7.6 KiB
| title | description | category | tags | accessLevel | author | publishedAt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market Analysis | Market Analysis | strategy | public | Baby Ghosts | 2025-11-10T10:42:09.226Z |
Market Analysis
This very basic guide will help you start benchmarking your competitors' games and collecting relevant data so you can do a competitive/market analysis for your game. This is how we do it for potential investees at Weird Ghosts!
Step 1: Identify competitors
This might be the hardest part; only you can pick the most relevant games out of the vast ocean of storefronts and platforms. Consider both direct and indirect competitors – those who make games very similar to yours and those competing for your audience (even if the game is quite different). Scour Steam, Epic, Switch, Xbox, Playstation, itch.io, Humble, GoG; ask around Gamma Space; bug your friends; and dig through showcases to come up with a list of 10-20 games that are similar to yours.
Step 2: Analyze competitor games
Now, let's take a closer look and gather some data.
Review gameplay: Purchase or download as many of the games on your list as budget and time allows. Look at the mechanics, the story, the visuals, the sound, everything. Ask yourself: what makes each game stand out? Interesting mechanics? Aesthetics? A unique story or especially good narrative design? What do you like about each game, and what do you dislike?
Read reviews: Reviews are a goldmine. Keep an eye out for the things that come up repeatedly, both 👍 and 👎. Start with Steam reviews, but also check out places like Metacritic and community Discords.
How popular is it? Use the Steam Revenue Calculator and SteamDB to understand how many copies they've sold and how much money they're making. Is the game doing as well as you thought it would, given its genre and how it looks and feels? Are some types of games doing better than others?
What's the community like? The size of the community and how active they are can tell you a lot about how well a game is doing. Look at their social media (TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter/X) — how many followers do they have, and how engaged are they? Do they have buzz going on in their official Discords or subreddits? A lively community usually means a solid player base, which means the game is probably doing pretty well.
Marketing and PR: How are they selling their game to the public? Are they active on social media or rely more on press releases and news articles? Are they working with influencers or streamers? And look at their trailers and other promotional materials. What's the vibe they're going for, and how does the public react?
Step 3: Use tools to gather more data
Here are some recommended free or inexpensive tools that can help you gather data:
- Steam Hype Chart - This requires a Pro GameDiscoverCo account (well worth it for the data backend as well as the biweekly newsletter) and shows you the most anticipated upcoming games based on community engagement metrics.
- SteamDB - This is a complete database of information about games on Steam. Shows player counts, historical data, graphs, and related information about any game on the platform.
- Steam Revenue Calculator (Boxleiter Method) - This tool provides an estimate of a game's revenue on Steam based on the number of reviews it has received.
- VideoGameInsights - This paid (and excellent) tool provides a wide range of data about games, including top games, trends, demographics, and more.
Step 4: Create a competitor analysis spreadsheet
Organize the data you've collected into a spreadsheet (template).
This will help you compare your competitors side-by-side and draw conclusions about how your game might fare. Here are the data points you'll need to collect:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Title | |
| Launch Date | |
| Price | Full, non-sale price from Steam page |
| Total Reviews | Steam page |
| Sales Estimate | GameDiscoverCo backend |
| Net Steam Revenue | Steam Revenue Calculator - Boxleiter Method |
| Wishlist rank | GameDiscoverCo backend |
| Steam Followers | SteamDB |
| Followers | |
| TikTok | Followers |
| Subreddit followers | |
| Followers | |
| Switch | Yes/No |
| PS4/5 | Yes/No |
| Xbox | Yes/No |
| Apple | Yes/No |
| Android | Yes/No |
| Net Other Console Revenue | Calculated automatically (adds 20% of net Steam revenue for each platform selected) |
| Total Revenue | Calculated automatically |
Fill in the relevant data for each competitor.
::alert{type="info"} Here's a real example of a completed spreadsheet that we did for an investee: Cozy Games Market Analysis ::
Step 5: Analyze data and draw conclusions
After you've gathered all the data, it's time to analyze it and draw conclusions.
Identify successful game mechanics: Pay attention to what mechanics make the top games in your genre successful. Could you incorporate these into your game, or improve on them?
Look at pricing: Are games in your genre generally free, low-cost, freemium, premium? What pricing model seems to generate the most revenue, and which aligns best with your game (and perhaps values)?
Spot release trends: Are there certain times of the year when games in your genre seem to launch more successfully? Are there any trends in how they launch (e.g. Early Access, full release, etc.)?
Weigh the impact of community: What tools and platforms do successful games use to connect with players and fans? What are those communities like? (Check out Victoria Tran's Community Dev newsletter for great tips and analysis on this topic.)
Determine the best marketing channels: Which platforms are your competitors using to promote their games? Do they use influencers or rely more on press releases and news articles? Do they spread themselves out across all the social media sites or focus on one or two? What kind of content do they share, and how often? Identify the strategies that could work for you.
It's still your game and you might decide to discard some or all of this intel. Don't feel like you have to do things the way others do just because they're successful. This is just one piece of the complex puzzle of marketing your game; only you know what feels right for you.
Step 6: Keep it updated!
That's all there is to it! lol
Like all your studio and marketing tasks, this isn't a one-and-done thing. You'll want to keep your spreadsheet current (set a reminder to do a review every couple of months). And keep an eye out for new games, changes in pricing strategies, and trends around your genre's market.
If you have any suggestions about improving this guide or the template, please get in touch with us. Or better yet, hit that "Edit this page on GitHub" button at the bottom of the page.
Resources
Tools
- Steam Hype Chart (requires Pro GameDiscoverCo account)
- SteamDB
- Steam Revenue Calculator
- VideoGameInsights