How Jump Ship added nearly 300k wishlists in just 2 months
Also: how about launch discounts? And lotsa lotsa news...
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
This week, meet the middle. The middle, meet this week. And we’re back in your inboxes, serenading you with unreleased trending Steam game goodness, and cyclical arguments on launch discounts - all of your favorite summer flavo(u)rs.
Before we start, what’s the deeal with eSports? Read the second half of this eSports World Cup ‘ethics’ piece by The eSports Advocate’s James Fudge, who explains why the unraveling of the space has led to this: “[eSports company] valuations were imaginary, and the revenue generation from profit-sharing, media rights, sponsorships, merchandise, in-person attendance, and in-game item sales were not enough to offset the [running] costs.”
[REMINDER: yes, you can support GameDiscoverCo by subscribing to GDCo Plus now. You get full access to a super-detailed Steam data suite for unreleased & released games, weekly PC/console sales research, Discord access, eight detailed game discovery eBooks & lots more.]
How Jump Ship added 300k wishlists in 2 months
We at GameDiscoverCo have metrics to track trending Steam games. So when mission-based co-op FPS Jump Ship - revealed in early April - debuted with initial trending numbers above even Arena Breakout or Slay The Spire 2, we took notice.
Then we noticed Filip Coulianos, co-founder of dev Keepsake Games, talking about hitting 200k Steam wishlists in no time, we wanted to know more. So we reached out to Daniel Kaplan, another Keepsake Games founder & Mojang (Minecraft)’s first ever employee, and he gave the GameDiscoverCo newsletter the lowdown.
So firstly, here’s what made Jump Ship*’s trending score go off the chart. That’s a 40,000 Steam wishlist Day 1 (!), followed by a dip under 5k wishlists per day, then another big spike we’ll talk about in a minute. (*This game was previously called Hyperspace, btw - you might have seen it under that name.)
This game is also interesting in terms of its AAA-ish promise, but small dev footprint - the core team for Jump Ship started at five people, including Daniel & founding members at Hazelight (It Takes Two), and and is now up to ‘just’ 14.
Anyhow, here’s the highlights of our discussion with Daniel - with some of our comments on how/why this game popped off so big on its ‘official’ reveal:
Having a gameplay trailer but also a 4-minute ‘we played this and it’s great!’ IGN video was key: Jump Ship was shown quietly at GDC, and “We managed to get IGN to come visit us and play [the game] with us… they eventually published both our own gameplay trailer and a video they made themselves.” That IGN ‘first preview’ video (414k views!) was assembled from B-roll Keepsake provided to multiple outlets.
Authenticity of gameplay footage outweighs polish nowadays: the gameplay trailer isn’t perfect - perhaps a bit janky in a couple of places - but it’s honest & real. And people dig the concept: “Finally, a science fiction (and mature) version of Sea of Thieves. Love the idea of going around in a ship with your mates, doing fun missions.” (There’s also comparisons to the curiously less-heralded Void Crew.)
Leading with co-op - but not making it mandatory - resonates: the debut trailer literally says: “While Jump Ship is best enjoyed with up to 4 players, solo players are welcome too.” That’s super-welcoming to players who would like to play with their friends, but aren’t always sure they will be available. (Or who just like solo-ing!)
When we talked to Daniel about the game’s ‘hook’, he noted: “I think it’s the combination of “Sea of Thieves in space” or “FTL in [first-person]” that’s instantly compelling… Obviously we’re not exactly that - but it’s easier to talk about the game like that, and then explain a bit more what you can do in our game and what you can’t.”
And that’s why Jump Ship is now on people’s radars. Sure, there’s the success of games like Helldivers 2,. But more broadly, being a co-op PvE title - in a world where players are fed up with toxicity from PvP players they don’t know - is a key factor.
So the game got off to a fast start - it’s already #76 in Steam’s Top Wishlists chart - without being in major showcases. That’s due to enthusiastic press previews based on the GDC build, viral YouTube videos, and general receptiveness to ‘this type of game’.
Jump Ship would have done just great - but how about that second Steam wishlist peak? We asked Daniel, and he said that he tried to apply to be part of Steam’s FPS Fest starting April 15th, but couldn’t, having no demo or released game.
But it seems like the FPS Fest was built around Steam’s ‘first-person shooter’ tag page, where Jump Ship was already trending. So, with front-page Steam banners sending players to the sale page: “To our pleasant surprise we got… a lot of interest in our game.”
We’re not sure that works for every Steam Fest. (Some are very specific, and not built around tag pages.) But what a fortunate algorithmic amplification of Jump Ship, leading to another >35,000 Steam wishlist day! Truly impressive numbers..
Obviously, when you get a lot of interest this early, you also need to keep an eye on expectation management. Heck, according to GameDiscoverCo data, 64% of Jump Ship’s wishlisters have played Helldivers 2, and 52.5% have played No Man’s Sky. What are those players expecting in terms of features and polish? (Possibly a lot!)
But to Daniel’s point, if you can “explain… what you can do in our game and what you can’t”, and you still have a unique proposition, you’re good. We’d rather have ‘you’ve got Hype, you need to nail the landing’ - than ‘you don’t got Hype, so nobody cares’. Good luck!
Should you discount or not at your Steam launch?
Probably the most-asked question of all time in the GameDiscoverCo Plus Discord is this classic - ‘should you discount your Steam game when it first releases?’ And, well, we’ve tried to answer it a host of times - but have lacked any solid data to do so.
So we wanted to point out that our buddies at Gamalytic sampled “around 700 [Steam] games released after September 2023 with at least 5,000 [launch] wishlists and at least 500 copies sold within the first month.” And above is the results, expressed in ‘total estimated Month 1 game sales as a fraction of wishlist balance at launch.’
Great - so that’s settled! You should either not discount your game at all on release, or discount it 15%, right? That’s what the data says, right? Well, not so fast…
When we discussed it in Discord, I noted one obvious thing: “There's still bias here cos certain TYPES of games decide to discount or not.” In other words, maybe more niche games decide not to discount, and these bump up conversion by 10% or so?
And the differences between these conversion rates are not, frankly, that large. So here’s what we’d say about the situation:
Steam itself is helpful, but very non-committal about launch discounts: when announcing a more configurable launch discount in March, Valve said: “Launch discounts are totally optional and we find that developers have differing philosophies about whether to run a launch discount or not.” They don’t got a view!
We think launch discount effects on the Steam algorithm are overstated: there’s nothing that says ‘if you have a launch discount, then Steam’s going to pay attention to you 10x as much’. (It’s not bad, but it’s not amazingly good either.)
We do think there’s a small psychological ‘launch discount’ effect for players: we actually ran a piece on the psychology of discounting in 2023. Not only is seeing the little ‘this is cheaper’ Steam flag good, but “‘psychological reactance’ makes us overvalue something when we think we’re about to lose the opportunity to buy it.”
On that point, we were chatting to Tomer Barkan of Suncrash and looking at the ‘end of launch discount’ period on his Steam games - marked in red. There’s a downshift, but you don’t really see a massive decrease - it’s just all part of ‘long tail’, really:
Tomer’s conclusion? “I will probably keep doing small launch discounts in the future. But I also don't believe that the difference is very significant.” And to be honest, we’re on the same page. A 10% discount at launch is just fine, and doesn’t cost you much $.
Sure, your primo Day 1 customers would pay full price. But just discount a bit, reserve a Supporter Pack for your megafans, and avoid the lack of launch discount getting blamed* for the game’s underperformance. (*Even though it wasn’t that, lol!)
The game platform & discovery news round-up…
Finishing up the free newsletters for the week - Plus subscribers get the awesome Friday PC/console game trends newsletter (example!), tho - let’s see what we found:
According to the Footprints.gg-monitored trends of top ‘trad media’ mentions, the much-awaited Silent Hill 2 remake topped coverage, followed by fellow Sony State Of Play titles Astro Bot and God Of War: Ragnarok (PC version!) - with new PC/mobile Genshin Impact-a-like Wuthering Waves sneaking in there too.
John Welfare is using Amazon & Walmart public sales data to estimate May 2024 U.S. console hardware sales, ahead of ‘official’ Circana numbers: “PS5: 240K - 270K units; Switch: 110K - 130K units Xbox: 90K - 110K units; Hardware revenue $200M - $215M (-36% to -41% YOY).” If correct, trends still looking a bit grim…
We’ll be covering ‘not-E3’ news shortly, but the Summer Game Fest crew say you should temper expectations: “There will definitely be new announcements, but the show is largely focused on… existing games that have new updates for fans.” (Like a gameplay reveal for the new game from Silent Hill’s creator, woop.)
A bit more detail on Steam being IP blocked in Vietnam: a gov spokesperson says “our agency has contacted Steam many times but the platform never responded”, but the new guidelines seem pretty onerous, including a complex game ratings system and written certification on a per-game (!) basis. (So we get it.)
Netflix has revealed its latest set of ‘mobile exclusive with your Netflix logon’ titles. Alongside Netflix IP like Netflix Stories: Emily in Paris, and Selling Sunset, there’s Tales Of The Shire, Don’t Starve Together, Rotwood, Case Of The Golden Idol and Arranger - many of which are also shipping or shipped on PC/console.
This PC Gamer op-ed - ‘The future of gaming belongs to weird little games’ - is worth reading: “Because small studios have [an] ‘infinite replayability without infinite content’ challenge… it leads many of them to cook up weirder, captivating ideas like Phasmophobia's security camera booth [and] Balatro's satisfying exponential jackpots.”
Just Steam things: some top devs (Palworld, Valheim, Slime Rancher) talk about how Early Access worked for them so far; Chris Z. on what Steam wishlist velocity is, and how to think about it when evaluating your game’s success chances.
Nvidia things: the company’s G-Assist AI-powered hint helper is interesting - “has the potential to massively reduce the need to use an online guide when you get stuck in one of your favorite titles.” And GeForce is partnering with Xbox for 3 months of free PC Game Pass - showing how aggressive Microsoft is getting with PCGP.
Looking at Valve’s official list of top Steam Deck games of May 2024, by hours played, you’ll see Hades II newly atop the chart, with Fallout 4 at #2 (TV show hype!), followed by Stardew Valley - with Animal Well also debuting further down.
As Ryan Brown relays on X: “A list of employee-reported privacy breaches at Google reveals that multiple Nintendo leaks originated from a Google employee accessing private videos on Nintendo's YouTube channel.” Some good 404 Media reporting here…
Microlinks: a Genshin Impact x PlayStation 5 hardware bundle will release in Japan on July 17th; a well-researched piece on the history (and death) of E3; the latest Unreal Editor for Fortnite update includes 800 new NPCs, a better performance optimization profiler, and 254 in-game classes for your UGC.
Finally, we enjoyed this video from Eastshade Studios’ Danny Weinbaum (Songs Of Glimmerwick) - in which he lists all the tasks a solo game dev needs to do, and ranks them anywhere from ‘Love’ through ‘Kill Me’. It’s an interesting thought experiment:
[We’re GameDiscoverCo, an agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your PC or console game? We run the newsletter you’re reading, and provide consulting services for publishers, funds, and other smart game industry folks.]