Live Q&A: Steam Next Fest, AI Slop, Getitng wishlists

This this should do it. I think this is I know there's no audio. I think it's working now. Thank you so much for the heads up. I think we can go. That should work, right? Let's see.

Any good? No sound. I know there's no sound. How about How about this sound? I think we're working now. Um I see little meters moving. Thank you so much uh for alerting me. Fixed OBS. Every time I open it, it's like a new day. They're just like, I don't I you've set you've made settings. Who knew? Um all right. So, we've got this. We're going to start in just a second. Um I'm just counting down to all this. I gota I gotta send alert to the Discord. Sorry. I'm gonna You're gonna get a ping from me. Just I gota I got to drive the numbers up. You know, you gotta you gotta you gotta market your stuff. You gotta market yourself. Uh so, let me just do that very fast. Just give me a micro second. Um while while you're waiting for me to do the stuff, um say what game you're working on. Tell me where you're from. I'm not going to stalk you, but I just want to know. I'm just curious. Just curious.

I got to figure out how to uh how how to get a link to this. [laughter] I'm just getting the link. Just getting the link. Okay, wait. I got it. Okay, hang on. Not working for me. Uh hang on. Okay, it's live now. All right, so we are uh I just I just alerted the Discord. So, hang on. I just got to move some stuff over and I'll be right there. Hang on. Open Amazon. Uh okay, we're live. Um yeah. Okay, so here's the thing is yes, please ask questions. The one question I'm not going to answer, I always get this question and I've already seen it popped up. I'm not going

to answer your your this genre question because I don't know because people are always like, "What do you think about a uh uh an action rogike that I'm going to make? It's going to star a guy with a sword and he's got a hood over his head. What do you think?" It's like, I don't know because I don't I can't picture what you're you're thinking in your head. And sometimes people have different genre definitions and then and then you're going to yell at me in two years. You're like, "Chris, in a live stream you said I should make that game and it didn't sell and I just wasted two years of my life." So, I'm not answering the what do you think about this genre question because I I don't get enough context. I get I get half a sentence of context. So, I'm not I'm sorry. I'm not going to answer that question. What I would recommend is play a lot of games. And so what I would do is go to any platform that has the Steam scraping like Game Analytic, uh, VG Insights, Game Discover Code, they're all great. Okay, filter for the

last two to three years. Throw in the tags that you think you would like. Okay, they what you think your game is going to be. You know, throw those tags in. See all the games that pop up. If those games that pop up are the ones that you're thinking, "Yeah, that's the game I want to make." These are very much in the thing. Buy all those games like on the next Steam sale, the next Steam sale. Buy them all, play them, and look for games that have earned 500 reviews or more. That's that's in my book success. And you play all the 500 and above reviewed games. And you just play them and say to yourself practically, "Can I make this? Is this something I can make? And a lot of the stuff people always say like, Chris, what what about development time and development skill for these games? You don't factor in how long they take to develop. And you're like, I'm I'm right. I you are right. I can't do that because it's so hard to determine like how many people were working on a project, how many how long did they take? That's I

don't have access to that data. They don't say in Steam how many people they have. And so I can't do it. But what you can do is skill. Like if you look at the games you play, those games that have 500 views or more, um, see how good they are. Like how good are the graphics, how like deep is it, how long is the game? Like is it 30 hours of content and it's all handbuilt content for 30 hours? You cannot make that game. Okay. Well, you can, but it's just so expensive that you're not going to make enough money on it. What you're doing is you're not looking for one hit. Like, you know, there might be one hit that really popped off like Wukong or something like that. That Wukong game or, you know, uh, Mecca Chameleon everybody's talking about now. Don't look at the number one game. Look at the family of games around it. Like, what's the next two to 10 games in that genre that you're thinking and have they succeeded in getting over that 500 reviews? And can you make a few of them?

Like, do you have the skill set to at least get close to those games? That is the kind of mental model I go through when I say like this genre is is looking good. I look for games that have an approachable quality because here's the thing. This is why I don't think you should make indies. The people who listen to me, the scale of indie that listens to me, I don't think you should make an RPG. They sell well, but if you look at the top ones, they are enormous. there the the the quality bar is so high and the amount of content that you have to make is so high that I know most indies cannot achieve that. Same thing with Metroid Vania. Once you have a Silk Song or an Ary in the Blind Forest, that is the bar of execution you have to hit. And that is such a high bar. And if you don't hit that bar of execution, you're dead. They they just don't care. I see a that's why you look at the whole family of games. And if you look at Metroid Vanias, it's like there's some winners at the very top and then it's a huge gap down to where it doesn't

succeed. You know, you'll just see this huge drop off. And that's why I'm like, this is not a good genre because most people just cannot hit those high things. But things like Friendlop, these management games, the one I just played, the cat co, I can look at the games that are there and that the the games that succeed are very varied. you know the the quality can vary and still do okay. And so that's why that's the mental model. So those are the answers that I would give. So if you ask that question of like Chris, I'm going to make this game. Is it going to work? Am I going to be w am I going to win Steam? I don't know. I don't know your skill level. I don't know what you're I don't know what you what you want. I don't know what your uh quality what you're good at. You know, if you're good at art, maybe an RPG. If you're like, I have zero art skills. And I see that a lot where a lot of people who have I have zero art skills and they're and they're like I'm going to make an RPG. And I was like RPGs have require so much art. So if you're not an artist, you're a coder,

tend towards the genres that don't require have as much emphasis on art and content that you play through like a souls like that's another one. people play souls like some some of them some for the hardcore but also because the monsters look so cool and the demons and the sights and so don't pick that genre if you don't have art skills or your team isn't art heavy they can't make a lot of art all right that's enough blabbing for me let's get to your questions I'm going to go through the questions um let me uh I'm going to disappear for one second here I'm just disappearing um and I'm going to uh just copy some stuff here hang on hang on I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere. I just have to make sure that Okay. I just had to make sure that Watch this screen and then Okay, there we go. There I am. All right. So, uh just just a reminder, I'm doing this because the sale ends I

think tomorrow at like 9:00 a.m. I can't remember the exact time. I think it's coming up soon. I should know the exact date. It's a 7. It's within the next 24 hours. So, uh, again, everything is super deep discount. Like, normally I sell one course for 400, but I'm selling everything I've done in the past, um, for 379. Um, that's the best deal. Uh, and but if you just need the master class, that's 280. Super deep discount. See how it's normally 400 this. So, sale ends at the end of the, uh, the day basically. Um, I think it's at 11:59 tonight my time. Uh, so that's that's that. So, I would jump on it. And again, I offer a 30-day guarantee. So, if you're like, "God, I shouldn't have bought that. I I I don't actually like it." All you have to say is, "I'd like a refund." And I will push the button and refund you. There's a little button I push. So, um um let's answer these questions. Uh the

questions that are shortest and have a big bold question are the ones I answer first because that's good. All right. Um, it's hard for me. There's so many chats that it's best if you do an emoji and the big word question and then I'll answer that question. Just makes it easier. And please keep them short. I also answer short questions first. If it's long and it's like, well, my friend and I are making a game and I I knew him since childhood and he was there and and we used to always play game. I'm not going to answer that question because I can't even find the question in there. Give me a short quick question and I will answer it. And I won't answer the uh is this genre gonna succeed question because I don't know. I don't know. Um okay. I'm gonna make a game. I'm just trying to find um what do you think about subscribe to my YouTube channel? Do not do not subscribe to my YouTube channel. Subscribe. Click this right on my website how tomarketaggame.comcourses. That's how you find the sale. And then see where it says free stuff. That's

what I want you to do. When you subscribe to my YouTube channel, nothing cool happens. When you do this, you get a free book. Which is better? This one. This one right here. Okay. Uh, can you tell me why I'm getting so fat developing games? I I don't know. Um, okay. Yes. Most 13-year-olds I know don't even know how to use a mouse. Do you think PC gaming is about to go extinct? Uh, you're just talking to the wrong 13-year-olds. I I don't know. [laughter] Um, everybody thinks something's g you know what? 13 year olds don't drive anymore. They just don't. They don't drive. And it's like, uh, it's because they're 13. It's the same thing like when you're 13, you're dumb. You just don't know anything. But you're going to get a job or you're going to have to use a mouse and you're going to get up and you have to go. I think people are too focused on the youth. The youth suck. The youth suck. Um, as you age, stuff happens. They're like, "God, 13 year olds, you know, they don't have credit cards. How are they gonna buy stuff?" Well, when they turn 18 or maybe 16,

when they get the job, they're going to be for forced to work at an office at a desk and they're going to learn how to use a mouse and they're going to get a credit card and they're going to use how to spend it and they're going to learn how to drive. Like, we shouldn't focus on what 13-year-olds are doing now. It's going to be okay. It is going to be okay. I think marketing is way too focused on the youth. Way too focused. And they make too many They just keep drawing a straight line from what the youth is doing right now. They're like, "God, these kids, they just spend all their days in classrooms. Is the future going to be all classrooms?" No, it's cuz they're young. They're in school. They will graduate and they will get a job and then they will do job things. Stuff doesn't change that fast. I know. I know. It feels like it is. Stuff doesn't change very fast. Um, and uh let's see here. Uh, what's your advice for using YouTube to market a game? Is it a viable strategy uh for building community and getting wish lists? Um YouTube shorts

are I don't recommend YouTube channels. Um it is a lot of work. You have to have the right personality for it. I think a lot of game devs just they don't have good personal and it's not a bad thing. They just they're they're internal and they're not good at YouTube. Like being a nice emotive person and I think it's a time suck. That video that I made for the cat cafe or cat mailco took way too long and I know it's not even edited that much. I think I have like three edits in it and it took me hours to do that stupid thing. YouTube sucks. It's just the editing takes forever and the results aren't that good and takes so long to build an audience. It's not worth it. I don't think building a YouTube audience is worth the time and effort and you're likely to just attract game devs, which I can do. I can attract game devs because I'm selling to game devs. You have to do this bait and switch. you have to bait and switch it where you're like trying to attract players but you're trying to document your de dev time. Not worth it. YouTube shorts worth it. YouTube try YouTube

shorts for a little bit. You might have the right game. You might have the right juice, but I would try it and limit your time. Please folks, I know you like to watch YouTube, but just because you like something doesn't mean that's the thing you should be doing. Okay? That's a big thing you have to switch off. Because I every time I tell talk marketing stuff, people always go, "Well, I don't do that." It's like, I know. That's why I have to teach you what actually works. They're like, "Well, I would never do that." I was like, "But you need to do it." So, it's like, "Well, I watch YouTube, so I must market my game." Nope. Nope. Sometimes what you do is not with the general public. We are weirdos. Most of us game devs are weirdos. So, our behavior should not influence what you do. You got to read and study and maybe watch to see how to market these things. It's not intuitive. None of this stuff is intuitive. It isn't like up is down, down is up. In Steam marketing, it really is very different. Okay. Um,

if you could market a game uh towards two different subg genres, how do you pick which one is better angle to Okay, don't make two different subg genres. Make make one genre. One genre is enough. But anyway, you're already there. You're already making two. making yourself twice as hard to work. Usually when people like it's two separate ones, there's usually one. There's usually one that's a backbone and then the backbone genre and then they kind of staple another genre on there. And so you just you got to be honest. Tell give it to a friend say which genre is. It's usually like, okay, it's tower defense. Yes, I know you stapled a little bit of citybuilder on the side, but it's tower defense. Like what you're primarily doing, whatever the A button is, if you have controller support, that's usually the genre. like if you p a and you jump, you're a platformer. Uh for the most part, um whatever the A button does is a good sign to tell you what genre it is. And then another thing is you just test the marketing. You can change your marketing. So you do these YouTube

shorts and you say one day you say, I'm making a platformer and then the next day you go, I'm making a city management game and you see which one connects better. You're like, oh, people are actually responding when I call it this. Or send it to the subreddit. build your demo, upload it to itch, go to the subreddit for that genre, like, "Hey, I'm making this game and I just need some feedback. What do you think of my city builder?" And then you go put it there, and then you might get a lot of feedback like, "This isn't a citybuer. This is a platformer." And then you go to the platform, people are like, "Oh, this is a great platformer. Thank you." That's how you do it. But in general, my advice is for all of you who aren't doing this, don't make sub genres. It's so hard to market. It's so hard to make. It doesn't double the amount of time because you're making two games. It quintuples the amount of time because you have to make it, unmake it, remake it because you're trying to fight these two genres. Don't mix genres. I really I really search my blog for mixing genres. Go here and search mixing genres. I really I think the riskiest thing indies can do is mix genres. But you're down

this path. What I'd recommend is go to the figure out test your marketing to figure out which one responds and do play tests with the fans because the true fans know. the true fans will say like, "Yeah, this is a great whatever the genre is." And I think that's usually one. I don't think it's as mixed as as you think it is. Okay. Um, and really genre, you should know your genres very well. And um, you will know it when you get good at this. You'll know and be very disciplined. Like we are making a ba genre for this type of fan. We are definitely making a citybuilder. Definitely. Here's all the genre tropes of a citybuilder. We're getting we're saying no to all these things. It is definitely a citybuer. That is true confidence to know your genre so that you can market it. That's a good sign when you do got that. Okay. Um

all right. Question. How to make a pitch deck. Does it need to be PowerPoint fancy stuff or PDF works? What data should be put in the Well, we do have a course that you get in here called the pitching and funding master class. Uh we go through um I I worked with Jason Delaroko who's the uh slide master. So I'm not an expert in pitch decks, just not. But he has a 10 slide strategy. I think it's actually if you really want the pitching and funding master class, I think if you go in there and you go to the page, there are some free things. We we offer some free lectures in there like whenever you go to my master class too like this one you can watch the there's some free lectures that we unlock just to give you a flavor of what it is and I think we have a couple of those that are on that tells you the the layout it's whatever is easiest you can do a Google do Google drive PDF where you're just like here here's the thing the PDF the people or you can just do a something easily they don't even have to download it like Google slides you can share and just share it there and basically it's like

10 slides we call it the 10 slide program and the 10 slides It's just layout. It's like this is the game and it's a unique selling proposition in the genre. You uh do your sales analysis where you say like, "Hey, we think there's a gap in the market for this genre. We're going to hit that genre hard. We fill this gap perfectly. Here's some other games on either side that we think we can target. That's how much they made." You're doing that stuff. You're talking about your team size. You're like, "Hey, I need this much funding because we have a team size of five people and we we each make whatever a million dollars each. So, we need $5 million to get this thing done." Whatever. Um, that's uh what you do in the in the thing, but really go into the this one. I think if you kind of navigate, if you click the bundle, I list all the component parts. Well, let's see. Let's see if I can do it now. Let's see and see how this and if you click more inside com pitching and funding masterclass. Let's see if this works. It does. Uh, I know. Don't bite here.

Don't buy here because see how it says 400? That's because it's in the preview mode. Um I think if you say browse products and you click it, you kind of click through here. There it is. And you click through. Here's a free class. See this curriculum. Some of these we made public. Start. Start. Yeah, here they are. Preview. So we do a little preview. We don't do about that, but uh we do see how it says slide decks. I mean, I guess you could just scalp my uh content here. You can't watch them. They're not there. But you can see, okay, here's your slides. Slide one, cover art. Slide two, gameplay. Those are I guess you could just free tip. You just get it from the table of contents here. Here's your 10 slides. This is the 10 slide strategy. We're so confident in the content. We just put it right up there. Uh, so that's what I would recommend for your slide deck. All right. Um, let's see here. Um, Yum. Okay. I like this uh question with

you guys are doing fantastic calling out the questions. I like how you're you're illuminating your questions. Um okay. Um Oh, okay. Whoa, you guys are asking such great questions. I was like, hey, there aren't that many questions. And then I scroll down. Boom. I am on top chat. It's a lot of stuff going on. So, I got uh let's see here. Um I am reading these things. Gabe, if that's Gabe Newell Gabe, I always read everything. Wow, there's a lot. Okay, back to the 13-year-olds. Okay, again, um let's see. I'm trying to find where I left off. Let's see if I can do a mo. Uh, I'm I'm clicking the the click. Uh, oh, pin message report. Put user in hide

user on this channel. Okay. I was I was wondering if I could add a little emoji to say, "Hey, yeah, I've answered this question just so that I can scan it faster." Um, okay. Do people care about you making your assets yourself versus using store assets? um they do in a genre where it really matters um where the visuals like if you are buying store assets for a Metroid vania or for an RPG or like a Souls like where any game where you're a dude that runs around they care because they want those games those genres people want to have an experience where they explore a world that they've never seen before. Um, if you buy store assets, they're like, "Oh, yeah, it's Cintiard. Here we go. Cinti." Oh, where's that uh that dude with the sword and the the big eyebrows? Oh,

there he is. There's the beard guy. Beard guy with the big eyebrows. There he is. Where's that orc guy? Oh, there's the Cinti orc. There he is. Um, that Cinti art, you can see it. And I think people know the Cinti art now. Cinti art is so big that it's been used so much. Now, there are genres like that. I think it's the tavern tabletop simulator that uses maybe cinti art or very cinty looking art. If it's a more strategy game where the fun and the novelty is in the the meta layer, I think you can get away the storebased art. The main thing is people want to see quality. They want to see that you've invested in the game. And when you store art or AI art, that gives off an effect of, oh, this guy is not fully professional. And if they don't want to uh invest their money in somebody who's not investing in the game. So that's the big risk. I think for small firsttime games, it's okay to use store art, but you're going to see you're not going to see it. And so what you do is you just start small. Your first game is not going to succeed. So

you make smaller games and maybe use asset art and you sell that and you learn some and you make money off that and then you reinvest that into hiring an artist. Like if you're doing pixel art, a pixel artist, I know I don't know everybody's financial situation, but pixel art artists, if you're making a management game where art stretches a lot farther, like that uh that cat game that I was playing on my stream, if you look at the art assets, there's like five or six packages, 10 stickers, two cat models, and then it's all these combinations of stuff. And then a really nice um thing, management games don't need as much art as a game like where you're a dude running through a wonderful magical land where everything is bespoke. So it kind of depends on the genre, but start small. Use store assets and then your next game you can pay for art. Maybe you pay for half the art and the rest is store art. You you got to roll yourself up. Know where you are. Know who you what and what you're doing this for. Okay.

Um uh do I know first game make the lower SC Hey Chris, do you think about the calendar? What do you think about the calendar system? Read my blog. I love it. It's good. The new calendar personal calendar system is awesome. Um just search up here for personal calendar or it's the last few blogs. That's my whole thoughts on the calendar system. It's good. It's uh really good. Everybody always complains about how Steam doesn't give them anything or Steam's always getting worse. The data is good. Data is showing good. It's We're now at the phase where it's so good people are going, "Is this going to last? Steam's going to pull this away from us." We're now in stage three of complaining. Where stage three of complaining is it's so good that devs are anticipatory scared that Valve is going to take it away from them or it's going to get overloaded or saturated. That's how you know it's working is when people start complaining not about visibility but the fact that we're getting too much visibility. That's how good it is. Okay.

[laughter] There's no satisfying indie devs. I'll tell you what it's working. Maybe it's working but how long? [laughter] I was like, "Okay, it's good." That's my short answer. It's good. All right. Um um I'm keep going down. Okay. Question. I like the question with the hand. What do you think is the number one marketing move that people miss that you wish they would utilize more? Um number one. Well, there's so many things. Again, I always say it, but genre. They they picked the wrong genre. Your product is your marketing. Marketing mix. The four Ps. Product, price, promotion, platform. Product is number one. and they always miss that. They go straight, how do I market my pixel platform? Well, you can't. But that's not what the answer you're thinking of. You want to know the thing. I would say they don't um they miss beats. So, when you announce your game, that's a beat. And you can do

things like you can upload your trailer and try and get into a festival and announce your game and do all these things. That's a beat that you get free marketing for. All these little tactics colesque around a beat. So, you've got to think in beats, not oh, I'm going to tweet every day. Those aren't beats. That's just you just wasting your time because social media sucks. You have to organize beats of it. The other thing is just talking to people. That's another thing is you have to just like cold email people and be like, "Hey, I saw you're running this festival. Can I get in?" That kind of stuff. Or, "Hey, you're a content creator. Can I can you play my game? Hey, you're making a game like mine. You want a bundle?" Just email them. Like, it's email. Well, it's not. You don't even have to tell people be like show up at their door and face to face see them reject you. It's just an email. So, be more confident just reaching out people. People always ask me like, "Chris, can you make a a a channel where we can bundle together?" I was like, "No, no, I will not. You You've got to do the work. You do the work. Just find somebody that's making your type of game and just email them

and be nice. Be human. You don't need me in the middle. Just you can just do it. Just Just do it. Just contact people. That's a big thing. Question. Is it a good idea to release during a thematic sale? Everybody asks this question. I don't know. I've got to study it. I don't know. Because here's the here's the trade-off. There's a lot of games. And if you look, Steam always promotes the top games, the biggest sellers at the top, and everybody else gets almost no visibility. And when you're announcing a game or releasing a game, you don't have any sales or your numbers aren't great. So, you probably you're thinking something amazing is going to happen, but usually you get relegated to the bottom. I think my gut says that most people who benefit from these sales are people who released like a year ago or six months ago and they've got the sales like they did well on their own. They

sold a bunch and then they use this festival to multiply their sales. Those are the people who win during it. I don't know specific because I've seen devs do back flips like we're going to cut features so that we can make it so we can launch on this festival and I don't think that trade-off is worth it. My gut says it's not just because there's so many other games also in that festival. Usually if it's run by Steam, it is crowded as all. Get out. It's just full of people all crowding in. So, every time Andy's always ask me this question, specifically this festival question. Anytime I see indies all thinking the same thing, I'm like, that's not a good idea because you're all sheep hurting in the same direction. I'm like, wait, what's the counterweight? Just because everybody always asks, should I launch immediately after Steam NextFest? You should not because everybody, every indie thinks, I'm going to launch right after Steam Nextfest. Should I launch during this festival? I don't think so. I don't. That's what my gut says because every single time

indies all ask me the same question that tells me you're all hurting together. So, I do not think so. Because here's the reason. It's not how big the game you're launching against like GTA 5 or whatnot. It's how many other games you're launching against. That's the worst thing because like this personal calendar, there's only a limited number of slots on there. So, if every indie who's making um rogike is going to launch during Steam's rogike festival, guess what? That launch day is going to be full of indies launching rogue likes and you're all fighting against each other. So you got to think backwards to what every India is thinking and you all are asking me should I launch during this festival? So I'm thinking no because you're all going to crowd yourselves out of this calendar. Think two steps ahead. All right. Um do you think about uh let's see here. Uh why don't you ever speak about sports games? Is it good and profitable genre to make? I have searched. I mean, I haven't specifically done sports games.

I don't like sports. That's borrow. [laughter] I don't know. Um, but search tape to tape. It's a hockey game. Um, they do okay. I think sports games do okay. I just I don't know. I don't like sports. I don't know. I guess I should. I do think that they do okay. Racing games do well. The problem with racing games is it's a very high bar quality. um you have to look part of the appeal of racing games is that it's beautiful. Um it one that the racing mechanics feel good and the mechan and the and the visuals are amazing. So those are two bars that you have to get over. So if you're good at that. Um and then the sports I don't know I should I do see them pop off. I always see a couple sports games do well. Specifically sports management does well because management games always do well. Um, so it's good. I should I I should write these down. These are all good questions. I'm the festival question I always get asked. So I definitely need

to do that. See, part of the reason I do these Q&A is so I can figure out what to write about. And so this is my this is my pen to write down festival launches sports games, but I think they're kind of they're they're good. I I always see sports games in my analysis do pretty well like in the whenever I look at the top games that earned a thousand reviews or more. I always see a couple sports games in there and made by indies like tape to tape is one. Search search my blog for tape to tape. That's that's probably the most recent one. It's a it's a a hockey rogike that did very well. Okay. Uh got tips on how to stick to your strengths. always seem to fall into the trap of adding more art to my game even though my strengths are on the coding side. Um, how to stick to your strengths is one, know yourself. That's a big thing. You got to know yourself. You just got to get old. See, nobody ever asks what the

old people are thinking about. They always ask what the 13-year-olds are thinking about. And one of the cool things about when you get old is you you learn about yourself. And that's part of making art is you learn about yourself and what you're actually good at and what you're not. And I've learned over time and through a lot of tears and failures what you're good and what you're not good at. And you just it takes time. It takes time. That's why I don't make games. I'm not good at it. I'm just I don't have the brain. I don't have the patience for it. So, uh that's why um and so you'll just learn these things. It's it's just time time and and through life you got to do it. So, I think the main thing is ship ship your game and then you'll find out what people yell at you about and you're like, "Well, that's either a skill I need to develop or it's something I need to steer away from." And then you play games that steer away from your your thing. And that's part of the the the thing is you got to get outside your bubble. And that's why you got to look at all these other games. And there's some games like one of the best ones I I

think of recently is He is Coming. No, the art style is art directed. It's got good art direction, but the actual art is very limited. And that's the stuff you need to concentrate on is go more towards style that doesn't require photorealistic superdetailed art. It's pixel art. And every pix every sprite is one color. That is such a cool choice. And so you start to find as you play more games, you start to learn about these types of games that have done amazing with a very limited art style or very limited pallet. Uh, which is good. Um, and so I part of it is you just got to play a lot and play outside your thing. I think a lot of indies they they the reason first-time indies always fail is they they've been raised on a diet of AAA games and they think that AAA is games. They don't even realize there's this whole other layer and world out there that aren't AAA looking games and it's you just need to increase your taste. Part of it is just playing a lot

to what they say increase your pallet. A lot of people come in and all they've drunk were Budweiser beer and now we have to open the world to all these craft beers or all these other alcohols that you've never heard of from different countries and stuff. We've got to broaden your pallet so you can see other things. And so that's what I'd recommend is broadening your pallet. And that's why I like to do the 1,000 uh review Steam page review reviews of games that earned a thousand reviews because that broadens your pallet. breaks the algorithm. So you're not just seeing the same algorithm stuff, you're looking laterally across all the genres. So that's what I'd recommend and that's why you should look at these tools like Game Discover Co is cut across and just say I want to look at every game that hit this year or um look at uh the top 50 demos of Steam NextFest because you'll see a cut across [clears throat] different genres and different um quality styles. I mean they're all good but it's like hey wow this game was made and it's all pixel art. That sort of thing. So that's what I'd recommend. Um, question. My game is launching in less

than a month. What are some of the things I should keep in mind for the launch and promise? Well, personal calendar. Make sure you set your date. Even though it's a month away, stick to that date. You'll show up earlier, I think, in personal calendar. If you do that, reach out to more content creators. That's my big stuff. Also, uh, search this FAQ. If you if you're still in deaf, um, search I can't remember. just search um I bet if you searched ultra widescreen because there's a list of things that people always forget to do in indie games that really matter to the Steam player base and they're little things they probably take you a couple days to implement. They're they're they're kind of trivial but kind of not like well one that's not trivial is adding customizable controls to your game. They will review bomb you if you can't change every single button on every single keyboard, every key binding. But Steam players expect to rebind keys and stuff. They also expect ultra wide support. They don't want to see black bars on the side. If you can

do it and your game can go side to side, test your game with ultra wide monitors uh because they care about that stuff. And I have a list of all the little things that they will complain about. So search I think if you search my blog for ultrawide I can't remember the specific blog post name but I list out all the things you need to implement that if you don't implement those steam players are like why don't you do this? So I would if you don't have time and you're like well I I can either add this extra boss or controller support or whatever controller support the things in this list that if you have the time to implement them I would do it. So search ultra wide or settings I don't remember the specific blog post but that's why I think you might be able to find it. Okay, question. A game that doesn't have a demo yet. What are other ways to market it other than social media? Well, okay. I don't know specifically what you mean by social media because some people say Reddit and X, but I do think Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, shorts, one of those or stories. One of those three might fit

that. It seems like people have a version that they like versus the other. Try those. Try try try try really cut down your demo and do that stuff. Um the other thing is apply for festivals. There are festivals that apply you can get into that don't have the demo. Um IGN search my life for IGN how to get into IGN with a trailer. Try that. Just keep make some more trailers and try and get IGN or just shut down and get that demo. You don't have to market your game. If if you tried social media and didn't work, shut down. Don't do anything. just double that time that you're getting that demo out because the faster you can get that demo and cut features that aren't going to be in your demo and focus only on the content that will be in the demo and get that demo out faster. I know that's not the answer you want, but get the demo out for every game. No matter what you do, even if a game succeeded on YouTube shorts and social media and stuff, they did even better once they launched their demo. So, be sure to get that. Um,

question, does Indie Game Joe change the game? I mean, I love Indie Game Joe, but he's a tactic. He's not a game changer. What changes the game is, I mean, I love Indie Game Joe is whatever Steam does. See, 99% of your visibility comes from Steam. That's why you pay them 30%. So, Indie Game Joe is a tactic. So, like um I just heard uh on Thomas Brush's latest show, he said Indieame Joe talked about his Twisted Tower and he got about 2,000 maybe 3,000 wish lists. Um, Twisted Tower is a really good-look game. Perfect for social media. In Indie Game, Joe got him two to three thousand wish lists. Like, that's good. That's good. But when you're needing like a hundred thou for a game of that quality, you need about a 100,000 wish lists. So, that is one 200 or one 50th of what you need to launch a game at that scale. So, Indie Game Joe is great. I love the guy. But you have to remember that's just a tactic that gets you like two to three

thousand wish lists. Sometimes you can trade that up. So like you might be able to take Indie Game Joe and say, "Hey, Indie Game Joe tweeted about us and he went viral." And then you can go to IGN and say, "IGN cover us." And IGN can maybe get you two to three,000 wish lists. But really those are tactics. The strategy, and you should be thinking strategy, not tactics, is how do you get more people to play your game? And the strategy is a demo. A demo is like the launch of your demo is a strategy. We're going to use the demo and the visibility from people playing the demo to get into festivals, contact content creators, get uh into Jeff Keelley's show. We're going to use it to leverage it. And that that is a strategy. Okay. Indieame Joe is a tactic. You could use this is why a tactic supports a strategy. So, you could say, "We're going to launch our demo and we're going to contact Indieame Joe and we're going to get him to tweet about our game on the same day we're launching the demo because we're going to use the demo boost that Indie Game

Joe gives us and we're going to hope to get into new trending free on Steam and that is going to propel us to the next level." See, see how the difference between tactics and strategies. You all need to think higher. Think first time indies think tactics, the reals think strategy, and the really reals think genre. So yeah, Indie Game Joe, love him. He's a tactic. So it's just like, hey, can we get 20? How can we leverage these 2,000 wish lists that hopefully Indiegame Joe gives us? Think tactics as support for everything else. Okay. What if we change the name change? What if we change theme of the current successful game but keep gameplay loop the same? Will we get this a copy of another game as reviews? Uh, not as much as you would think. Not as much as you think. And actually changing the theme I think is better than genre mashup. I I

think the best if you're a new indie, you've never made a game before. I think the best thing you can do is change the theme in a meaningful way rather than like well we're going to be this game plus this game. Anytime I mention a genre. So like anytime and you guys are going to make this joke and it it every time this joke has been made every single time. If I'm like, "Hey, uh, in my latest analysis, uh, top genres are deck builders, dating sims, and colony sims." And then there's invariably all the time in that video, like, [laughter] "I'm going to make a dating sim, colony sim." They just take all the genres that I list and then they just say, "I'm gonna make this every single time." That joke is made every single time. If you see somebody in that in the YouTube video, just say, "You made that joke." Every time. So indies, for some reason, have gotten in their mind that the way to

make a successful game is just throw all the genres into a blender and then it just turns into the nastiest slop you've ever seen. I wish indies would get over the genre mixing thing. I think indies need to learn. I think the better strategy is you take a game and you rethe it. And that's what actually this the last YouTube video that I made is all about that where it's like the better thing is take a core mechanic, find out what is the core mechanic, the core gameplay loop and rethe it. Now you're you should change the mechanics like 20 to 30% a little bit in there because if you change the theme to like pirate land, it's not going to make sense that it's a cute cat game before. So you just you see what works and what doesn't and what the correlary is in this new theming. So you do change some things. You're not cloning, but you're doing a different theme. Like for example, Mecca Chameleia. I just came up with this top of my head. It'd be cool. That's a fun gameplay mechanic where you get to color and then you get to hide. I

could see you doing a more uh like a shooter version like you you overlay Modern Warfare style game, but you're you're actually painting camouflage on people and it's a shooter. So, it's more of the modern warfare FPS theming around a mecha chameleon. So, instead of it's a game of hide-and-seek, it's now a game of like first person shooter type of thing. You see what I mean? Where it's it's not I know I technically that's a genre mix, but what you're doing is you're taking that core mechanic of hiding via I draw and you just add more mechanics in that theme that you're adding. Um, and that's generally what I think is is more powerful. that is a better route to success is the retheing of things. So yeah, um definitely would recommend that. Um question Halloween. This is another blog. This is another blog post. I I did this was going to be one that I got this week, but I didn't have time to gather all the data that I needed to. But I I I I just saw the word Halloween. I know where this question is going

because I get this this is another indie question I get all the time. This will be a blog post. I promise. Okay. Halloween is popular season, so I'm sure a lot of games will be released around that time. How worthwhile is a launch game during this crowded period when the competition is intense? Actually, not as much. Um, here's the thing. And I think I wrote about this. Yeah, I think I did. I I think it was at the end of the year I did a roundup. Just search Christmas. Search my blog for Christmas. In general, this question isn't actually is where I was going. I thought you were going to ask about horror games. Um, in general, gamers do not think of the games they're going to play. based on the season. So they don't play Christmas games during Christmas. They play the number one AAA game because most AAA games launch at Christmas time in time for Christmas. PE I know we do that for movies where it's like, oh, it's Halloween time. I'm going to watch horror movies or it's Christmas time. I'm going to watch Christmas movies. Oh, it's Valentine's Day. I'm going to watch some romances. We don't that I don't see that behavior in the in

the world of gaming. See, this again, what you think is not what's true. Uh like your gut instinct is not true. I don't see it in the data as far as we do that. Um, people launching in Halloween. Actually, most people, most games, the busiest season is November and December for launches, November and early December. It's not during Halloween. There's no increase in that in that. And I think there is an increase in horror games, but I don't actually think you need to launch your your horror game during Halloween. I do not think you do. I do not think that more people play horror games during October. It's horror fans play horror games year round. Um, so I don't think we should be too smart. I don't think you should play too smart. Like, oh, it's uh it's this genre and it's this season. I'm going to launch my game. People gamers do not think in holidays. They think in what games are coming out. So, I don't think that I don't think you should be too thinking too much about that. The better thing and again the mo

put more brain power towards the game you're making, not towards when you're launching. I think indies spend way too long thinking about the exact day, month, season, hour to launch their game when really they should spend all that brain power picking the genre. Question: How to get wish list in management sim games where the game hooks is a genre twist like Dave the Diver. I don't think David Diver is that much of a twist. I don't like surprises, so just tell them. I don't think it's for the most part the twists. I don't think they're that much of a twist in the first place. I don't think we should be secret. You, we indies, especially if you're a small indie, you don't get to do the surprise twist. You don't. You're just like, "This is our genre. Don't do that. Don't do the twist." Nobody really likes the twist. I know somebody's going to bring up Doky Doi Literature Club. I know. I know. It's one thing, but you don't see it's different if it's a well known dev. Like if John Blow said, "Hey,

we're making that uh his Soabon game." and then all of a sudden halfway through it turned into a different genre. That would be newsworthy. But I think indies are being too cute and too smart and too clever by doing these switch things. Just tell them what genre it is. I don't think one of the best ones. Okay, Frog Fractions 2. I don't know if I'm That's now an old reference. Everybody was talking, oh, is this game Frog Fractions 2? That I don't see that joke anymore. Frog Fractions 2. Um, they did that. There's a game called Glimmerwick, I think it is. Is it Glimmerwick? G Glimmer Glimmerwick Glenn. Just search Frog Fractions 2 game. It did terribly. Okay, if you don't know, there was this indie game, Frog Fractions 1, which is this ironic game, which was a twist. It was free and it was funny, and then they tried to pull a second one, the sequel. They hid Frog Fractions 2 in another game. And if you look it up, Glimmer Wick Glenn, I think it is, it sold terribly. It didn't do well. This twist where it's like, oh, it's a different game. Uh, it's too

clever. It's too clever. Just make a good game and tell people what the game is. That's surprises don't market. It's I know it's you. I know indies always think, "What are the tricks I got to do? I got What's the I always get that question, too. Like, what's the biggest trick you've ever seen somebody pull in marketing?" There are no tricks. You're just like, "This is my game. This is my genre. Take it or leave it." That's that's marketing. It's not surprising or tricking people or doing something wacky and zany like I dressed up like a monkey and I got up on this Empire State Building and did a dance. That is not marketing. Marketing is like I'm making this game. It is this genre. I think you are a fan of this genre. Buy it. And they're like this is me. This is my genre. I like this. I will buy this. It's not tricks. There's no tricks. So I don't like tricks. I'm not a big trickster. So my my I know you think it's a clever twist. Just tell people, hey, it's a game that changes. It's you can even tell them it's a

surprising game where this goes to this. I I really think that that is a better bet than trying to trick people because we've been there. We've all been tricked and those games don't do very well. So it's not that novel to say like you thought it was this game, now it's this game. I think that's been played out. It's been done. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's not I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. Okay. If you could market a game towards two different subject Oh, wait. I answered that one, which is better for visibility, streamers or festivals? Um, streamers are more likely because there's more streamers. And even if you get a smaller streamer, you won't because on my on my thing, my festivals page, go right here, right here. Click it. I mean, I got a lot of festivals listed. I got like 15 or 20 um that are accepting applications right now. Um, but in general, there aren't that many. So you have more chances on content creators, but why not both? Do both. Apply to festivals, apply to streamers. It you can do both. So do them both. Um I will subscribe to your YouTube channel. Can't help myself.

All right. But this is the thing. Reading is cool, people. YouTube sucks. It wastes your time. You should be working on your game right now. I don't want you listening to me. But the blog is so much better. The blog is so much better. Um, in the course you mentioned that you need someone big to announce your Steam page by leveraging virality. But what if my game is not a social media friendly game? Then you move on to being there. There's a second part to my course which is if you're not a social media friendly game, you do a different strategy. So I I look at my course there's what I call road maps. This is a new section by the way uh for 3.0. I add road maps. So depending on what type of game you are, you have different strategies and you know I said tactics versus strategies. So what I do in the course is I lay out these road maps based on what strategy you have. So we figure out what game you are but I help you figure out what kind of game you are and then there's different strategies and then within that strategy there's all the tactics you need to do. So in

general if you're not a social media friendly game which is fine most games are not social media friendly you get that demo out and you market towards that demo. That's how you do it. All right, Jack. Will Steam penalize you for making one genre game lower dev time, i.e. horror, second game RPG? Nope. If your game does not succeed, nobody knows about it. Nobody knows. So, don't worry. Make games. There's no nobody knows what games you made before. They just forget about you all the time. Okay, that's it. Um, also you don't need a PC. I know this isn't a qu question. I don't you don't need a PC and mouse to PC game, but Steam released stats that said only 18% of gameplay sessions were with a a controller. 18% only 18% of sessions, not people, but

sessions were with this. PC gaming is primarily mouse and keyboard. I'm just I know that wasn't a question, but I'm just you guys really you have to realize you're in the world of PC gaming. PC gaming is different than console games. Most people I mean I'm not going to say whatever 100 minus 18 is or on mouse keyboard because maybe some people are playing on their guitar controller but or a flight stick. Um but most people are playing PC games on keyboard mouse. That's why crafty building strategy simulation games do are are so big is because that's how most people are playing. They're playing on WASD mouse and keyboard. You need to shift your mindset. If you came from console and you played a lot of Nintendo games, you got to shift your mindset uh for how you're doing. Uh just to pop in just in case people forgot course sale ends soon. I guess I should put a ticker timer. It basically I think I might put it right here. When you click this, I think I have the time. when you go down

and if you're if you're wondering like I got all this stuff testimonials like tiny glade million wish lists million wish lists and it said the course is packed with information um and honestly this course has no right being this good that's what they said makers of tiny glade I'm in the credits my name's in the credits because of this course um anyway uh what I was trying to get to just wanted to I just want to shut that out okay did I actually I was wondering If I put the time, there's a little thing where I can tell you how much time. Let's see. Let's see what happens if I click this. I think it tells you how much time is left. I think it's like at 11:59 tonight. Um is when you can see it. But um it's you're running out of time. So if you're at all interested, now's the time to do it. [laughter] Uh because we're running out of time here on this thing. All right. Anyway, um yeah. So you just go to my site and hit courses. Let's keep going here. Um

what what's your current data with calendar affecting early access full release difference? I don't know. Um so early access and so the for people wondering early access and full release you if you do early access you actually get to show up in the calendar two times because you do it at 1.0 or at your early access launch and 1.0. out and we're getting a lot of people are getting a lot of visibility off this popular this calendar thing. It's pretty hot. I still don't think people always want to do early access. I don't know why. They just want to I think the biggest problem with early access is not the visibility. It's people are either making the wrong type of game or their game fails. See, and this is what Valve says. They always say early access is not a marketing decision. You don't decide whether you're going to do marketing uh early access or 1.0 or just you know regular launch because of marketing like oh man I can game the

system by doing this. The reason you do early access is because your game needs the feedback. That's why it's a game design question not a marketing question. And that's anytime I like to listen to Valve because they make the algorithms and the systems. They make the dreams. And so what you're I like to think their business sense like okay well that's their theory is that early access is a is a product decision like it's about making your game better not about marketing and so when you ask that question like oh man is this the secret uh trick to get more visibility I don't because see this is the problem this is why I don't recommend early access is 90% 95% of games just fail they just don't sell this is a hard business and if your game fails at early access launch, the it's cooked. Your game's cooked. And that's what they don't talk about. Like

if you don't I and I did the analysis search on this 150 reviews in the first month, you're cooked. You're just your game's never going to come back. And now you're in this position where it's like, well, I'm cooked. Do I invest another year, six months polishing up and patching this game that's just done, is never going to sell? No. And that's I just do not like early access because it is such a cliff if it doesn't succeed. And so I still think you should think of early access, whether you do it or not, based on the product. And the reason you do early access is you've already got a game that's like 30 hours worth of content. That's an early access game. 30 hours worth of content and your game is so mechanically complex that you need the feedback of thousands of gamers to impact the balance, the meta, you know, tweaking the numbers, adding the right type of content because you need that many people. That's the decision. Like, oh man, our 30-our game needs that

hardcore testing. That's why you make the early access decision. It's not because like, oh man, I can double dip in the personal calendar. Uh, it's a trick. And so that's why I still I mean, we can look at the data, but I I think that the risk of early access, failing your early access launch is great enough that it it negates any tactical thing that you might get by getting a double dip in the personal calendar. Just my thought. All right. Um, the youth suck. They do. Question. Will Steam become oversaturated soon or is it already? Just yes. I I don't know. I more people join every day. I don't think of saturation. I don't think I mean I don't I don't I don't know how to answer that question. You need to what? You need to add more details, genres and stuff like more people are playing games. I think we're in a golden age because I see more games popping off.

More I know we're getting a lot of layoffs, but that's at the AAA side. people are going to fail. But I'm seeing some fantastic games take off. Like that cat game that I played on stream. That game launched in a month. I don't know how long it took them to dev, but I'm seeing all these devs are like, "Yeah." And you'll and see we're kind of in this they call it the vibe session where people like, "Yeah." And there's this thing. And I I was listening to a podcast just yesterday and it was a Devon. He's like, "This is our best year ever. 2026." Oh, it was a Ramy Ismmail and um Mike Rose podcast. They do this podcast and nobody listens to it. Only had like 400 views on YouTube. Look it up. And uh No More Robots was like, "Uh, this is our best year yet this year or one of the best. It was better than last year." And everybody who's doing very well this year, they got like but it was because we we outsmarted everybody else. No, it's and this is why it's a vibe session, I think, because this is theoretical here. Social media shares

everybody's failures with everybody. So we we just and humans overestimate the occurrence of something when they hear a good story and a and a a scary horrible story. That's why people are so afraid of planes. Plane crashes are very rare, but they're horrific. So we humans have a deficiency in our brain where anytime something's horrific, we think that's more frequent. And social media is all about bad news. And so we think when we see something bad on social media, we think that's prevalent. And so everybody has this mentality. Even studios that are doing well, they're like, "We're doing well, but it's because we're smart by ourselves." And I remember reading on social media that studio that did bad, so we outsmarted everybody else and we did good. Everybody else is doing bad, but we're doing good outside of it. But I'm looking at the data across several studios and I'm seeing a lot of outstanding success right now. Um, and so yes, on social media you might hear

one ghost, I call them indie ghost stories because you go on Reddit and you hear these indie ghost stories where somebody's like, my game got sued and all these bad news and they always have these ghost stories that I say like I made a game and this bad thing happened to me and then everybody's like, "Oh, that's very common." No, it's horrific. Remember, it's the the mental bias, the deficiency we have humans where if we think something's bad, we think it's frequently occurring. That's not it. So, I don't think I really, folks, I'm looking at the data and I see a lot of games that short development times doing very well. Um, studios like having these viral hits. I I really think there's some great times. So, I don't think it's as simple as saturated, not it's not like there's a level where it's like saturated. There's a lot more people are playing a lot more games, buying more games. Studios are making games faster, smaller, cheaper, and then still making a lot from them. So, I'm an optimistic guy. And if you search Golden Age here, you'll see it. Um I I don't think it's saturated. I I really don't. A game

that doesn't have a demo yet. What are other ways to market it other than social media? I talked about that one. How impactful are reviews on your game? What are the extremely positive tag on Steam? Um extremely positive tag on Steam. Oh, well I it's not a tag. It's a attribute based on the matrix. There's a matrix of how many reviews you have and how positive they are that goes there. I actually and I should do a study on this, but I don't think the reviews counts. I still I'm a This is my full-time job as se I still if you ask me what is better, overwhelmingly positive or mostly positive or very positive. I don't I don't distinguish I I can't remember which one's the best one. Is it very or overwhelmingly or I can't remember which one's the best. I don't think that the percentages matter and I don't think actually they're correlated as much as we would think of percent positive versus sales because you can have a very

low selling game and it only sold to super hardcore people and they all love it but that doesn't translate into everybody liking it. So, I think indies are fixated on the review score um irrationally and I don't think it correlates as much as we think to sales performance. There are a couple exceptions when you go to mixed player perception reduces sales. who I have seen data from not widpread but enough players when they dipped into or enough developers when they dipped into mixed players were like uh I'll wait and there's no algorithm steam even says there's no algorithm penalty if you go to mixed there is an algorithm penalty if you turn into the red the negative mostly negative there is an algorithm penalty that but not mixed there is no algorithm it's a it's a human algorithm where humans go h if they see mixed so it does hurt sales But it's because people go um above that I don't think

again I'm only working off gut and from data I've seen sporadically but I don't think the you know like you get there's a big myth going around that if you hit 500 reviews something magic happens you get extra boost I Valve says there's no boost I believe him so I don't think there is a special like extra boost that you when you go overwhelmingly positive. I don't think that happens. I really do not. Um, okay. If I make a video about my game in Arabic, my native language, and reach in a way higher compared to posting in English on Instagram, should I post in a single language? I'm not a social media expert, but if it's working, do it. Do it. Let it go. Do it. All right. What's the best approach to get visibility on each prototype to see if it has the magic? um do it as a game jam and put your game in that game jam. In other

words, like they always have that roundup of all the games. Um two, make sure it's playable in the browser, not downloadable. Search my blog for itch. Reach out to the uh content creators. Just reach out to them. Be like, "Just made a game. I think you'd like it." Reach out to content creators. Reach out to uh the Itch editorial staff and say, "Hey, I had a game that was played by this content creator. Can I get featuring?" That's how you do it. And that's it. And that's the thing about the magic is you don't have to do much after that because if it's got the magic, it just works. And a lot of people I just listed out all those things. People like, I tried that and it didn't get many views. That's the magic. You just learn the lesson. That's it. So reach out to some content creators, ask the editorial staff, make a YouTube short about it, and make sure that your page is listed on whatever game jam you're part of. After that, it's up to God. It's up to whatever you believe in. Will PC gamers use a controller for an arcade shooter style

game or always default to mouse and keyboard? Uh, well, they they won't do arcade shooters. I'll tell you that. [laughter] Steam just doesn't like arcade style shooters. They just don't. And it's because it's more a cultural thing. Steam players are PC players and PC players don't like fast twitch, you know, like arcade style games. They like deep, thoughtful, slow paced churning. I mean, they do like some fast games like um of FPS, but those are like they're embedded. There's just a cultural difference where they don't like these ephemeral arcade games. And I know somebody's going to pick out, but what about this game? But for overall, remember 18% of sessions are controller. They might do it, but I I just don't see arcade games doing as well on Steam. It's just the number one marketing decision is the genre you pick. And I'm just going to tell you, Steam players just don't like arcade shooter styles. Okay. In the course, you mentioned they

need someone to big. Okay, wait. I'm I'm still going. Um, do you know how many monthly active? Yeah. Um, you can find uh the number of stats on Steam DB. Go to Steam DB. Right at the top, they have a big chart. And if you click that chart, you can drill into the concurrent users. And they have it broken down to people who are in-game and then people who just have the Steam browser open because I have Steam open all day just because I don't know, it just starts when I start up. Man, I'm sweating like a horse over here. Um, I just have it up and so I count as having it open. So depending on your definition of active users, it's all the time. You can see it and it's it's cool. So you can see the world working because it's like, "Oh, China's getting online. It's time in China." Nope, it's time in US. And then you just see this like wave. It's so cool. And here's one thing, folks. This is the interesting test. Steam um uh Grand Theft Auto 5 or six. I always The next Grand Theft Auto, it's not coming out on PC. And

everybody's like, "Oh, watch this." Here's what you watch. watch that graph when um the next one comes out, the next GTA, and see if it crimps lower than the other the an equivalent day because the the the number of users increases on Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday of course. Um I have a feeling we're not going to see any difference. I I I because the last big game when people were coming out was Breath of the Wild or the next Zelda game and I was like, "Oh man, I'm not going to launch my Steam game because Breath of the Wild is coming out." and I looked at the stats. It had zero impact on Steam players. There was no deviation. So, it's a good test. We're going to see my money is on. We won't see any difference. I think PC marketplace is almost completely separate from the console marketplace. And because GTA is launching on consoles, the graph is not going to look any different. I we maybe we could put some money on it. I I really don't think you're going to see much impact. Um all right. Uh, from experience, building a YouTube audience

is equally hard as making a game. Yep. And you don't want to do both at the same time. So, just focus on your game, folks. There's no tricks. Just make the game. Reach out to content creators. You can save yourself so much time by borrowing some other bozo who spent all enough time building an audience, which is kind of a waste of time to build an audience on YouTube, but some bozo did it because they thought YouTube was cool. So, you can just use that bozo and just say, "Hey, Bozo, play my game." And they're like, "Okay, I've wasted all this time building a YouTube audience, which is built on sand, and when the tide comes in, it'll wreck your sand castle." But that's another argument that I have against social media. But use them and their poor judgment for free. You just like, "Hey, you want to play my game?" And they're like, "Yeah, I'll play it." And you use their audience. Much better than you building a YouTube audience. All right. Um, does early access still have negative effects on visibility? It's not that it's negative effects. It has nothing.

Early access has no negative effects on visibility. It's just that it's risky because here's the whole reason I don't I don't recommend early access for firsttime developers or people who have never made the type of game that does well on early access. The reason I tell people not to do early access is because you have to be good enough at development to know how much game to release because you don't want to release a a game that is too small because then the players are like, "Uh, this game's not ready for prime time and they'll yell at you because your game doesn't have enough content." But if you wait and you build too much content, then that's an opportunity cost. You could have been selling your game earlier and you misjudge it. So when you do early access, you have to thread that needle between releasing too early and too late. And if it's your first game, you don't even know how to release a game, much less thread the needle between development. It is too hard. I don't know why devs are so in love with

early access. I just don't get it. It's like it just I know. Maybe it's the naming. I think it's the naming. It's like early access. It's early and it's just it's just early access. If I do something wrong, I can just be like, "No, it's early." Hey, I know you're criticizing me, but it's early early access. can't yell at me. I think it's a protective shield that think people get, but it's not early access is super hard because like I said, you got to thread the needle between those two extremes and you can get yourself in a spot. See, if if you release just a full-on game and you just release it and it fails, you can just wipe your hands and be like, "Hey, my game failed." And you just move on. You can just walk away. But if you release an early access game and it fails, now you're in a pickle. You are in a squeeze. Because if you just go, "Well, that game failed. That's not worth my time." And you walk off, there's a small population that bought your game that is going to be super mad at you. And early access buy people who buy early access games are so mean. And

then you're just going to have this mean man on your back that's like, "When are you going to do another update? You haven't updated the game in 24 hours. Why aren't you not communicating with me? I paid money for your game. You are a shifty bad person because you did not update your game today. And you're like, god damn, my game failed. What do you want from me, buddy? You. So, you have just loaded a mean man on your back. Do you want that? I don't know. So, that's why I don't recommend early access. Now, if you're an experienced dev, you release lots of games, you're making these crafty, buildy games, you understand the Steam marketplace better, I do see benefits to early access, but it's very difficult. It's very difficult and you have to have a lot of experience. So, I just think people underestimate the difficulty of early access. It's not a marketing decision. It's not because of marketing. It's because you're just not good at making games. And it's very hard to make an early access game that works. Um, there's no negative effects. It's just that people are mean and once they buy your game and you're not constantly updating it, they get mean. Okay. Do you

want mean people? Don't do early access. Okay. All right. Removing all the slot from the numbers. Are the release numbers growing on real Steam? Feel free to break down by genre. Um, it is. There are more um games um as a proportion. Even if I strip away the slop, follow the thing. I do have to download the next quarter. I do a quarterly check-in. Search my blog for this. I can't do it off the top of my head because I don't remember. But basically, there are more games that are of decent quality growing faster than the number of real Steam games. So, it is like like the games that I call like 150 reviews, the 150 review games, which are like if a game gets about 150 to 300 reviews, those games are usually like high quality, like good dev, they know what they're doing, good art assets, the game's not total trash, but it doesn't hit the genres right or it didn't just

spark. It wasn't like an amazing game. It was just like, yeah, it's a decent game. But that that is the hardest place to be is 100 reviews to 300 right in that little soft spot. Um, and those games are growing. Those numbers of games are growing. Not as fast as the slop. The slop is growing so fast, but that doesn't matter as much. I do see a slight ticking up of the amount of decent games outpacing the real Steam games. So um it is growing but not at an exponential rate. People always say exponential incorrectly because it has to increase at an increasing rate to be exponential. It's increasing but like at you know 10 to 15% per year. The decent but not great games. All right. Um a game that I'm gonna I got to take a drink of water real fast. Sorry.

I'm gonna go for 15 more minutes and then I got to go um have lunch with my mom. So, um 15 more minutes. I'll try and answer as many I can. All right. A game that doesn't have a demo yet. Um I keep seeing that question again. I I see it. I've answered that. Um just maybe just focus on your demo. I know it's not the answer you want, but get that demo out faster. See what you can cut. You don't need to add the boss to level three. Polish up the demo because you got to determine if your game has it with the demo. And everything that's not going to be in the demo, stop working on it, okay? Try and get that demo out. See what corners you can cut. Are sports good genre? I mean, it it's tricky. I don't think PvP sports because PvP at indie scale is really hard, but there is a market for sports games. I just don't feel confident recommending it because I don't like sports and I don't like sports games.

But I think if you have a really good handle on sports, it might be viable. I just don't The main thing is when I see an indie sports game take off, I don't feel confident knowing why it took off. So that's why I say you do your research. I think it really depends on how good your controls are for sports games. And indies often have a hard time with that. Now, there are sports management games which I do think are really good because you don't have to be as good at controls. I would recommend you just study the market. Look up all the sports games. Use just guys, I know it costs money. It's worth it. You're It costs like $30 a month. Pay for one month of one of these software tools. It's worth it. These are good people. These are all small companies like Game Discover Co. Spend the $30. If you're going to be spending the next year or two developing a game, it is worth it to spend $30 and one month play in the market. And what you do is you just look filter for sports games and then download all the sports games that you got. Buy them. Buy the sports games that

Game Discover Co. or whatever have released in the last two to three years that have reached over 500 reviews. Download and play them and ask yourself purposely, can our team achieve this? Is this viable? And then you can kind of get a sense of that marketplace. And that's that's why I do have a hard time recommending genres. I do see a lot of sports games pick up, but they're by very established people who have good controls. So, you have to be honest with yourself if you can actually achieve that level of scale. Okay. Um, let's see here. How to change theme of current successful game that keep the game. I think I've done that one. It they the questions see YouTube is just not built for Q&A. It's I keep seeing the same questions. I think it's algorithmic which ones get shown up. So, I'm sorry if I missed your question. I'm still going through. I'm trying to find them. I'm just seeing like a lot of the repeated questions. I don't know if people are reposting the questions. Please don't do that. I'm really trying to go through the list and answer them all. For horror games, you don't really

recommend demos unless the trailer doesn't take off, right? Um, no. I I think a demo I I think a demo is good. It's the main thing I'm saying is like the de Okay. the trailer tells you and I I mentioned this in the course for horror it really matters. So if the demo, okay, so the monster matters so much. The monster and the hook of a horror game matter so much. And so if you are going for a game where the monster plays center role, not necessarily vibes, there are some horror games that go well on vibes and and the one I think of is like uh I think it's called Zoo something. It's it's about a zombie zoo. That game got a 100,000 wish list off their trailer because the concept was so wild. Like what if zoo creatures like a giraffe got infected by a zombie virus? Boom. You just say that. Like it could be a trailer where I just step up and

say zombie giraffes and then I show a picture of a zombie giraffe and then you get 100,000 wish lists. That is the power of a horror game. And that's why I think it's awesome. So if you have a high concept horror game, you can put out a trailer and be like, we're going with it. And if it's high concept and it doesn't work, you've got some soularching to do where it's like, okay, well, we're going off this viral hook and if our trailer didn't do it, do we want to invest that much time? There are some horror games that are a slow burn and it depends and to see if it is. So, there might be like, hey, our trailer didn't go. Now, you got to say like, well, maybe we'll scale back the trailer or maybe we're not going to bet as much on this after if the trailer didn't take off. It's just it's a very strong data point. If your horror trailer did not blow up, maybe it did pretty good, but you saw in the comments like, "Well, what's the monster?" It could be a trailer problem. It could be the monster problem. Like, if you did a really good job showing your monster and people

like, "That's dumb." Then you kind of know like, "Oh, maybe we should reo our monster or this combination didn't work." That's what you got to you got to assess. All I'm saying is your trailer is a very strong data point for horror games. Okay. Why is your microphone golden? Because I speak golden words. Um um should I release on Epic or or just Steam? Just Steam. Unless Epic gives you a lot of money, but I don't think they're giving money anymore, so just Steam. Um, how to figure out what your best bang for your buck is for localizing your game genre. Um, I would focus on the the Asian languages first, Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Then I would go Brazilian, Russian, then I would do Italian, German,

Spanish, French, did I say Italian, Polish? That in that order basically. uh the the European language is kind of in last because a lot a higher proportion of European players are willing to play an Englishonly game. So, but the Asian language is first. Um what do you think about farming game in 2027? Um well, farming farming, uh I think farming is still good and it depends. There's there's multiple things like are you talking farming life sim like Stardew Valley? Uh because I do think those are I've seen them pop off all the time. They are getting the the quality bar is getting higher. Um farming farming sim where it's like I'm driving a tractor and it's really realistic. I think those are still good because simulation games. But um overall simulation games, farming games, they're the right type of things for Steam. They're like I mean again those games do well because they're crafty strategy simulation. You see the main thing is those genres really don't

change very much. Crafty, strategy, simulation-y in there. There are some subg genres within that, you know, like farming, but it's horror farming or something like there's some little things that pop off in there, but overall, folks, genres don't change as much as we all think. They don't. It's mainly the change is a lot of people come into Steam thinking, I'm going to make a platformer. And then and then they read my stuff and I'm like, don't do platformers. And they're like, Steam's always changing. Steam's changing. I went in and I was thinking that there was platformers and there's not platformers. It's changed. Nope. platformers pretty much have never been a thing on PC gaming and it's the person changed, not that the genre changed. So, I really don't think genres change very fast. There's new things that pop off like friend slop that's pretty new. But for the most part, it's not that genres disappear, it's just that there. The main thing is you want games where there's endless content and content creators and players can replay your game over and over and over and over.

And if you want to add more content, you're just like, uh, we now have carrots. And so you just coded carrots and cor carrots do this and this is how you grow them. You just add in the metadata and it's like a sprite of a carrot and then all of a sudden they added 10 hours of content because you just added that. That's why crafty building games work is because when you add one element, it completely sets off this chain reaction of of multiplicative uh gameplay depth. And that is why crafty strategy simulationy works is because it's both players can play a lot, but it's also easier for you as a dev to add content. And so farming games are still crafty strategy simulationy genre meta genre. So they work. And that's that's why. It's not that they're changing, it's just that it's a very strong genre. Now, you got to come up with something new. So if you can't come up with something new for farming games, that's going to be hard. But I still think they're good. Um,

did Bullet Heaven getting a tag help the genre? I don't know. Um, I'll have to That's a hard one to test. The main thing is because the hard thing to test is I do think the genre is maturing still. I still see them. There's a couple that pop off every year, but it's it's just that the bar has raised. So, helping the genre. It's just that it's one it's easier for me to market to to do data analysis because I can just punch in that tag. Before I'd have to do action rog like plus a couple something. I think I'd have to do bullet hell. Um I think it was bullet hell plus action rogike was how I'd filter those out. So it's a lot easier now. Um but I don't think tags help. It's more that they allow data analysis. So, the main thing that matters for a genre is just the player base, whether they're actually into it, and the maturity of all the other games coming into it. How can I gather play testers for a game that isn't playable on the web? What you do is, um, you put out calls. You start

a mailing list and you say, "Hey, um, I'm looking for play testers." And you put play testers on, um, you, um, go to destroy my game. go to on Reddit, go to uh whatever genre you have uh your game on Reddit if it's hopefully not too um oversaturated uh because like incremental they kind of don't like so many people spamming on that channel now because so many incremental games um and you just say hey I need some feedback somebody tell me how my game does and um and then you give them and what you want to do is you want to upload the build to Steam and then give out beta keys because people don't trust just a random .exe showing up on their computer. They don't trust that. And I wouldn't install an .exe because that's how David Why got hacked. Somebody was like, "Can you try my game?" And he tried it and it was just hacking everything he had, which is not good. I would never install that. So, there's a little bit better protection on Steam, but not much. But it is

better. And then there's also the play test feature in Steam where you can just turn on play test and then you reach out to content creators and you say, "Hey, I got a play test." And then they'll play that. Um, and then you get play testers there and you just start building it and you make a good game because nobody wants to play test a bad game because if your game doesn't look good, people are going to be like, I'm not going to play that. And if somebody doesn't uh that that guy Payne Robinson said, somebody doesn't want to play your game for free, they're not going to play your game for money. So, if you can't get play testers for your free game, ship that game and move on to the next one. Okay. How can I Let's see. How cozy gardening games do on Steam? Good. But it has to be an interesting thing. Like it can't just be the exact same thing. You have to take the see where cozy farming games are. See what the next step is and add an interesting little splits on there. But it's a crafty buildy strategy simulation genre these farming gardening sims. So they do good and they

do good. I mean, there's just a lot of things I I I shouldn't I said I wasn't going to answer the genre question. I just can't help. I don't know what you're thinking, you know, because are you talking gardening? Are you talking room where you install a plant? I'm not going to answer the genre question. I promise I'm not going to answer any more genre questions. Just play games. Look them up on Steam. Do genre research. Buy the $30 a month tier on one of these platforms. Spend the money. It's worth it. It is worth your time and your effort to buy these things and do your own research. Play the games because I don't know what you're thinking as far as what a cozy gardening game is. I have my interpretation but not yours. So, I'm not going to answer those questions anymore because we only have five minutes left. Okay. Um, why do you think indie gaming is on the rise? Why? Because the number one game right now, well, relative is Mecca. What's that game? Um, Chameleon Mecca that was made by two

Japanese men. Two Japanese men made the most popular game on Steam. Like there more people have bought and played that game than like AAA games. I think we should just stop and just hold [snorts] on that about how freaking amazing that is. Like we shouldn't just Yeah, whatever. That is freaking amazing. And I bet you folks didn't know the Mecha Chameleon people, they released two other games and I think they were sitting at 150 reviews. Okay, look at their other games. They released two or three failed games. Did people go, "I'm not going to play Mecha Chameleon because they had three failed games before." No. They're like, "Whoa, everybody's playing this game. It's Mecha Chameleon. This is amazing." And they do that. I know of several developers who are launching games that they've made in like a month and they're doing amazing or they release a game in a year. They built a whole game in a year and it is selling better than a game that they spent six years on. Um Steam player base is totally going for

lower fidelity games. They're like lower fidelity. Is it fun? Good. That's all they care about. We don't have to, it's no longer a race to see who has the most money to spend on the most resources. The games that are succeeding are the ones that are the most fun. And that's why I know people hate friend slop. They're like, "Oh, look how janky it is." That is a good sign. That is a healthy thing of it is the game play is fun and players are rewarding us for fun games. And that's what AAA sucks at is they can just throw money at a problem. They just hire a million artists, spend a billion dollars, and make the most beautiful slideshow you've ever seen. But the game is very boring and derivative. That would be awful. But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world where two Japanese men can just make a one of the most popular games in the world right now. It is

amazing. That is amazing. And I know it's hard. This is a hard business. I know there's a horror story. Somebody can link to a horror story down below. They they can. But that's the problem with social media. Again, our brains are hacked. So, anytime we hear one piece of bad news, we automatically assume it's happened to everybody. It's just in the years I've done this almost for 10 years. Okay? I've been writing this blog for 10 years. I've never seen a time where I've seen so many small games pop off so hard and in short periods of time. Like the recommendation was always like long marketing periods. There's a game from the people who made Root Trees Are Dead. I still am going to I'm going to follow up with him. He released a game. I He's my friend. I know. I had lunch with the guy. He made Root Trees Are Dead. I didn't even know he was releasing game. He released it in one month. Well, the game took longer to make, but his marketing period was one month, and it is selling like crazy. It's a narrative

game, narrative mystery game, and it is selling amazing. So, small devs are doing amazing things. Okay, I'm not saying this is easy. That guy who I just mentioned, my friend, he's been making games for a decade. He worked at corporations and and stuff, and he's made a lot of games that went nowhere. But it is possible. And it is not one hit stories. I'm seeing many many people who are making smaller gains which reduces the amount of cost and risk that you need to invest and they're having very outsized results and it's not a one or two things. I'm seeing it much more frequently. So this is hard. This industry is hard. I'm not saying that it's a guaranteed money maker. You are going to make 100,000. It is not. But what I'm saying is it is possible. Okay? You have to follow the rules. Like I'm not saying like everybody who makes a pixel art platformer, but if you play the game right, your chances are better now than they've been in a very long time. And the amount of effort that you have to put into it is less. And so I've

please read please I I I can say this, but the best thing you can do is read. Search this. I'm going to I'm going to end this one on a positive note. This is my last question because it's positive. I like ending on a positive note. So go up to my search bar, how toarketame.com. Hit the search bar and type in this golden age. Golden age. Okay, there's my blog right here. Optimistic view that indies are in a golden age right now. That's the one. This that lays out the whole argument of why I think we're there. Please read it. I know reading is not cool. People want to watch YouTube all the time, but please take a break. Put some headphones on so you block out the sound. Don't listen to anything else. Focus and read just for It takes like 20 minutes to read this article. This lays out the case for why it's such a good time. There's so many genres that are popping off. So many devs are doing well. So many devs are doing decent. Um that if you know and you study and you learn and you

practice, you make a couple games. It's not going to be your first one. I'm not saying this is easy money. It's hard, but it's possible. This is the most possible. I've seen it since I've started this career, like the last 10 years that I've been blogging. That's why I'm so optimistic about it. Um, and so I kind of want to end on that. I just want to remind you how to marketame.comcourses or you just go up here. This is the end. Um, sale ends tonight. So, you got to do it. I didn't I don't know any exact hours. You got to do it. I've This is version three of the course. I will be updating it to 4.0 very soon. But, you get it like you if you buy the course, upgrades are free. So, if I upgrade to 4.0, which I am, when I do all this research on the personal calendar, I will update it and you will get it for free. The update, it just shows up. The new lectures just pop up into your thing. Search Reddit. Here's what here's what you do. Don't even take my word for it. Search Reddit for Zukowski course or something, and

you'll see people in the comments. Search by comments. You'll people say, "I took this course and it's actually really good." I don't I don't comment on Reddit so that I don't uh look like I'm influencing people, but search on Reddit for my course and you'll see people go, "Yeah, his course is really good." So, don't take my word for it. Just do that. And then also, if you go down and click on it, you can see all the um testimonials from people. Um all right, that's it. Here's what's the thing is you've been watching this for an hour and a half. That's too long. Okay, you got games to make. No more YouTube. Don't watch any more of my videos. Don't subscribe to me. Don't do that. Read my blog about golden age. Focus and then work on your game for the rest of the afternoon, the day. Don't watch any more YouTube. It's not good for you. It's not good. I don't like YouTube. It's a distraction and it it reduces your concentration levels and you think that you can listen and work on your game at the same time. You cannot look up the studies. Studies have all proven that you cannot simultaneously have two channels going in it. It it decreases

every decision-making thing you can. So, just just if anything, put some white noise on and just work. I'm going to end with that. Thank you so much for showing up. I'll be around. I I have one more blog. I don't know if I can fit it in. Um I think I might be able to. No, I can't. I can't. I can't fit in the next blog. I'll see you again on Monday. That's when my next blog will be coming out. All right. I love you all. I love you all.