Discord
Chat and voice platform that grew out of gaming communities. It publishes safety transparency reports, including a report on child protection under Brazil's ECA Digital law.
Documents
No published documents yet
Reports about Discord
414 documents by other writers name Discord in the title or summary.
AMA: Hopping and Skipping Your way into Last Place Q&A with Zaire Lanier
Securing a sustainable career in the game industry requires a strategic shift away from traditional cold applications toward the cultivation of a genuine, peer-based professional network.
- Professional advancement in the game industry is driven primarily by peer-based networking and referrals rather than traditional cold applications.
- Building a portfolio through game jams and small-scale projects like Twine games is the most effective way to demonstrate skills and gain community entry.
- Financial literacy is essential for career longevity, requiring freelancers to account for taxes, benefits, and overhead when setting rates.
Spellbreak's Hype Get, PlayStation Plus Collection, & More
This analysis explores evolving strategies for video game discoverability and platform engagement as of September 2020.
- Platform holders are shifting focus from individual unit sales to ecosystem retention, exemplified by Sony’s PlayStation Plus Collection for PS5 and Apple’s integration of Apple Arcade into the Apple One subscription bundle.
- Developers without established fan bases can gain market traction by prioritizing viral-friendly platforms like Reddit and Imgur alongside centralized community management via Discord.
- Successful game discoverability increasingly relies on creating distinct visual hooks optimized for short-form video content to capture audience attention.
Behind the Dizzying Ride to the Top for Among Us
The unexpected rise of the multiplayer party game Among Us serves as a case study in unconventional game discovery and long-term audience cultivation.
- The success of Among Us was driven by a viral surge in 2020, two years after its 2018 launch, proving that sustained development can lead to delayed global prominence.
- A Steam daily deal in early 2020 served as a critical inflection point, significantly boosting baseline sales and wishlist counts to provide the momentum necessary for mainstream adoption.
- The game’s initial growth was anchored in non-Western markets, specifically Brazil, Korea, and the Middle East, before expanding into North America and Europe.
Are the 'Store Wars' Really Upon Us?
The video game industry is currently undergoing a structural shift characterized by platform consolidation rather than a traditional price war over royalty rates.
- Major platforms are prioritizing vertical integration and the acquisition of internal studios over lowering the standard 30% revenue royalty rate.
- Platforms are leveraging first-party content to populate subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, reducing their reliance on expensive third-party exclusivity deals.
- Third-party developers should expect to maintain standard royalty rates while pursuing incremental revenue through bundles and subscription-based distribution models.
Example of a Great Email Signup Form: Wishlist Counts and Early Access
This analysis explores effective game marketing strategies, emphasizing the necessity of proactive outreach, community engagement, and data-driven list building.
- Successful game marketing requires proactive outreach to platform partners and gatekeepers to secure visibility, rather than relying solely on organic Steam store discovery.
- Publicly disclosed data from publisher Playway reveals high-performing titles like 'House Flipper' with 783,718 wishlists and 'Thief Simulator' with 417,335 wishlists.
- A benchmark analysis of Playway’s 'Builders of Egypt' shows a ratio of approximately 7.12 wishlists per Steam follower.
We Need to Take Wishlist Quality More Seriously
Steam wishlists should not be treated as a single, uniform number, argues Simon Carless in this August 2020 newsletter essay on game discoverability.
- Organic, high-intent wishlists convert at approximately 12%, whereas event-driven wishlists often convert at significantly lower rates of 4% to 5%.
- Relying on aggregate wishlist counts without accounting for the source of acquisition leads to inaccurate and inflated day-one sales projections.
- Event-driven wishlists from sources like Steam festivals or prologue demos frequently function as low-intent bookmarks rather than expressions of immediate purchase intent.
GDC Summer Live Podcast - Day 2
Predictable success in the independent game industry relies on a rigorous, data-driven approach to publishing and community management.
- Launch performance is best forecasted by prioritizing data-driven metrics, specifically Steam wishlists and platform-specific algorithm behavior.
- The Nintendo eShop ranking system favors unit volume over revenue, incentivizing developers to use aggressive discounting to achieve top-seller visibility.
- Discord communities are more effective than traditional mailing lists for driving the early reviews and wishlist counts required for successful game launches.
The 5 Types of People That You Are Not Marketing to but Should Be
The primary purpose of this analysis is to guide game developers beyond traditional marketing channels by identifying five key stakeholder groups that can significantly amplify a game's reach.
- Build direct relationships with platform holders like Steam, Xbox, and Nintendo, as they often use human curation for store features, newsletters, and social media promotion rather than relying solely on algorithms.
- Leverage game engine companies like Unity, Unreal, and GameMaker by documenting technical innovations in your game, as these companies actively seek to showcase high-quality titles to highlight their technology's capabilities.
- Partner with third-party hardware and software providers like SteelSeries or Intel, who often have dedicated departments to promote games that integrate their specific APIs or hardware features.
How Big Is Your Game's Discord?
This analysis explores the role of Discord as a community-building tool for video games and examines broader trends in game discoverability and platform marketing as of August 2020.
- Steam’s automated wishlist notification emails are a primary driver of sales, but developers must offer a discount of at least 20% to trigger these notifications.
- Discord serves as a vital hub for player retention, with effectiveness extending beyond official developer-run servers to include community-led and partner-affiliated hubs.
- While major titles like Minecraft, Valorant, Fortnite, and Roblox dominate Discord activity, indie games such as Terraria, Risk of Rain 2, Deep Rock Galactic, and TemTem maintain disproportionately high engagement levels.
Live Streaming Real Tears: The Last of Us Part II Tells Us Everything We Need
This analysis examines the shifting cultural and economic landscape of the global video game industry during mid-2020.
- The Epic Games Store reached 61 million monthly active users by mid-2020, positioning itself as a significant competitor to Steam, which reported 95 million active users in the previous year.
- Discord transitioned from a niche gaming tool to a mainstream social and educational platform, resulting in a $3.5 billion valuation.
- The video game industry is experiencing a shift toward becoming a deeply political and social medium, evidenced by the polarized audience reception and 'review bombing' of narrative-driven titles like The Last of Us Part II.
GDC Plays Command & Conquer Remastered Collection with Jim Vessella
The Command & Conquer Remastered Collection represents a strategic effort to revitalize a foundational real-time strategy franchise by balancing authentic 1990s gameplay with contemporary technical standards.
- EA partnered with Petroglyph Games and Lemon Sky Studios to develop the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, leveraging the latter's prior experience in remastering legacy titles.
- Development began in November 2018 with a community-first approach, utilizing feedback from a community council to guide creative decisions before pre-production even started.
- Lemon Sky Studios re-conceptualized every game asset by referencing original hand-drawn sketches, manuals, and cinematics to create high-definition 3D models that were then exported as 2D sprites to maintain the original aesthetic.
How to Stress-Test Your Marketing
Marketing a video game requires a proactive approach to performance measurement, specifically through the implementation of a stress test.
- Stress-test your marketing channels months before launch by sending an identical call-to-action (CTA) across all platforms simultaneously to measure actual click-through intent rather than passive engagement like likes or retweets.
- Use a proxy CTA that simulates a launch announcement, such as announcing a live demo, a Steam wishlist page, or a new trailer, to gauge audience responsiveness.
- Calculate the effectiveness of each channel by dividing the number of link clicks by the total number of followers or subscribers on that specific platform to normalize performance data.