The industry makes great games, but nobody can find them

At the Madeira Games Summit, a workgroup led by Modma Studios' Michal Bujko landed on a blunt conclusion: the industry already makes plenty of good games, but the systems meant to surface them are failing. Algorithms increasingly reward volume, familiarity, and short-term engagement, while distinctive projects get lost unless they can be aggressively optimized for visibility.

The group argued that this is not a small tooling issue. Platforms control discovery at scale but operate as black boxes, leaving developers and publishers to guess what is and isn't working. At the same time, publishers keep greenlighting projects based on comparables and wishlist velocity, which pushes the market toward safer, more repetitive output. The result is a feedback loop where the safest bets get more attention, and originality becomes harder to justify financially.

The proposed fixes are as much business discipline as platform policy. The workgroup called for better attribution, granular analytics, stronger human curation, and editorial placements that don't just amplify already-visible games. On the studio side, the advice was to build audience relationships from day one, commit to a clear identity, and make fewer but more deliberate bets. Paradox Interactive came up as the model: a publisher with a defined lane and a community that helps its games find each other.

The larger warning is that discoverability is becoming a long-term cultural risk. If the industry keeps optimizing for what the algorithm already knows, the games that deserve attention may never get it, and the studios...