How discovery & matching works

The two sides of Wishgate find each other on completely different screens, and both of those screens are ordered by the same number: the match score.

Why it works this way

Because the default in this industry is spray-and-pray. Studios send keys to hundreds of channels and hear back from a handful; creators get unsolicited offers for games they'd never play. Both sides are doing the same thing — guessing — and the cost lands on whoever bothers to reply. The score exists to make the first guess a good one.

Because fit is about taste, not size. Follower count tells you how many people will see a video, not whether the person making it wants to play your game. So the score is built from tags on both sides — what the game is, and what the creator says they love or avoid — and nothing else. Reach, region, plan and reviews are all on screen for you to weigh yourself; none of them move the number.

Because a studio recruits for a game, not for a roster. A creator who is perfect for your horror title may be nowhere near right for the co-op puzzler you ship next year, so a score only ever means "this creator against this game". That's why there is no global list of creators to browse — the list lives inside a game.

And because a stated preference is worth more than an inferred one. The creator fills the profile in themselves, in the same vocabulary the studio tags its game with. Nothing here is guessed from watch history, which also means an empty profile scores neutral rather than wrong.

Where each side looks

A studio doesn't browse creators in the abstract; it recruits for a game. That's why the same creator can sit near the top of one game's list and nowhere near the top of another's.

The match score

A single number from -100 to +100, shown as a circle on creator cards and game cards. Zero is neutral: no signal either way, not "bad".

It is built from seven axes, each worth up to about ±14.3 points:

How one axis is scored

Take the game's tags on that axis and look up the creator's sentiment for each: love = +1, avoid = -1, anything not rated = 0. Average those, then scale to the axis weight.

So for a game tagged with three genres, where the creator loves one and hasn't rated the other two:

(+1 + 0 + 0) / 3 × 14.3 ≈ +4.8

Two consequences worth knowing:

• Averaging means breadth costs you. A game tagged with one genre the creator loves scores the full +14.3 on that axis; the same game with three genres, only one of them loved, scores a third of it. Tag a game with what it is, not with everything it touches.
• Not rating a tag is not the same as disliking it. Unrated is a true zero and pulls the average toward neutral in both directions.

An axis the game left blank scores 0 — it can't help or hurt.

Things that are not in the score

• Content Created (the content-format multi-select on a creator profile) — it's a filter and a description, never part of the score.
• Follower counts, region, language, plan tier and reviews. They're all visible, and studios weigh them themselves; none of them move the number.

Creators: getting a real score

Until you take the preference test, you have no sentiments on file and every game scores neutral — which means you rank in the middle of every studio's list rather than at the top of the right ones.

1. Switch to your creator context.
2. Go to My Organization → Match Profile.
3. Press Start the test and work through the axes, marking what you love and what you avoid.
4. Come back and press Edit any time your channel's direction changes.

You can leave anything unrated. A short, honest profile beats a complete, invented one: every ❤ you don't mean is a game you'll get recruited for and won't want to cover.

On Browse, the sort defaults to Best match once you're acting as a creator with a profile.

Studios: reading the Recruiting list

Open your game, go to Partners → Recruiting, and you get every discoverable creator with their score against this game. The Show: chips filter by where each creator already stands with you — All, Applied, Invited, Rejected, Kicked, Left.

Two habits worth forming:

• Fill in every tag axis on the game. A blank axis contributes nothing for anyone, which flattens your whole list toward zero and hides the creators who'd actually be a fit.
• Click the score to see which tags drove it. A high score with one unexpected ❤ behind it is a different proposition from a broadly good fit.

Being findable at all

The score only matters once you're visible, and visibility has two independent conditions on each side.

A game appears in Browse when it is verified, not archived, and not locked — locks come from an admin, a lapsed subscription, or the owner restricting it. Archiving takes a game out of Browse straight away, even though its hub stays writable through the resolution window.

A creator appears in Recruiting when the organization is approved, verified and not locked. For a creator organization, "verified" means at least one linked channel is verified — remove the last channel and you go undiscoverable until you link one again (your organization keeps its status; it just stops showing up).

If you're sure you should be listed and you aren't, check those two conditions before anything else.