Simon Carless's Blog
Simon Carless [LinkedIn] has been working in and around the video game industry for over two decades. He’s passionate about games, art, people, and bringing amazing creative endeavors to light via discoverability and curation.
Simon is the founder of GameDiscoverCo and runs the popular GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter, a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s, and how your games could sell better.
He’s most known for his role helping to shape the Game Developers Conference and the Independent Games Festival for the past 15 years. He was also the co-founder & advisor for the Independent Games Summit at GDC and the person behind 2019’s GDC Game Discoverability Summit.
Simon is also an investor and partner in indie game publisher No More Robots, which has published notable independent & PC console games including Yes, Your Grace, Hypnospace Outlaw, Descenders & Not Tonight.
Expert Blogs
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Thu, 21 Jan 2021 12:08:00 EST
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We’ve been discussing Steam prologues again - you know, those things where you take a short excerpt of your game and launch it on a completely separate Steam page, but link back to your actual game’s page? Are they a big booster of interest?
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Mon, 18 Jan 2021 10:55:00 EST
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The latest GameDiscoverCo article looks at Flying Oak Games' deep-dive data on NeuroVoider & ScourgeBringer's multi-platform game performance - revenue source by revenue source!
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Wed, 13 Jan 2021 07:54:00 EST
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Wouldn’t it be nice to make $1 million gross on your Steam game.. in one day? Maybe many, many years after your game originally came out? That's what Rust did the other week. Twice. But how?
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Mon, 11 Jan 2021 11:27:00 EST
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Nova Drift - arcade space combat roguelite, Geometry Wars meets Asteroids meets randomly generated ‘runs’ - had a really good holiday season sales-wise. But why? We look into it.
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Thu, 07 Jan 2021 09:56:00 EST
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So, when your game has been released, how do you get people to keep talking about it or buying it? Discounts are key, but are you looking at comparables, & do you have a methodical strategy?
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Mon, 04 Jan 2021 10:43:00 EST
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What does Xmas Day mean for game sales nowadays? Does unwrapping game consoles under the Christmas tree mean that digital game sales shoot up over the holidays? We examine the evidence.
Simon Carless's Comments
Comment In:
[Blog - 11/22/2020 - 11:00]
That 's true Although it ...
That 's true Although it 's 25 in a weird abstract way, because the coin rebate might or might not be spent on your games I bet for cheap/90 off games, a LOT of the spending is 'free money ' via coins. Relatedly: I don 't think we 've even ...
Comment In:
[Blog - 08/17/2020 - 05:05]
Thanks, I missed/failed to fully ...
Thanks, I missed/failed to fully understand this because all the companies I deal with are in the U.S. or the U.K. and have updated the story to reflect this - and will mention in my next newsletter. Appreciate it.
Comment In:
[Blog - 07/19/2020 - 10:04]
Yep, I 'm planning to ...
Yep, I 'm planning to look at this at some point too But can be done without surveying people. It definitely helps for pre-release games.
Comment In:
[Blog - 06/18/2020 - 10:36]
Comment In:
[Blog - 06/01/2020 - 04:35]
It 's definitely an extreme ...
It 's definitely an extreme approximation. But it evens out the problem that the eShop ranks by units, and units are not a good approximation of revenue as much as 50x difference between the costs of some of these games , so that 's really helpful.
Comment In:
[Blog - 02/26/2020 - 06:41]
BTW I don 't know ...
BTW I don 't know that 10 is THAT high for Steam Early Access games, some games just get refunded at very different levels. Also, China as a country seems to refund at greater levels than the rest of the world. I 've seen Early Access games that approach 20 ...
