What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About Making Their First Games

Look, you don't need a viral game to be successful. I can't tell you how many times I've heard developers or honestly even my own insecurities tell me that I need hundreds of thousands of wish lists to have a successful launch on Steam. The truth is, you don't need 100,000 wish lists. You don't even need 50,000 wish lists. And by the way, wish lists are very, very important, and we'll talk all about it in this video. But you don't need as many as you think. Chris Sakowski, the go-to expert for game devs, dreaming of hitting the Steamfront page, talked at length about this with me. He really challenged my preconceived notions for my own project about going viral and getting hundreds of thousands of wish lists. I was insanely encouraged because, well, the truth is, you don't need to be nearly as viral as you think on Steam. You need a good game, obviously, and you need to aim for a pretty conservative amount of wish lists when you launch. We'll talk about that exact number in this video. Let's jump in. You may also be wondering how to turn that $100,000 or million-doll game

idea into actual money. And some of you might want to do it before you even finish your game. For that, I have a gift below for you. It's totally free. It's a workshop that shows you how to turn small game ideas into actual money. I'll say this. I was talking to Gavin, uh, creator of Choo Choo Charles, and he and I sort of agreed like 100,000 was a good goal for us as developers. This is going to sound really proud, and I promise I'm not trying to, but this is our this is my third game, and also Gavin has really high standards. Obviously, he's made a he made Choo Charles and he's just got high standards. That's the number that I always aim for lately is 100,000 to 150,000. But I want to hear your thought process on like for is that true for most devs? Should they aim for that or should they aim for something lower? Not because their game sucks, but because like practically 30,000 will be just fine. Yeah, 30,000 will be just fine for most games. Cuz here's what happens. There's only so much promotion Steam can do. Yes. The wish list conversion. And this is why people spend

too much thinking about conversion. What if I have 10% and this or that. So the way Steam works is they're like they just give you enough and then they see if it does well. Like and one of the big things and you look everybody look if you launched a game look back at your previous game now Thomas your last couple games were many many like a decade ago or something. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's more now if you look at the twoe period when you actually make your game for sale 50% of your traffic will come from this thing called the discovery queue. Mhm. And discovery queue is Thunderdome. It's where they just drop your game in in a they show your game randomly to people and if people click buy or wish list, I don't know what the metrics are, what they're looking at. It's some machine learning algorithm, but if enough people do the right thing, Valve will keep showing you more and more. That's a big driver. And it has nothing to do with wish list. I mean, you get in there faster when you have more wish list and all this. And that's why it doesn't matter once you get to about 30 to 100,000. You're it's diminishing

returns. like you've made enough and at this point Valve's like they push you as hard as you can. As soon as you get that popup, there really isn't more that Valve can do. Like you have been in all the top spots. It's it's like you've got first ply prize, you're sitting on the top of the podium. It's not like there's a ladder with another podium on top of that or something. You're maxed out and then it's just between you and God whether you're going to do well because then it's like Val's like, "We've we've given you everything. We've shown you everywhere. There's no more places to go. Yeah. And then at that point, it's like, does your game have legs? Do people keep playing it? Do they keep recommending it? It's it's then out into into the public. It's like, do people recommend it? Do streamers keep playing it? Do they keep replaying it? And that's why it doesn't matter that much between 30,000 and 100,000. Yes, the difference between a 30,000 wish list game and a 100,000 wish list game is um that popup, but it's not that much better. Okay, Valve will not give

you a popup for 30,000 wish lists. They just won't. It's so discouraging. It's so discouraging because at the end of the day, it at the end of the day, it's like you just got to make a good game, you know? That's what it's hard. You're like, how do I market my game? It's like, okay, well, don't make a bad one. That's the first thing. And just don't everybody watching this. Yeah. If you were thinking of making a bad game, click the thing in Unity that says bad game. Unclick that. There's a check box in Unity. I don't know if you guys saw it. It's like on this third tab that says good game or bad game. Uncheck bad game. Just uncheck it. Okay. It's a little secret. They don't tell you this stuff. You have to pay me a lot of consulting dollars before I tell you about it. There's a little check box. Clickclick bad game. Don't Some people might say, uh, that's actually just Unity. There is no unchecked bad game. It's only Unreal is the good game and then Unity is bad game. That's what a lot of people are saying these days. But I don't, you know, it's kind of like a I was thinking about a metaphor to try and

fully understand what you're saying about why why wish lists have this diminishing returns. Is it something like um like a big lighter versus a small lighter trying to like light a campfire? It's like what matters is like how you set up the campfire and the kindling. You need that lighter, which is some wish lists, right? And a and a good marketing plan, but you could have the world's biggest lighter with a ton of fuel in it. If you have crappy kindling it and it's wet, you're just not you're going to keep trying to light it and you might get it to light every once in a while and make some money, but that's it. Is that a good metaphor? That that is an excellent metaphor. I've not heard of that metaphor, but it is excellent. Yeah. your wish list count is the difference between once you get 30,000 it's like a big lighter like it's good it gets the job done you've got that 100,000 which is like one of those butane torches you know you like click it and it's a torch like it's going to light the fuse it will light the fuse but is up to that pile of kindling which

is your game that's not marketing that is your game that pile of wood and the kindling and whether you structured it right so that you got the little fibers that light the bigger logs that light the bigger logs it's all down to that that initial spark arc. You know, if you have under 10,000, you're just like rubbing your hands together to try and start the fire. It's basically not going to happen. Just to fully clarify the importance of the beak lighter. Is it really worth a developer's time to go through your material, go through my material, and learn how to market their game prior to launch? Is it that important? Yeah, it is because so Steam has been built to smother AI slop games. my first game, all that stuff. And the way Valve has done those is they know like, oh well, if it's my first game, if I'm doing this as a school project, I don't know how to market. So Valve raises the minimum step to start marketing at a certain level. And that's just to filter out the slop. Okay? And the very very minimum is 10,000 wishes,

7,000, 10,000. I've even seen 5,000. that kind of range is that's what it minimum takes to get into uh popular upcoming and then to get there is that popular upcoming takes about 5 to 7,000. You'll know if you have it if you go to Steam DB and you have something called a wish list rank on Steam DB. That just means if you're in that if you got what's called a wish list rank. It just says number whatever out of whatever doesn't matter how big it is. You're going to probably get on popular upcoming. It depends on how many games you're launching with really a minimum bar. And that's to Valve just does that so that you rise above the AI slop my first game hobbyists. Okay. So what am I looking for here on Steam DB? And I I'll put Go look at your game and then scroll down to there's one called charts and then you scroll down there'll be this little box and it says how many followers you have and then right next right under followers it says number blank in games. You've I know you have it for your game. Yep. That's it. Yep. Okay. So it's not here it's right here. Yeah. See where it says number four.

What is it? 12. Yeah. Um that means you've got it. You're you're going to prepare in popular upcoming. Now, that's obvious for you, but um if you don't have if you're checking at home, everybody at home, and it just says follower account, but there's no number of that, right? You're not there yet. You got to work a little bit harder. So, you do have to get that minimum playing field. And we can debate whether that's right or not, but that's Valve's minimum way of keeping the AI slop at bay. Okay. Now, the 30,000. See, after this, you want to get to new and trending because you do popular, upcoming, and then once you launch, if you sell, and I don't know the number, and again, it depends on how many other games are launching next to you. But in general, I've seen games that get they sell about $8,000 worth of their game within the first 24 48 hours if you sell 8,000ish. I It's not specific. None of this stuff on Steam is specific. It's like kind of based on the other games compared. You get into this new thing called new and trending. That's the next thing. And that is tricky to get $8,000 worth in a

short period of time. So, you need that buffer space. You need a bunch of people who are going to buy it on day one. And that's what having more wish list does is it it gets you in there. And a lot of publishers say, "Oh, we want 30,000 wish list." That's kind of the publisher secret goal. I I've talked to a lot of publishers. There's no magic algorithm for that. It's just that at 30,000 whether your conversion rate is 1% which I've seen 5% 10% 15 20 anywhere in that range don't somebody at home do the calculations anywhere in that range you're probably going to get around $8,000 when you convert that many depending on your range because publishers know like oh games convert at different amounts. Okay. Right. And so the higher your wish list count going into it, the better chances you're going to show up in the new and trending and then you're in the new and trending and then you get a lot of visibility from that and then you're getting into other things at the same time. And so basically getting more wish list is more like an insurance policy. It's like the more wish list I have, the more likely even if I have a weaker conversion rate,

I'm still going to hit those kind of numbers to keep me on the right track. That's why you go wish lists. But after that, after new and trending, after your popup, it's kind of again, that's where I say it's like you did the best you can and then it's up to you and God. Like whatever whatever happens there from there on out, it's like does do streamers keep playing your game? Do people keep telling their friends? And again, that that 30,000 wishes thing is kind of like you're collecting more friends who could tell their friends and it starts the dominoes. Okay? And so that's why 30,000 is kind of that thing that number that a lot of publishers will say to you. There's nothing in the Steam algorithm says if you have 30,000 wishes this happens. It's just it's just more likely to have good stuff happen. It's probably it's probably just their experience with launching games. They probably just found that to be and that's that's that's the number I used to shoot for in my head though to be completely honest with everybody. My goal is to do a $2 million game. So that that might be why I'm aiming for a 100red to$200,000 wish list cuz like I want to shoot for the moon this time.

Um, whereas with my previous games, they they they supported my family. They they brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars and I launched with I think 25,000 with my with Neverong. Now, Neverong didn't blow up on Steam, but it did really well in Apple Arcade. So, that's not really a good comparison, but I can go to Pinstripe here. Pinstripe I launched with 7,000 wish lists, but again, probably a decade ago. You can get your plane. Yes. Yes. But that game did hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so, you know, I I think I think you're right. I think that I think people might over value wish list. You may also be wondering how to turn that $100,000 or million-doll game idea into actual money. And some of you might want to do it before you even finish your game. For that, I have a gift below for you. It's totally free. It's a workshop that shows you how to turn small game ideas into actual