How hype works

The short version

Hype is a measure of recent activity around a listing. It is not a rating, not a score out of ten, and not a judgement about whether something is any good — a quiet game can be excellent and a loud one can be terrible.

It is made of four things people do, each worth a set amount, each fading to nothing over 30 days. That is the whole formula, and the numbers below are read live from the settings — if I change a weight, this page changes with it.

It cannot be bought. There is no amount of money that moves this number, and featured placement is not for sale either — not with money, not with Pixels, not by asking.

What counts, and for how much

• Someone wishlists itOnce per person. Removing it from a wishlist removes the event with it.3
• You post a devlogOnly posts filed as devlogs against the listing. Deleting one takes its weight back.5
• Someone reacts to a postAny reaction on any post attached to the listing, one per person per post.1
• Someone backs it on SparkCounted once the backing is authorised or captured. A refused card never counts.8

Nothing else feeds it. Sales, downloads, page views, star ratings and review counts are all measured elsewhere on the site and none of them touch this number.

Old activity fades

Every event is worth its full weight on the day it happens, and slides evenly down to nothing over 30 days. Halfway through that window it is worth half.

So three wishlists added today are worth 9. The same three, 15 days ago, are worth about 4.5. After 30 days they are worth nothing at all.

This is deliberate. Without it the meter would be a lifetime total, and a game that was popular two years ago would sit permanently above one that people care about this week.

The arrow

The arrow beside the number answers a different question from the number itself: is this picking up or falling off?

It compares two equal stretches of time — the last 7 days against the 7 days before that — and counts the weighted activity in each. Freshness is not applied here; a trend asks how much happened, not how recent it was.

• Rising — the recent stretch is at least 1.25× the one before it.
• Steady — anything in between, including a listing with no activity in either stretch. Nothing happening is not the same as falling, and an arrow pointing down at something that never moved reads as a verdict.
• Falling — the recent stretch is 0.8× the one before it or less.

One adjustment: both sides of the comparison have 1 added to them before they are divided. Without it, a single wishlist against none reads as an infinite rise, and every small listing would swing between arrows on one person's click.

When it's worked out

A listing is recalculated the moment one of its inputs changes — someone wishlists it, a devlog goes up, a post is reacted to. Every published listing is also recalculated once a night, which is what applies the fade and moves the arrows on listings where nothing happened.

If this looks wrong

Publishing the formula is only worth anything if you can tell me when it misbehaves. If a listing's number or arrow doesn't match what this page says it should be, write to admin@talkingpixels.games and I'll look at it.

The rest of how this place runs is on the About page, and what selling costs is at /fees.