PREVIEW: Wishlist And Visibility Masterclass 2.0

foreign so welcome to this preview of the steam wishlist invisibility master class uh before we go into this I kind of want to show you why why is this class what am I talking about how does steam actually work and this is an important thing this is a good question to ask so steam is pretty easy to get a game up you pay a hundred bucks you upload a build and you can put your game up on sale there are so many people that are wanting to do this to live the Indie dream that steam cannot contain all this visibility like there's just there's just too many games and so what steam has to do is they have to filter out some games now in the past they used to just curate like you would apply with your game and some I don't know people in an office would just Gathering like yes that game know that game yes that game too many games they can't do it and they

can't determine what games are good or what's going to sell like vampire survivors if I had looked at that game I'd have said what is this game next move this game out but that game did amazing it's great it's a great looking game once you understand what's going on but before that it's kind of crappy I don't know no offense to vampire spiders I love that game but the whole point of this is the filter and that is essentially what the steam algorithm is it is filter upon filter to kind of figure out which game is worth promoting which ones should we put on the front page and which one should we bury that aren't worth it now there are two kind of phases as to where the filter lives and the first is before your game is on sale now I tell everybody get your steam page up nice and early you need a long marketing period and that marketing period before you go on sale is to gather wishlist we all know that but the thing that a lot of people don't know and what I'm going to teach you in this class is that there's filtering going on here the

steam algorithm looks for signs that your game might be the next vampire survivors instead of just some asset flip that they have to bury and so they're always looking out for signs that you are the next hot thing and the way they look for that is this like external traffic that comes in from places like streamers Tick Tock Twitter Reddit all these various places they're on the lookout for that and if you bring that visibility in they start to think your game's hot and they move you up the visibility ranks look at this chart right here this chart here shows hundreds of games that I surveyed to ask hey what is your seven day impression rate and you'll notice each bar is a different game on the left are games that get hundreds of thousands even millions of Impressions every seven days and you'll notice there's a big group of them and then they kind of tailor off all the way down to the bottom

and that is the filter in action you can literally see the filter here those games in that kind of top third get all the Impressions valve through various means in the algorithm have said these games are hot these games are encouraged we are going to put them everywhere they throw them in every widget they can find we want to show this game everywhere there's kind of this middle tier and those games do all rights they get a lot of Impressions that hey I would want to be any one of these games and then there's everybody else these are games that maybe they haven't done it yet maybe they never will but these games have not proven to the steam algorithm that they are hot that they're actually worth promoting now some of these games need to be activated they need to be turned on they need to be like shocked to the system so that valve will pay attention to them they're kind of in a primordial state this class is all about teaching you how to shock the algorithm so that steam

will promote your game and you'll become more of the games on the left side of this chart and less of the games on the right side of the chart because once you become one of those games that gets all the Impressions your wishlist rate Rises like crazy see the thing is steam is going to be the source of most of your visibility it doesn't come from your tweets or your tick tocks or whatever I mean those help but it's really the steam platform and that's what this class is all about we're using techniques like Twitter and Tick Tock those are so valuable to influence the algorithm so the algorithm thinks you're worth promoting and then going off and promoting your game through these kind of Impressions and all the widgets that is how Steam Works now once your game goes on sale all this stuff is just get with us when you go on sale the reason we collect all those wishlists is because those wish lists hopefully will convert to sales in Steam at this point stops caring about you

know as much as The Impressions and the visibility they now have a very important number which is dollars earned you see the reason some games get so much visibility is because they make Steam money and what steam really looks for is in a short period of Time how much money do you make us because remember steam gets a 30 cut of everything you make so if you make a lot of money steam makes a lot of money and some games make a lot of money some games don't and what steam is looking for and this is through experience of my own marketing examples when I work for clients and stuff if your game earns somewhere around 250 000 within you know first few months first six months first year your game is kind of in what I call real Steam and valve have for whatever reason they've kind of considered that amount as worthy of their time in games that aren't over that start to end up in additional widgets all over Steam and we'll go over this in the whole Master

Class but what we really want to do is get you set up get you primed so that your game is likely or at least possible to earn that 250 000 to get you into real steam because after valve realized that you can make them money they'll promote you everywhere games that have no chance of getting that 250 like no matter what happens no matter what you try you're just never gonna reset 215. valve eventually buries that game it just doesn't show you and that's why you see a lot of games they kind of stall out right around the 150 reviews 300 reviews some are about there even though they have totally positive reviews for whatever reason that game just wasn't beautiful enough it wasn't exciting enough whatever happened I don't know what it didn't convert enough that was like hey thanks for trying you're just not our type of game and they basically smother that game algorithmically it sucks and I hate it I hate to see that having a great games

that's what I want to teach you all right when you look at this chart of all the different you know games get all these Impressions you might assume oh well those are AAA games that is not true I have seen very normal teams small teams teams of like two three even one person teams do this this is possible I've talked to these people I know them they are nice people they are normal people they're not like some Super Genius you can do this it is possible and when we go through this course and I teach you all this stuff I'm going to show you real examples from real developers that I've worked with really looking at their numbers to see what they literally did too many times too many GDC talks I see a lot of hand waving and you know just general advice it doesn't really apply to you I'm going to show you the real advice the real actions that these developers took to actually influence that algorithm get the algorithm to wake

them up pay attention to their game and start promoting their game I'm going to show you how they did it now I will be honest there is no guarantee here I'd love to do it if I if I could guarantee this and say you will get a million dollars when you take my course I can't I literally can't because it comes down to your game the game is what sells all I'm doing is just amplifying your game this whole marketing strategy is just how to amplify your game and get it seen by as many people as possible if the game isn't exciting to people the graphics aren't kind of like tickling their brains however want the genre is not right the gameplay is kind of hard to play that's that's just the way it is I can't brainwash people into liking your game so I can't guarantee success but what I can do is teach you everything I know about how Steam Works why some games do well some games don't and hopefully you've figured out but I can't guarantee anything this is an art more than a

science and sometimes games just have something about them that ex just makes people's brains explode and want to buy your game it's just it's magic when it happens but what I want to teach you is why this happens how this works what you have to do to make it happen and then hopefully you will know enough to make it happen for your game so the way I teach this class is with real world examples this isn't stuff that I just think should happen or the way I'd like it to happen it is how it really happens so I show you charts like these examples from real games that have had real success I show you actual data actual tweets actual tick tocks all the stuff that actually worked I will show you and walk you through why it worked and why it didn't I also go through the actual algorithms that support it you're going to learn how Steam Works the Clockwork engine

that's powering all this so that you can understand like oh this is why I'm doing this action because the algorithm's looking for this I go through in depth how it all works you are going to learn a lot about steam you're going to learn the nuts and bolts you're going to learn what popular developers do you're going to learn the tricks of the trade that real developers use in Publishers I have worked for publishers I I know what they're gonna do so it's almost like you're getting a little publisher in a box with me no no guarantee again but you're gonna know what the industry leading standards are for improving your algorithm the chances this is this is Cutting Edge I update this every year you're looking at 2.0 for this time so this is the stuff that's we're going to take out stuff that doesn't work I had stuff that does we're going to go through all of that to help your game get the best chance that it can and hopefully you know really start the wish list flowing so that you get to the front of the algorithm get

your game seen and then people enjoy your game I think you're going to have a good time good luck out there foreign [Music]