Get More Wishlists For Free

The games industry has always had niche gaming communities, juggernaut consoles, web games, mobile, social and now sandboxes and CTV.

The lesson in this is that no one can make games for everyone. Talk to your players early and often. Social media, in discord or in your community hub on Steam. This doesn’t prevent you from reaching a broader audience, it means you can build a foundation and accurately forecast your first week in sales and if it does crossover then BOOM you’re a breakout hit.

Speak to your fans and urge them to do actions that drive visibility on platforms and socials - velocity, content views within a narrow margin of time are the best lever.

Here’s a list of popular gamedev discords so we can stay on top of the ebbs and flows of the games market. (LINK)

Steam's Personal Calendar isn't just a new store feature it's a window into the recommendation algorithms shaping game discovery on the platform. By understanding how playtime profiles, wishlists, and similar-player networks drive visibility, developers can strategically optimize for discovery and maximize wishlist growth.

Last issue I went through a comprehensive marketing + content marketing strategy for generating buzz and wishlists. First lets recap the benchmarks and conversion rates from the 50 postmortems.

SPECIFIC WISHLIST BENCHMARKS

So what does this mean. Real fans are your bedrock, Next Fest is a big opportunity and are truly interested and high performing. Tiktok is about building socials, clips, influencer awareness and Discord members, not wishlists but think of it as the top of the funnel marketing to eventually get to a fan. Abysmal conversion rate but builds other parts of your community and can be valuable promoters of your game even though your game may not be for them personally.

Steam's Personal Calendar: What Game Developers Need to Know About Discovery and Wishlisting

Steam has launched a new discovery tool called the Personal Calendar, and it reveals critical insights into how players find and wishlist games on the platform. For developers, understanding this algorithm-driven discovery mechanism is essential for maximizing your game's visibility and wishlist growth.

How Steam's Personal Calendar Works
The Personal Calendar is Steam Labs Experiment 16, designed to help players discover games through a sophisticated recommendation engine. But more importantly for developers, it shows exactly what factors influence discoverability and wishlist placement on Steam.

The Playtime-Based Recommendation Algorithm
The core of the Personal Calendar relies on a simple but powerful principle: Steam finds players with similar gaming profiles to each user, then analyzes the games those similar players have wishlisted.

Playtime matters more than casual interest. The algorithm prioritizes games that similar players have invested significant time in, not quick demos or brief trials. If players in your target demographic are spending hundreds of hours in games like yours, Steam's algorithm notices. Focus on player retention and engagement as signals of your game's quality.

Daily retraining optimizes for current trends. The recommendation system retrains every day with fresh data. This means wishlists are tracked in real-time, and games gaining momentum can see rapid visibility increases when many players add them to wishlists.

The Wishlist: Your Primary Metric
Here's what many developers miss: wishlisted games appear on the Personal Calendar regardless of other factors. Even if the algorithm's recommendation score isn't high enough, wishlists guarantee visibility.

Strategic Implications for Wishlist Growth
Focus on similar players, not everyone. Rather than trying to appeal to all players, identify the specific playstyles your game serves. Are your players into roguelikes? Story-driven experiences? Competitive multiplayer? Target those audiences aggressively, because when similar players wishlist your game, it creates a network effect in the recommendation algorithm.

Invest in pre-release momentum. The algorithm is trained daily. Every wishlist in the weeks before launch compounds visibility. Pre-release is your best opportunity to build a cohort of players who can pull your game into recommendation cycles.

Day-one sales and engagement matter more than you think. Players who wishlist your game are tracked. If those wishlisting players then spend significant time playing after launch, that signals value to future recommendation cycles.

The Calendar View: How Your Game Gets Placed
Steam's Personal Calendar emphasizes upcoming releases with a visual timeline, but there are specific mechanics to understand:

Weekday-only display prevents clutter. Games only show on weekdays, which means your release date's day-of-the-week matters for visibility. A Friday release won't show until the following Monday on the calendar view, potentially reducing discovery momentum on launch day.

100-game density is the sweet spot. Steam displays up to 100 recommended games by default. This is the window of visibility. For niche games, getting into that top 100 for specific tag filters is crucial.

Tag filtering enables discovery. Players can filter the calendar by tags. If your game has the right tags and appeals to that filtered audience, it has a better chance of appearing in their top 100.

Optimize Your Game's Tags
Tags directly affect filtering on the Personal Calendar. Ensure your game's tags accurately reflect its gameplay:

Algorithm literacy is marketing literacy. Understanding how Steam's recommendation systems work is as important as understanding your target audience. Player retention is a marketing metric. Hours played directly influence visibility. Community signals matter. Wishlists, playtime, and similar-player networks all feed discovery.

The takeaway: build games for a specific audience, focus on retention and engagement, and actively convert interested players into wishlists. In Steam's algorithmic marketplace, wishlists are currency, and playtime is proof of value.

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Festivals, showcases, influencer and media showcases and their submission windows. Pulling this list from How To Market Games (great resource) and stuff from linkedin.

Have a win, a learning, a question, or an opportunity worth sharing? Send it in. If it helps the community, we’ll surface it with credit. [email protected]