How the GameDiscoverCo newsletter launched a data product for game developers
Simon Carless carved out a niche in the gaming industry by tracking the metrics around game releases.
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There’s absolutely no way to predict with 100% accuracy how a piece of commercial art will perform once it’s released to the public. If that were possible, then book publishers would only put out bestsellers and movie studios would exclusively release blockbusters. There are just too many variables at play — including critical reviews, marketing campaigns, word-of-mouth buzz, and even macroeconomic trends — to determine ahead of time whether a piece of content will be a smash hit or total flop.
That’s not to say that the companies that fund this content don’t try to gauge the potential sales numbers of a project before greenlighting it. That’s why every book proposal is required to have a “comp titles” section where the author lists other similar books in the marketplace along with their sales numbers, and it’s why there’s a whole cottage industry of data analysts who try to predict the box office openings for films. It’s also why Hollywood is obsessed with making movies and TV shows that fit within already-existing IP; it gives executives at least some peace of mind that there’s an audience that’s expressed an interest in the property.
But what happens if you’re a video game producer who wants to set realistic sales expectations for an upcoming title? While some games are based on already-existing IP, there are hundreds launched every year for smartphones, desktop computers, and consoles that are wholly original, and the companies that publish them collectively spend billions of dollars to market those titles to potential customers. In order to ensure a good return on their marketing spend, they need accurate data on how similar games were promoted and discovered.
To get this data, many within the industry turn to the GameDiscoverCo newsletter. Launched in 2019 by a longtime gaming journalist named Simon Carless, GameDiscoverCo analyzes both public and private data around game releases and then distills it into marketing and sales insights. Carless monetizes the newsletter through a mixture of paid subscriptions and consulting, and he’s used his profits to build a platform that visualizes this data for paying customers. Think of it as sort of a Bloomberg Terminal for game developers.
In a recent interview, Carless discussed why he decided to quit his job to run the newsletter, how he grew his audience, and what it took to build out and run his own data platform.
Let’s jump into my findings…
Learning the ins and outs of the gaming industry
While Carless spent the last 20 years in gaming media, he actually got his start on the operations side of the industry. Specifically, he was a game designer in the 90s, working on a number of titles that included Looney Tunes Racing and a first-person shooter for the PC. “I enjoyed it, but I didn't really feel like I had a full skillset,” he said. “Like I can't really program, and I felt like that was sort of holding me back.”