The Business: How Many Actually Know Your Product Exists?

On Saturday this past weekend, this story came over the feed.

Every issue spoken of here applies to Tabletop.

In addition to the Network Effect--rant incoming on that, as it is obvious that people need it have it drilled through their skulls--most Tabletop games do nothing and go nowhere because they are neither seen nor heard due to incompetent and insufficient marketing.

What we see with Steam is Gaben and company, out of their own self-interest, devising a Visibility Boost solution that is tailored to the interests of a specific Steam user. It is similar to what Google (formerly) did with both search and content (i.e. on YouTube), and for the same reason: to boost the user engagement with the platform in the very manner that users want- to use their own Revealed Preferences, as shown in the user data, to serve up More Like What You Like to them.

DriveThru and every other Tabletop storefront that is not tied to a publisher needs to do the same thing.

The other thing that Steam, and anyone that follows their lead, needs to do is to go to the publisher and show them how to work this system to get their news, products, and updates put into the feeds of their target audience. Do that, and now you have both users and publishers happy with you and you get your cut without complaints because you not only delivered that added value you showed both ends of the transaction what you did and how they can use it to their advantage.

You want to get people to play "Haughty Heresy Huntresses" by putting it before that 40K crowd? Boy, it would be nice if you had a platform that had those features so you didn't need to blow upto 100% of your production budget just to get it before their faces and hope for a pick-up rate of 10% at best that will, most likely, only be a party trick gimmick that doesn't actually get played.

This won't help you overcoming the dominent Network Effect, but it can help you tap into it and compete from the inside.