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Steam Greenlight: 1000 games and counting, more Greenlit every few weeks
- Thread starter MRORANGE
- Start date
HadesGigas
Member
Delusibeta
Banned
Let's just say that I've seen stuff actively promoted on Youtube that'll get the average Fox News viewer grab their pitchfork and torch if they ever caught wind of it.
The_Player
Member
The games from my friends just got a 9/10 from eurogamer ... so it is a good time again to call people to vote for Out There Somewhere ! =D
And my reaction to the 100 fee is :
Wich is not even dramatic enoght because it is not the ingredients, since it is a one time fee =P
If you pay 100 to get you AA game on greenlight you CAN then proceed to put Super Mario World if you want ... if you want your greenlight account banned for a few time xD
And my reaction to the 100 fee is :
Wich is not even dramatic enoght because it is not the ingredients, since it is a one time fee =P
If you pay 100 to get you AA game on greenlight you CAN then proceed to put Super Mario World if you want ... if you want your greenlight account banned for a few time xD
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
The games from my friends just got a 9/10 from eurogamer ... so it is a good time again to call people to vote for Out There Somewhere ! =D
And my reaction to the 100 fee is :
Wich is not even dramatic enoght because it is not the ingredients, since it is a one time fee =P
If you pay 100 to get you AA game on greenlight you CAN then proceed to put Super Mario World if you want ... if you want your greenlight account banned for a few time xD
A good analogy, but I think a better similar example would be the money to make the stand, as you only have to buy the stand once.
T
thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
I really do think if you can't shell out 100 dollars then maybe steam isn't right for you. If you can afford the equipment and education needed to create a game then you can probably find a way to scrounge up 100 dollars. If games are going to be your livelihood then you should find a way to make that investment any way you can.
If you are spending every single last penny on college loans or something and can't make that 100 dollar investment that could actually make your thousands and thousands of dollars you invested on college worth it, then at least there's other avenues, like xbox live indie and android. Or you can just find a way to sell it on your own site and get people like RockPaperShotgun to look at your game for free advertisement. If the game is good enough to get through the very tough competition of whats currently on steam greenlight, then its probably good enough to at least make up most of that 100 dollars on its own to start.
If you are spending every single last penny on college loans or something and can't make that 100 dollar investment that could actually make your thousands and thousands of dollars you invested on college worth it, then at least there's other avenues, like xbox live indie and android. Or you can just find a way to sell it on your own site and get people like RockPaperShotgun to look at your game for free advertisement. If the game is good enough to get through the very tough competition of whats currently on steam greenlight, then its probably good enough to at least make up most of that 100 dollars on its own to start.
Furthermore, at least one indie developer/publisher (Dejobaan) has already offered to loan people the $100 if they're a special case with a good game who can't afford it or whatnot.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Wow.
The games from my friends just got a 9/10 from eurogamer ... so it is a good time again to call people to vote for Out There Somewhere ! =D
And my reaction to the 100 fee is :
Wich is not even dramatic enoght because it is not the ingredients, since it is a one time fee =P
If you pay 100 to get you AA game on greenlight you CAN then proceed to put Super Mario World if you want ... if you want your greenlight account banned for a few time xD
That's a bullshit analogy. It's more like having to pay a government fee to apply for a license to sell lemanode, where 90% of the applicants will likely be shut down.
It's not the end of the world, and people may be able to afford it but they're still entitled to complain when a valve adds a new arbitrary fee that doesn't pay for anything
HadesGigas
Member
It's more like having an option to pay a government fee to get your lemonade stand visited by tens of thousands of potental lemonade drinkers.With the chance they might choose your stand to be picked up and moved to the most lemonade addicted neighborhood on earth.
Otherwise you can keep selling lemonade outside your own house for free.
I can understand the complaining only because this was a swift kneejerk change. So now people who jumped in early are butthurt. It should have been like this from day 0.
Otherwise you can keep selling lemonade outside your own house for free.
I can understand the complaining only because this was a swift kneejerk change. So now people who jumped in early are butthurt. It should have been like this from day 0.
Ho nooooo!! Please download Snails and try the demo!! Or at least up vote a fellow gafer!
I like how now, with the drastically reduced number of daily submissions, I actually have time to look at the trailers the authors provide. My initial reaction for some of these were downvote just based on screenshots, but the trailers ended up doing the games a lot more justice.
This cracked me though:
This cracked me though:
You mean not everyone hides guns under their pillows?
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
At least you dont need to pay it. I have to, and Im not complaining, actually I prefer it.
What I dont like is that there still 400 submissions that would have never been there if the 100 dollar would have been before, and that now some have to pay and others, the once that entered before the fee, no.
...that is how capitalism works =P
You have to make a good product and do all the marketing if you want your product to sell.
Greenlight is neither a place wich markets your product or make it looks awesome.
Or going by the lemonade metaphor, if your lemonade sux and you don't have enoght people thirsty than your lemonade stand WILL be shut down =P
I'm not talking about the lemonade stands being shuts down, I'm talking about their applications being shut down before they can start selling any of their lemonade
Ultimately the only thing that really matters with greenlight is at what rate Valve decides to start accept games, wether it's by setting the target number of votes or start accepting a few of the top ranked games every now and then. And the depressing fact is that unless they'll significantly boost their number of indie releases, which they've never really implied that they'll do, it'll be months and months before before some of the more interesting and more niche titles are picked up, if ever. A lot of these games probably don't really need to sell a whole lot to make a tidy profit , but it doesn't seem like they'll get in and can start selling at all unless they can muster up a gazillion votes
Which is why you need to be sure your game is worth the price.
And Valve said it is going to charity ... and not to the programers making the pages, steam key registry makers, server use for people downloading the game and other stuff.
Also, valve said that they created greenlight BECAUSE they wanted to increase the rate for aceptance that Steam Games get to the system
And Valve said it is going to charity ... and not to the programers making the pages, steam key registry makers, server use for people downloading the game and other stuff.
Also, valve said that they created greenlight BECAUSE they wanted to increase the rate for aceptance that Steam Games get to the system
So ive spent about a half hour looking through games and clicking yes to some and no thanks to most of them, then it hit me, does my no thanks act against the game? I was clicking no to alot of games that were fine but not my particular taste, i hope i havent caused them any issues getting certified. If this is the case Valve should really introduce a "next game in queue" option before you can pick yes or no, otherwise you have to make a decision on the game to see the next game.
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Before the update it seemed that yes, or at least the people behind the game could see how many positive and negative votes they gathered, I dont know if after the update that bar for the developers still exist.
Now they change the downvote adding "no interest" part to it, so maybe it could account that not interested votes really dont count as negative.
I hope not. If a game gets 1 million yes and 10 million no-thanks, why would Valve reject the game? It has a potential sales of 1 million, and in that regard the number of people who don't like or not interested in the game is irrelevant, even if it's tenfold.
You have single-handedly ruined months if not years of hard work and dashed the hopes of these indie developers of ever being able to sell their product on Steam.
Hellsing321
Member
The "no thanks/not interested" button doesn't count against a game.
I don't think the absolute number of votes should be the end all, be all. You can't expect a point-and-click adventure game to be able to garner the same amount of upvotes as a shooter or zombie game.
The chance is 1. aka 100%
I know we're probably going in circles in this thread, but I'm pretty sure Valve mentioned that they may accept some games without the percentage even going to 100%. It's just data. Valve is a company that above all (except perhaps hats) loves data, and often doesn't like other people to have access to that data, so they're experimenting with people like they do with their various sales and TF2 items and so forth, and changing as they go along, and in theory games will pop out the back end after a few months. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just kind of the way they operate. It'd be nice to see how many favorites each game has, for instance, but maybe Valve decided they didn't want people knowing that so they can't complain that X game was accepted with Y number of favorites.
Andvary
Member
Unepic is awesome, vote for it people! =)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93055432
Technically it might be fair to value the time of thousands of people literally having their time wasted if something is so bad that it will never ever have a chance of passing. Imagine if you value the time of the average gamer as $5 / hour, that would be like 8.33 cents per minute, if you assume they look at each game for average of 1 minute then it would take only 1,200 views to take $100, and 12,000 for $1,000. I am just saying, there is a balance of totally wasting people's time or not. "Well this is my first attempt to learn programming, but I'm going to post this thing on Greenlight anyway" - I saw at least a couple dozen of these out of 300.
People don't wade through every single game on iOS, if they did they would stab their eyes out. Just look through New Releases some time, it is probably just as bad as the worst on Greenlight, but it is well hidden because you never really need to wade through it.
$100 is basically industry standard magic number for "open platforms", the fact that Greenlight is not really an open platform makes it strange to use the same # but they have every right to charge whatever they want...if devs want to go other places, there are other options...like indiecity or desura.
People don't wade through every single game on iOS, if they did they would stab their eyes out. Just look through New Releases some time, it is probably just as bad as the worst on Greenlight, but it is well hidden because you never really need to wade through it.
$100 is basically industry standard magic number for "open platforms", the fact that Greenlight is not really an open platform makes it strange to use the same # but they have every right to charge whatever they want...if devs want to go other places, there are other options...like indiecity or desura.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
The number of entries listed under Most Recent should be the total count right? It says 770 right now.
alexandros
Banned
I had rated every game on Greenlight before the fee was set in place. After that, there were less than 20 submissions.
Edit: I feel I should point out that the signal to noice ratio after the fee is much, much higher. Most of those 20 submissions were games that I could easily imagine being on Steam.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
You can view all games, but it's not visible anywhere in the navigation
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/browse/?appid=765&browsesort=mostrecent
(You can find this link by rating everything in your current queue and then clicking "All Games" in the same text where you'd click to generate a new queue)
Not that anyone's votes need defending--I'm not going to get frustrated with anyone for upvoting something I downvoted or downvoting something I upvoted, I really really believe in the premise behind collective voting and I hate when people think "their vote matters more".
... but: I upvoted Gamekid primarily because I thought the level design as presented seemed good, it comes with a level editor (and if the devs get on Steam, they have access to Steam Workshop, so...), and they are tracking a target price of $2.50. That was enough to me to justify an upvote despite the plain presentation and how well-tread the genre is. I agree that the Game Boy aesthetic doesn't really blow the roof off the place.
Snails, frankly, I upvoted because I like Lemmings and Mario vs. Wario and all the other similar games, and it's a totally under-served genre in modern times and on PC. Presentation looked on par or better than Eets, which I guess is my biggest frame of reference for an independent / small team stage-based action publisher on Steam.
I have re-evaluated my position on "$100 isn't that much". Somewhat. I think the man's alternate suggestions, like requiring a functional game demo, might be of better use.
Same flawed reasoning as every other commentator who thinks it's about the dev's own financial means, instead of whether they'd be able to get the support of backers/donors.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
If you don't have 100$ for the submission fee then how do you pay for internet and a computer to build your game on? Or are these games made out of coffee shops for wifi and on library computers?
And yeah, as the above poster said, why not make a blog post and get some backers to donate if they wanna see your game on Steam? And send a copy to RPS to see if they will do a piece on it to help it gain some traction.
And yeah, as the above poster said, why not make a blog post and get some backers to donate if they wanna see your game on Steam? And send a copy to RPS to see if they will do a piece on it to help it gain some traction.
"non-privileged backgrounds" ???
NON PRIVILEGED BACKGROUNDS ?????????????
Man .. you make a game. You sell it 10 times for 10 dolars or 20 times for 5 dolars.
You get a LIFE TIME subscription to send as many games as you want to steam
If you are not able to sell 20 games for 5 dolars, getting it on steam will not change ANYTHING.
Steam is a distribuition platform, not a marketing tool.
Eh the "starving indie artist panhandling for coins" image has an irresistible, romanticized hipster appeal to it.
What kind of scenario is it these people are conjuring up where someone with the trade skills to a produce a hypothetical masterpiece game, yet is somehow living in a shack, eating dog food with no prospects for making $100 on contract work, whether it be programming/graphic design/or music composition, AND simultaneously, the indie community including Notch are too hard-hearted to pitch in $100 to support giving this hypothetical masterpiece a spotlight.
Wat...
Family Fry
Member
Dejobann Games have said they will lend indie devs $100, they are also encouraging other Indies to do the same.
http://www.dejobaan.com/greenlight100/
http://www.dejobaan.com/greenlight100/
When you spend hundreds of dollars on a nice suit to present yourself well in a job interview, do you feel entitled to a job too?
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Shots fired.
To be fair, the suit would be reusable in any subsequent interviews with other companies too. I like the college application fee analogy.
ONE TIME FEE
GAMES
I like the suit analogy ... you can put the "other companies" as "other games" you submit =P
$100 spent on Greenlight is per-developer, not per-game.
I agree with this; the fee itself isn't really a big of a deal and it doesn't concern me personally, but some of the responses whenever someone questions or criticise it are baffling. On the steam forums especially but even here to a lesser extent. The fact that's it goes to charity almost makes it worse. They're not even pretending they need the money to cover the costs. It's nothing more than a spamfilter and could have been handled in many different way, or just a much lower fee. And many indie devs do not have a lot of money; yes most people can muster up the money somehow, but there is no reason for them to be happy about an extra fee.
Sure, unless you need that income for other stuff like rent, food or debths.
(As a side note. Gunman Clives total revenue on Desura is $92 but I can't really claim I've done all I can to promote the PC version )
Never worn a suit for a job interview. And I didn't say I'd feel entitled to get the game accepted, just entitled to complain about arbitrary fees.
That's not really relevant for most smaller devs. I don't think a lot of them have a huge backlog of games ready to submit to steam and they can't exactly whip up a new one to submit by next week
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
The people that lack the money but still have dedication to their project will find a way to overcome that obstacle. Those who lack the money and drive to accomplish this may not be best served by Greenlight anyway. Releasing and supporting a Steam title will require a tremendous amount of effort from an inexperienced dev with a low amount of resources.
lol some of you still don't understand that it's a one time fee for $100. once you pay that you can submit as many games as you want.
if you can't afford $100, submit your game to newgrounds.
According to that analogy, indie devs wouldn't be able to sell the game legally on any other places without said permit, so no.
If you are a freelance artist, you will have very few money, but you NEED to get a tablet if you want to get the best of your work and increase your possibilities of getting more money.
By tablet I mean a Wacom Bamboo AT LEAST, not an ipad =P
It is an investiment and one that you NEED to make if you want to go professional.
Also, if you are a freelance artist, you need to create your portfolio, you need to have something to show to the people who will hire you. You need to do some work before you can get some work.
If you are not good at metaphors, Wacom is the fee and the portfolio is the backlog.
If you are not professional than you migh reconsider and if you can't pay your bills with it you might want to consider a second job, or alternate ways to get money from it.
And you saying that you praticaly already got the fee on Desura only with less than 6 month with a 5 dolar game and praticaly no promotion is more than enoght excuse for a developer to get financial before entering.
And lets not even talk about your other ways of seeling the game like the app store !
...or marketing =P
Why did you people think that half of the budget for an AAA game goes to marketing alone ?
Yes there are other things in life that costs money, and yes there are several ways to get money. That's not the problem. The probelm is that there is very little justification for the fee itself. There needs to be some way to filter out the trolls, but it could have been done differently/cheaper.
Also I'm not talking about myself. I'm pretty comfortable financially at the moment and Gunman Clive made a decent profit on Android and iOS. My example of the desura revenue was only to illustrate how ridiculously low PC sales are on most places other than steam. I've seen a lot of other decent games that judging by number of comments and reviews haven't done any better.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I'm not against any of the alternate submissions, but I really think this is still based on the faulty premise that Greenlight means Valve wants hobbyist games. They don't. They want commercial games. They want games that will sell many thousand copies.
The developers who don't think they can make 5+ figures on Steam with their game shouldn't be submitting. The developers who don't have any confidence that their Greenlight submission will get on Steam shouldn't be submitting. That's the stakes here. Greenlight wasn't introduced as a way to loosen the quality restrictions to enter Steam, but rather to get the same quality and polish of games but give Valve and easier time and help erode their team's blind spots.
I empathize that it's a bit too early to tell how many of the games currently on the service will end up on Steam, how many votes will be needed, what kind of exposure, community feedback, etc.--this is an argument to wait a few months to find out.
The stuff about the negative feedback is valid, Steam trolls suck, but some of it has already been addressed. The balance of voting isn't visible anymore and the down-vote option is now a "No thanks, but good luck" option.
I think the fee is designed to do the following things:
- Deter pranksters and jokesters
- Deter legitimate fans of games submitting commercial games because they don't understand the purpose of the service
- Third, and probably most importantly from Valve's POV, deter well-meaning developers developing actual games that just aren't up to Steam's standards of professionalism--IE to send the message that Steam is not intended to be an open service, it's intended to be a commercial, curated service.
I wouldn't be surprised to see them adjust, lower, refund, or drop the fee as time goes on, but I think at this point they're looking for a few weeks or a few months to gather data to figure out more about how the service is going to work going forward. I guess the moral of the story might have been that a slim beta with a few thousand helpful, articulate, and friendly users might have been a better move than throwing open the floodgates, but I guess they felt that they needed to see how the final product would be responded to.
Desura doesn't surprise me--there's never been any indication to me that anyone uses Desura, period. It seems like a fantasy service propped up by some foolish investors in the company rather than a real service with real users. To me, the Indie Royale tie-in is probably about as much use as the service gets, and there's no kidding that many, maybe even most of the Indie Royale buyers only play the games with Steam codes. I might be wrong, but I've never seen any indication. It's like a bizarro ghost town world.