ABOUT GAME ORACLE
Where did Game Oracle come from and who's behind it?
How We Got Here
We didn’t plan on starting a market research platform for indie game developers. We actually started a game studio before we started Game Oracle and it’s where the idea for this whole platform came from.
In February 2024, both of us were working in the most corporate jobs you could imagine, living that work-from-home life and spending the majority of our time in separate rooms of the house. Both of us had a creative itch we wanted to scratch and as it turns out, Ross has always wanted to make games.
What started out as a hobby project to make games based on F1 memes quickly spiralled into “could we make game dev commercially viable?”. We soon found that the tools we expected to be available for researching game ideas didn’t exist.
In other industries, market research tools are abundant, but the tools available to indie game developers that were actually useful for building a business didn’t really exist. We didn’t want to just be served data from Steam in meaningless graphs or shown trends that we couldn’t jump on. And don’t get us started on the inaccuracies of user defined tags!
At the same time, the online negativity around the opportunities for new indie games on Steam was really getting to us and we witnessed so many developers calling their games a failure because they didn’t make millions of dollars in revenue.
So Ross put his data science cap on and we made a map of every game on Steam that showed us exactly how saturated Steam really was, using statistical models to group similar games together. This is where Game Oracle really started; as a reaction to the overwhelming declaration from “experts” that Steam was a lost cause and that indie game development was dying.
The Steam Map that we built gave us the foundation to make tools that are actually useful for finding gaps in the game industry, finding your competitors, setting targets, pricing fairly and spying on what everyone is doing for their marketing… and many other market research tasks that we’ll probably make a YouTube video about.
So that’s the history of Game Oracle - we’re so glad to be here with you instead of in our corporate jobs and we hope that we can make your indie game development life just that little bit brighter.
The Founders
Ross Burton, PhD - Head of Data and Tools
Chat to Ross if you're interested in:
Indie game development holds a special place in my heart. When I was traveling around the UK working different jobs, studying, and living in different cities, PC games have always been a familiar friend, keeping me company even on the darkest days. Indie games in particular have helped me stay connected to my friends, even when we were separated by distance.
Gaming came to the rescue again a few years ago when I found the corporate world was dragging me down. After finishing my PhD I was left with a creative void and that is where I found my love for indie game development. So when I'm not working on Game Oracle, I can be found researching, designing, and learning about game development...or just simply playing the games I love.
My day job has always been in the science and data world, so it was a natural fit to combine my passion for gaming with my skills in data science. I have over seven years experience in data science, machine learning, and statistics, and worked in the world of biomedical science before then. My core expertise is in pattern recognition - how can we take a large complex dataset and find the patterns that matter? With Game Oracle, I want to help indie game developers find the patterns that matter to them, so they can develop a healthier mental model of the game industry, and where they fit into it.
Ross' Socials:
Jennie Burton, Head of Hype and Chats
Chat to Jennie if you're interested in:
I’m going to start by confessing something, I mostly like games because of the art, UI and theory behind clever mechanics, not because I play them. Instead, my hobbies are what you might associate with a women living in the 1950s; gardening, sewing, baking, bird watching and I do enjoy a bit of hoovering. I’m also an avid collector of stones and shells from the beach, I love to cycle when it’s not raining and if you put me in a charity shop, I’ll be in there for hours and emerge with an armful of second hand outfits, two wicker baskets and some blue and white crockery that I didn’t know I needed.
Professionally I’m a marketing nerd, but it took me a while to figure that out; I am your typical wiggly career gal. I have a Degree in Microbiology, a Masters in Science Communication and most recently, a Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing. I’ve worked in a supermarket café, academic science, science centres, finance, online harm prevention and now my final resting place, the game industry.
It’s been quite a journey, but along the way I’ve realised that the theory and strategy behind marketing is the same whatever industry you apply it to, but the endless opportunities for creativity makes indie games my favourite marketing subject by far!
As if I didn’t have enough hobbies, I’m currently learning how to draw so that I can have a crack at the art for the games we want to develop. Wish me luck and I’ll see you on Game Oracle’s social media!
Jennie' Socials:
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Contact Us
If you have any questions about our products, ideas for partnerships, or you want to make a press enquiry, please contact us at: jennie@game-oracle.com