Where Have You Gone, Hard Hat Mack?

This was initially prompted by a video by Bill Fairchild on his Nerd Nest YouTube channel, titled “Can Valve fix this?” The thing that Valve was being called on to fix was the problem of discoverability on the Steam storefront. There are so many games being released all the time, and it’s gotten harder and harder for independent devs to break through at all.

The phenomenon isn’t unique to Steam, of course; it’s true of just about any digital storefront that has a big enough user base to generate a breakout hit.

Years ago, I signed up for the Apple Developer program specifically to release a game for the iOS app store, and by the time I was ready to get started on it, people were already reporting in overwhelming numbers that there was no way to make a dent in the app store; you might as well not even try.

The first half of that Nerd Nest video focuses on numbers, in particular the increasing number of games that released on Steam every year, and the percentage of games on the store that have fewer than 10 reviews.

If you’re an independent developer, it seems really daunting. The market is already over-saturated, and it’s just increasing almost exponentially (logarithmically? I remain bad at math). It’s highly likely that you’ll pour a ton of effort into creating a video game, release it on Steam, and no one will even play it!

And that might very well be the case, but I can’t help but think of Sturgeon’s Law and remember that there’s always been shovelware. The volume has certainly increased, since it’s gotten easier and easier to develop games over the years, but I’m skeptical that the ratios have fundamentally changed. It’s not a level playing field, because a huge number of the developers putting stuff in the store don’t pour a ton of effort into creating their games.

Which doesn’t do a lot to change the discoverability issue, of course. When I started working in games, the shovelware was usually sequestered into vinyl sleeves of CD-ROMs on spinner racks, kept comfortably apart from the real games in boxes on shelves. Now, it’s all mixed together on the Steam front page. Your earnest and heartfelt independent game about dealing with grief, or dealing with a metroidvania except it’s a roguelite with deckbuilding elements, is being presented alongside Hentaisland 5: Revenge of the Ninja Sluts.1

It is a little less discouraging to remember that, though, if you’re optimistic (or arrogant) enough to believe that it’s still a meritocracy on some level. That quality games will be able to find an audience that’s more sustainable than quick impulse purchases.

I thought the more interesting idea in that video, which I hadn’t considered, is the Steam backlog. You’re not just competing for attention against the thousands of new games being released all the time, but against the hundreds of games people already have in their library, but haven’t played yet. Sturgeon’s Law doesn’t apply here; the resource you’re fighting over isn’t attention or money, but time.

Still, it’s made me wonder just how different today’s market is from the way it’s always been. And I think the most fundamental difference is something Bill mentions towards the end of his video: it’s not just that the number of game developers has exploded, but the number of people covering games has, too. And they’re now subject to all the same issues of discoverability and fighting for attention.

That’s not an entirely new phenomenon in itself: retailers had to prioritize shelf space, magazines had to prioritize the games that would get the most attention for their covers on news stands, websites had to fight for release-day coverage of the most popular games to get the most views.

It’s always been the case that games coverage is subject to marketing, too, which means that the games that get the most attention are the games which are already getting attention. There’s not much money to be made promoting games that are only going to appeal to a niche audience. The rich get richer, the biggest games keep getting bigger.

I think what’s fundamentally changed is the “elimination of the middle class.” Instead of a couple dozen publishers competing for coverage across a dozen or so major magazines or websites, it’s now a many-to-many situation, with hundreds or thousands of developers trying to get the attention of hundreds of video creators and streamers. All with a very small number of platforms consolidating all the “power” by deciding how things are promoted and what gets attention: Steam, YouTube, Twitch, etc.

Everything I say about the business side of game development has to have a ton of qualifiers applied: I have yet to release a game on Steam (or the iOS App Store), and even as someone who plays games, I’m probably not a “typical gamer” by any measure. I’m so dang old in video game terms, for one thing. And I’ve never been very interested in AAA games, almost always preferring independents or the types of games that appeal to niche audiences.2

But I will say that the question of “discoverability” is a little baffling, since I can’t recall ever buying a game or app after seeing it on a digital storefront. Not just Steam, but the iOS app store, or the Nintendo or PlayStation versions. I always already know what I want before I’ve reached the store’s front page.

That’s not to say that concerns about discoverability are wrong or even overblown, of course; just that I don’t get it.

In my mind, the key is to do exactly what Bill does at the end of that video: give personal recommendations to under-seen games. I recently started watching Jason Evangelho’s YouTube channel Linux for Everyone, and he started something similar recently, regular videos giving attention to some of his favorite games for the Steam Deck.

There’s something immensely appealing about getting away from The Old Ways, concentrating on a few big publishers and a few big gaming sites, and working towards a new model that’s more like dozens of community-driven book clubs. For as long as I’ve been working in games, at least, there’s always been a strange disconnect: this business of buying coverage for a game that was purely marketing-driven and transactional, even though there were genuine enthusiasts on either side of that.

In my own experience, it created situations where getting negative coverage from a single website would be devastating for us, since there were so few places covering the types of game we were making. I got the sense that there was an inverted power dynamic that not everybody was aware of — the site giving us negative coverage probably saw themselves as the scrappy underdogs.

While I’m optimistic and naive to a fault, I’m still not suggesting that a more community-driven approach to promoting and marketing games will solve all of the problems. One good thing about consolidating coverage into a single magazine or website is that they’re obligated to make a declaration of their standards and ethics. We’ve already seen tons of cases where influencers have been doing paid advertising without having to acknowledge it as such.

But I am optimistic and naive enough to believe that treating it as a meritocracy will result in the most ethical people doing the best work also earning the best reputations. You can usually tell when someone making a video is talking about something they genuinely enjoy, vs that dead-eyed look when they’re talking about some mobile free-to-play game they’ve been paid to advertise.

Over the past few months, as I’ve tried to be realistic about my chances as an independent developer, what assets I have vs what limitations, I keep thinking about the same thing: sustainability. The most discouraging stories I’ve heard are from people trying to start a studio, not independent developers. And most of the talk about “discoverability” seems to revolve around solo or very small teams having a breakout hit on the level of Stardew Valley or Vampire Survivors. The topic I hardly ever see — probably because it’s not exciting, and it’ll never get as many views on YouTube — is just what it takes to have enough.

There’s always been a tension between the idea “video games are creative works that often have to make a concession to being economically viable,” and “video games are commercial products that often can allow for creative expression.” That’s true of any medium, but I think it’s particularly pronounced in video games, since the start, there was this idea that they were toys instead of works of art.

The entire idea of games as creative works never occurred to me until I first saw how Electronic Arts marketed them. (Especially remarkable considering the kind of company they eventually turned into). The whole idea was selling them as if they were record albums: not just in the packaging, but in promoting them as the work of artists. They leaned heavily into the idea, not just putting the primary creators’ names on the cover, but running ad campaigns that seeded the (soon-to-be toxic) idea of “video game rock stars.”

I was at LucasArts when they started to make the transition away from putting the project leads’ name(s) on the box. I’ve still got mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was part of a move away from treating them as artistic works and towards treating them as commercial products. But on the other, it was getting increasingly unrealistic: Hard Hat Mack and Pinball Construction Set might have been the work of a few people, but by the late 90s, it was almost unheard of to have a commercially viable game made by fewer than at least 20-30 people.3

Of course, it’d be foolish to be too romantic about early Electronic Arts. The company had a significant amount of money behind it, and while stressing the games as creative works may have been entirely genuine, it was undeniably part of a marketing strategy. But it also seemed to strike the right balance between art and commerce: using the idea of promoting artists as branding could be cynical, or it could be one of those vanishingly rare cases where everybody wins.

Whatever the case, it’d be a mistake to get too nostalgic about those old days, for a few reasons. Those games were not only competing for shelf space, but still trying to elevate an entire medium, in much the same way as the Vertigo imprint was used by DC Comics to assert that comic books were too for grown-ups, actually. That seems like an argument that nobody really needs to make anymore.

And we saw what happened when game companies took the “game devs as rock stars” idea too far, and it was insufferable. We probably should’ve settled for “game devs as creative people trying to make a living doing what they love.”

I have to wonder if lowering the bar on game development and distribution, making it more accessible to more people, actually helped bring about today’s shift back to product — focusing on breakout hits, sales, placement on digital storefronts, reaching influencers, etc. Removing the “gatekeepers” in publishing and promotion means that more people are having to be hyper-conscious of the business side of game development. Fewer people have the luxury of concentrating solely on the creative or technical side, but also have to be more acutely aware of what sells and what doesn’t, getting as many sales as possible at launch, securing coverage from influencer channels, etc.

Whatever the case, I’m still optimistic that there is a path to sustainability, even if it doesn’t guarantee becoming rock star famous and pulling in rock star money. And I’m optimistic that it comes from promoting the things we love, building more niche communities of people getting really excited about games that directly interest them. Not just games that are so huge and expensive that they have to appeal to literally everyone or they’re considered not worth the investment.

(And I’m going to resolve to practice what I preach and keep promoting independent games that are interesting. The problem there is that, as I mentioned, I’m kind of old, and I just don’t play that many games anymore).

1
At the time I’m writing this, some anime-inspired porn game called Fap Island is on my Steam store front page. And I don’t feel bad being dismissive of its potential creativity, considering that a much better title was sitting right there.

2
It only occurred to me recently that the biggest game I ever worked on was itself kind of a niche title. I’ve always thought of it as being this gigantic project.

3
An exception worth noting is Rebel Assault, which was a massive hit.

1 At the time I’m writing this, some anime-inspired porn game called Fap Island is on my Steam store front page. And I don’t feel bad being dismissive of its potential creativity, considering that a much better title was sitting right there.

2 It only occurred to me recently that the biggest game I ever worked on was itself kind of a niche title. I’ve always thought of it as being this gigantic project.

3 An exception worth noting is Rebel Assault, which was a massive hit.