Wishlists are important for indie developers because they show how many people are interested in a game. It also might be a key metric for publishers. So how many wishlists should a game have to show that you’re on the right track?
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On June 30, TavroxGames CEO Yannick Elahee opened up about the “ugly truth” of working with indie publishers in a blog post. In the article, he also wrote about the importance of wishlists.
Here is what Elahee thinks about this metric:
- 100 wishlists/day is crazy good;
- 50 wishlists/day is very interesting and promising;
- 20 wishlists/day is an average good indie game on Steam;
- 10 wishlists/day is a bit low and probably not worth investing $50,000 into the project;
- 5 wishlists/day is a catastrophe and you need to rework MAJOR parts of your game, marketing, or design.
As discoverability expert Simon Carless pointed out later, if you have a great number of organic wishlists, you just might want to self-publish your game instead of trying to sign with a publisher.
Elahee also noted that indie developers shouldn’t always blame publishers for a small number of wishlists. It could be something about your game. “If the game fails to bring new traction, the publisher will rank it lower in their priority list,”
You can read the full article of TavroxGames head here.