Why I Am Making Games

I am 60. I spent more than thirty years in marketing. The last game I made was in high school in the 1980s, with my buddies. This year I made 45 arcade levels that run in a browser. You can play them right now at alderhoard.com. This page is why.

By Scott Covert · September 8, 2026 · Every number has a source at the bottom.

Here's Your Takeaway

  • The research said: build a horror game. Horror has been the biggest seller on Steam for three years running.
  • I said no. That advice is like telling a shy person to become a famous public speaker because speakers get the most clients. The most money makes no sense for me.
  • I am building the games I loved at 15, for the people who loved them too. Thirty years of marketing taught me one thing above all: find your tribe. Do not chase the biggest crowd.

What I know, and what I do not

What I know

  • How people find things, and why they buy.
  • Small groups who share a passion beat huge crowds who share nothing. Marketing people call these groups niches, or tribes.
  • Thirty years of doing this for other people's products.

What I do not know

  • Game development. Zero. Nothing since the 1980s.
  • So I did what I do for any new market. I researched it.
  • Ninety-nine videos, three reports, and a lot of numbers later, the answer was clear. And I did not like it.

What the research said

Pick the genre first

On Steam, the odds of a new game getting 1,000 reviews change by a hundred times depending on the kind of game.

  • Survival and crafting games: about 1 in 5.
  • Puzzle games: about 1 in 300.
  • Jumping platformers: about 1 in 550.

Horror wins

Horror has been the number one genre in Steam's top sellers for three straight years. It is cheap to make, and people film themselves playing it, which is free advertising.

Weeks, not years

The recent hits were made fast. Two weeks. Two months. Fourteen weeks. One sold 750,000 copies in its first two weeks.

So the plan the numbers pointed to was simple. Make a short scary game. Put it on Steam. Get 7,000 people to click "I want this" before it comes out, which is what a wishlist is, and Steam starts showing it to everyone for free.

Why I said no

The advice

Build horror. Get streamers to play it. Sell it on Steam to the biggest crowd, which is mostly men aged 25 to 34.

Me

Zero match to my real personality. It is the same as telling me the way to get marketing clients is to become a charismatic public speaker with a YouTube show. True for somebody. Not true for me.

Two other voices had an opinion. I have lived with both of them a long time.

My ADHD brain said

Build what you love. My brain is not a suggestion box. It wanders, it gets obsessed, it changes course, and I cannot make it do anything else. For forty years that was the problem. In games, it turned out to be the method.

My marketing years said

Find the people like you. There are always more of them than you think, and they are easier to find than a crowd. A small tribe that cares beats a big crowd that shrugs.

Who the games are for

The facts

  • People 45 and older are the biggest group of game players in the United States, 37 percent of everyone who plays.
  • Over 50, three out of four play puzzle games. Four out of five play alone. Twelve hours a week.
  • Seven out of ten feel games are not made with them in mind.

My preference

  • The arcade games I grew up on. Bricks and a ball. A maze. A cave to dig.
  • Four arrow keys and a space bar. Nothing else, ever.
  • Weird levels. Nothing really dies. No spiders.

The decision

  • Free. In a browser. No download, no account.
  • For people who remember 1982, made by one of them.
  • Not on Steam. Steam is a different person with a different wallet.

The dangerous part

Here is something I know about myself. On my own, chasing money, I am a disaster. Every reasonable income I have ever earned came from working with other people. The "how to make money" crowd would look at how I spend a build week and shake their heads.

So the games are not the business, and I am not pretending they are.

In gaming I found a place to be the freak I am

Every one of the 45 walls in my brick game has one new rule, and the rule fits in five words. The names say what they do.

Nobody asked for a wall where the bricks breathe, or one where balloons carry the bricks away. I built them because the idea showed up and would not leave. That is the ADHD part. The marketing part is that somewhere out there is a small group of people who will see TINY BUBBLES and grin, and they are the only audience I need.

Nobody checks the developer's age. They check whether the game feels like theirs.from my own research notes

Where I followed the research, and where I ignored it

Followed

  • Ship fast, in weeks, not years.
  • Pick your people before you pick your features.
  • A level you can learn by heart is worth more than a random one.
  • Let the AI write the code. Be careful with AI art and AI words.

Ignored

  • Horror.
  • Steam, streamers, wishlists.
  • Multiplayer. Never.
  • Chasing the most money instead of the right people.

That is why I am making games. Play them at alderhoard.com. Four arrows and a space bar.

Sources

Written by Scott Covert — plain explanations of what the AI industry did this week · scovert.com · CC BY 4.0
scovert.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Covertly Crafty