FEDERICO CICCHI
01
The Steam page says everything
Your game description tries to be comprehensive instead of clear. Players scan for 3 seconds. If they can't classify your game instantly, they bounce. Features don't sell. Clarity sells.
Nail the Mind.Win the Player.
Your game isn’t failing because it’s bad. It’s failing because players can’t tell in three seconds why they should buy it.
I’ve spent 20+ years shipping and scaling games at Ubisoft, Behaviour Interactive and indie studios, including Fallout Shelter, which launched with zero paid user acquisition and passed $100M in revenue.
Now I teach studios One Nail, the videogame positioning method: find the one reason players choose your game, and say it on your Steam page, in your trailer, and in your pitch.
I work with game studios and founders at four moments: rewriting a Steam page, rescuing a flat launch, pitching a publisher, or pitching investors. You leave with one clear reason players choose your game, and the skill to find it again for the next one.
The Problem
Your game is good. Your sales say otherwise.
In 2025 75.4% of Steam games sold fewer than 1,000 copies (Gamalytic).
Good games end up there too. Here's why:
02
Your genre already has a winner. And too many games
Does your pitch start with "It's like Hades, but…"? Then you've already lost. Players have their roguelike, and new ones land on Steam every week. Slightly better gives them no reason to look.
03
Marketing can't fix it
Trailers, ads, influencers, a Gamescom booth. Each one is a megaphone that amplifies whatever message you give it. If you can’t say clearly why a player should pick your game, you’re paying to amplify confusion.
How I Help
Does your game have a positioning problem?
You can’t see it from the inside. Your game feels clear to you because you built it. A player on your Steam page gets a few seconds and a capsule image, and decides.
Answer 15 questions about your game and how you present it. You’ll get a report with your score and you'll find out whether your game's commercial problem is positioning, marketing, or something else entirely.
After the diagnostic, we talk. Then you either learn the method on your own game with me, or I run it for you.
Take the Free Positioning Diagnostic →
3 minutes. 15 questions. Find out if your game has a positioning problem.
Referrals
Don't take my word for it.
Studio founders and leaders on what changed once their game had one clear reason to be chosen.
From a Steam page auto-tagged “Racing” to a cozy narrative life-sim where you connect with a town: one Word changed what the game is.
They came in pitching a cheap-to-build horror studio; they left pitching the first horror game where the player isn’t the victim: they’re part of the system.
From “a calm, atmospheric puzzle adventure” to REUNITE: one Word turned a generic puzzle game into the only narrative puzzle built on Indian mythology where every level ends in an embrace.
The Book
Nail the Mind.
Nail the Mind.
Win the Player.
Why great games die in a crowded market, and how to make sure that yours doesn't.
Join the waiting list →Videogame Positioning
Free weekly positioning teardowns, case studies, and frameworks for game studios that want to stop guessing and start testing. Read by game founders and studio leaders.
Read on Substack →