Charting the rise of (Vampire) Survivors-likes

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[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.]

We’re back for a Friday update, folks - which this time includes a giiiant links section for all readers, followed by a look into (Vampire) Survivors-likes as a genre for all you Plus subscribers. And a check-in on the giant Steam game debuts of the week…

Before we start, we were ‘medium’ amused that Xbox’s Gear Store had both a T-shirt that says ‘This is not an Xbox’ and one that says ‘This is an Xbox’ to tie in with its new ad campaign. Why not get your partner to wear one, and you wear the other, and then go to a fast casual restaurant seeking attention? (It’s the new ‘Thing 1 & Thing 2’!)

Game platform news: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 trending hot!

So let’s start things out with a heady mix of trending games, platform goodness, and discovery better-ness, shall we? Here’s what we have for you:

• First, we posted our chart of ‘trending’ unreleased Steam games(above) late, this week. Still, vaulting over a lot of the usual ‘hot games’, long-awaited FPS/immersive sim S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 surged all the way to #1 - thanks to it 'going gold' & confirmation of a November 20th release date. (And lots of pre-orders!)

• Otherwise, Showa American Story (#4) and Subnautica 2 (#5) are really hanging around near the top of these ‘trending’ charts, after entering them recently. Two new entries? Where Are We? (#12), the latest co-op escape puzzler from the We Were Here crew, and city-based F2P life sim (looks a bit GTA-y?) Paradise (#13).

• Xbox rolled out a major new ‘this is an Xbox’ marketing campaign, including a funky new commercial going beyond the console, as MS “invites people to play with Xbox across multiple devices and screens.” There’s also a ‘we got you’ PC Game Pass ad, as the company tries to escape the struggling console hardware paradigm.

• Footprints.gg’s latest ‘trad media’ coverage charts are headed - expectedly - by the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro, followed by Dragon Age: The Veilguard (lots of online guides!), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and BioWare’s Mass Effect franchise, since it was N7 Day last week and a Mass Effect TV show is in development.

• Exciting news for Kickstarter nerds? ICO has now added two weekly newsletters tracking the top video game and board game Kickstarters by $ - something that it’s been very tricky to monitor in aggregate recently. (Their Switch/Steam weekly release newsletters are also still handy.)

• Looking at our Switch ‘recent’ eShop charts (paid, third-party, U.S. by download #), Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake zoomed to #1 in the chart (and #40 in all 14-day downloads!), with Metal Slug Tactics and Sonic X Shadow Generations close behind. Poppy Playtime: Chapter 3 & Poppy Playtime: Chapter 2 hold their positions well at #95 & #100, while Tetris Forever makes it as a new entry at #162.

• A social media post about a Steam sequel with 40k wishlists that ‘only’ made $20k went viral, and Ichiro Lambe’s take on it intrigues: “when I hear folks say this is a marketing problem [for the dev], I say: absolutely! But it's also like seeing a capsized cruise ship and saying that everyone is drowning because they need to breathe better.”

• Xbox’s Phil Spencer gave a whole raft of ‘thought leader’ interviews, including with Bloomberg. Summary: “They’re planning a handheld but it’s years away… there are no “red lines” for which Xbox games will come to PlayStation… the business is healthier now (no more big cuts?)” Also: good catch-ups with GameFile, and with Rolling Stone.

• Mobile microlinks: an excellent case study on Capybara GO, as Habby cooks up a cauldron of hot gameplay; Apple Arcade is adding 15 games through Jan, inc. “three Final Fantasy titles, PAC-MAN 256 & Boggle: Arcade Edition”; a mobile gamer survey reveals that“the most valuable 2% of players generate 35% to 45% of all IAP revenue.”

• Looks like Steam got its own version of Roblox’s Hindenburg Report from the ADL, pointing out “millions of examples of extremist and hateful content [in Steam Community comments] – including explicit hate symbols… as well as copypastas… shaped into swastikas.” It’s on the edges of the community - but more moderation needed?

• GDCo’s U.S. PlayStation and Xbox ‘recent’ game charts see Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 topping things (duh!), with Farming Simulator 25 in the Top 10, Dragon Age: The Veilguard still doing decent, and ‘those EA/2K sports games’ the other evergreens. Lego Horizon Adventures (on PS!) & Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake are also popping into view - though not strongly, yet.

• We found this guide to the most popular vTubers - CG avatar-based YouTubers - very helpful: “VTubers command intensely loyal followings even when compared to traditional streamers; as an example, 7 of the top 10 most Super Chatted YouTube Live channels are VTubers.” (Many of these folks stream a lot of games.)

• Microlinks: PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for November is adding Grand Theft Auto V, Dying Light 2, Like a Dragon: Ishin, and more; talking to devs on the “real squeezing” effect of the current indie game market; Dragon Ball and Undisputed “deliver big UK game sales in October, as Call of Duty claims No.1.”

(Vampire) Survivors-likes - so what’s the trends?

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