It’s common knowledge that the Apple App Store and Google Play are absolutely littered with hundreds of thousands of games, yet the vast majority remain undiscovered. The same goes for PC-orientated gaming platform, Steam. For game developers, especially indie developers, some of the statistics for revenues and downloads are depressing. For example, it’s estimated that over 50% of games on Steam will earn less than $1,000 in their lifetime on the platform.
The problem, as such, is not one of quality; although there are many poor game titles on app stores, it is more about discoverability. Traditionally, gaming platforms succeed in leading users to what they are looking for with smart organization and compartmentalization. For instance, you might find 100s of titles at a social casino and see them organized into tabs like online arcade games, table games, slots, and so on. Yet, when we are dealing with tens of thousands of titles, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, it can get difficult.
Ludocene Caused A Stir
It’s for that reason that the recently announced Ludocene platform has made waves, both with the gaming community and as an app idea. Now, to be clear, this is not an endorsement for Ludocene – it won’t even be released until September 2025. It’s rather to highlight how an idea can potentially fix a problem that blights the experience of engaging in an online activity, in this case, the vast oversaturation of games online.
So, what exactly is Ludocene? It has been described as “Tinder for games.” The idea is that you approach it in much the same way as a dating app, swiping right and left to build up a portfolio based on your likes and dislikes. The games are presented as a series of cards, with information provided by video game journalists (the founder of Ludocene was a gaming journalist, Andy Robertson), allowing the user to build up a database to lead to personalized recommendations.
As stated, we don’t know how much of a success Ludocene will be when it launches later this year, but it is clear it is tackling a problem – discoverability. Of course, you can argue that many sectors have discoverability issues, but gaming feels like a special case, and it certainly cannot be solved by traditional methods like SEO.
Ludocene should, in theory, help with the fact that many great games simply remain undiscovered.
Can Recommendations Be Unbiased?
Now, there are perhaps some potential flaws in the plan. What if the data provided for the cards is not reliable, i.e., perhaps the gaming journalists will be incentivized to recommend certain games? That is speculation, of course, and it does seem that Ludocene’s founders are committed gaming enthusiasts who really want to solve an issue that has become problematic both for gamers and the industry at large, yet it is often the case that these things evolve over time: consider the slew of sponsored results a search engine throws up today compared to twenty years ago.
Yet, as an idea, it has a lot of legs, especially considering how an application like Ludocene could be enhanced by artificial intelligence. There are other tools for discovering games, and perhaps Ludocene will be usurped in terms of hype, but some of the excitement from gaming experts, not to mention that the project raised a lot of funds on Kickstarter, suggested that the oversaturation of games on app stores and gaming platforms needed a fix.