Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
US Presidential Election Year Stock Market Seasonal Trend - 29th Nov 24
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past - 29th Nov 24
Gold After Trump Wins - 29th Nov 24
The AI Stocks, Housing, Inflation and Bitcoin Crypto Mega-trends - 27th Nov 24
Gold Price Ahead of the Thanksgiving Weekend - 27th Nov 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast to June 2025 - 24th Nov 24
Stocks, Bitcoin and Crypto Markets Breaking Bad on Donald Trump Pump - 21st Nov 24
Gold Price To Re-Test $2,700 - 21st Nov 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks: This Is My Strong Warning To You - 21st Nov 24
Financial Crisis 2025 - This is Going to Shock People! - 21st Nov 24
Dubai Deluge - AI Tech Stocks Earnings Correction Opportunities - 18th Nov 24
Why President Trump Has NO Real Power - Deep State Military Industrial Complex - 8th Nov 24
Social Grant Increases and Serge Belamant Amid South Africa's New Political Landscape - 8th Nov 24
Is Forex Worth It? - 8th Nov 24
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

What Alexis Kennedy Learned from Launching Cultist Simulator

Personal_Finance / Gaming Feb 19, 2020 - 03:59 PM GMT

By: Sumeet_Manhas

Personal_Finance

Alexis Kennedy’s Cultist Simulator launched on May 31, 2018 to love-it-or-hate-it reviews and sales of 50,000 copies within the first month. After the launch, Alexis and his business partner Lottie Bevan started to see retaining the momentum for the game as their biggest challenge, with bumps in sales predominantly coming from price markdowns, occasional releases of new content and newfound attention from either streamers playing the game or events on Steam.

Data from the game’s release showed that most of the traffic and attention for the game came from Steam’s home page, “Friend is in game” notifications, and recommendations yielding over 100M impressions over the game’s lifetime.


From this data, the Weather Factory team were able to conclude that Steam’s ‘Top Sellers’ and ‘New and Trending’ lists generated most of the impressions that led people to Cultist Simulator, and also showed them that sales and price cuts are hugely influential when it comes to getting consumers to purchase games on the Steam platform.

The “in-game” notifications, however, worked differently - they function similarly to word of mouth advertising from a person the player trusts, and for many consumers, seeing that their friends are frequently playing a game makes it far more likely that they will in turn purchase, download, and play it themselves. This also goes for recommendations - in fact, Lottie and Alexis highly recommend that developers do everything they can to get their games on as many different subsections of this feed, as there are opportunities to appear in tags, on wish lists, player reviews and playtime counts.

In looking at the overall number of visits to the Cultist Simulator page on Steam, the data reaffirms a key lesson: by having good tags, you can appear in suggested searches, as well as in sections such as “More Like This,” “Similar Recent Apps,” and “Bundle Contents Preview,” to name just a few.

When assessing Cultist Simulator’s Genre page on Steam, they saw the highest clickthrough and conversion rate, which makes sense: like-minded consumers are browsing for games like this one, then see it, piquing their interest and potentially leading to a sale. In addition to this, Lottie and Alexis also noted that price reductions have a huge impact on sales here as well.

The Community Hub, another section of Steam, is full of people who have already purchased the game, are extremely close to doing so or are interested in purchasing DLC or expanded material. The data Weather Factory looked through demonstrated an interest in video content, of which they didn’t release a lot, and this could be also be a major opportunity to up sales in the future.

Another feature that came up in the breakdown of data was microtrailers; 6-second, automatically generated previews of gameplay. These proved to be extremely effective at getting people to visit the Store page, as they are built with the sole goal of quickly connecting people to games that they are likely to enjoy but haven’t heard of.

In an analysis of the search data associated with the title, they discovered that massive numbers of non-owners of the game are searching for it - in fact, over 85% of people searching for Cultist Simulator in a 6+ month window were not owners of the game, and this is obviously a massive opportunity. Lottie and Alexis see many different ways to up conversions and sales, and named just a handful of them: price reductions, a better online store page, more marketing off the Steam platform, or international localisation, if needed, to connect with curious players.

Lottie and Alexis also discussed Visibility Rounds - a Steam feature that allows you to feature major updates on Steam’s front page. Each Round lasts 30 days, pushes to interested consumers, and are limited to five per title at first with the ability to earn more. The data revealed that while views for each Visibility Round went up, clickthrough rates dropped, which made sense, as these updates became increasingly niche by way of new localisations and DLC releases. That said, the Chinese localisation gave the game a massive boost.

From all of this, the team concluded many things, several straightforward takeaways and others more surprising. It was clear that a Chinese localisation was a huge boost to sales, as was being on the front page of Steam. However, they were surprised to learn that genre and tag pages are a huge opportunity to get impressions, that “friend is in-game” notifications have the power to use your players as a means to market the game very effectively without marketing spend, getting a “recommended” slot on Steam is hugely valuable, and that microtrailers are very worth thinking about. Additionally, the Visibility Rounds provided by the platform can be used to easily tell what you’re doing right and where you’re losing your audience.

All of this also demonstrated that Steam can help - but won’t solely - sell a game. By using it effectively, it is a massive opportunity to reach people but fine-tuned, razor sharp marketing is the key to successful sales. There are always more people to reach and almost no indie has connected with everyone who might love it, so being resourceful and thinking intelligently about your marketing is an absolute must.

Learn more about Alexis Kennedy by visiting his personal website or read more updates on Medium.

By Sumeet Manhas

© 2020 Copyright Sumeet Manhas - All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in