Cool writeup: What factors predict the success of a Steam game? (An analysis)

Tuism

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/buuire/what_factors_predict_the_success_of_a_steam_game/

This dude did a pretty comprehensive analysis over maaaany titles and with a couple tracked metrics. The TLDR:

The big take-aways from this analysis are:

- The success of a game on Steam very strongly depends on its first week performance
- A game's first week performance is strongly correlated with its pre-launch market awareness
- Quality does not seem to strongly impact first week performance, but may have some positive effect on a game's "tail"
- All inferences regarding sales are dependent on the relationship between review counts and sales

It's actually pretty intuitive but it's good to see it tested. Basically, pre-launch market awareness is important. Which really sounds DUH but has often been overlooked ("I'll launch it then worry about marketing after")

MajorPAIN

Will give it a read, but I can say that I had the "I'll launch it then worry about marketing after" mentality, and it is true. You need the pre-launch awareness to get any realistic chance of decent sales.

konman

That was a very interesting read from the perspective of what to consider when you're ready to launch commercially.

I found his other reddit post (linked to in above reddit thread) even more interesting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/apvm4y/almost_five_years_ago_i_started_work_on_my_dream/

There he kindly shares his thought processes on stuff like when to decide to continue a long-term prototype AKA the well known "sunk-cost fallacy" and also how he evaluated the project's prospects using the Bygones principle. "How realistic is it that if I continue, the game will justify its future costs?" and his answers to some interesting questions in that thread as well are worth a read.

Fascinating, thanks for sharing :)