Getting Started with Game Gap

Game Gap helps you find high-potential Steam market segments, inspect risk signals, and decide whether a niche is worth pursuing.

Demand Score

Central to Game Gap is the demand score, which estimates how much player appetite there is for the typical game in a segment. It’s built from two signals:

  • Released games: the median estimated Steam sales of the segment’s released games.
  • Upcoming games: the median estimated wishlists of its coming-soon games.

Both are put on a logarithmic scale, so a few blockbusters can’t dominate, then blended as a weighted average. Each signal’s weight depends on how many games stand behind it, so a median resting on one or two games counts for less than one backed by a healthy sample. Using medians rather than totals keeps the comparison fair: a segment of 300 low-selling games shouldn’t outrank one of 15 strong sellers just because it’s bigger.

Segments are then ranked against each other, and the score is reduced when demand is concentrated in one or two standout titles, since a niche carried by a single hit is much harder to break into.

The demand score ranges from 1 to 10, where higher means stronger, broader demand. Segments with no measurable demand score 1.

Ranking

Game Gap ranks segments by a combination of high demand and high uniqueness. Segments with strong player interest and clearer differentiation rise to the top. You will see both the demand score and the Avg. Uniqueness Score on each card; together they explain why a segment ranks where it does.

This default ranking is called Top Picks. Use the Sort by control above the segment list to reorder instead by Demand, Uniqueness, or Median Sales when one of those matters more to you than the blended default.

Main Workflow

1) Start on the segment list page

Open Game Gap and use the top controls to shape the segment set:

  • Dimensionality toggle (Both/2D/3D): switches the market map lens. Both is the default and the widest view: it covers the whole catalogue rather than combining the 2D and 3D lists, so it’s the only place you’ll find segments whose games never state a dimensionality. Narrow to 2D or 3D when you want a specific look
  • Subcategory carousel: narrows to specific subcategories
  • Keyword search: type a genre or theme, e.g. “roguelike”, “horror”, or “strategy”, to zero in on segments whose keywords match
  • Segment-type icon toggles: quickly include/exclude flagged segment types (e.g. Goliath, Stampede, NSFW, Franchise-dominated; see Segment-Type Toggles below for details)
  • Advanced filters: refine by composition, performance, uniqueness, and maturity

2) Read segment cards

Each card includes:

  • Segment title and keyword chips
  • Short summary
  • Demand score and Avg. Uniqueness Score
  • Median Sales/Wishlist context (where applicable)
  • Total games and % coming soon
  • Warning/type icons (if present)

Click a card to open full segment details in a new tab.

3) Deep dive on segment details

The detail page is where you validate the opportunity with richer evidence:

  • Segment overview
  • Player sentiment summary (likes/dislikes from reviews)
  • Warnings and flags (Old But Gold, Goliath’s Playground, Stampede, Achievement Farming, Studio Monopoly)
  • Segment composition metrics
  • Performance metrics and growth deltas
  • Opportunities and challenges
  • Market gaps and developer fit commentary
  • Building Blocks: the game-design features most common in this niche (see below)
  • Full game table for that segment
  • “Hollow Hits” and “Top Outliers” spotlight lists when available

Sections load independently rather than waiting on one another. If you are the first person to open a segment, the segment overview and player sentiment summary may take a few moments to generate (“Building segment overview…” / “Summarising player sentiment…”) while the game table and metrics populate right away.

You can bookmark the segment from the header of the detail page, as well as from its card in the list.

4) Continue into concept validation

Each detail page ends with “Inspired by a market gap? Validate your idea with Concept Compass”. Click Open Concept Compass to hand the market signal straight into a fresh validation project in a new tab.

Building Blocks

The Building Blocks section of a segment’s detail page shows up to six game-design features that games in this niche are built from. They’re taken from the games most similar to the segment and ranked by how much more common they are here than across Steam as a whole, so you see what makes this niche distinctive, not just features every game has.

Each card shows the feature’s category and name, with a note such as “Found in 12 of 20 similar games”. Click a card to open its full feature report in a new tab, with implementation advice, production cost and what players love or hate about it.

Building Blocks make great candidates for your Concept Compass core features. The section is hidden for segments where no distinctive features stand out.

Finding Segments from a Game’s Page

Any game’s page can link straight into Game Gap. Under “Game Gap Opportunities”, you will see the market segments that game belongs to:

  • Up to 3 segments are shown, the highest-ranked first
  • If none of the game’s segments clear the usual ranking bar, the single best one is still shown, so a game that genuinely belongs somewhere always links somewhere
  • If the game does not belong to any segment, the section does not appear

Click a segment button to open its full details in Game Gap.

Curated Mode from Data Explorer

If you come from Data Explorer’s market-gap discovery prompt, Game Gap opens in a curated view.

In curated mode:

  • You see only segments that overlap with your Data Explorer result set
  • A banner explains that these are related gaps
  • You can exit curated mode anytime and return to the full market stream

Bookmark Mode

Subscribers can bookmark segments from the list cards or from the header of a segment’s detail page. Your bookmarked segments also appear under Your Bookmarks on the dashboard.

When you enter bookmark mode:

  • Only bookmarked segments are shown
  • Other filters are temporarily disabled
  • You can exit bookmark mode to return to normal browsing

Legacy Segments

Opening an old bookmark or a shared link can sometimes take you to a segment from an earlier version of the Game Gap model. These carry an orange “Legacy segment” badge on the card and a full notice on the detail page, since their stats and member games reflect that older clustering rather than the current one. Legacy segments never appear in normal browsing, only via an old bookmark or link, so if you want an up-to-date read on that space, browse the current market segments instead.

Segment-Type Toggles and NSFW Behavior

The icon row under filters controls whether flagged segment types are included.

  • Active icon: include that segment type
  • Inactive icon: exclude that segment type

Each toggle corresponds to a specific segment flag:

  • Goliath

    • Meaning: The segment has strong big-studio presence.
    • Trigger: A meaningful share of games are from established studios/developers with high historical Steam revenue.
    • When toggled off: Segments flagged as “Goliath’s Playground” are filtered out.

  • Stampede

    • Meaning: The segment has unusually heavy pipeline pressure from unreleased games.
    • Trigger: More than 30% of games in the segment are marked “coming soon”.
    • When toggled off: Segments with the Stampede warning are filtered out.

  • Achievement Farming

    • Meaning: The segment appears inflated by low-effort achievement-focused titles.
    • Trigger: A high share of games have very large achievement counts (100+), which can distort performance comparisons.
    • When toggled off: Achievement-farming-dominated segments are filtered out.

  • Studio Monopoly (Cult Following)

    • Meaning: A single developer heavily dominates top performance in the segment.
    • Trigger: Top games are concentrated under one studio/developer identity.
    • When toggled off: Cult-following/monopoly segments are filtered out.

  • NSFW

    • Meaning: The segment contains adult-content games.
    • Trigger: Segment-level NSFW flag.
    • When toggled off: NSFW segments are filtered out entirely.

  • Franchise Dominated

    • Meaning: A single franchise owns a large portion of segment performance and attention.
    • Trigger: Segment-level franchise concentration signal.
    • When toggled off: Franchise-dominated segments are filtered out.

NSFW behavior is split intentionally:

  • NSFW segments can still appear in results
  • If your account is set to hide NSFW content, capsule/screenshot imagery is hidden on cards/details
  • Turn off the NSFW toggle icon if you want to remove NSFW segments entirely

Advanced Filters

The advanced panel lets you narrow by segment-level metrics with both hard thresholds and banded ranges.

How bounds work:

  • If you fill only Min, you keep segments at or above that value
  • If you fill only Max, you keep segments at or below that value
  • If both are empty, no bound is applied

Composition filters

  • % Coming Soon (Min/Max)

    • Controls how pipeline-heavy a segment is.
    • Useful for reducing launch-crowding risk by setting a lower max.

  • % Indie (Min/Max)

    • Controls how indie-leaning the segment is.
    • Useful if you want to avoid markets dominated by larger organizations.

  • % Very Positive+ (Min/Max)

    • Controls overall reception quality of games in the segment.
    • Useful for identifying either high-quality benchmarks or weaker quality bands you believe you can outperform.

Performance and revenue range filters

These use range bands (not exact single values), so they are best for quickly narrowing by order-of-magnitude:

  • Median Sales Range

    • Filters segments by typical unit-sales scale.

  • Median Revenue Range

    • Filters segments by typical gross revenue scale.

  • Median Wishlists Range

    • Filters segments by pre-launch demand scale where coming-soon titles are relevant.

  • Median Developer Lifetime Revenue Range

    • Filters segments based on the historical strength of developers active in that segment.
    • Useful for avoiding spaces where incumbent teams have substantially larger prior market power.

Market uniqueness and maturity filters

  • Avg. Uniqueness Score (Min/Max)

    • Higher values = stronger differentiation and fewer close substitutes.
    • Lower values = denser competition around typical games in the segment.

  • Median Age in Years (Min/Max)

    • Controls how mature or recently formed the segment is.
    • Lower age tends to emphasize newer trends; higher age tends to emphasize established markets.

Practical filter recipes

  • Lower-competition scouting

    • Higher min uniqueness score
    • Lower max % coming soon
    • Keep Goliath and Franchise Dominated toggles off

  • Quality-upside scouting

    • Moderate/high demand cards
    • Mid-range or lower % Very Positive+
    • Segment warnings reviewed before final selection

  • Indie-feasible scouting

    • Higher minimum % indie
    • Lower developer lifetime revenue band
    • Goliath toggle off

Use these to move from discovery to decision quality.

Practical Strategy

A reliable workflow for most users:

  1. Start broad (Both, no subcategory)
  2. Keep all segment-type toggles active initially
  3. Review top-ranked segments (they combine high demand with high uniqueness)
  4. Open 3-5 segments in new tabs and compare warnings, composition, and game table patterns
  5. Remove risky segment types (e.g. Stampede or Goliath) only after you’ve seen the full landscape
  6. Move top candidates into Concept Compass for concept-level validation

FAQ

Why don’t I see old Game Gap modes anymore?

The v6 redesign merged mode-specific outputs into one segment workflow so you can compare opportunities and risks in one place.

Why are some segment images blurred/hidden?

Your NSFW display setting can hide media while still showing the segment’s data. Disable NSFW segments via the icon toggle if you want to remove them entirely.

Why can a segment have high demand but still feel risky?

Demand alone is not enough. Always read warnings, uniqueness, composition, and competitive concentration before deciding.

Why does a game’s page only show one segment, even when it looks like a weak fit?

That is the fallback behavior described above. Membership in a segment is a fact worth linking to, even when none of a game’s segments clear the usual ranking bar. In that case Game Gap shows the single best one rather than showing nothing at all.

Free vs subscriber access

Game Gap is available on paid plans, including the full segment list, detail pages, Building Blocks and bookmarks. See the pricing page for plan details.

If you have any questions about using any of our tools, drop us an email at support@game-oracle.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.