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 Wed, 14 Apr 2021 04:22:00 EDT
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TikTok - the shortform video social app which sports hundreds of millions of MAUs worldwide - can be a boon for the right type of game. We explain how within.
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Mon, 12 Apr 2021 03:00:00 EDT
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We read all 700 pages of the 'Apple vs. Epic' lawsuit, so you didn't have to - here's some of the key takeaways for Epic's pitch against App Store monopoly.
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Wed, 07 Apr 2021 01:53:00 EDT
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The latest game discovery round-up looks at Steam's new UTM tracking solution, an Epic Game Store exclusivity database, and lots more besides.
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Mon, 05 Apr 2021 04:33:00 EDT
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We look at an interesting widening of Apple Arcade’s subscription service, Steam's new European cookie rules, and lots more.
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Wed, 31 Mar 2021 08:01:00 EDT
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We know just how many games there are out there, and how tricky it can be to get featured by notable streamers. So let's talk about 'variety' streamers and the best targets for your game.
Posted by
Simon Carless
on Mon, 29 Mar 2021 05:35:00 EDT
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Stray Fawn Studio was kind enough to provide us with an annotated version of The Wandering Village’s impressive daily Steam wishlist numbers to date - let's analyze.
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 ...
