The indie developers of “Motorslice” accidentally discovered on Steam that as long as they put a character image of “a shy anime girl with a mole fighting a giant machine with a chainsaw” in the marketing materials, the wish list number will skyrocket. This operation triggered polarized discussions in the marketing circle: some people think it is a genius idea, while others think it is taking advantage of the close-up of girls.
The Key to Wish List Curves Are Visual Hooks
The developer’s original marketing materials tended to purely show machinery and scenes, but when the team took the girl character as the main axis and repeatedly placed it in the marketing map, the curve showed obvious differentiation and improvement. This shows that in Steam, a platform environment dominated by male players, the visuals of certain characters inherently carry traffic attributes and can guide clicks without much explanation.
But is this selling games or characters?
Some people in the game marketing circle have questioned: If the core gameplay of a game has nothing to do with the character, but relies on the character image to drive traffic, does this constitute misleading? The other group believes that this is just normal creative positioning. Each game will choose the most advantageous angle as its appearance. The key point is “whether players get the promised content in the end.”
For independent developers, this case is extremely cost-effective!
I would also like to remind you that this strategy is not a panacea. If the clicks and retention of the game itself cannot support the expectations behind the wish list, it will eventually lead to negative reviews. The wish list is just the first step, the product is the final acceptance.