How to do a Competitive Analysis: For Beginners

What’s a Competitive Analysis?

Hello! It’s nice to see new faces in the game development scene!

If you’re reading this, chances are you were asked by a publisher or partner for a competitive analysis of your game! Or you’re just here because you were bored and found this article on social media. (If you did, please give us a follow there too!)

A competitive analysis is, in simple terms an answer to the following questions:

Based on games currently available on the market, how much do I expect my game to sell, and how much do I expect to make?

For example, I’m currently developing a minesweeper roguelike game! I won’t go too much into detail on it, but I will do a competitive analysis on my own game, and you can follow along and see how it’s done!

If you want to know why competitive analysis, stick around to the end of the article. It’ll be this article’s bonus section!

Of course, it’s important to know that competitive analysis are just estimates. They’re not fact. Games can overperform and underperform.

Step 1: Understand your game

First, you need to understand the building blocks that other people will use to describe your game. There’s a few different ways to go about this, and I’ll cover a few briefly. I recommend doing both of the ones outlined below.

Strategy 1: Attempt to describe your game using -likes

For example, my minesweeping roguelike game has a Balatro-like formula, where you earn points to beat a target score using passive items. It’s also taking influence from Demoncrawl, which is another minesweeper roguelike.

This way, you can find games similar to the one you’re making, which will be important in Step 2.

Strategy 2: Assign genres to your game

They don’t have to be rigid genres like “Action” or “RPG”. They can be the fundamentals of what makes your game in a weird but unique way.

For example, I could describe DELTARUNE as having “minigame combat”, which would be a valuable definition for the next step.

You would want to have five or six of these genres that are the most important in defining your whole game. You’ll be comparing other games to see which fill in those check boxes!

Once you’re done…

You should have a few games in mind and have broken down your game into five or six genre checkboxes. Have a look at mine and see how it turned out!

Genre	Roguelike?	Score Attack?	RTA?*	Meta unlocks?**	Anime artsyle?
My game	✅	✅	✅		✅
Balatro	✅	✅		✅
Demoncrawl	✅			✅

* Game is played against a real-time time limit
** Unlocks that change core gameplay between runs

If you have something like this, you’re free to move on to Step 2!

Step 2: Expanding your list of games

Good! Now that you have a short list, it’s time to expand it! Go scouring the internet (or your massive backlog of games) for games that can reasonably fit into your list! Find games with similar characteristics to compare!

I can’t really give much advice for finding said games, you’re gonna have to ask around or own a couple thousand of them like myself. But you’re done once you have at least four other comparison points… the more the better, though!

You want every column to contain at least three check marks.

Genre	Roguelike?	Score Attack?	RTA?*	Meta unlocks?**	Anime artstyle?
My game	✅	✅	✅		✅
Balatro	✅	✅		✅
Demoncrawl	✅			✅
CloverPit	✅	✅		✅
Demonic Mahjong	✅	✅		✅	✅
FLATHEAD		✅	✅
Chrono Ark	✅			✅	✅
Downwell	✅	✅	✅

Step 3: Math. A lot of math.

Alright, pull out your calculators. Now’s the time to do some counting.

First thing you’ll want to do is figure out how long each game has been out. This means the moment you were able to first buy the game. Here’s that info tacked on, you can find that info from the game’s store page.

Genre	Roguelike?	Score Attack?	RTA?*	Meta unlocks?**	Anime artstyle?	Age (years)
My game	✅	✅	✅		✅	1 (default)
Balatro	✅	✅		✅		1.8
Demoncrawl	✅			✅		5.5
CloverPit	✅	✅		✅		0.4
Demonic Mahjong	✅	✅		✅	✅	0.5
FLATHEAD		✅	✅			1.5
Chrono Ark	✅			✅	✅	1.5
Downwell	✅	✅	✅			10.5

Next, you’ll want to grab each game’s estimated sales and revenue. I personally use Gamalytic (and so do many people in the industry!)

NOTE: These numbers are not at all accurate, but it’s fine, because competitive analysis is meant to be an estimate, not hard facts. There will be lots and lots of variance.

Genre	Age (years)	Estimated Sales	Estimated Revenue	Tamping
My game	1 (default)	?	?
Balatro	1.8	5,900,000	74,500,000	/10
Demoncrawl	5.5	30,000	300,000	-
CloverPit	0.4	1,300,000	11,300,000	/10
Demonic Mahjong	0.5	195,000	2,300,000	-
FLATHEAD	1.5	8,500	13,500	-
Chrono Ark	1.5	460,500	6,500,000	-
Downwell	10.5	561,800	734,000	-

The checkmarks section of the table has been left out for readability, see the table above for that.

Huh? What’s tamping? That’s just something I do to keep numbers realistic. I suggest you do too if you’re an indie gamer that hasn’t seen the massive success those two big games above have.

If you think a game is mainstream (in that everyone and their mothers has heard of it, or close enough), I’d tamp the game by dividing the values during math by 10.

Genre	Age (years)	Adjusted Estimated Sales	Adjusted Estimated Revenue
My game	1 (default)	?	?
Balatro	1.8	590,000	7,450,000
Demoncrawl	5.5	30,000	300,000
CloverPit	0.4	130,000	1,130,000
Demonic Mahjong	0.5	195,000	2,300,000
FLATHEAD	1.5	8,500	13,500
Chrono Ark	1.5	460,500	6,500,000
Downwell	10.5	561,800	734,000

There you go. Much more reasonable.

Now to make estimates. We’re trying to look at the expected value each feature will bring to your game. Remember the checkboxes from earlier?

Genre	Roguelike?	Score Attack?	RTA?*	Meta unlocks?**	Anime artstyle?
My game	✅	✅	✅		✅
Balatro	✅	✅		✅
Demoncrawl	✅			✅
CloverPit	✅	✅		✅
Demonic Mahjong	✅	✅		✅	✅
FLATHEAD		✅	✅
Chrono Ark	✅			✅	✅
Downwell	✅	✅	✅

Divide each game’s sales and revenue estimates by the number of check marks it has. That is the estimated value that, on average, each feature brought to the game. Replace each checkmark with it. I’ll guide you through one of them.

Balatro made 590,000 sales (tamped) and earned 7,450,000$ (tamped).

Since it has three features in our checkbox grid, we shall divide each by 3.

590,000 / 3 = ~196,667 sales per feature

7,450,000 / 3 = ~2,483,334$ revenue per feature

Additionally, Balatro has been out for 1.8 years. We want to estimate the earnings we’d get in a year, so we need to multiply each stat to compensate.

If you’ve forgotten basic algebra, here’s how to turn 1.8 back into 1.

Convert to fraction: 1.8 -> 9/5

Divide by numerator: 1.8 / 9 = 0.2

Multiply by denominator: 0.2 * 5 = 1

We will repeat each division and multiplication on each stat.

196,667 / 9 * 5 = 109,259 estimated first year sales per feature

2,483,334 / 9 * 5 = 1,379,630 estimated first year revenue per feature

And we plug the numbers back in as shown:

Genre	Roguelike?	Score Attack?	RTA?*	Meta unlocks?**	Anime artstyle?
My game	✅	✅	✅		✅
Balatro	109,259  1,379,630	109,259  1,379,630		109,259  1,379,630
Demoncrawl	✅			✅
CloverPit	✅	✅		✅
Demonic Mahjong	✅	✅		✅	✅
FLATHEAD		✅	✅
Chrono Ark	✅			✅	✅
Downwell	✅	✅	✅

Do this for the rest of the games.

Genre	Roguelike?	Score Attack?	RTA?*	Meta unlocks?**	Anime artstyle?
My game	✅	✅	✅		✅
Balatro	109,259  1,379,630	109,259  1,379,630		109,259  1,379,630
Demoncrawl	2,727  27,272			2,727  27,272
CloverPit	108,333  941,666	108,333  941,666		108,333  941,666
Demonic Mahjong	97,500  1,150,000	97,500  1,150,000		97,500  1,150,000	97,500  1,150,000
FLATHEAD		2,833  4,500	2,833  4,500
Chrono Ark	102,333  1,444,444			102,333  1,444,444	102,333  1,444,444
Downwell	17,834   23,301	17,834   23,301	17,834   23,301

Now, gather the averages for each column!

Add up each value individually (do NOT mix sales and revenue) and calculate the average of all the values!

For example, for the roguelike column’s sales number:

(109259 + 2727 + 108333 + 97500 + 102333 + 17834) / 6 = ~72,997 expected sales value

Note: Dividing by 6, because there were six numbers. Averages.

Get the values for each.

Genre	Roguelike?	Score Attack?	RTA?*	Meta unlocks?**	Anime artstyle?
My game	✅	✅	✅		✅
Expected Sales Value	72,977	67,151	10,333	Unneeded.***	99,916
Expected Revenue Value	827,718	699,819	13,900	Unneeded.***	1,297,222

***Because this column isn’t checked, its values should not be added to the total.

Finally, add the values together for the checkmarked columns! Based on this competitive analysis, I should expect my game to sell…

250,000 copies, and earn… 2,800,000$ in revenue in the first year!

But is my game going to do those numbers? I find it unlikely. Let’s call this a highball, and estimate a lowball that’s a tenth of the values. So a lowball estimate is 25,000 copies for 280,000$.

25,000 - 250,000 sales, and 280,000$ - 2,800,000$ revenue. That’s your answer!

And that is how you do a competitive analysis! But, just like in math class, please show your work to that publisher/partner. If you just throw numbers around, you’re going to be laughed at (well, not really, but internally).

Hopefully this helps, and thanks for reading!
And remember, this is just an estimate, not a fact!

Bonus: Why this method? And why does this seem so inaccurate?

Hi, welcome to the bonus section!

So, these numbers may seem really wildly inaccurate. Can we really say Al Fine made 1,000,000 dollars just by including anime aesthetics in Chrono Ark?

Yeah, definitely not. 

This occurs because we’re assuming the entirety of a game’s value is encapsulated in the genres we’ve selected. You could improve accuracy significantly by adding genres that encapsulate the games you’re comparing against, but not the game you’re making. That way, we can fully generalize the value each feature brings to the table.

You’ll get a lot less outrageous numbers anyway.

So, why competitive analysis? We want to know a few things to better understand how to help you out! (Speaking as a publisher/partner.)

Of course, money makes the world go round, and we are happy to see larger numbers. However, doing a competitive analysis can show the potential market demand for your game. Additionally, it can help us better understand the budget we recommend you throw at the game for advertising/marketing.

Of course, we also know competitive analysis is just estimates. They’re not facts. Games can overperform and underperform.