Using “unique” in the description only betrays how few games the developers have played.
If you’re making games as a hobby, for the sheer fun of it, without regard for the financial outcome, there’s never been a better time to be alive. If you’re making games for a living, you’re most likely dying.
Visual Novel, Sandbox Survival, and Minimalism Anything are very saturated genres.
A lot of developers are using the “vaseline” filter on their screenshots, and it’s not doing them any favors.
If it’s on a mobile app store somewhere, it’s almost certainly on Steam, though the reverse is not often true.
There are a metric ton of “free” games on Steam. Some of them are high-budget, super-polished experiences. Some are low-budget, super-polished experiences. The rest are hot garbage.
The fact that Steam uses the same color for “Mixed” overall user reviews lends such games an immediate negative bias. Reading the reviews, watching the videos, playing the demo (if one even exists, very few games seem to have them) can reveal the truth.
Overwhelmingly Negative means 100% hot garbage, guaranteed.
Wishlisting is an interesting metric. The developers are able to see how many Steam users have Wishlisted their title, though it’s important not to put too much stock in the resulting number. I’ve had certain games on my personal Wishlist for many years now, more as a reminder that they exist than an intention to buy. I have a hundred or so active “Friends” on Steam, and during my trek through the thousands of items in the Discovery Queue I saw that one had added nearly every game to their Wishlist! When asked about it, the response was “I heard a rumor that sometimes Steam awards users their Wishlist games, so I decided to go for the jackpot.” I’d heard such a rumor once before too, but as far as I can tell that was a one-time thing from half a decade ago.
There are a lot of games where the protagonist is some kind of ball.
Lifeless, empty environments feature prominently.
“Poorly lit” could be a genre.
Steam now feels a lot like Kongregate or that other big Flash site did back in the Flash heyday, only now people can charge “real” money for their games rather than relying on contracts and advertising revenue. As such, there’s a large enough community of users who seem willing to “try anything” that no matter what gets launched onto the platform will inevitably get some feedback. Once again, if you’re in it for the joy of making games and not making money, then there’s really no reason not to try and get a game onto Steam. Based on what I saw in my harrowing journey through the Discovery Tube there seems to be an audience for just about everything.
You know how sometimes you’ll go on the Internet to check what time the grocer opens, and then it’s suddenly twelve hours later and you’re watching some Finnish weirdo crush plasticine animals in a hydraulic press? Going deeper than a few hundred games into Steam’s Discovery Queue can be like that. A harrowing journey into the unknown that will most likely end up with you scratching your head and wondering what the hell you’re looking at.
Well-written text adventures are niche enough on Steam to warrant creating one if you’re one of the literary-inclined, but it seems like you’d be looking at pounding out at least 200K words to craft a story with enough choice to engage that community.
If you put enough caveats/warnings on your Early Access game, you can get away with murder. Seriously: if you have enough pre-production materials to put together a pitch video you might as well follow the holy trinity of crowdfund → Steam Early Access → Steam release. Zero reason not to, other than being afraid of what people will think of your game, and if that’s the case maybe consider another hobby.
There are just so damn many first-person survival games on Steam right now it’s incredible. I got my fix with Minecraft many years ago, and other than the occasional foray into Terraria I can’t see reason to get into a new one. If you’re the opposite, and all about lighting fires in dismal forests while zombies and other players try to gank you, friend, Steam is your cornucopia.
Many of my “Not Interested” clicks come from an objective evaluation of my video game backlog which, I assure you, is substantial. Single-player stealth game? Still haven’t beaten the Thief series. Retro-inspired anything? Got unbeatens and unplayeds by the dozens. Sports? Okay, those are ones I’m genuinely not interested in, along with visual novels, and anything that looks like it was made in RPG Maker. I’m not being an elitist, as I’m sure that many of the stories told in those games are AMAZEBALLS 10/10 BULLET-POINT LIST OVERFLOWING WITH PROS, but there are hundreds of other games I’d rather play. If a trusted friend aggressively foisted one on me, I’d play it. That’s only happened once, and that game was To the Moon, and I still haven’t beaten it. Besides, there’s a gazillion classic Japanese role-playing games I’ve yet to beat. If I ever get through a Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger, maybe I’ll try one of the “modern” ones.
VR games. I don’t have the gear, and I’m still waiting for the jury to come back on the long-term health effects of having a monitor strapped an inch away from my eyeballs.
Basically any “grand strategy” game, as I own a ton of them and have only ever completed campaigns in the Civilizations.
Tower defense/horde mode shooters. Just not my thing, though if I ever manage to play though Anomaly I might look into another TD.
Metaphysical and gamified abstractions of the game development experience. No thanks. I’m terrified of beating a simulation of something I failed in real life.
Any game I own on another platform. Not gonna fall into the trap of spending twice on something I haven’t beaten once. My only recent exception to this has been Grand Theft Auto V (PS3 then PC), and I suppose I’d make another exception for Red Dead Redemption.
Any game that looks like it was ported from mobile, particularly ones whose first screenshot is their main menu.
Games with overblown, misleading art in their title cards. They used to have to do that with the ancient console games because you actually had to use your imagination to believe that a line of pixels was a snake. Nowadays it’s just rude.
Added to my Wishlist: Unique-looking, Overwhelmingly Positive in genres I’m interested in; games I’ve heard a lot of buzz about from trusted friends; games I can’t afford and am willing to wait for a sale (a.k.a all of them). Of the 2,000 games that I’ve “Discovered”, only 117 fit that bill.
Followed: As above, but Early Access. I enjoy using Steam’s “Community Activity” function, and Following copies any game updates/announcements into that stream. Why not immediately Wishlist? Games get abandoned all the time and development takes turns for the worse. Plus, I’d rather prioritize proven and finished games over everything else.
Played immediately: I only found two games for this, one was described as a “very short experience” and the other was prequel content for a game I already owned. Both were free, and this is saying a lot considering I must’ve hit “Not Interested” on at least a hundred other free games. Even if it’s free it still costs those precious moments of life to play.
If you’re someone who’s only ever played a few games in their life, and looking for games to play, it’s like all your Christmases and birthdays for ten thousand years are waiting for you on Steam. If you’re a forty-something jaded gamer/game developer who’s spent most of his life collecting games to try and fill that aching void in his heart, there’s little to get excited about in the ever-growing mountain of content on offer.
If you’ve read this far, congratulations on having both a superhuman attention span and godlike reading skills, and thanks for taking the time. Sorry not sorry for not including screenshots and more links, but I feel most every game deserves a fair shake. I only ever review games I’ve played through to the “end“, whether that’s a credit roll, killscreen, or breaking myself on a difficulty curve. I think that even the most Overwhelmingly Negatively received game can come back from the abyss with enough care and attention, so it isn’t really my place to directly bash on things I haven’t even played. That said, time is the most precious commodity we get in this life, and spending a few days avoiding things that could end up wasting even a second of it are a solid investment. See also: indie market research. It can be a refreshing wake-up call to find out that a game you’re trying to make has already been made, especially early in the development process. Such a discovery could push you to make something even better, or something else. Far better that than having to live in the shadow of someone else’s work.
Some advice for Steam page formatting from someone who’s looked at thousands of them:
Put your gameplay video first, and make sure it communicates what the game’s about in the first ten (better, five) seconds. Open with the hottest moments in the game. Drop the title in after this, or at the end. People visiting your Steam page immediately see the title and genre already, so crafting a unique THIS IS THE GAME promotional video is much better than uploading a formulaic marketing splash that was made for Youtube. This advice only works for folks who have “Autoplay videos” checked. Otherwise, see next point.
Make damn sure the very first screenshot following your videos shows the hottest moment in your game and precisely communicates the game experience. If a Steam user has “Autoplay videos” unchecked, this is the first thing they’ll see. If it’s a poorly lit shot of your game’s menu, or a grease smeared, bloomed out shot of an explosion, that might be one potential player you lose. Try to tell a visual story with your screenshots, as they’ll “carousel” in sequence. If you show a potential player how hot your game is with five still images, you’ll hook them enough to look at the rest of the page.
For the text descriptions, do with words what you did with video and screenshots. Make sure the opening paragraph explains in clear, plain language what players can expect from your game. Avoid words like “unique”, “innovative”, and anything that describes the genre. Steam users can already see all that from your perfect video and screenshots, right? If not, the tags below the description will fill them in. Also avoid “inspired by”. Players who get it will get it, and those who don’t will think you’re a world-beating innovator.
Get someone else (preferably a master of the language you’re using) to look over all the words on your Steam page.
I really wish I’d had the ability to do this level of research back in ’08 when I was preparing for a career in indie game development. I could’ve saved a ton of time and heartache. Sadly, the Discovery Queue system didn’t even exist back then, and it’s only recently that it’s become robust enough to use. Coupled with sites like Steam Spy and regularly checking the Recent Popular Releases and Top Sellers lists, all the tools are available for taking a clear look at the state of the PC video game market on Steam.
I’ve recommended that Valve’s Steam team adds the option to input feedback when clicking “Not Interested”. I think this would be a huge help to developers to know why players weren’t sold on their game. (As of March, 2025, this suggestion has gone unnoticed. —Ed.)
2016.05.23