Steam - Your target audience doesn’t exist

Sergey Galyonkin has written another interesting article for his 'SteamSpy' series:

Your target audience doesn’t exist

Why you shouldn’t talk about “MOBA audience”, “core gamers”, “female gamers” and instead think smaller.

[…]

What about “usual” games?
And here is the interesting thing — there is a market and audience for smaller games, otherwise Steam wouldn’t exist. Many people are trying many new games. They don’t spend hundreds of hours in one title, they’re, you know, your average gamers, you used to hear about a lot.

But there is a catch:

There aren’t many of them.

Classic “core gamers” — the ones that play most major hits or jump from indie game to indie game — are relatively rare when compared to overall gaming audience.

In fact, 1% of Steam gamers own 33% of all copies of games on Steam. 20% of Steam gamers own 88% of games. That’s even more than Pareto principle suggests.

So, to be a member of the “1% group” of Steam gamers you have to own 107 games or more. That’s not much considering how Steam is selling games at discount prices and how easy it is to obtain games in bundles.

We’re talking about 1.3M PC gamers that could fall into definition of “core gamer that buys several games per year”. And that’s including discounted games as well.

Of course we could extend it to, I don’t know, “softcore gamers” — the 20% that own 88% games. To be included you’d have to own 4 (FOUR) games or more on Steam — not exactly a huge number, right?

Let me repeat it once more, because it’s really important.

Various studies suggest that there are 700–800 million of PC gamers. It’s probably true, but it doesn’t mean much for your game. Because if you’re developing a downloadable game for Steam you’re not even fighting for 135M of its active users,

you’re fighting for the attention of 1.3 million gamers
that are actually buying lots of games.

The 1% group.

[…]

More information.

I know a lot of people of the 1% group.

I own 698 games on Steam.

I'm almost ashamed to say I own 95 games on Steam - considering I'm mostly into RPG's, or else games with strong sci-fi or fantasy elements, that's a bit too much to break out the ol' monocle.

I own exactly 0 (ZERO) games on STEAM.

I own 7 games on GOG. I have paid for none of these.

I own ca. 600 boxed games.

I know noone who owns games on STEAM.

Originally Posted by Sir_Brennus
I own ca. 600 boxed games.

Pics or it didn't happen.

hmm, I would have though that 1.3 millions was closer to 2 millions based on PC exclusive game sales of the last few years.

It would be interesting to have the same statistic for the console crowd. I know both type of console owners: the one that buy many games a year and the ones that buy one or two games and then the console collect dust somewhere, but I wonder the % of "core gamers" as a whole.

I don't know anyone in that group. My days of buying lots of games were in the nineties.

I make it easily into that group with over 200 games on Steam, that's however only part of the picture… Most of these games came from bundles and/or very hefty sales, that doesn't mean I'm a regular buyer of Steam games perse. So given that more people in the 1% category might be the same your target audience could even be (much) smaller than anticipated.

Lot of analysis to find out what we already know.

Different people buy games for different reasons and like different things.

Most games will sell to some individuals of all the groups so picking one group to decide what the potential customer base of a game is doesn't make sense.

I "only" own 67 games on Steam, which puts me in the 20% range. I, do, however own over 100 digital games, if I add my GOG and Gamersgate games, so I probably count in that 1% as well.

I'm at work, but I think I own between 50-60 games on steam and about 20-30ish on GoG. Ooh 1 on Ubi, MMX and one on Origin but neither system is on my current pc.

I would fall within the 1%, but many of what I have were bundles. Humble Bundles count for a lot of mine, but the publisher bundles during a sale adds up fast. I can't remember how many titles were in the THQ Bundle I bought back in 2011, but it had a dozen or more with all the Warhammer and Company of Heroes games, the Valve complete pack had over 20 - even though I had the Orange Box it was still cheaper to buy the complete pack to get the remaining Valve titles.

142 games on steam
219 on gog

Plenty of games to play but today its all shadowrun HK.

I have 119 on Steam, 188 on GoG. If I'm not mistaken no one owns their Steam games, they simply have a license to play them. Slowly but surely, I'm making the move to buy more and more on GoG myself.

I own 893 games on Steam and 389 games on GOG (and a bunch of titles on Origin, Uplay etc.), so by those standards I guess I'm absolutely crazy…

VERY interesting article! I know there are games out there where the vast majority of players don't play any game outside the franchise but having just 4 games puts you in the top 20%!?

He's definitely speaking the truth on WoW - that was definitely a "silo" game. (No idea where I picked that term up but the player numbers make it look like a huge spike sticking up out of the plains, just like a grain silo.) Many of the people playing it didn't just play it exclusively - they actually had only a vague notion that other MMO games were even out there and certainly weren't at all interested in leaving their friends to go see what it was like.

I'm not so sure about his guess. There are a lot of "sports" console gamers that just buy 2 or 3 sports games. Some CoD types that just buy that game every year, too.

Originally Posted by sakichop
Lot of analysis to find out what we already know.

We? You got a mouse in your pocket??

P.S. Shadowrun: Hong Kong was my 101st game. I'm still not part of the elite 1% so I'll be voting Democrat when Gabe is up for re-election.

Originally Posted by Zloth
VERY interesting article! I know there are games out there where the vast majority of players don't play any game outside the franchise but having just 4 games puts you in the top 20%!?

He's definitely speaking the truth on WoW - that was definitely a "silo" game. (No idea where I picked that term up but the player numbers make it look like a huge spike sticking up out of the plains, just like a grain silo.) Many of the people playing it didn't just play it exclusively - they actually had only a vague notion that other MMO games were even out there and certainly weren't at all interested in leaving their friends to go see what it was like.

I'm not so sure about his guess. There are a lot of "sports" console gamers that just buy 2 or 3 sports games. Some CoD types that just buy that game every year, too.


We? You got a mouse in your pocket??

P.S. Shadowrun: Hong Kong was my 101st game. I'm still not part of the elite 1% so I'll be voting Democrat when Gabe is up for re-election.

?????

I own over a thousand on Steam(only know this because I got the "achievement") and at least 150 (probably much much more than that, Steam keeps track, GOG doesn't) on GoG and I barely play games. A) I have pirate guilt from my teen years and B) god damned 85% sales and cheap ass bundles are too alluring… so yeah. I'm part of a special 0.1% or 0.01%

I own 109 games on Steam, barely made it! LOL