Wishlisting

Often developers will ask players to wishlist their game. What does that do for them? Is there some kind of Steam metric for interest?

Yup, don't ask me exactly how it works but presumably a game with a lot of interest would become more visible on the store, but the developer could also use it to prove to investors that their game has interest, think of it like pre-preorders.

In addition to what @cikame mentioned, everyone that's wishlisted the game also gets notified when the game is released and when it's discounted - both of which could help drive those people that were already interested to actually make the purchase.

I believe Steam's discovery algorithm also is boosted or helped by wishlisting. I seem to remember a dev at some point indicating that wishlisting a game on Steam was the best way to help it out short of buying it.

It's a much more consumer-friendly alternative than begging for preorders.

Yeah as far as I know, wishlisting is a pretty good sign of interest and if a lot of people do it/pre-order, publishers often turn around and allocate more marketing dollars towards that game as they believe they have a potential hit on their hands. And it helps algorithmically on Steam, too, I think!

Apart from what's also being mentioned, wishlisting shows up in Friend Activity too. It's probably a blip as far as advertising is concerned, but word of mouth can be huge for someone with no means of getting their name and game out there.

I love Wishlists and depend on it to keep track of the games I'm interested in. I've been wishlisting neat looking indy games on Steam all weekend. I can't believe Sony completely dumped PSN wishlists, they just assured I'm not going to pay any attention to their store.

not sure how much it helps dev but i'm sure it does. that said as a person who likes games alot and doesn't always have money for them or doesn't always keep great track at this time of year imo the steam( and other places) wishlist has been great, i don't usually have to keep a txt file of things i see that i'm interested in anymore like i did years ago and my own aside i've gotten enough bundles that there is often something i already had or am not interested in that a friend might be n i can easily just go OH so and so wants that ...here ya go buddy ^^

think they brought them back recently cause i seen it the other day still/again there on psn

@styx971: Oh, thanks, I see now. Shame my old one was nuked.

On the Play Watch Listen podcast Mike Bithell has gone into a very in depth discussion in the past as to why wishlisting is important for him and his company. Its basically an additional metric to judge interest in a game prior to its launch. It's incredibly helpful for indies as a lot of the time it will help measure how successful they will be on launch day. Granted not all wishlists turn into 100% day 1 purchases but I think Mike stated it was still a pretty high statistic (75%?) that he puts a lot of importance on it.

Plus as others have stated it does help with the Steam algorithm.

@tom_omb: yeah i know what you mean , it really sucks , idk why they did away with it in the first place