Earlier in 2025, Ludocene made a few headlines, gaining mainstream attention after a Kickstarter campaign to fund the platform went viral. Ludocene is – for want of a better term – a video game matching engine, a platform led by gaming experts (video game reporters, developers, etc.) that aims to help players find games that match their specific tastes. It was tagged with the headline-friendly moniker “Tinder for Gaming,” which certainly helped sell the story earlier in the spring.
Today, Ludocene remains a work in progress. The platform is functional, but you can see there are many other features that have not yet been added. However, beyond what the platform will eventually evolve into, you can say that Ludocene’s creators followed the same principles that all app builders should: They saw a problem or a market gap and built an application to solve it.
Undiscovered games are a huge issue for indie developers
The problem, as such, that the Ludocene team, which is led by gaming reporter David Hayward, saw was that gaming discovery could be difficult. Too many great games were left unknown, and players who would discover games based on algorithms or whatever platforms like Steam decide to promote were missing out on titles that might better suit their tastes. Thus, the Tinder idea came about, using a variety of tactics to start building your own personal library of games that really suit you.
Is it really a problem, though? It somewhat depends on how you look at it. Platforms like Steam do tend to push what’s popular, so there are usually 1000s of titles that do not get the credit they deserve. Some gaming platforms are more adept than others at helping players find underrated titles. Obviously, a lot can depend on how much content is housed on your platform or app.
Some platforms think outside the box on discovery
Online casinos are faced with a similar problem, and again, some do it better than others. The social casino McLuck.com, for instance, has an excellent discovery UX, looking beyond the standard search and genre options and allowing users to find games through concepts like specific slot features that they may like. It makes it that much easier to explore a platform with 100s of games.
Yet, much of this can be transferred to other aspects of content discovery on an app or website. For many years, experts have been banging the drum about how important app functions and features can remain undiscovered by users, which can impact aspects like user retention rates and revenues. The problem is that nobody reads user guides or how-tos; they simply dive in and start using the app. If your app’s features or specific content are not easily discoverable, they remain undiscovered.
If we can return to games, consider how stark it is between the popular games and those that struggle: There are around 90,000 games on Steam, and around one-third of those (32.7%) remain unplayed. You can see the statistics for yourself at SteamDB. When it comes to revenues and profits, it’s just as tough. The ‘big games’ suck up huge amounts of the revenue, whereas those in the bottom 50% measure revenues in 100s of dollars, perhaps cents. Steam has tried to help with its “Discovery Queue” feature, but its success has been mixed.
You can, of course, argue that it is survival of the fittest and that great games will inevitably rise to the top, but anyone who has launched an app or a product that users just didn’t ‘get’ will tell you that sometimes it’s not the product but how people find the product that counts. The lesson is simple: don’t make assumptions about how users will discover your app or its best features. Make it easy for them.