Data Sources
| Source | Role | Confidence | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam store pages + SteamSpy appdetails | Primary spine — game metadata, review scores, short descriptions, and real Steam user tags | High (review % from thousands of reviews); user tags crowd-sourced (medium confidence) | Per-game Steam user tags are fetched via the SteamSpy appdetails endpoint and used for art style, theme, and mechanic classification, supplemented by short description keyword matching. Tags are community-applied and can be noisy or popularity-biased. |
| SteamSpy | Owner count estimates | Medium — modeled estimates, ±30–50% typical | Not verified sales data. Post-2019 API changes reduced accuracy. Treat as order-of-magnitude only. |
| itch.io | Supplementary coverage count | Low — one browse page, no owner/revenue data | Free/paid split only. Not included in quantitative charts. |
| Kongregate | Supplementary coverage count | Low — 1–5 star ratings mapped to %; NOT comparable to Steam % | One page of results. Not included in quantitative charts. |
| Reddit r/incremental_games | Qualitative sentiment (if available) | Low / unavailable | Returns 403 without OAuth. Qualitative only if cached. |
Pipeline Design
Why Steam is the Spine
Steam is the dominant PC distribution platform for idle games and provides: structured game metadata, short descriptions, real Steam user tags (fetched via the SteamSpy appdetails endpoint), review counts and percentages, and price/business model data. SteamSpy also provides modeled owner counts which, despite their uncertainty, are the only freely available proxy for reach on the platform.
Weighted Score Formula
weighted_score = review_pct_positive × log(1 + total_owners)
This balances quality (review%) with reach (owners). Biases toward popular titles —
a niche game with 100% reviews will score lower than a popular game with 85%.
Owner counts use SteamSpy estimates (medium confidence).
Theme / Mechanic Classification
Themes, mechanics, and art style are classified from each game's real Steam user tags (fetched via the SteamSpy appdetails endpoint) plus its short description, using word-boundary keyword matching. Steam user tags are crowd-sourced — community-applied, and can be noisy, inconsistent, or popularity-biased — so this is a medium-confidence heuristic: better than description-only classification, but not authoritative genre data. A game may be assigned to multiple themes or mechanics. Results should be treated as directional signals, not definitive genre classifications.
The "rpg" theme is the most commonly detected in this corpus because "RPG" is a very common community-applied Steam tag on idle games. This reflects genuine community tagging behaviour on Steam, not a classification artefact.
Art Style
Art style is classified from each game's real Steam user tags (e.g. "Pixel Graphics", "Anime", "Hand-drawn"). Of 3,479 games, 3,206 have an art style assigned (pixel: 799, hand_drawn: 613, two_d: 516, three_d: 477, minimalist: 438, anime: 235, cute: 114, stylized: 14). Tags are crowd-sourced (see caveat above) — medium confidence.
Underserved Flag (Gaps Module)
A theme is flagged underserved when:
supply ≤ 25th percentile AND demand ≥ median demand.
Thresholds are corpus-relative — adding more games shifts the percentile.
Treat as directional signal, not a hard market gap.
Update Cadence
Active: ≤ 30 days since last detected update. Occasional: 31–120 days. Abandoned: > 120 days or no update date found. Update dates are scraped from Steam — missing dates default to "abandoned".
Update Cadence Data Source
Update cadence is derived from the Steam News API, which is used to detect the most recent news/patch post for 2,169 games. A game with no news entry within the last 120 days is classified as "abandoned." This is an approximation — news posts do not always correspond to gameplay updates.
Exclusions
- Mobile (iOS/Android): No free/reliable structured data source.
- SteamDB: Excluded from this pipeline (Cloudflare / ToS barriers).
- Reddit sentiment: r/incremental_games top.json returns 403 without OAuth; not collected unless cached data is present.
Known Limitations & Caveats
- Steam is the quantitative spine. Owner counts are SteamSpy modeled estimates — not verified sales figures. Treat as order-of-magnitude only.
- Mobile (iOS/Android) is not covered — no free/reliable data source was available.
- Reddit r/incremental_games top.json returns 403 without OAuth; qualitative sentiment not collected unless cached.
- Kongregate ratings are 1–5 stars mapped to a percentage; they are NOT comparable to Steam review percentages (low confidence).
- itch.io provides no owner/revenue data — coverage counts only.
- Scrapers parse static HTML/JSON-LD; counts reflect one page of results, not the full catalogue.
- SteamDB was excluded from this pipeline (Cloudflare / ToS barriers). The Steam News API IS used for update cadence detection (~2,169 games).
- Theme, mechanic, and art style classifications are derived from each game's real Steam user tags (fetched via the SteamSpy appdetails endpoint) plus short description keyword matching (word-boundary regex). Tags are crowd-sourced (community-applied, can be noisy or popularity-biased) — medium confidence; treat as directional signals, not authoritative genre data.
- Art style is classified from Steam user tags (e.g. 'Pixel Graphics', 'Anime'). 3,206 of 3,479 games have an art style assigned. Tags are crowd-sourced (medium confidence — see above).
- Weighted score = review_pct_positive × log(1 + total_owners); biases toward popular games with high approval.
- itch.io provides no owner/revenue data — coverage counts only.
- Kongregate ratings are 1-5 stars mapped to %positive (low confidence); not comparable to Steam review %.
- Mobile stores not covered (no free data source).
- itch.io and Kongregate data are scraped from static HTML / JSON-LD; counts reflect one page of results, not full catalogue.
Confidence Ratings Summary
| Metric | Confidence | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Steam review % | High | Direct from Steam; typically thousands of reviews per title. |
| Owner counts (SteamSpy) | Medium | Modeled estimates. ±30–50% error typical. Order-of-magnitude only. |
| Weighted score | Medium | Inherits SteamSpy uncertainty. Useful for ranking, not absolute values. |
| Theme / mechanic / art style classification | Medium | Classified from real Steam user tags (SteamSpy appdetails) plus short description keyword matching (word-boundary regex). Tags are crowd-sourced — community-applied, can be noisy or popularity-biased. Better than description-only, but not authoritative. Art style assigned for 3,206 / 3,479 games. |
| Underserved flag | Low–Medium | Corpus-relative thresholds; sensitive to corpus completeness. |
| itch.io coverage | Low | One browse page; no owner/revenue data; not comparable to Steam. |
| Kongregate ratings | Low | 1–5 star → %; not comparable to Steam review %. One page only. |
| Reddit sentiment | Low / unavailable | 403 without OAuth; qualitative keyword counts only if cached. |
| Mobile coverage | Not covered | No free structured data source available. |