What are Fortnite's top 'third-party IP' skins?

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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 have returned for midweek, folks - and thanks for the positive reception to all that Steam wishlist conversion/’long tail’ data from Monday. One interesting follow-up from that - Ben Scapp asked us whether conversion results differed by genre.

We’d need more like 500 survey results to get granular with subgenres, but we do have top-level median results: “RPG, 0.28x - 16 games; Strategy, 0.24x - 14 games; Adventure, 0.16x - 13 games; Simulation, 0.28x - 13 games; Action, 0.15x - 10 games.” (Reminder: the median of ‘launch wishlist balance to Week 1 sales’ was 0.20x for the full data set.) FYI!

[HEY YOU: you can support GameDiscoverCo by subscribing to GDCo Plus now. You get full access to our Steam data back-end for unreleased & released games & weekly PC/console sales research, Discord access, eight detailed game discovery eBooks - & lots more.]

Fortnite’s top third-party skins: a deep data dive!

When we were chatting to a client recently, they pointed out that Fortnite.gg - the top third-party data site for Epic’s ‘games as a platform’ standout - has a ‘most used skins’ section, documenting the avatars that players utilized the most, lifetime, in-game.

We were intrigued, and discovered that the data came from the more obscure Fortnite-Replay.info, which has a whole section for ‘most popular cosmetic characters’, based on PC game replays uploaded to its site. (BTW, it also has a ‘most frequent deaths’ heatmap - by in-game location - which is fascinating!)

The cosmetics were identified by skin #, not name, and there was also full ‘per-patch’ data on the most popular skins. So our data nerd Alejandro made this absolutely giant spreadsheet(Google Drive link), including skin popularity and name data from Fortnite.gg & beyond. (If you’re looking for the most obscure skins, they’re all there.)

But we wanted to break it down easily for GDCo readers. And because ‘lifetime skins by appearance %’ naturally disadvantages newer skins, we decided to use ‘% of players using that skin during the Fortnite patch closest to its release’ as the ranking. (Patches aren’t 100% ‘regular’ in terms of release timing, but it’s the best we can do.)

We also realized that skins you can redeem after buying a Battle Pass are going to have higher percentage usage than those you can only buy. So we also split those out! And here’s the results, starting with top third-party skins that were in a Battle Pass:

The above certainly re-iterates how superheroes are dominating culture nowadays, given that 14 out of the 20 most-used Battle Pass third-party skins were from Marvel or DC. (And The Mandalorian is kinda a ‘super hero’, just in Star Wars form, heh.)

Other skins in the mix? Never underestimate Rick & Morty, which has massive pop culture reach, and it’s interesting to see Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) included, as well as Brazilian soccer player Neymar Jr.

Next up, here’s the most popular third-party skins that you had to actually purchase with Fortnite V-Bucks. Fascinating to see rapper Travis Scott and his alter ego Astro Jack at the top of the charts, tied in to his Fortnite in-game concert. (It’s closely followed by Slim Shady, aka Eminem, who starred in the recent Big Bang event.)

What you might be surprised by are the celebrities - from F1 driver Lewis Hamilton to Fortnite champ Bugha - also crowding the top of these charts. You’ll also see notable manga & anime IP like Naruto and Dragon Ball in here, as well as a smattering of Marvel, DC and Star Wars characters.

Finally, here’s both first and third-party skins by ‘popularity in launch patch’, showing that Epic’s own IP - like Focus, Surf Witch, Daring Duelist and Caper - can hold their own alongside all of this hot third-party content.

And that’s what we derived! We are by no means Fortnite experts, so hit us up if we missed anything. But it’s really interesting to see a large-scale data cache about skin usage for such a giant game, and what it says about celebrity and creative IP.

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How TikTok virality still genuinely helps wishlists..

Neonhive’s Korina Abbott recently reached out to GameDiscoverCo because of this very handy Twitter/X thread she made showing how - as her TLDR explains: “TikTok views convert well to wishlists, and is a great way to boost daily numbers.”

The above example, for Krillbite’s ‘cute culinary adventure’Fruitbus, shows how two particular TikToks from Krillbite’s channel boosted Steam wishlists - idling at around 20 per day for that game - up above 100, a very creditable result.

Korina has some really good takeaways from a practical point of view. Quoting her:

• You don’t need millions of views to see meaningful wishlist growth

• TikTok SEO is a powerful way to keep views coming in

• Old posts with good organic views are continually pushed by TikTok

• ALWAYS repurpose TikToks to Reels and Shorts

We particularly wanted to highlight TikTok SEO as a key point. Korina notes: “People use TikTok as a search engine so it’s important to make sure your video appears under the right search terms to hit your target market. For Fruitbus, ‘cozy cooking game’ and ‘indie cooking game’ have been particularly powerful.”

Another great example is for vampire* narrative RPG Cabernet, which has had a number of multi-hundred of thousand view TikToks at various times.

It’s not epochal wins - 500k view TikToks lead to 400 daily wishlists. But it’s pretty darn good. (*There’s a running joke at GameDiscoverCo that we think ‘vampire games’ are massively undersupplied, btw. Success here could indicated we might be onto something. Bat!)

Finally, GameDiscoverCo asked Korina about the difficulty in concretely tracking where wishlists came from. (She included Steam UTM tracking in the thread - which was fragmentary, to say the least.) She says, and we agree:

”What is lost in the move from TikTok to Steam… is that people are not logged in on their mobile browser/app when they initially click the TikTok profile link… I genuinely believe that most users don't bother going to the profile to click a link and instead head to their browser or Steam app to search for the game directly. That's why seeing the comparative graphs is so interesting!”

There are more takeaways in the full Twitter/X thread. And thanks to Korina, her team, and the dev teams involved for being so transparent with data sharing here.

The game platform & discovery news round-up..

Finishing off the free newsletters for the week, here’s the game platform and discovery news we’ve spotted since Monday. Take info away, and don’t stray:

• Per Footprints.gg’s data on top ‘media website’ coverage this week(above), interest in Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws led things, with Fallout 4 getting pickup due to an upcoming free update & the Amazon show, and PS5 exclusive (for now?) Stellar Blade also gaining momentum.

• There was a Nintendo Indie World streaming showcase today (video, post-event press release): “presentation highlights include Little Kitty, Big City, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate and 3D Action Platformer Europa.” (Pizza Tower and Hollow Knight: Silksong are the big ‘where are they?’ player requests, btw.)

• Roblox is moving from an application-only process to letting everyone* (*with some restrictions, when paying a publishing advance in Robux) create and sell select 3D items on Roblox Marketplace. Fascinating, particularly the ‘Steam publishing fee’-style gate. Here’s the ‘thought leadership’ announcement, and here’s the practical one with how it all works.

• Randomly generated news: Robin Guo asks: “Roguelikes have been an indie favorite for decades now. Who will be the one to take it mainstream?”, whicle Deconstructor Of Fun looks at mobile idle RPG Legend Of Mushroom, which is big in Japan & Korea and “heavily relies on RNG-based mechanics and incentivizes long sessions.”

• PlayStation’s announcement of Ghost Of Tsushima’s PC system requirements also reveals a lot about Sony’s cross-platform strategy - the game uses“a new PlayStation overlay.. for PSN Friends List, Trophies, Settings, and Profile. [You] can also earn Trophies, addition to full support for Steam and EGS Achievements.” Huh!

• PC Gamer is the latest to reveal its ‘not-E3’ showcase, with the PC Gaming Show returning Sunday, June 9th with “50+ games, exclusives and announcements”. Meanwhile, the PitchYaGame folks are keeping an up-to-date ‘video game showcases’ page that looks awfully handy.

• Former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra “would like the option to "tip" developers once he's completed a game. Whilst acknowledging that "most will dislike this idea", Ybarra says that when he beats a game, he has "often" thought, 'I wish I could give these folks another $10 or $20 because it was worth more than my initial $70'".” (Supporter / Founder Packs on Steam are probably the closest to tipping right now, huh?)

• Apple’s Vision Pro has seen new app releases ‘plummet’ to just a handful a week, and Cassia Curran notes, in contrast, that: “Devs instead make apps for Meta, which does great financing initiatives like Ignition... has much cheaper headsets to develop on... has a good install base already with the Quest 2... isn't tied to Unity Pro ($2k a year!)”

• Xbox Game Pass’ second set of April games includes Manor Lords as a Day 1 PC Game Pass debut (that’s a great get, given its 2.5 million Steam wishlists), plus Another Crab’s Treasure & Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. Also: Game Pass Core adds Deep Rock Galactic, Superhot: Mind Control Delete, and Wreckfest.

• Some fascinating Fortnite & Roblox data via David Taylor: “According to email receipt data from YipitData, Fortnite OG saw paying player count increase by 150% through the period of Fortnite OG and LEGO Fortnite. During this period, paying Roblox players remained flat. In contrast, Apex Legends saw paying players decline by 35%.”

• PlayStation news: Sony is “asking developers to create a new PS5 Pro-exclusive graphics mode in games that combines… PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling to 4K… with a 60fps frame rate and ray-tracing effects”; more than 25 games are leaving PlayStation Plus in May, including lots of Final Fantasy titles.

• ‘Other media’ microlinks: Harper’s on why film and television writers “face an existential threat”; U.S. bookstore graphic novel sales in 2023 were dominated by manga, Scholastic, and Dav Pilkey, rather than DC/Marvel; U.S. board game sales data shows“hobby up slightly… mass and specialty retail flat or down in everything except TCGs… crowdfunding down, and more difficult.”

Finally, did you know that Japanese game company Namco had a Chuck E Cheese-esque ‘robot band’ called PicPAC they were showcasing in the early ‘80s? There’s a great mini-documentary about it on YouTube, and ‘new’ footage from a Japanese TV appearance in 1984 just got unearthed. Watch ‘em go, starting at 0.25:

[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.]