probably earn and marketing just ensures that you get as much of that as you can yeah um that's kind of how I think about it well how about this can a mediocre game let's let's find the right number here so that you can you you'll at least agree with me a little bit can a mediocre game with the right marketing can it make a full-time salary for someone for a year like 40K 50k and they could live on it what do you think about that I don't know you don't I don't I don't promise numbers I don't promise numbers so what what is is marketing an effective thing to do for a mediocre game or is it a waste of time no I think it is good like so even if you don't sell so it's still good mean you should still play the rules here's the other thing about here here's what I

is like again you're paying valve 30% like that's a huge amount like that's a lot of money when 30% I know you don't pay it up front you pay it on the back end but that's a lot of money and it's like you should do everything you can to make the most of that money it's like it's it's you're paying for it it's like if you bought an air conditioner analogy number three and you never turned it on it's like you're paying for it turn it on so it's the same thing with marketing it like you do need to do marketing and we can go through what they are I kind of mentioned them with that Terminus survivors um there are certain thresholds you have to hit in marketing to get permission from valve to be shown and so that's why you have to do some marketing it's like playing the game of basketball we'll go back to another analogy but this is still we still have only gotten three but number two is like it's like could you win at basketball if you never dribbled the ball and it's like yeah you technically could but why not there's a skill set like you're allowed to dribble you might as well and

that's way I see it with with marketing is like you should still dribble cuz it's a part of the algorithm like you should do it so with the marketing thing and and marketing a game yes you should do it and here's why is because even if your game doesn't succeed and get fulltime money um you it sets you up for the next one because I don't think people make enough games I actually think people need to make more games you won't even if you don't sell well your game gets out there and you're you people have wishlisted you and there's other things that happen side effect so even if you don't sell well it's a it's a brick in that fourth metaphor of your house and you're building up and so your next game might be better because you get a bunch of followers people at least know about you like oh I didn't I I hav even though my game's never sold well people are like oh yeah I I saw that game I know what your game is I never played it but I saw it so even if there's not a financial gain right away I still think it's important to Market a mediocre game because it might do well for your next game gotcha gotcha okay so that brings me to my next question for you I I have heard that wish lists don't

matter anymore which I think is a stupid thing to say because it's like it's it's really black and white H have they have they at bare minimum lost their effectiveness no and here's what it is um there's a lot of games where and i' I've listened to I've listened to some past uh of your podcast there are some people who who had big wish list gains here's the difference um I think people have figured out and that's what I write about how to get wish lists like how do you get them um and so there are some games that can get a lot of wish lists um they've people have learned how to get the wish list but at its core it wasn't and I don't mean this for everybody but the game wasn't as good as what people were anticipating or something and and they undersold because um typically and we'll just go hardcore numbers here like I see successful games and games that launched just like last week or before because I interview Dev succeed all the time they will get 20 to 30% conversion rate on their wish list

that's crazy 20 to 30% conversion rate on their wish list what's the average and then their games then they are games that same amount of wish lists but they get a lower conversion rate and that's the thing and so the the dev who had the lower conversion was like wish list don't matter as much anymore they just don't matter they're just junk but the guy that just launched this game that got 20 to 30% conversion he's like what they're fineing for me yeah and so that's the difference that's why it sounds like it doesn't work cuz people like sharing bad news sharing bad news so somebody post on Twitter I got 100,000 wish list and my game failed see wish list don't matter for anymore and then people because people have an aversion towards bad news they love it they say yep wishless don't matter and that's the thing is like well it's the game that matters it's just think of wishless as potential that's the number of people who will receive that email when the game launches and then it's up to them to to evaluate and say Ah that's that's it and there's a couple other reasons why wish L um might not confirm we can go into it let's do it um all right so here's the deal um I think

100,000 is a pretty good wish list amount it is um and sometimes people like oh man I got 100,000 wish list and I didn't convert and then I'm like oh well how long has your game been marketed right so then you look and they're like well I've been making and marketing this game for seven years it's been up on Steam for seven years and so if you do let's just say 10 years because Ms are easier and so if you're like oh well 10 years 100,000 wish list that's 10,000 wish list a year that's okay but 10,000 wish list a a year is not great so the final amount looks awesome I have 100,000 but that typically means what I see is when somebody gets about 10,000 a year that's kind of like people like it's pretty good you know like in other words there's just not that emotion like you'll see it I've consulted for games that have like it's an exciting game everybody's anticipating this game they get so many wish lists they get like 100,000 wish lists in a year in 6 months way got 200,000 wish lists in 3 months David wh yes um and so that is energy that is

like people going yes but so what the first thing I do anytime I read a Reddit post everybody should do this do your own homework every time somebody posts I had 100,000 wish list and I they didn't work and they didn't convert and I sold Port it was like okay then go to something called steamdb look up the game on steamdb and you can see how long the steam page has been live and divide that 100,000 by the number of years the game has been uh had the steam page up and then you can get a sense and my general sense is if you can get 30 to 50,000 wish lists in one year that's a decent that's decent that's like all right people are all right they're kind of excited if you can get 100 200,000 wish list in one year I'm like this is going to be a hot one this could be a hot one gotcha if you're like I got 100,000 wish list over 10 years I'm like okay all right there's not that much excitement in there yes okay so let me ask you this then um man there's so many questions uh well

first off I want to make a statement to to sort of agree with you um ever since email marketing ever since email became a thing even with like dial up internet back back when I was you know a teenager uh it's like that's all that's all wish lists are it's email it's email marketing email marketing is I would say it's the Lynch pin of every single digital operation out there would you agree with that email is still cool kids let me tell you and I was I was talking to David or I was actually talking to you I I talked to David about this um but I also talk to you about this Thomas um like I don't do social media I don't PO on social media I don't have a you I mean I have a YouTube channel but I don't I don't post to it very often I do it when I just I use it as a video repository I'm like hey here's a cool video um I'm making a full-time living off of an email list I know it is still cool kids I I know it's a it doesn't

seem like it but email is cool and the next somebody's going to put in the comments yeah well my I am my kids's 14 or my my brother's 14 years old and he doesn't he doesn't read email it's because he's 14 he doesn't drive all right you still need a car to survive it's just people get email addresses people think because they're kids yeah uh that they don't check their email it's because they're kids all right kids don't have anything responsibilities as soon as that 14-year-old gets a job they're going to need an email address and they're to check it a lot cuz their paycheck comes in there if they get bills their bills are going to come in through their email address it's not because they're 14 and 14-year-olds don't care about email more because it's a kid well that once you become an adult it's like your bar mitzvah or something here's analogy number five you become aware of emails and then you're like yeah I love emails so kids the kids are going to learn to love email it's it's one of the constants of the universe email marketing even if for some reason email marketing dies which I don't think it will not for a long time I think well

I think the replacement is going to be something like Discord um it essentially regardless of whether it's email or Discord or whatever all you're get all you're doing with the steam wish list is you're Gathering contact information for people who are interested in your game that's all it is the difference though between a steam wish list AKA a steam email list that they own and a email list that you own like let's say it's on MailChimp or Squarespace or whatever the difference is is that your wish and it's really a question for you this is my next question is would you rather have a 30 a list of of 100,000 email addresses that you own or would you rather have a 100,000 wish list for your game on Steam I know I just Ted email but here I would rather have 100,000 wish lists me

too why is that coming in hot so here's why okay um I'd like both but here here here's here's why here's the other thing you have to know is and this is steam um is not like a website a lot of people treat it like a website they they treat steam like it's a repository like oh I upload my game and then I point traffic to it is not it is its own weather system and and what happens is um if you're in the ecosystem of steam you get that 100,000 when you get about 100,000 wish list you can actually phone up steam I always do this I always phone them up um and you can say I got 100,000 wish list can I get a popup and then they're like just one second and they die you up and they're like yeah you can have a popup what you do is you go I have 100,000 wishes I'm launching uh on next weekend or next week let's do

it um can I have a popup okay and they look at their thing and they're like oh yeah maybe U and I'll get to that in a second what happens is that 100,000 wish list is currency that you can spend inside of steam what steam is done is within Steam that algorithm is very good at sharing people so when you have a lot of wish list you get shared within Steam so I do a lot of analysis like people will give me their data half of all traffic comes from Steam itself like half of traffic is generated from Steam algorithm itself that is where you get your visibility as Steam you don't Market your own game like it's not like a website where it's like like us email marketers direct response marketing that's a totally different thing from Steam because we can do the math we can be like okay 10 people joined my mailing list four people click the link two people bought it it's a clear funnel yep it's very Newtonian it's very einsteinian physics okay um but when it comes in from the other

side from Steam it is quantum mechanics it is like oh my God there's like all of a sudden people are coming in this way that way that way there's no clear funnel and so what happens is the reason I'd like that 100,000 wish lists is because then I can use that within the ecosystem of steam to get much more visibility than my 100,000 email subscribers but but before we go the one thing is I'd still like that 100,000 because what we can do is you can Kickstart the algorithm and and that's we'll talk about this in the future I I'll I'll bend one of your questions to answer this the the real point of marketing is to trigger the steam algorithm to go crazy for you correct okay correct that's why I'd rather have 100,000 wish lists now let this leads me to my next question Chris this is a this is a truly mysterious uh it's it's a question that's Bo boggled my mind for a couple years now can I build an audience on Steam for my future games so for example I get

a 100,000 wish let's say I'm David wayy which I'm very jealous of and I hate his guts right now but he has 300,000 wish lists which is what you I think he told me 200 but maybe it's already at 300,000 and it's for we Harvest Shadows which is an amazing game um let's say I have 300,000 wish lists is it possible to keep and use though that audience for my future games okay kind of yeah a little bit um it's 200,000 I just wrote a blog post oh it's David and so it's 220 and he gave me the stat just a few days ago so if you I don't know when this was going live but if you check how Market game.com you can read the the thing so it is 220 but anyway I still hate him not you still hate him I I like he is the nicest guy I'm just kidding I love I love David he's one of my really good friends but I am very jealous I am jealous I will and I've told that to him to his face so um what what happens there are you kind

of you can do it it's not as clean as as like an email again theme is like quantum mechanics um it is shocking how how little fans care about us as developers yeah it sounds like Indie oh you're Indie that doesn't mean you're like everybody falls in love everybody loves Indies cuz they fall in love with Indies and it's like we're rock stars or something that's that's the image people have when they become IND G developers like we're the same as like I'm like a singer songwriter um that is not true because they just do not follow us I think it's because our art is well removed from us so it's like you don't see the person performing the art like you do a musician so our art is very um way at arms length we're way back in there even more than filmmakers I think we're even worse than filmmakers about getting our our face out there and so people for the most part 99% of the time just don't care about us as developers um and so I have seen

games and like a game peglin and there's another game called do keeper both of those guys had games previously they released games totally different genre and you would expect like man these were hit games peglin and do keeper You' expect oh man bet they you know when you find a hit man you're like oh let me go listen to their back catalog no nobody went back and played their old games you can look at their sales stats they'll do big things with their main game and it has zero zero impact on their old games nobody cares about us okay but here's what you can do to your question about whether you can use that leverage of 100,000 you can try and get people to follow you as a as a a publisher when you publish yourself on Steam we can follow you you also I think the more critical thing is that you have your um your game and if you make the type of game that's endlessly replayable you have new you can publish widgets on your thing I would I would code this up where it's like on your game's splash screen like when they start the main menu I'd have a news item that pops up that you can dynamically update that says like hey my next game's coming brilli that

attention is what's important so that everybody who launches your game plays like oh there's a new game I'll click that that is a very potent thing yeah um there's other things and this is more for steam if you've launched a game um that is done very well and by very well I mean about 150 to 200,000 minimum gross revenue US Dollars before steam's cut you can phone up steam here comes the steam phone Ste phone coming in um you can phone up steam and say valve you can phone him up and say hey um I'm going to be launching a new game can I cross promote can you can we do a a daily deal that's a big secret daily deal with my old game that earned a lot and then pair that with my my upcoming game you can paare those together and then you get visibility on the other one so it's not direct it's not like all of a sudden those 100,000 wish turn into something else on your other game it's you now have currency within the valve ecosystem that you can trade around those are some examples of trading around that visibility does this does

this okay I'll say this this doesn't strike me as a corrupt system I think it's just a business and they're they're looking at okay if you have a lot of wish list it means people are interested do you see it as unfair that some game developers are allowed to use the steam phone no because it's all it's all about money you just you all valve cares about for the most part is the money so if you make them money they will they'll reward you and so you have to make the money in order to do it yep and I can say from personal experience and when you say the steam phone is it is it actually a phone call or is it an email just curious It's actually there's a there's a support ticket and they read support no I know they do yeah you go into Steamworks and there's a button on the far side of the menu it's probably right here and it says support you click that and then you

fill it out there's some choices you fill out they read them they really do read them and so what you can request you can just request this stuff you're like hey like a daily deal if you think you should get into one of the themed festivals and you didn't yep you can open the supports you can say like my game is a horror game and I wasn't allowed to participate in the horror festival can you please add me I that's the steam phone boom right there um valve is getting away from they used to assign you a uh a person but they kind of getting away from that I think that for if you're like making million dollars years every year then you do get still a person but for the most part the steam phone is just a dialogue box in Steamworks called support and everybody can fill it out it's just they won't listen to you unless you do well well what's so interesting is uh my game pinstripe which was my first real commercial game which I'm looking up on Reddit right now cuz I'm trying to figure out when I did a daily deal I I it was actually 6 years ago when I got I won't say who it was but

you've probably talked to him as well um and I've emailed him and I just said hey can we do a daily deal and he was like sure and it's like the game's Revenue was like something like I'm trying to remember what it was it was something like $80,000 gross and he was like yeah we'll do a daily deal so we did a daily deal and I ended up making like 25k I think during maybe it was $10 to $25,000 during that daily deal and it was all because I just emailed them and what I what's interesting is I had a publisher yet I took the initiative so this is just sort of a side note a little asterisk for everybody just because you have a publisher doesn't mean they're going to do the work for you in fact most most Publishers are pretty awful about about caring for you when you're not the game making them the most money because they tend to spin the chamber and if if your game's not making them a ton of money that they slowly forget about you so it's totally true what you said I've done it myself and it works you get a daily deal uh I think the Halloween sale I got into a Halloween sale doing it that method as

well so it works you know yeah here's the here's the thing theme is actually curated this is and this is a lot of people you'll see this usually in the Reddit post or some Twitter thread they're like man my game failed I wish steam were were curated this would all be fixed if steam's curated here's the deal it is you still no um it is secretly curated but here here's how it works you have to you you do some stuff that's automated you know the wish lists the conversions all that stuff you do just enough you all the stuff that I write about every single day my my my blog how tomarket game.com free um you do just enough and then steam gives you a little bit they're like okay you did the minimum here here's your visibility and it's like this little bit of visibility and they're like let's see how you do with this and then you do it you like turn all that stuff into money and they're like good job good job and then you can go all right and so they you get ,000 from that my my I call it

real steam once you get about 150,000 200 minimum I call that real steam 200,000 W sorry ,000 hund about $150 to $200,000 us pre steam cut just gross revenue y for your game Y in general you're kind of on steam's radar and then okay the curation kicks in so that whole thing steam is just one giant fil filter you know how people are like oh there's so much shovelware crap on there valve is taking care of that if you go to uh steam.com just go straight to the website and look at the thing you will never see the shovelware Y I only see the shovelware when I scrape the data pull in every game you will never see the shovel Weare if you're just like clicking around if you go like two or three pages deep you just don't see it right and so that's what the steam algorthm does it just suppresses everything if you rise through that and I'm not saying that's easy but you get about that 15 200,000 you are now in real Steam and that what you're seeing

everything you see when you go to steam.com right there on the front page has been curated that is like in other words that's like it has made it through the filter it is now in real steam everything you see is real Steam and those are the games that have sold enough that Val like you're worth our time you are worth a spot on our store in val eyes I love all of you even if you in so well but in val eyes you are worth it okay so go ahead and once you're worth it let just let me yeah go ahead and it's curated the store is actually curated and you can fun them up and say hey your old buddy real steam Chris here um can I get some a daily deal yeah let's put you in there and it's up to you all that's the main thing is like your goal is to get one game into real steam because it is so much easier to get your other games into real steam once you get one game into real steam so just just just try and get one game into real steam oky dokie so there's a billion questions I've got here by the way check out my notes you I don't think you can see me but I'm going to show my notes anyway to the camera there's like a billion words that I've

written down because there's just there's so much information here it's there's a reason why your newsletter does so well because it's so granular you you you give so many data points now I have a question here about why you call it real steam what's the what's the re why do you call it real steam because um you don't before you get into real steam it feels like your your game's okay so okay here's why I call it real I was like why did I call it good question okay so you feel like you're doing it you're like yeah I am uploading my game and I'm like yeah posted it you can send a link to it you can be like here's a link and you get some reviews you know and uh you're like yeah I got up on Steam I'm on Steam mom here's my steam link and you're like yeah way to go son and um and it's on there and it's yeah you are definitely on Steam but you get no visibility I'm

I'm assuming you're under that thing and then if you sell that amount it's like the club like I don't know I don't go clubbing or anything but you always see it in the movies yeah like the protagonist is like I want into the real club and you go into the VIP section and it is just like pandemonium awesomeness or something if I like clubs it looks awesome but I don't I don't like loud s like no me neither where's the earplugs I'd rather it's like the real club and when you make the real money they're like come with us and they they lower the VIP Velvet Rope and you're like I didn't even know this was a door and they're like oh it's a door and then you go into the club and you're like what the hell this is this is awesome oh my God what was why was I spending so much time in that stupid Club this is the real club and everything's like crazy and naked and stuff that is the real Club there's no nudity well there is there's plenty actually there's a whole other section of the club on Steam yes we'll get to that but anyway so that is steam is like you're like wait people are actually making money here and

they're like oh yeah we are and then they're like it's curated and there's featuring and there's all this stuff that is what I call real steam yes before you had a link that goes to steam but you're not really making the money and steam's like you're in Steam way to go kid and you're like Yay can I get some visibility they're like no no no you don't get visibility but once you make enough money then they're like you ready to make some money let's make some money because valve knows that you now a cow that they can milk you're like you're making milk here let come back here come back here let's milk you and they're like yeah let's do it and so that's a different club by the way and then so all that stuff um but that's that's what I mean by real steam is now valve sees that you can make money and they're like let's partner up and that's why you get the steam phone you're like let's make money and Val's like yeah let's make money and that's that's real okay okay how many analogies was that I think I counted two or three in there that was like 30 and it was amazing I feel amazing I feel like I've learned so much okay so essentially what you're

saying is uploading your your game to steam and not getting $100,000 in revenue is essentially like I don't know being on hiio it's like you're just you're just on some shelf some dusty shelf you're not really going to get promoted the algorithm is not really going to favor you and the curating team isn't going to favor favor you either or give you deals or I'm sorry features right now what what's the difference what's the difference between real theme and the sandbox I remember reading a blog post about the sandbox did you make that up yeah I think so I sandbox is is not real steam that's everybody starts in the sandbox I can't remember maybe gave a talk I I gave a tu I think it's a talk so if you just search my name on YouTube just search how to Market a game with Zukowski um you're gonna get Thomas brush or that video if you search how to Market a game you either get a Thomas brush video or that video we we fight with each other sometimes I'm On Top sometimes you're not need to everyone should click on your video and I'm being dead serious

I'm not trying to flatter you that's the video that's the video where I talked about the sandbox and so basically everybody starts in the sandbox yeah and then if you make enough then steam plucks you out of the sandbox and they put you in real didn't but didn't you mention in one of your blog posts that there's a certain amount of reviews you should hit there's like 10 reviews or something kind of so there's there's like ladders of visibility on Steam and the first one the first tiny step is 10 reviews and and that once you get 10 reviews then you are I think Val says there's no algorithm change it's not like there's somewhere in the code that says like if 10 reviews yeah do this that is I believe them they're like Chris there's no algorithm there is a correlation isn't there in the data yeah there is yeah so um but typically once you hit 10 reviews I think you might get shown in What's called the discovery queue which like I said that is the god is the Discovery queue and that starts that train see that's that stepping

stone that I'm talking about it's a ladder of visibility if you can't get 10 reviews you're definitely not going to get it into the next one like then the latter is like then you got to get in popular upcoming and then you got to get new and trending and like that's why you have to play the game of the stones and if you don't do the first step you can never you can't then jump three steps it's hard enough to get one and you're already behind and that's that's the 10 review thing okay so I'm drawing a diagram right now and you can't see it but I want to show the audience basically what you've said so on the diagram on my notepad it's there's a Q and it's outside the club and that's a line to get into steam that's the 10 reviews then you get into the club that's steam but to get into real steam the VIP room you've got to get $100,000 does that sound about right about 150 to 200 150 to 200,000 is is is more the what they're looking for and that's like that's that's the little

Club goodness just you're just barely in there oh so you're saying there's like a diddy party uh happening somewhere yeah uh does valve send you chocolates does valve send you chocolates Thomas no they do not that's called chocolate tear chocolate tear is that's that's the Diddy side that's gross but chocolate tier is the ultimate once you make I don't even know what chocolate tier is but once you get am a certain amount valve sends you a $300 box of chocolates every Christmas I mean do they really oh yeah yeah it says search them search them on on you on just Google just search Z chocolate tier Paris it's this artisanal Parisian chocolate maker and they sell this like Oak box and it has like three tiers of these little chocolates and it costs $300 yeah and I don't know what the limit is I don't know how much you have to make but if you make enough every Christmas valve sends it to you and

developers call it chocolate tier like you've reached chocolate tier oh man that's that's that's Primo the website Chris the website is all in French so that that tells you exactly what this tier is okay so there's all these look for the box that cost 300 bucks valve gives you that $300 box every Christmas oh my goodness see I could buy one here's the thing folks I want to I want to I'm going to keep you positive Let's uh a comparison is a theft of Joy just go treat yourselves everybody go buy that $300 box when you think about it you're like oh I want the $300 box but you're like you just made valve like a million dollars and you get one $300 box of chocolates that's do the math that's not a great conversion just treat yourselves everybody go buy that $300 box it's yours do it you're F yeah that's right do it man okay so that's a good video here's what I want you to do Thomas this's good video buy that $300 box of chocolates that's a brilliant

idea that is a brilliant idea $300 worth of chocolate live on air dude that's like the title is 1% of steam developers are get what do you think the percentag is of people getting this chocolate oh it's not it's like1 0.001% yeah it's like 0.01% yeah how about this if if David does it if David wheelie or your next game yeah does it you should live on air eat that box of chocolates that's that is oh man we'll go to a club too um absolutely okay so how do we get wish list Chris okay here's the here's the trick you're not going to Tweet yourself to wish lists like you're not going to Reddit post your way to wish lists the way you get wish lists is you go to somebody with a big audience and you knock on their door and you say can you show my game to your audience that's it that is that is how you get wish list it is not you like cuz I see these devs

they're like I post it on Twitter every single day and I'm not getting wish list or they're like I post every time I can on red I post on um Reddit Sundays where I post thing and I only get 30 wish lists why am I not getting wish lists how do they how do people get 220 you knock on the door of visibility you have a big person and you say can I show my game to your audience and this is the curation see basically valve has offloaded the Cur C to the whole internet is what valve has abated that curation to so let's just we've been talking about David all the time because he's such a great guy um like what he did and if you read my blog post on how to Market a game.com um when you read that blog post from him the first step he took was he did the investigative work and he found Jeff Key's email address and he knocked on Jeff Key's door and he said look at my game can I show my game to your audience and Jeff was like that game looks good yes and so Jeff key showed

his game during the Gamescom Festival they played his trailer and his trailer's awesome and it did good and he said yeah you can have it you can have it David you you know go for it but David then and this is what you this is what the real pros do he was like I'm not happy just with that so then he took that email from Jeff and he walked down the street and he knocked on the door of IGN and he said Jeff key just gave me visibility it hadn't happened yet he was just like I'm getting into this gamecom Festival IGN would you like to have an exclusive trailer and N Jan's like well if if Jeff did it that's a sign of quality y we'll do it too so so David gave them an extended trailer because Jeff was like you only get 90 seconds and he's like well my trailer's two minutes and just like I don't care it's 90 minutes you get 990 seconds and so then David was like well IGN you want the full uncut you know like red label

red what do they call Red Label trailer and they're like heck yeah and so now he traded Jeff's visibility to IGN's visibility and then IGN's like yeah so now he's just turned that into that that's how you do it it is notice how all of that is personal connection it is like and it's not like he knew somebody I mean he kind of did but he he just tracked them down he did investigative work to find the email address of Jeff and then somebody at IGN and he just played them off of each other and they gave him visibility that in a nutshell is how you get wish list okay so devil's advocate here I don't know if it's Devil's Advocate maybe it's just a a little bit of a defense of why you can potentially tweet Instagram Tik Tok and YouTube your way into wish list my theory is you may not be getting wish list but you you you will be building an audience and you will potentially be one of those people that people are reaching out

to right so like if you if you slowly build up your audience on Twitter as a successful game developer and you have a following of 20 to 100,00 people on Twitter or YouTube or whatever like I've done that was only done because I tweeted and because I created content about my games and now I have that leverage and I have that audience that I mean I don't have Jeff's audience but I do have a big audience now you know what I mean there's okay there's a couple types of games that can do it um one of them was this game called tiny Glade I also oh yeah oh yeah they were on the podcast how to Market agame.com look at my tiny Glade um thing uh and I they took my class and what they did was what I recommend which is they tried some little tweets and they it was just black and white and they just dragged they just showed like their level editor in black and white and it was like on a gray box and it it looked awesome and

that went viral y if your game is like super beautiful now these people these tiny Glade folks people who made tiny Glade they are former VFX artists at like unreal I believe uhhuh so they're like tripa quality game developers if your game is like super duper visually amazing and I don't just mean like yeah like your mom's going like yeah it's pretty good or you're like oh I'm a good artist it's like holy crap you invented a new art style that stuff go viral on social media by yourself but it still is just one little tiny step okay but you can do it on social media a little bit but it's just a it's one little piece that you can get you there now here's another thing here's another one okay here's another thing where social media can kind of help but again you have to treat it the right way it is like remember how um David took Jeff Key's thing he's like you're in and then he traded it yeah you're trading that following for something else so um a lot of wholesome games wholesome

games are awesome they're really popular on Steam you can take that visibility uh let's say you you tweeted a few times you kind of went semi viral on social media the people who run wholesome games are always watching social media they're like out there in a very pink nicely crafted sweater and they're always watching you and watching the the wholesome thing if they see something pop off on on social media for wholesome yeah like a pink eye of saon they will hone in on you and say you are making an awesome wholesome game and they will grab you and they will feature you in their wholesome festivals mhm and then then that will get you even more visibility than you Tweeting alone right okay and so that's how you have to think about it folks is you're going to grind forever and it's not worth the effort like yes you could walk to New York City from where you are but it's much better to walk to the airport and then get on an airplane and go to New York City you'll get there faster and that's how you have to think about marketing yes you could grind and tweet your way to

New York City but it's much better just to get on an airplane those two analogies so that add that to the list y That's about 90 or may we're close to 100 analogies I think good okay but but my my struggle here and where I might disagree with you is it's not about building wish lists on social media how about we go there that's probably maybe we'll agree there which is if if wish lists are your goal on social media that's a that's not a great goal but but I do think audience building and audience ownership is incredibly valuable if I can't own an audience on Steam I can own an audience on social media which is what the creator of choo choo Charles did Gavin and he's a good buddy of mine he built an audience and then he drove that audience in one big push actually he did it through like 10 on YouTube and he drove them to wish list and then he became the number one

or like not number one but like he hit he hit the top list of wishlist of games on Steam point being the only reason I would say it's not it's not a journey to New York City that I'm advocating for um it's it's a journey to owning an audience um to it's it's something like just you know when Forest Gump is running across the country and he's got that man I'm sounding old here but he's got a train of people behind him that's that's how I see social media it's this building an audience that you can utilize for as many games as you want does that make sense I do I mean okay so here's the thing and I do Advocate I actually wrote a blog post on how to Market a game.com um check it out it's called don't build your Castle in other people's kingdom you need to own an audience I totally 100% agree with you right okay and and basically my argument is like when you are building a following on Steam valve May who knows maybe maybe Gabe retires and he sells

his his whole valve business to Microsoft or something right that is who knows what's gonna that is like GNA really I don't even know what's going to happen after that and that's why you should build your audience and that's why I I I and if you search me my first GDC talk was all about mailing lists because I think every Dev should build it correct I just want I just want people to understand like the I don't think the analogy is Forest scump because I think analogy is like figure out the anog York City you're the analogy is you build up the following and what that following can do is like hey can you drive me to the airport and then you have somebody who can drive you to the airport that's what your following can do I like that that's good that that's what your following can do because you're following again I don't think people understand with steam the reason you give 30% is because they can put you in front of an audience that you could never drive organically even top selling games yeah big huge games will get most of their visibility from Steam okay just like if

you look EA EA went back to steam they came crawling back they're like we can't drive enough visibility okay yeah we can't they they publicly traded company they're like we still can't sell our games as well they went back to steam and steam sells EA EA our games up on Steam now okay so if EA can't get to New York City by walking who are we who are we so again I think we have to put it in appropriate terms if I do think it's totally good to build an audience you should have a following social media but just quantify how important that is it's like the the the range that you can get is getting driven to the airport and um well let me just let me just put one more thing and sometimes what you'll do and this is what you'll see if you're not doing the math like this is why I interview people if you look and you interview people um like you know chucha Charles Dev I I had did a piece on chucha Charles uhuh yes for the outs

like well he's got a popular YouTube channel and he did well or or Jonas Ty roller I also interviewed him on my blog Jonas Ty roller is like yeah I do I have a popular YouTube channel one of the top Game Dev channels but most of our visibility came from Steam because he just gets his his YouTube audience he's like they don't do I mean he loves them but they give them just enough visibility to trigger the algorithm on Steam and that algorithm then takes over they Dr his visibility from YouTube was enough to get him to the airport to then get him to steam steam's and so that's that's for me that to me is incredibly valuable because it is Imagine yeah right imagine everyone listening right now imagine if you had an audience of let's say 10,000 people who you could rely on you could snap your fingers and they would show up and Trigger that algorithm for you um and so that's why for me I'm all about brand building and like uh audience building and just accumulating an audience because it's sort of an insurance policy for game

devs I think I think in 2020 and I want to talk all about 2025 and well this year kind of sucked for game developers and and I want to talk all about what we can do differently in 2025 but all that said in 2025 my goal and I was talking to Thomas Salah about this he's the creator of the falconer it's a great podcast and he's just he's all about building an audience and owning that audience and building that brand so that so that it's like that it's like an insurance policy it's you you pretty much just know as long as I make another game they'll show up and they'll like you said trigger the algorithm um yeah and this is I totally agree with you I just want people to understand it's not like you're you're in Candy Land all of a sudden once uh once you get that audience because you then have to take that audience and apply it places and here's one more real story is like like the Jeff key thing like he does really good work he will reach out to people that he knows have made several like interesting games and make interesting trailers like Indie devs and they will knock on the door and they're like hey we got a slot open in

our Festival no it's not Jeff key it's the PC gaming show the PC gaming show is another similar show that typically runs in June and they have a Big Show and if you get a trailer in there it's awesome they usually they'll have a couple slots open and they will knock on the door of Indies who make lots of games that are like really cool and interesting and go hey we've got an open slot we have like 90 seconds that we need to fill do you have something do you have a project or something and because that dev has been public they've got a known presence they've known games that they've released they're like yeah you knew me I I know you and they they trade that favor that that is powerful sure sure again it's not that audience that gave so then when you see the wish list come in a lot of people will say oh it was that Dev they have so they're so funny on Twitter that's not what got them there no yes the Twitter audience they're popular they're all over Twitter but that's not what got them the wish list they were popular on Twitter so the organizers of PC gaming got them and then they got featured on the PC gaming show and that is what gave him the wish list so I just want people like this is the main thing that we'll move on to

2025 the main thing that I want devs who are just sitting like in I don't know like Tacoma or something I I don't know where where people Tulsa or something let's say you're sitting in Tulsa and you're like how the hell do I do this let me tell you there's a whole world the secret like communication that happens with people like secret steam like real steam yeah tracking down Jeff key and talking to him that is what actually drives it and you don't see the smart thing that David wh did was he first snuck in found Jeff ke's email got in contact he didn't find the email he had an introduction he got the introduction then he traded that and then he gave that to IGN that was all behind the scenes you never saw any of that so if you just look at somebody's Twitter account you're like man they're so funny on Twitter they do all these memes that's what got on the wish list no it's the secret second order effect of going and trading these little nuggets of visibility for the real visibility and I just want people to to

understand if you're like if you're not aware that that's what people are doing you're going to think I tweeted and tweeted and I don't have an audience you can't you got to go do that extra work of tracking down Jeff Keeley getting the introduction trading that for another thing that's what actually works that's and that that was the main thing let me tell you like it took me like seven years to figure that out of just like interviewing devs I'm like oh so that is how it works it's all the secret stuff that you don't see that actually matters man I think people listening right now are are probably discouraged a little bit because and you know who cares I mean I I love everybody listening but at the end of the day it's like if it's truth is going to help you and and we just got to accept what's true but the reason why people listening might be a little discouraged is it's like how am I going to get connected to these people you know and if everybody listening we're probably going to get at least 20,000 people who listen minimum 20,000 people let's say you know a thousand of them have a good game a thousand people are going to be rushing

to Jeff key now right uh next time that there's another uh opportunity available and so my theory is I my Approach for 2025 and we'll talk about 2025 my Approach for 2025 is I don't want to do that kind of I don't want to rely on that stuff anymore I mean I do want to rely on it in the sense that I'm happy to to try it but I'm not going to be able to sleep at night if I'm a business owner and I've got three kids and a wife and a mortgage I want to know that I have a bunch of opportunities that I've been building the groundwork for right so for example here's a here's another metaphor for you let's say Jeff is a is a ladder now oh crap a thousand people are at that ladder and they want to climb that ladder and get to the top well I can try that and I will do that but I'm also going to start building my own ladder which is building audience on social media and I'm not as I am not a huge

ladder but I have I I am a little bit of a ladder as a YouTuber and as and I do have a social media presence so it's nice to have multiple sort of uh levers I can pull when I need to pull them and also for the record for people listening I didn't used to use my channel and my social media presence as leverage to get deals but I can do it and I have done it recently where I'm just like wh pull that lever Thomas has 400,000 subscribers bang got a deal and so that helps and it does help you get more connections right so I just want to put that out there and I'm I'm I'm sure you don't really disagree with me there about any of that but um I just wanted to mention it so no I agree I I totally agree with that yep okay 2025 now first off was 2024 a bleak year for game devs or is that a misnomer I I mean I don't I don't know the Bleak ratings I haven't done the Bleak

analysis um I think it I mean here here's why I don't know it it's Bleak for a bunch of different reasons I mean a lot of people lost their job I don't know I don't follow the industry one thing I don't follow is I don't do the stats of like how many people had a job and then how many people lost a job I just don't know that so I can't I mean it sucks I saw a lot of people lose their jobs how many I don't know I haven't done that analysis I don't typically do that because I I mly talk to people do this and I I I know people and they're like it's really hard to get funding like if you go to a publisher it's hard to get funding and the money's kind of dried up I don't again I don't like vibes okay yeah I'm like yeah I feel like this so usually whenever I feel Vibes my first action is I don't complain about stuff I like go do the math I haven't done the math on like well how much has the funding been cut how many jobs have been lost I actually haven't done that math because I just that's not my special team but um and this is why it's like it depends on what Bleak is because I still

see and like okay so I write a blog every week I have a backlog of people who have succeeded this year released a game this year got hundreds of thousands of wish lists yeah and they've released successful games that were profitable I haven't even written about them all because they're like there's so many I don't have time to write about them all so and this is where I'm like Bleak is yes I don't know the funding side okay and I don't the job loss side but it's still possible for like teams of like one to two people to sell a game on Steam and make a lot of money on it so that side is still the same it's I don't know how much harder it is and I'm trying to figure out but uh for the most part so that's I don't want to give you like yes Bleak or no Bleak yeah I got this is kind of where I see the industry is like on the on the employment side I don't know but on the sales there you can still like if you look at the top charts for 2024 there's a lot of like one or two Indies team Indies that have been at the top yeah okay well for me

you know I to to sort of to to give anyone listening if they're curious uh my own team I had to let people go uh this year um we had funding we had some funding cut we're still published but we had some funding cut from our publisher uh I've talked to several Publishers and they said funding is still there it's just not as much that's all it is it's like a half a million dollar deal it's like probably not but 50 to $150,000 in funding is but that's Vibes and I I don't well it's here no that's not Vibes that's that's real stuff well that's just what Publishers they're just sort of throwing sort of random numbers um at me so that's that's what I've got so but when it comes to actually selling your game right there's there's this uh I think it was from your blog post I actually read it uh recently and it was something like and I think we talked about this there's so many bad games on Steam

like just bad games do we even need to consider those as competition cuz like we're so scared of these huge like thousands of games are being released in 2024 and it's like but but really though I mean are they really like is that our competition do you know what I mean yep no I've done this I've uh I wrote a Blog every quarter I started doing that this year so every 3 months I do another scrape of the data to see which new games have released that have made that who've gotten into real Steam and uh I'm just trying to figure out like how many games are released and that sort of thing because at the end of the year like clockwork there's going to be a a thing and my my bet it's like around 177,000 games are going to release in 2024 that's we it's and it's 30% more than the previous year last year it was 14,000 games and then it goes there so it was a 20% in 20 to 30% somewhere and there increase over the previous year Y and so then I'm like what wait wait wait

before we go into Vibes let's just see where it is and so like I said remember that first step is just to get over 10 reviews and what I did was I was like okay well how many games released that never got to 10 reviews okay and it is growing faster than the number of games that uh released over total so it's like the total number of games that never reached 10 reviews got like grew by like 40% whereas the total number of games grew by 30% interesting in general for the most part and this is where I can't figure out yet most of the growth that you see every time like there's 100,000 games this year 200,000 most of that growth are people that are just like dumping the the the weirdest on the steam that's that has zero chance and like you know I think we mentioned it one of the f after the 10 alongside the 10 reviews one of the things you should do is get to about 7,000 wish list before you launch because that kind of gets the algorithm rolling yeah the vast

majority of games that released this year never did that they didn't even they're not even like contending to be considered by the steam algorithm and so that by if you just do that math it isn't that scary and so what my general thought is steam is spreading like they they have more and more users they're going to more and more countries and what my theory is is that more people are just making games and they're making them from countries that have never really had a Game Dev scene and so there are more people who are making more games but they just don't have that professional uh chops yet to get there and that's where most of the growth is going to come gotcha is it your suspicion that audience growth is the the rate of audience growth is going faster than the amount of games and that growth that is a good question I have not done that math I've not done that math so that could be really encouraging I'll do that for the fourth quarter yeah do it seriously cuz like it could be encouraging that actually there's more demand now for games than there was yet

we have more games and maybe our this feeling of it being overc because everybody says it you know I say it steam is overcrowded it's overcrowded well not if the audience is growing right y I mean the one thing I do see so here's here's where I'm trying to figure out where where the crunch really is so I know there's okay so 85% of games that released this year never made it to 50 reviews there's not don't folks there's nothing magic about 50 reviews it's just kind of a good indicator so 85% of games just they're not really that competitive um but W here's the here's the rub this what I can't figure out so steam really you know real steam I've checked it every year it's about 5 to 600 games that enter into real steam every year so this is where it's like really challenging is where is the

bottleneck because that's not growing I know that for a fact it's always around 5 to 600 Indie Games per year make it to real steam regardless of the growth so somewhere there's a pinch in the in the hose my go ahead yeah my theory is it's right around the like 150 review Mark there's like right around in other words like I think that's where we're kind of getting the buildup where they're games that are doing better than 50 reviews they're like a professional team they're doing good they they have experience maybe in the industry uhhuh and it's right around 150 to 200 views this this is vibes okay I am getting into Vibes here right around there that it's like I think there's a big like aneurism there's just like a whole bunch of blood swelling behind that and that's a bunch of games that just don't generate enough excitement to break through that and I think that's where you're seeing and those are like funded games I seen a lot

of like games that are backed by a publisher that kind of stall out right at 150 to 200 reviews they kind of get stuck there I think that's where the glut is yeah so there's there's a couple things here there's audience size there's um but there's also shelf space you know it's like how much how much more cluttered can the steam front page be uh how many more games can they recommend you know so I guess it's algorithmic it's like something with the algorithm it just doesn't it doesn't know where to throw these games uh or maybe it's a curation process maybe they need more people on their curation team I I don't know but it's interesting that you're saying you feel like it's just always consistently 500 people or 500 games that are always at that bottleneck hm man yeah and here's here's I think valve kind of knows this and they did a couple changes this year I think they're trying to to squeeze that out a little bit more so a couple things we talked about daily deals they now um I I think

they kind of lowered the bar for how many it takes to get to a daily deal yeah but they also they now they used to only do daily deals or two games were featured for a daily deal per year all right so if you do the math like okay two can do it per day there's a daily deal let's say 365 it's not technically 365 days but let's just do that from math so that means there's like 700ish games that can get a daily deal every year but what they did this year was they said okay we're going to do four games so four games can get in there and the other thing they did is used to be able to get two per year used to be able to get two daily deals per year you knock on the door and say can I get a daily deal and then six months later can I get a daily deal now they do it one per year so they've expanded that so more games can get daily deals and I think they're trying to do these things like how much more can we open the store up but then you do the math and you're like well and and I I had some devs who said well I got a daily deal this year and it wasn't as good and it's like well that's what Equity looks like you're not going to do as well because you don't

get on as long as you did before and there's four other games three other games beside yours that it's doing that and you can only run it once per year so you kind of see this this tension that's happening okay man so indie game developers who are thinking about and this isn't this can't be a fully objective question because you and I both we we run I run courses I have courses you sell courses so it's difficult for us to appear objective in our answer but I'm gon to I would I would ask that you are to the best of your ability is Indie Game Dev a a a high-risk career in 2025 absolutely me too I agree it's gambling it's gambling if you look at my course page I don't ever promise and I don't either I you could definitely if you take my course you can get this it is it is too much you it's it's highly unpredictable

y it's tough is it tougher in 2025 than it would be in let's say 2009 I don't know um and the reason is like there's more resources now yeah I think it's um technically easier to make a game like there's more resources the engines are better the graphics are better um um but and I think it's it is there is more competition but I think if you're smart about it so I I just I don't have a clean like easy answer here I just think that it I think here's what I think it is you have to be more disciplined now than you did back in 2009 in what way okay so and this is this kind of goes to the funding and I think where some of the funding is coming from some of the funding crunches okay so in 2009 I think if you had the best looking game as long as your game looked good enough mhm um you could do

there was like a baseline you could earn money like it was like okay yeah we might make this much money um that the floor has dropped now like you can make a multi-million dollar game and the floor is just dropped out like you could make zero dollars a game um I think that's the big thing that's changed between 2009 and that and so this is the discipline thing for a long time when credit was cheaper when money was cheaper because the the interest rates and stuff um Publishers were just throwing money at Indies and so you could grow your team like crazy um and I think that's some of the things like well we'll just grow the team and we'll make a better game with a bigger team right but when the floor dropped out when it's like you could almost literally make zero dollars with your game the the money bags the the Publishers and the funders were like oo that's that's not good and so now they're being much more conservative nowadays I think versus 2009 I think it's better to have a smaller team and

make a smaller game and this is the discipline that I me y y and I think the thing that we are learning as devs and we're learning as publish Publishers are learning is that it's like we can't just throw money at anything to make it win corre we have to be smart and I think it's it's if if I was talking risk I think it's much less risky to be a small one two three person team making a game a year than it is to be this mid tier where it's like yeah we got like 20 people and we're making a game that's taking three years that is very very hard to make a game profitable with that yep whereas I think being a cockroach where it's like we're one to two people we make a game a year sometimes we hit sometimes we don't that's less risky and I think that's what I mean by discipline is you've got to be able to say I am disciplined I'm going to make a game in a year we're going to keep head countdown we're not going to do the Splashy Graphics we're not going to do the scope creep thing we're keeping discipl going it it fast it release it the next one that's my the so I'm I'm going to

draw a chart here I love drawing these charts they help me so much uh and this this chart actually came from Jonas tie roller um there's two kinds of games I'll explain it CU I know you can't see it but uh there's there's two like kinds of games the first kind of game is the chart is something like a a line going up and to the right it's just a clean straight line and it's cost versus Revenue okay so the more you put in the more Revenue you make and it's perfect it's one to one then there's developers morons like me who we decide to make games where it's zero revenue and the next chart is a flat line all the way up about halfway through the chart horizontally and then it spikes up to the revenue so it's like an l-shape and it's it's a it's talk about spinning the chamber with the second graph right and those are linear games story driven games big budget games like a Bioshock type game which is what we made and we're currently

finishing up right now called Twisted Tower it's a high-risk game because I can't release at Early Access I can't prove it I can't prove it in terms of like is the audience there is the revenue there so my question to you is is should game developers of 2025 treat their game like a balloon and I just released a video about this it can be inflated as you make it so you you release this tiny balloon to an audience AKA maybe early access or just a multiplayer game or or a creative sort of sandboxy game if it proves itself and it starts making money then you inflate it AKA you start putting money into the project what do you think about that kind of I um does that count as a metaphor the balloon kind of one of my metaphors are yours no that is mine metor okay that's yours however you on the metaphor count um um I don't know and here's here's

what I think you know very quick whether your game's got the juice the magic the spark you you know very fast like you show a trailer or you release a demo and people play it and you know y um and that's kind of goes back to that thing I was talking about like oh take the number of wish list you earned and divide it by how long that steam page has been live uhhuh that's kind of the hype Factor where it's like does the game have the hype behind it and that's where I I mean I don't know whether that's a balloon or not but that's where it's like if you got if you're seeing the hype like a David wayy you know like 220 and three months you're like that's got the hype yeah but his his model is a balloon because he can release I don't know what it is but what I'm saying is like if you're seeing the juice there it's a pretty good sign I I would I would say it's less risky for him to you working on it correct um if you're like if you release a trailer and you see it and it's like man we just

didn't get the wish lists I don't I don't know if that's a balloon or not but you're like let's get this let's wrap this up and you release it uh and just release it and see how it does yeah I here's the other thing that I think kind of with your metaphor like expand the balloon there's no there's no law you can make a second balloon so um you know in other words like you made a uh a tower defense game and it did pretty good not great did okay just blow up a second balloon that's like a tower defense plus City Builder yeah tech and and I think that's I think that's a more sure bet is to to just make a second balloon I think yeah and I think the the the reason why I use balloon as as the metaphor and that's what I'm going to try and do in 2025 is it's essentially like it's like rudimentary business skills which is if you can make money if you can make small money that's and you're making more money than the cost put in scale that thing up right scale it up

scale it up so for example if you launch a trailer and you get a ton of wish lists good it's proven make the game scale it up scale it up scale it up right um if if you're if you're not getting wish list if you're not getting views or you're just too scared to show the world and you just wait until launch that just to me is so high risk and I I think you could get away with that back in 2009 or 2010 man I don't I just don't know if you can get away with it anymore and I don't think it's worth it you know what I mean so wait if you're not getting the views what do you do if you're not getting the views you don't make the game if if if the trailer doesn't get views if if your steam page isn't getting wishless and no matter how hard you try with the pre-launched marketing material it's just not worth it it's not worth finishing the game unless unless you love making the game you know what I mean yeah I I I agree if well here's one

other thing is there are games that just don't look good that are what I call infinitely deep games um there's a good game I wrote about them last year they released last year I think um it's called Cosmo tier if you look it up the game's not I mean I love the game it looks good it looks it's Charming I should say but it's not amazing Graphics if you tried to make a trailer out of Cosmo tier M I don't think it would well but this has done fantastic because the guy Market it by putting theame the enti game up onio and you could play this game infinitely forever and ever and so that game you couldn't determine if it had the juice or the magic without putting out something playable you need the players gotcha yeah so what my thought is maybe to modify to to Plus on to add on to that is prer if you know if you're like our game's beautiful at this game and you you think the graphics are like the main selling point and like the characters and all that stuff you put out the trailer and that goes over

poorly yeah then yeah then you have that that that discussion but if your game is like Hey we're a game where we simulate every single Pixel and it's like every person is a real person and you can follow each life and it's an infinitely deep game and like all this stuff like a Dwarf Fortress I would make that judgment after you put out um the demo like you put out the demo and you see how people engage with it and just put out for free see at that point whether it proceeds so a trailer screenshot a trailer generally it could be it could be enough to prove whether a game is valid yes or no or is it the demo like really that the demo should be doing the thing for you like that zombie Terminus survivors game if you look at it and you watch their Trail now I know it's like well I could improve the trailer I could make a better trailer you probably could but that game is like the fun you I mean if you looked at a trailer oh good another pixel art zombie game but and so I mean there's nothing

about that game that sounds that unique it's like you're a Survivor and you walk far and you got to collect bandages and if you get by a zombie you got to bandage yourself up but when you play that game you're like God this game is so fun and so that's why I think there's a certain type of game and these are actually the games that do better on Steam are the games with infinitely deep content endlessly replayable um those games I wouldn't make that kills decision until you uh Shi the demo or something playable yeah and and by the way Chris when I when I mention the balloon that's what I'm talking about the games that are infinitely playable that are creative that I can launch a single Loop and people can play it and play it and play it and it's a tiny little balloon but like for example like CRA what is it called crab Champions um you you introduce a new enemy or you just you you do a patch and there's a new enemy the game is just it blows up and it keeps SC you just scale scale scale scale scale and that's beautiful

to me I love the idea of making money while I make the game if I can do that that is like so low risk that is so low risk so that for me is like kind of the strategy I'm going to take I'm going to try to take in 2025 but like it's definitely easier said than done it's so hard to come up with a loop that's infinitely playable you know and still fun so yeah I I mean I I I I think so one thing that I would do is just study see what games are doing well this is what David did with with I mean he looked at those horror and the those like farming he called them work Sims which I love that term work Sims yeah yeah you see those and those are like super funny he's like oh somebody's already figured out what's fun about this game okay I'll just take the fun part and I'll just steal that it's like we're not in school anymore you can just copy off somebody else's work but what he did was he just took that gameplay Loop which is like hey you got a to-do chart chart you got to go water the plants you got to go clean up your room like all those work Sim games there's always at the beginning like clean your room that's always the first to do always the first

task yeah yeah and so he just copied that he like okay and then I'm going to make the interesting stuff around it and it's like yeah do that and this is I want to do a positive note on this because that was scary the way you talked about your 2025 goals like those are like that sounds hard so here's one thing for those and you are an experienced game designer there um if you're looking at Thomas you're you're sitting in Toledo or is it to or Toledo um maybe you're sitting in Witchita Kansas or something maybe you're sitting in bog colia you are just wondering like how can I possibly do this here's what I like here's one thing with the balloon thing if you ever go to the fair and you see those guys that can make the balloon I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna plus up your balloon thing you see those guys that make those like amazing balloon animals like it's a hat and it's got like a pin wheel that's spins you're like what the hell and that you talk to that balloon guy he's like yeah well my business I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to make double balloons now I'm going to make balloons within balloons and I'm going to have a hat that's a hat and you're like oh Jesus like what the

heck am I going to do listen if you're sitting in bogot Columbia just blow one balloon y it doesn't have to it doesn't even have to be financially viable like it like it's it's hard I remember I couldn't when I was a little kid I couldn't even blow up a balloon like it takes a lot of lung power it took me a lot of practice just to blow one balloon Y and so if you're sitting at home and you've never released a game and here's Thomas talking about like oh we kill the game the trailer level don't it's not even worth finishing I I wrote a Blog over at hot marketing game.com um called The Missing middle and this is one thing that I don't think devs now that a game can make a million dollars everybody expects to make a million dollars on a game back in the day we're talking the 2009 when the flash portals were every Dev back then was like I'm here to make 10,000 to $20,000 because that's what you'd make like you do some you you negotiate with like an ad platform and they're like well buy your game we host it on our site for 20 grand and You' be like awesome I won that's how much I

made yeah that's how much I made you relee the game yeah you did it and if you release the game nowadays 20 grand you're like I'm a failure I completely failed I'm a failure fail fail you're like no no no no no that used to be normal yeah so what my thought is is like hey Indie de if you've never made a game remember like what Thomas is saying is like he's a successful guy with with like employees my thought is like just blow just try and get one balloon blown like you know just enough so that you can tie it off you did one and two three make a nice little bouquet of little tiny balloons that are like this big don't worry about it at first you've got to learn just how to release a game 100% 100% know this advice is depending on how many games you've released yeah because I don't think this is the big thing that I think I don't like about the current industry and this where I'm like disciplined is where I was saying like the thing is discipline now you've got to go in I think if you've never made a game before you've never released a game you're looking at doing on Steam shoot

for $10,000 $20,000 Revenue yep try and get those reviews and you know those 10 reviews that I was talking about just just the most minimal game that takes you like six months it's not going to be the best game if you make 10 grand you did good then you make another one that's 10 grand then maybe you make another one that's 30 grand then then you're like okay now I know then you can kind of like now you can pull the kill switch you're like well it's not pulling the numbers now I can kill it that's that's one thing that I think we've really the harder thing about the industry nowadays is the expectations are so high that they outpace our skill set when we're just starting out so everybody quits before they get to their thing and I'll end this with one stat that I I I did the scrape and the stat that I'm looking at is like um the number of Studios that have released more than one game well okay there's um 70 I think it's 75% of Studios on Steam have released one game and one game only and then they just disappear the number of Studios that

have released two games is like 5% it is shockingly small how many people make a second game or a third game or a fourth game it is so sad and so I actually think we should be making more games not fewer but each individual person should be making more games not you know like that yeah yeah so that's kind of the mindset I like to tell devs it's like expect 10 to 20 grand for your first game sure sure so is the golden ticket something like release a bad game ASAP on Steam is yeah and I I totally here's my other analogy okay this this one this one's on me I I consider like what do you think is harder riding a bike or making a game which which do you think riding a bike or making a game making a game yeah of course and the first time you got on a two-wheeler did you get off and like run the tour to France no you fell down yeah right and then the second time you got up did you fall down or did you ride the tour to France I've never ridden the tour to France okay see so here's the thing it's

like you got to know that it's like the first like 30 40 50 times you ride a bike you're going to fall down so make them quick make them small and it's just like I feel like the expectations again once games could start making a million dollars devs are like well this is my first game I'm going to SN 10 years in on this I'm going to hire some people I'm going to get a half million dollar worth of funding from Publishers and I am going to make a million dollar game it's like holy crap just trying just trying and steady yourself on the game just try and like learn how to ride a bike and then maybe your fourth or fifth game then you can shoot for the it just it's just too like you can't ride a bike right off the bat what makes you think you could like do the most epic thing which is like ride the tour to France sure exactly I think you're I think that's a really good metaphor man because the the uh the thing is is like not only is it it'd be one thing if you were falling off a bike onto a mattress but if you fall off a bike and you you skin your knee your body is is your brain is

brilliant and it's like what are all the things like all the all the your brain starts firing and it says all the different things that I did wrong and you just you just know subconsciously what you did wrong and that's why when you release a game you need to embrace the bad reviews and enjoy try and enjoy it and learn from it and it like it needs to hurt it it needs to hurt and I've done I've released hundreds of videos on YouTube and I've released I think I it was like three games before my first commercial game and I made sure to read those reviews and like figure out what I did wrong but of course it would put my stomach in knots but that was a good that was a good thing it needed to hurt and if you're if you're trying to resist getting hurt you're just not going to be successful I think that's probably a rule of thumb you know so excellent metaphor wait way way to extend the metaphor cuz it's like you could read all the books about riding a bike you

could like study you could watch YouTube videos on bike you could go to the biking conference and watch everything on biking and all this stuff but if you've never gotten onto a bike it doesn't matter you just you just have to fall like you were going to fall on a bike but you don't go to the tallest mountain and say well I've never ridden a bike I've never done it but I watched a bunch of videos I'm going to go down from the top and I'm going to all the way down to the bottom you will die literally die so don't do that just like just go to a park that has grass on both sides of the little sidewalk hold your feet out let go ride like five steps and then put your feet back down like that's you got to release some game that's right get those little ones out so you don't don't don't go to the top of the mountain first you're GNA die die dude that's so encouraging what you said to sort of wrap up this conversation cuz we've been going I think you're my longest podcast guest so far by the way congratulations okay let do it I think it's the golden microphone that's the that's what made it

happen um but to wrap it to wrap this conversation up I'm I I'm really encouraged by what you said about the majority of uh Studios on on Steam have only release one game because it's it gives me I mean I've already I've already released two games on Steam but I I I my hope is that it gives everyone listening a goal in a way a goal to be the studio that does too to to put yourself into um the minority of of developers and maybe that will put you onto real steam you know so I think that's a great goal for 2025 is get your first game done and out there and finish it even if it sucks you know brilliant and and I want to I want to keep everything posit like I I want to show like here's the thing it is possible to sell a game and Well on like I I look at the top charts every year and the amount of games that are made by like one or two people is it's like

amazing like that's why I'm still hopeful about this because theme can promote weird games that have done really well for just very small you know like teams like small teams you know handful of people amateurs that that for so it is possible and I have talked to these people I've had beers with these people they are normal human beings like it is possible to make a full-time living doing this doing this stuff but I I just want the expectations to be set because like David like when I wrote this blog post about David and and and his game we have shadows uh somebody on on the tweets they said oh man I loved his first game it was so awesome I love the first tree or the last tree the first tree and uh and then somebody commented below he's like that was actually David's second game because his first game did so poorly nobody remers it correct 100% And so that's what everybody forgets like so many games that I profiled that had successes they

made a game that totally bombed like didn't even get 10 reviews so many so you've got to fail with a couple games 100% that is that is a really really good note to end on so dude Chris thank you so much for your time man this was so helpful uh links in the description for your what is it for how to Market agame.com just add thefree herefree on the end how marketing.com free you get a free book it is uh 60 mistakes that I see devs make all the time like I've seen the mistakes and so I'm telling you don't make this mistake and so it's like just a little book that just lists out the 60 mistakes and how not to make them yeah uh and that's that's my book so check it out you get it for free awesome I highly recommend it guys Chris is in my opinion the leading voice in G indie game marketing not me Chris cuz most of what I teach I I don't know you're at the top of the chart when I search YouTube so well just cuz I'm at the top doesn't mean I'm know what I'm talking about cuz there's plenty of things I do wrong that's what we we learned that we learned that yeah

right all right Chris thanks so much dude that was so fun love to have you love being here you're a great guy thanks Thomas cheers