Why “My game is for Everyone” quietly kills it before launch

Today I’m going to show you how to replace “my game is for everyone” with a sharp, usable positioning spine: one core player, one promise, one anti-promise, and a launch wedge you can actually market.

If you don’t decide who the game is for, the market decides for you, and it decides “meh.” And “meh” doesn’t get wish lists, doesn’t get streamer picks, doesn’t get retention, doesn’t get word-of-mouth and, most importantly, doesn’t get revenues.

Because “for everyone” isn’t a strategy. It’s fear disguised as ambition:

• fear of saying no
• fear of being disliked
• fear of cutting features
• fear of committing to a specific identity

Your game won’t fail because you lacked features. It’ll fail because you lacked the spine to exclude.

This is about following the Positioning Law of Sacrifice, which we discussed in one of the previous article.

The framework we are going to set up today is what I called Bullseye:

• Pick one core player (a real person, not a demographic),
• Write a single-sentence promise (what they reliably get),
• Write an anti-promise (who will hate it, and why),
• Design for a sharp edge, not a buffet,
• Your marketing should follow your positioning. Make it specific enough to be recognisable.

Pick one player, not “everyone”

When you say “everyone,” what you’re really saying is: “We don’t know who this is for…and we’re scared to decide.”

So decide.

Not “18–45.” Not “casual and hardcore.” A person with a week, a mood, a device, a tolerance for friction, and a reason they play.

Example:

• Sara, 32, senior dev. Too tired for long sessions. Loves tactical depth. Hates wasted time.
• Leo, 19, student. Mid Android. Lives on Discord. Wants competitive bragging rights without a 300-hour grind.

If you can’t picture the person, you’ll build sludge.

Write a promise (and an anti-promise) in one sentence each

Promise = what the right player gets every time. Example:

• “When you boot this after work, you get a tight 25-minute tactical fight that makes you feel clever, not exhausted.”

Anti-promise = who this is not for. Example:

• “If you want endless grind and thousands of upgrades, this will feel too short.”

If you refuse to write the anti-promise, you’re still negotiating with your fear.

Design for a sharp edge, not a buffet

“For everyone” leaks into design like mould:

• easy mode + hardcore mode
• ranked ladder + cozy co-op
• narrative campaign + endless live-ops
• “just in case” features everywhere

You don’t get a great game by stapling audiences together. You get:

• confused progression
• mushy tone
• bloated scope
• tutorials that try to serve five psychologies

Result: the store page reads like wallpaper and the game feels like “fine.”

“Fine” is the kiss of death.

Mario Kart is accessible, not “for everyone.” It’s aggressively committed to chaos, rubber-banding, unfair items. People who hate that? Good. That’s clarity. Same with Dark Souls: mainstream success didn’t make it “for everyone.” The friction stayed. That’s why it’s loved.

Make marketing recognisable, not polite

Players choose from mental menus:

• mood (“cozy”)
• intensity (“punishing”)
• time-cost (“20 minutes”)
• social context (“with friends”)
• identity (“I’m a tactics nerd”)

“Everyone” fits none of those menus.

If your Steam headline could be pasted onto any competitor, you don’t have positioning. You have generic copy that converts nobody.

Specific wins:

• “Brutally hard precision platformer with instant restarts.”
• “Cozy farming and relationships in a small town.”
• “One-more-run deck builder where failure is expected.”

These aren’t “small.” They’re clear.

The real reason “everyone” keeps showing up

It’s not strategy. It’s people-pleasing and you’re trying to avoid the uncomfortable moment where you admit:

• some players will hate this
• some teammates will lose their pet feature
• some stakeholders won’t get their “mass appeal” talking point

So you keep doors open “just in case.”

That’s not generosity. That’s indecision dressed as inclusivity.

And indecision is expensive.

Examples

Here are real games that look “broad” from the outside, but are actually for someone because they have a clear spine (promise + anti-promise). Read these like templates you can steal.

Continue reading the full article on my Substack here.