October 2023 - Steam Next Fest Live Stream

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all right um I don't know who's here I have no idea if this is going to work um so uh um here we go uh I don't know if people are actually watching this I'm starting this out um so what we're gonna do is we're just gonna kind of hang out here I'm gonna just look at steam nextfest nextfest is a weird uh thing that happens every uh three four months hey folks coming on in welcome welcome to this weird stream that I'm doing I don't know if this is going to work I just had like I woke up at like 3:00 a.m. this morning and I was like you know I should

do this and you know it's a special time it's kind of a holiday here for um for video games steam nextfest day so I just thought I would do it my name is Chris if you don't know um I I I don't know I just thought I'd do this thing so steam nextfest started yesterday and it's always kind of weird at the beginning because stuff's changing so I thought I would just look at it and go through it with all of you and just kind of look at stuff now here I am I'm browsing it um let's see what's going on uh hello chat hey chat video is solid thank you so much um yeah would love a tad higher volume I'll see what I can do I am like maxed out on volume as far as as locally let me see what I can do I'll see what I can do volume wise yeah I'm I'm here for you all um Let me let me change it real fast again this is an experiment I don't know if this is I'm like maxed out on the volume uh let me try one more thing

I can crank the master sorry about that I had to go low had to get low to do that um I think this is good better I hope so I'm just G to move along so I'm not here just to do mic checks with you all I'm here to show you what I'm looking at from Steam nextfest so if you're in nextfest hope it's going well um if you're not I'm in incognito mode just to preface so uh sometimes steam will show you your preferences based on what's going on uh you know uh what you've wish listed what you've played a lot I'm going in uh with Anonymous account just so that I don't get any of these recommendations and affect it so um what I'm looking for right now the big question I had going to this next Fest was what is going on with these trending and daily active demo um widgets because um before in June the last one it took you 20,000 wish lists to show up

on this list and basically what our theory is is that steam looks at maybe the two weeks prior or or um one week prior and they did see how many wish lists you got and then they ranked everybody based on how many wish lists they got the previous one or two weeks I don't know why one or two weeks I suspect two weeks because they said the Press preview starts two weeks so that makes me think that everybody is on Steam just like hey what's going on in two weeks let's just take a look at that that was just there like internal metric so that's just my theory with it um now what I'm trying to do is to see like how many so these are the top games right now see this is new trending upcoming that means all these games were ranked High I don't know what that window is if they checked it so I'm kind of curious to see what happens here now I looked at the trending for these and a lot of stuff um I looked just using steamdb which is a tool you can use let me see if I can do this steam DB let's look up steamdb and I'm going to look up some of the these games

just to see what their two we prior was okay so let's look up I'm going to look up not the top one I'm going to look at the bottom dungeons 4 okay dungeons 4 let's just see what their previous kind of like two week increase was so what I'm do is steamdb if you don't know it's a really helpful tool it attracts followers and followers and wish list are very closely related and so there it is dungeons 4 and we're going to look at the charts and I'm just going to look the two weeks previous which is basically like what September um 26 is what it is so I go down here to wish list chart and see how right here looks like all of a sudden boom started taking off they knew whoever was here the marketing team kind of knew something was up two weeks prior and so they started doing stuff or started doing it so you have right here almost two weeks prior to the day 27 so they had what 8595 I'm going to you're going to watch me do really crappy so 8595 and then

we're going to do it just before 85 95 let's just round it up let's say n that to me that means a difference of 1,000 followers right in two weeks prior now two weeks a th follower increase means about 10,000 wish list so to me that says 10,000 wish list in the two weeks prior get you the minimum spot right here minimum spot is like 10,000 wish list which I actually see as kind of a hopeful thing if my math is correct and again we're estimating sometimes they're different um previously it was like 20,000 to get up here and the reason we think it was that was well we we did the same thing like just estimating follower counts and I also looked I knew a couple developers who had actual games on here and I just asked them like how many wish list two weeks prior and they told me what that means um is is that it's less competitive in October than it was in June because June we had steam nextfest coming right after E3 style events I

know there was no E3 but there was the games Awards the Jeff key uh what is he called steam or he calls them the Summerfest or something there were a couple other big festivals and so people were coming in after those festivals and they were really hot from the festivals and that's what the ranking was so it seems like so far in our limited data June is a lot harder of a nextfest than this October one okay so that's kind of what we're looking at now one thing I also like to look at when I look at these things okay are trending um what kind of games are trending because we can see how many wish list and I like to see genres what genres are picking up so look at this one survival Base building action RPG that's like the that is like classic steam right I mean you got you've got uh survival Base building and a little bit of RPG mix in classic steam this is what steam likes driftmas I'm always um I'm always amazed uh um racing games kind of do well on Steam um

there's not there's always like One racing game at any one time but they actually do okay so Japanese drift master um good a racing game up there we got a battle uh Deep Rock Galactic spin-off as a survival game Survivor uh survivorship I uh a Survivor like a vampire survivors like still hot guys still hot you could still do well with these now I know this is coming in with a brand and the quality here is very high but Survivor likes people still like Survivor legs RoboCop which is a brand IP so I kind of negate that but it's firstperson shooter then we have this um the th th I guess uh goes to show you names don't matter that much if you can't pronounce it doesn't matter turn-based story Rich RPG isometric um I can't tell by the hover tool tip but it looks like it might be kind of like um I don't know like an RPG Dr down type of crpg style

last train home looks like uh RTS RTS strategy game RTS is I always see is kind of soft RTS but this looks really good I don't know what the story is we could dive deep into that pioneers of pagonia um online Co-op multiplayer base Builder base Builder Co-op very thing very classic steam what they like last Faith Metroid Vania this one I picked out I thought I was looking at this earlier 2D platformer the only kind of 2D platformer that really takes off is maybe an r as a multi Metroid Vania I should say sorry Tongue Tied here Metroid vanas very hard to do uh you've got to be top top-notch quality to do well with a platformer and it has to be basically a Metroid Venia folks Platformers just making this up they're really hard to do so then we got a puzzle mm MMO RPG cozy Adventure this is an interesting one I don't know too much

we'll dig into this one maybe I'll put that on this on the list I'll put the sky one sky Children of the light um we'll take a it looks very jouri esque very Journey um and then we've got ghost Runners which is um a first person FPS type of game and Quantum knights we got third person shooter another shooter type of game is it multiplayer let's see what is it hacken slash action RPG very action type of thing and then we got another RTS City Builder I can't tell sometimes people just throw an RTS in there but city builders RTS so I think I counted really off the top of my head we like three or four city builders two two of them RTS now I know they overlap we got one platformer but it's a Metroid Vania we have one puzzle game we have one um two RPGs I think three RPGs but two of them are action one just straight up turn base like top down you know crpg Classics and a bunch of Shooters um the this one and then one um vampire

Survivor likes that's what I always like to see like what are the genres trending um let's start with the puzzle game because I'm always like puzzle games on Steam what are you crazy what are you crazy uh puzzle games just I'm sorry folks puzzle games don't really do that much so let's check it out see what they're doing here um oh it's from that game company there you go that's why it's that game company I told you it was Journey like um it's that game company that's how they're able to so basically if you want to get a puzzle game to do well on Steam you got to be that game company that game company uh so of course it's the most beautiful it's MMO RPG oh my goodness folks this is what it takes to get a puzzle game to the front page of steam you basically have to be that game company and it has to be an MMO RPG probably millions of dollars in the bank doing this stuff it this is hot like the most beautiful Graphics This Is What It Takes look at that that looks like finding Nemo you're like going

through an aquarium full of fish little popsicle monsters look at those little little fices oh that look delicious um uh that's basically what it takes to do well so folks I'm not just making this up it's hard to do puzzle games and Platformers we'll look at the Platformers okay let's take a look ah okay so I'm going to just do some tips stff we'll do steam page deconstruction here I love to look at steam Pages for these great things look at this this is what um in art school when you have the edge of the paper is all ripped and torn it's called a deckled edge they kind of I love it when people do these gifts with a deckled edge it just looks so cool it just makes it look like you know what you're doing this is what I mean a high quality steam page really looks good great art okay so come down here uh to do to show the level progression like what do you do in this game uh they've got this little arrow thing so it's like step one step two step three let's see if I can detect I'm just GNA I know I'm I can't talk and think at the same time so let me just think okay as you take

room make sure here and appreciate the Splendor of the Wilderness around you and keep watch of the spirits of your ancestors so this is you they show you a step by step here of how to appreciate your ancestors so step one just look at your ancestors until they glow and then they explode and then your ancestor becomes aoral being so that I'm really helpful of how to appreciate your ancestors here great Steam page thank you for doing that um and then again another way if you want to just make your steam Page look awesome put these like graphic design elements see how they just did this border they didn't have to put a border look at this border up here these little runes some runes down here that just automatically makes your game look like it's worth $100,000 more in budget so just hire somebody to do these little graphic design elements and put them in there I love it when they do this this just makes your game look expensive nobody goes and thinks ah need to add these but when you have a

lot of big art team with lots of time on their hands they can just make cute stuff like this I love this um so let's see here um I'm just trying to figure out what's going on here what I'm trying to do is what about this as well now we have to we have to caveat this because this is the that game company they have such a legacy so much support are they getting published are they self-publishing this I me like no they're doing it themselves but they're probably getting some big funding and stuff they've got stuff that's going on um um and so I just kind of look to see what they do now look three I love to see what they're doing as far as like telling you what the gameplay is you can swim you can fly you can kind of Glide it looks like maybe you're oh you're like sand surfing type of thing I just love to see the actions and then then they're kind of telling you with UI look at that UI right there they're telling you okay here you can hold hands there's a UI hand holding button right there boom hold hands cute cute cute okay and then you can bow to a candle which is great um if you want to see oh Bow to that candle with a heart

heart candle that's cute um I don't even know what what's going on there let's see what it is uh he's fully collaborating play engage with other players through Charming beautifully animated Expressions that's how you that's how you talk to other people that was a big thing with journey the non-verbal communication you can't like just text chat or anything um Dan Dean Cook from um from uh spry Fox he always had a joke the only way to make humans be nice to each other is to absolutely um censor them to hell so they can't even communicate they have to communicate with gestures that's the only way to keep toxic people away you you basically have to censor everybody I love that guy okay um and then just just bubbles of people like I think this shows variety all these little bubbles of all these people just shows that variety this is all stuff that you can steal just like making it like this just I think it automatically there's two things if you could learn from this if you want to make your art look like it's a better art team add these cool borders to your gifts and then just go in and add these little

Rooney fili type of things just add those things in there automatically your game looks more expensive uh but let's just look at the short description here CH light peaceful award-winning MMO designed to help players meaningfully collect with each other you are a child of the light with a magical cape great gameplay magical cape there is your unique selling proposition set on on a wide world to fun others like yourself and welcome in this cozy open World adventure above the clouds um I mean basically they can say we're the game company um that's that's how they do it so one thing that I always say with puzzle games is I'm just going to let this roll um is you've got to show like what is your what is the action that you're taking why is this puzzle game a puzzle game like what is the um kind of action that you take in the puzzle like what is the core puzzle and it looks like I'm just kind of looking through this um it's coming to PC see I guess this maybe have came through

um regarding about copying their visual style I'm not saying copy their visual style I'm just saying copy their graphic design element like edging Edge that uh you know cut the GIF out you know that kind of stuff um you know add those little things there I'm not saying copy copy but they're kind of copying themselves one and this is not this is a genre like not games don't have to be so unique this also kind of looks like the first tree or is it the last tree the first tree I mean all this stuff is is very there and and look okay the other thing I always like to say is if you don't know how to do text Graphics what you do is you just put white text white text on the background people always like people who don't have a graphics design degree they always go crazy they add all these fonts and they like add all this um like gradients on there the true artists the true graphic designers they just make it white that's what they do so um it's hard you basically have to

I saw they had a quote from the Los Angeles Times basically to get a a a puzzle game to do well you just got to basically do everything you can uh you have to be like one of the most famous indie game companies um the other one I want to look at um let's see I I do have a hard stop at the half an hour so about 10 minutes left I do want to kind of go into um let's look at an RTS I I see people because a lot of people ask me like oh I'm making an RTS and I feel like RTS is should work on Steam they're strategic they're endlessly replayable they're deep they're all this stuff but in my experience and looking at the data rtss kind of have a softer Landing my thought is rtss are very difficult especially for streamers like to play an RTS well you need like 110% of your attention dedicated to it you got to get your APM super high you got to do all this stuff to to be able to play whereas a turn-based game you can pause step off step off the controls talk to the

audience and then go back in and so there's just less of a cognitive load and so streamers like to play them better non RTS games um but it's good to see a couple RTS I like rtss one of my favorite games of all time is StarCraft 2 I played so much of that game but rtss just don't seem to do as well so I want to look at one of these rtss because I think it's kind of funny that we got two rtss in here um so uh last train home it's the last train to toille you know that like monkey song um I don't know if it's the last train home um but I I just I love the monkeys I don't know if this is a monkeys themed um you know video game maybe it's a The Cinematic Universe of the monkeys I don't know um look it up kids um let's take it up uh oh THQ so one interesting thing is THQ triple doublea games getting into the uh steam nextfest trained for a long time the AAA folks double A folks never did NEX Fest they were like what is that that's for peon now they're coming into it and so I

always think it's interesting to see this stuff now I don't like to look at their trailers for AAA because they always do the stuff that is is that real time is that yeah did they actually recreate do not follow what doublea and AA do they they actually got like a crew out here to recreate like fighting is it World War I or two uh I think it's two uh fighting and like don't do that don't do that this is like totally is that Brian cranon I don't know um but uh let's just take a look at what they say like I I really don't think double and triaa do good steam Pages I'm just curious what type of game this is Great War is Over the Fight Continues command a legion of soldiers desperately trying to make their way home am missst the chaos of the Civil War oh maybe it's a white versus red Russian thing lead through the unforgiving Wilderness on board an armored train manager crew in worses as they try to survive could be I see this this this kind of I'm getting kind of du jaago vibes from this um uh

so we'll kind of look through look at this always cross promoting good job way to have this Jagged Alliance 3 Cross promo um this looks World War II they said the Great War which is one right anywhere um more torn Wasteland your go they're very uh oh through CCH Czech soldiers back home aboard the armored train pae they kind of cage you with the countries and stuff where between Russia's red and white I called it called it Dr shivago vibes called it um I wonder if there's a lot of zither going on in this in this game you know uh watch watch Dr shivago it's not as bad it's like four hours long but it's it's worth it watch that Dr shago um let's see half an hour um I'm kind of getting some David lean Vibes here um but yeah I mean okay so so what I'm going off of here is um it's it's a double AAA company that's how they're able to get so High um it does um so very well known it's very hard for Indies to do RTS let me go back one and

see if that let me look at that other RTS it's just such a a high level that they can do here so let's let's take a look let me if I can find that other RTS that we saw I'm just trying to look for games that stand out action RPG Base building was there only one RTS I thought there was another one here um if not last train home um yeah I think there was only one RTS is that it sorry oh here it is dungeons four well it's the fourth one this is why making sequels is good who else made this one who who's this one uh Calypso media okay yeah it's an RTS absolutely download the absolute evil and trusted cough servant oh they put the the cough in there uh return to dungeons 4 I mean this is the fourth one again I kind of feel like to get get here you have to have such a legacy look here's one thing I want to check here's what I'm going to check let's look up dungeons 3 and see

how they're cross promoting and see how dungeons 3 I'm actually not familiar with the dungeons um um games are doing I've never really followed these so they are full price um I mean they're a big publisher let's see what they're doing cross promote see they got dungeons 4 here this game seems to be big so they're cross promoting to get to their main game they're doing a lot of stuff um to get people on their steam page they probably ran a huge campaign to get up on the trending um yeah they they're they're they're uh strategy look they got Tropico dungeons Railway they're they're known for their RTS and strategy games this is why some Publishers are really good because if they've got an audience that knows them as a strategy game developer they can just draw that audience to whichever property they want to promote they knew dungeon 4 was coming up in their steam nextfest so they just drive all that traffic there this is one of those cases where a publisher really really helps is when you're in a specific vertical like strategy crafty build games which are

catnip for steam okay we've got only I'm going to only stick around for another minute I've got an obligation I got to go to but one thing that I want to do is um I want to look at this um platformer because Platformers are very hard to sell on Steam and I'm going to show you what why I think this platformer did well okay so we got playstack another um pretty big publisher I think um they they've got you know 1,200 followers they've they've got some stuff going on here they got axel a I never know how to I know it's AEL but it's like AEL um play Stack's doing great stuff with golden idol really really good stuff Mortal shell really some popular games that have done very well so they're they're publishing this one now look at the game it is very similar I'm getting definite definite Blasphemous Vibes pixel art but it is super Grim dark huge pixel art characters just it just Next Level look at how good this looks very very dark very Grim dark um

great screenshot here if you're making a Metroid Vania this is a required screenshot I don't care you have to have the screenshot which is the map screen it's just a requirement oh I love this this is selling it too you've got to show some like complicated like leftand right hand hand like chart tree UI that's crazy I love this is a great screenshot it says this game is deep and look there's all these attributes all this stuff this is so classic so good uh look just Rich pixel art ah look at that power up that is awesome I don't even know what's going on there but I like it lots of monsters this is what it takes to do well with a platformer you have to have top tier gra like super duper good graphics and they have to be the darkest grimmest thing you've ever seen this is just this is why this is doing so well um this is what it takes to get there um great screenshots showing the animation a look at all that animation showing how rich how much art they have this is is basically this steam page is basically

showing how much art this game has every screenshot looks different every background's different so many visual effects so much great animation so many different type of monsters just amazing looking um a dark Gothic Fusion of Metroid Vania and souls likee classic everybody says that uh the last phase thrives on merciless and precise combat with a range of weapons firearms in custom executions at your disposal nothing stand anywhere um they're basically just saying Souls like plus this and then their Graphics I think are really doing the heavy lifting I really think that's that's what they're doing um let's see if the developer got their name attached ah this kills me always link to your developer page everybody right now on this call right now I'm leaving right now I'm G to end the stream right now go to your steam page click your name does it go to this page or does it go to a nice look how play stack this is one thing I would yell at your publisher if they did this to me I mean they're G they're taking 30 50% and they didn't set up your developer thing it should go to this this is called this is playx developer page but it's got the

follower count this is so that people can follow you it's got this nice interface this really great background all this stuff this is what you need to do everybody on this call don't forget to do that okay I'm GNA end the stream here I'm gonna be back I'm going to do it every morning I'm going to do a little stream I might play some games I'm G to play some demos I'm G to look at demos but this is just what I'm looking at for the front page of steam nextest I just thought this was kind of fun so I just decided to do this but I'm going to go live every morning this steam next Fest I'm just trying this I'm going to see uh subscribe to my channel click the Subscribe button I'm almost to a thousand Something Magic happens when I turn a thousand followers so try it I'm gonna I'm gonna do it so uh we're going to do a stream every day this week this time I just decided to do that call on it right now all right everybody have a good call uh this is recorded see you later have a good next vest