The issue of indie game discoverability on distribution platforms
The other day, I happened to stumble on a YouTube video where the creator explored the problem of “discoverability” of video games on platforms like app stores, Steam, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo’s shops. That’s something that has been bothering me for a long time about the Apple App Store.
By pure coincidence though, this morning, as I was browsing through the “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of a game that I am interested in, I began to go down a rabbit hole where I ended up finding a good handful of games I had played on Steam that I wasn’t aware were available on iOS/iPadOS as well. It’s quite sad, because these are games that I really enjoyed, and I paid for them on Steam, a platform that Valve (understandingly) neglects on macOS, whereas I could have played them optimized for iOS/iPadOS.
The creator in the YouTube video didn’t really have a solution for this problem, and it seems to me that as the industry grows, and more and more “slop” begins to flood these platforms, it will only become harder and harder to discover the good indie games buried underneath it all.
I feel this intense urge inside me to start some kind of blog or website to provide short reviews so that at least some people will discover these games. We definitely need more human curation.
I’m also appalled that so many of these games on the Apple App Store have little to no ratings. No one makes an effort to leave behind a few words so that other people can get an idea of whether it’s worth to invest their money in a game.
I guess that there isn’t really anything that can be done about the issue of discoverability. As an indie developer and publisher, you just have to do the that best you can to market your game, and hope to redirect potential customers to your website or socials, where you should clearly list all the platforms that your game is available on (surprisingly, a lot of developers don’t do this). But that’s about all that you can do. The rest is luck.
Discoverability is the main problem for every kind of content online. If you don’t have the money to buy discoverability it is a hard road.
So we invent “algorithms” that try to surface content out of the endless slop but that comes with more problems and different companies are better at this than others (Apple is pretty bad at it) and the company making the algorithm has it’s own incentives.
Streamers seem to be one the best way that games can come out of obscurity. So along with suggesting games to your friends maybe more importantly is suggesting a good but relatively unknown game to streamers you watch or are involved with their “community”.
I've paid for a couple dozen small indie games because I saw them on a youtuber's channel, it's the best way to find stuff these days.
I don't know if it was Second Wind that you were watching, but they did a folloup video on the topic which recommended pretty much exactly that. If you love something, talk about it with your friends. A lot of the games I've bought recently are from people talking about their favorites on Tildes.
Dang. Yes. You’re right. It was Second Wind.
That's the neat part: I don't have friends (who care about video games) 🙃
The best solution I can think of is granular human curation. Discovery algorithms run into so many issues in terms of platform homogenization, conflicting incentives, real-estate limitations and advertising; that at the scale of global platforms, the diminishing returns have made them more of a liability to enthusiast users. It's acceptable for youtube or music streaming since a lot of that is background content. But gaming is an active experience and you want real value for time and money.
That's why most pure gameplay channels I still follow are very specialized in their content. I watch Aliensrock for interesting puzzle and deck-building games. Manlybadasshero for more obscure narrative horror, VN and quick weirder indie projects. Amelie Doree for classic Japanese VNs. Tokaku for rhythm games. Many games I've gotten or seen on those channels have never come up in recommended lists, online discussions or video recommendations. But these people make it their business to find and platform things that their audience likely wont get anywhere else, a strategy that runs counter to what the algorithm demands (consistency and popular trends).
The problem is finding this type of curation because you are avoiding the things that rise up in the algorithm. A strategy would be to drill down into a single game or genre until you find videos that has a more nuanced opinion on elements of the game design and avoid the YouTube over-reactions. These channels tend to be people who would speedrun or made dedicated content to one game and did not pivot to verity content after that ran its course.
Something I think about is that distribution platforms are incentivized to deliver only the 'best' and consumers have largely been trained to hunt out the 'best'. To a platform if 90% of sales go to .01% of the content that's the same profits as if sales were more evenly spread. As a consumer if it only takes a few extra seconds to look at ratings or the ordering of content in a 'by highest rating' list, why wouldn't you pick the better rated game even if it's only incredibly marginal additional 'goodness'. Niches and preferences smooth that out but most consumers probably only look at the top few games in a category because why wouldn't they?
The internet and digital content has smoothed out most natural barriers (besides language and innate niche preferences) to become highly winner takes all. If we want to spread out the number of people who are able to get an audience then either new barriers need to be found or consumers need more incentives to explore. I think it'd be interesting to build a platform which intentionally partition users (new barriers) while connecting them to specific creators who then provide special deals/direct interactions/sneak previews (new incentives). A sort of specialized stumble upon made up of social cohorts to make it more like a book club.
As @MimicSquid mentioned, the Second Wind video about it for reference: The Big Games Discoverability Problem | Unpacked. Their first video suggesting a few things they're looking forward to just came out a few hours ago as well: Retro Dino Horror, Dredge but Trucks and Bustling Taverns | Wishlist.
It also seems like discoverability is something the Noclip Crew folks are going to focus on and they've already uploaded a few more videos on their channel highlighting some games I've never heard of.
Overall it's definitely an issue and a hard one to solve I think, for example just because I like Stardew Valley I won't necessarily love every other indie farming game and I don't have time to check out all of them to see if there's one that clicks for me. My backlog of own games is already longer than I'll ever get to but I'm still always open to new suggestions so I enjoy hearing about weird and niche things.
For PC games this is good and helps do what you want: https://buried-treasure.org/
One solution I found is literally the human touch you spoke about.
https://eshopperreviews.com/
This is specifically for the Nintendo e shop but it has reviews for just about everything. From big budget AAA games to indie gems to cash grab hentai card games.
Originally it began as a subreddit to deal with the exact problem you’ve mentioned, but has now spun off into its own site. I used it to get a sense about done games that seemed like just random cash grabs but were actually solid games in their own right. Things like Cat Quest.
While it's true that Steam's storefront is completely overcrowded it's still super useful as a social platform since you can see what your friends play and read their reviews. Even if you only have a handful of friends on Steam who regularly try new games the network effect can be pretty big. And because of that you don't have to rely on any auto generated game lists or paid ads to find some good content.