Marketing reports and market data
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Documents
How To Market A Game34 min
How's Steam Next Fest June 2025?
Steam Next Fest functions as a critical discovery mechanism within the global PC gaming market, serving as a high-volume platform where approximately 2,500 titles compete for user attention.
- Steam Next Fest functions as an accelerator for existing momentum rather than an independent growth catalyst, with success heavily dependent on pre-existing wishlist counts.
- Approximately 2,500 titles compete for visibility during the event, necessitating a robust marketing strategy that includes early influencer outreach and prior showcase exposure.
- The platform's algorithm prioritizes titles that have already established a baseline of interest, making pre-festival visibility essential for trending chart placement.
How To Market A GameJun 2025
Thomas Brush87 min
Chris Zukowski: How To Make Your First Game Blow Up On Steam (With No Following) | Ep. #045
Steam’s algorithm functions primarily as a revenue-generation engine, prioritizing games that demonstrate immediate commercial viability through high conversion rates.
- Valve’s algorithm prioritizes raw revenue generated at launch over review counts or positivity percentages to determine front-page visibility.
- Steam uses a 'wait and see' approach during a game's launch window, monitoring conversion rates and technical stability before granting significant front-page exposure.
- Developers should aim for 100,000 to 150,000 wishlists to ensure a strong launch, though smaller developers can still succeed by focusing on high-quality demos and festival participation.
Thomas BrushJun 2025
PocketGamer.biz44 min
What Players Do Outside Your Game Will Grow Your ROAS
Modern mobile game marketing requires a fundamental shift from siloed user acquisition toward a holistic, cross-app behavioral strategy.
- Tailoring advertisements to specific app categories and player personas can increase user engagement by up to three times.
- Studios must shift from siloed user acquisition to a holistic, cross-app behavioral strategy that maps player activity across e-commerce, fintech, and other gaming environments.
- Integrating acquisition and re-engagement campaigns into a continuous user journey is necessary to sustain lifetime value and improve overall profitability.
PocketGamer.bizJun 2025
Two & a Half Gamers45 min
MAU'25 Live Special: The Bold New Era of Rewarded Gaming & UA in 2025
The rewarded gaming landscape is undergoing a significant transformation as platforms transition from traditional Android-centric models to more complex, multi-platform ecosystems.
- Rewarded gaming strategy for 2025 is shifting from Android-centric models to iOS expansion, requiring a move away from last-touch attribution toward rigorous incrementality testing.
- Measurement frameworks now rely on a triangulation strategy that combines last-touch data with causal incrementality testing and self-reported user insights to validate growth.
- Successful geographic expansion, particularly in competitive markets like South Korea, now mandates deep culturalization through local staffing and region-specific reward structures.
Two & a Half GamersJun 2025
Thomas Brush12 min
What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About Making Their First Games
The pursuit of viral success and massive wishlist counts is often misunderstood by independent game developers.
- A game's long-term success depends on core design quality and organic factors like player retention and community engagement, as marketing can only provide an initial launch spark.
- Reaching 30,000 wishlists is a practical benchmark for many publishers, as this volume typically triggers Steam's 'New and Trending' algorithm to increase visibility.
- Accumulating wishlists beyond the 30,000 to 100,000 range yields diminishing returns for a game's overall performance.
Thomas BrushJun 2025
Two & a Half Gamers60 min
🔥 The Art of Scaling Applovin UA & Admon: A Deep dive
AppLovin’s Axon 2 algorithm represents a fundamental shift in user acquisition, moving away from manual optimization toward a sophisticated, data-driven black box model.
- AppLovin’s Axon 2 algorithm functions as a black box that requires stable data inputs; changing ROAS goals every 2–3 days prevents the system from calibrating, as it forces the algorithm to constantly re-target different user segments.
- For IAP-based games, D28 ROAS campaigns are recommended over shorter windows because they yield higher-quality, higher-retention users, even if initial D0 metrics appear significantly lower.
- Campaigns require a minimum of 10–14 days to calibrate on a specific ROAS goal before any adjustments should be made to the target.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2025
Tenjin7 min
Scaling 100+ Mobile Games: PSV Game Studio Shows How They Use Tenjin
PSV Game Studio, a Cyprus-based mobile gaming firm established in 2014, manages a portfolio of over 250 titles and provides publishing, marketing, and monetization services for 20 external gaming studios.
- PSV Game Studio manages a portfolio of over 250 titles and provides publishing services for 20 external studios, utilizing Tenjin as its centralized data infrastructure to scale operations.
- The studio tracks day-zero return on ad spend (ROAS) as its primary benchmark to evaluate the success of user acquisition campaigns across more than 100 active applications.
- Analytical strategies include granular performance breakdowns by channel, campaign, and geographic region to identify high-performing segments for scaling and underperforming assets for adjustment.
TenjinMay 2025
Thomas Brush94 min
Pontypants: Making Games Alone, Burnout, Coming Up With Viral Ideas & Finishing Games | Ep. #044
Successful indie game development requires a strategic balance between personal creative passion and rigorous market awareness.
- Game development success often relies on identifying unique movement or physics mechanics, such as the mouse-driven hammer physics in Bennett Foddy's games, which provide depth for exploration.
- The final 10% of game development is critical because it is the stage where the core identity of the project is often discovered, frequently during periods of high stress and emotional pressure.
- While strong mechanics like those in 'Balatro' can drive viral success, a focus on mood, story, and aesthetic properties—similar to 'Bioshock'—can effectively satisfy a niche audience of approximately 100,000 players.
Thomas BrushMay 2025
Deconstructor of Fun78 min
What Gaming Taught Them—And Why App Companies Are Hiring Them Fast with Mission One's Gerard Miles
The gaming industry is currently serving as a primary talent pipeline for the broader consumer application sector, including fitness, education, and AI-driven platforms.
- Consumer application sectors like fitness, education, and AI are aggressively recruiting gaming veterans to replace failing traditional performance marketing with high-retention engagement strategies.
- Gaming professionals are enabling non-gaming firms to pivot from rigid subscription models toward flexible, high-retention frameworks rooted in live operations and monetization expertise.
- Successful application development is shifting toward immersive, narrative-driven experiences built on technical frameworks like Unity, prioritizing long-term user value over short-term revenue extraction.
Deconstructor of FunMay 2025
Gamigion31 min
GOAT: Jani Torppa aka Fashion FRIDAY
The mobile gaming industry is currently navigating a critical transition, moving away from a period of stagnation toward a more dynamic and experimental future.
- The mobile gaming industry is shifting toward a decentralized model, with a positive growth outlook projected for 2025 driven by the integration of data-informed creativity.
- The Turkish market is emerging as a high-potential ecosystem for mobile gaming due to favorable government incentives, lower operational costs, and a high volume of agile startups.
- Finland’s gaming sector is currently undergoing a structural renewal, moving away from rigid legacy operational models to regain its competitive edge in innovation.
GamigionMay 2025
Thomas Brush117 min
Six Figure Game Idea Workshop - Day #1
Achieving six-figure revenue in the independent game industry requires a strategic shift from creative experimentation to a disciplined, market-validated development model.
- A successful game concept relies on a 'hook' that differentiates it from oversaturated genres, such as realistic story-driven horror or standard top-down action-adventure games.
- The 'Big Butt' method involves creating a unique pitch by combining a familiar genre with an unexpected twist, such as 'Bioshock but with Willy Wonka' or 'a dungeon crawler but with rhythm.'
- A game's value is derived 99% from the strength of its core idea and only 1% from the actual production, emphasizing that a compelling hook is more critical than mechanical innovation.
Thomas BrushMay 2025
Two & a Half Gamers48 min
⚠️ The Industry’s Dirty Little Secrets: Confessions from the UA Underground
The mobile gaming industry is currently characterized by a systemic reliance on unsustainable user acquisition strategies that prioritize short-term valuation over long-term profitability.
- Chinese game studios are outperforming Western competitors by utilizing massive creative teams, with some companies employing over 300 people specifically to iterate on ad assets and lower acquisition costs.
- Mobile user acquisition (UA) has become increasingly simplified since 2020, shifting the primary focus for many managers toward creative testing and bidding rather than deep algorithmic understanding.
- Internal UA reporting is frequently subject to 'window dressing,' where managers manipulate data or highlight specific metrics to secure bonuses and satisfy management, often misleading founders who lack a deep understanding of UA mechanics.
Two & a Half GamersMay 2025