I don't really think there are many if any games that are hard to create demos for. Minecraft even had a demo (included in an issue of PC Gamer Mag) and all it was was Minecraft with a time limit to how long you can play. That's it. And it was simple and effective.
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Steam axes submission process, ALL new pubs/devs must go through Steam Greenlight.
- Thread starter chubigans
- Start date
I don't really think there are many if any games that are hard to create demos for. Minecraft even had a demo (included in an issue of PC Gamer Mag) and all it was was Minecraft with a time limit to how long you can play. That's it. And it was simple and effective.
SteveWinwood
Member
Honestly if you can't cut a trailer and make some appealing screenshots you have bigger problems.
why would they need to have someone for that? I mean, if we're talking about small indie teams here, they all make sure they have a good trailer and images. Always.
Do you think they just talked with Valve about their game before without sending anything? games always try to have cohesive trailers, images, and hopefully demos. They always try to sell the idea. Some people are taking these greenlight arguments so far that it's like they forget how the market still works in a very similar way without it. Greenlight supposedly just boils down the process to something "simpler"
Warm Machine
Member
Indie PC game development is in a very ugly place right now. If you want to have a small company and make your living making games, you outright need to be on Steam. Without Steam your Super Meat Boy style dedicated PC games will simply not sell very well unless you get really lucky with media coverage. Even then the PC audience will wait for Steam even if it never comes.
As it is, the game industry is in a very ugly place on all platforms. What the PC could do with is a very large portal with a large audience where anyone can place a game. Outside of Windows 8 that isn't a reality and Windows 8 hasn't proven itself yet nor has it, or will it, be invulnerable to freemium/free to play in app purchase games.
As it is, the game industry is in a very ugly place on all platforms. What the PC could do with is a very large portal with a large audience where anyone can place a game. Outside of Windows 8 that isn't a reality and Windows 8 hasn't proven itself yet nor has it, or will it, be invulnerable to freemium/free to play in app purchase games.
cartman414
Member
They picked Postal 2.
You're ignoring the big picture. The problem is that getting a game on Steam is fundamentally impossible for all relatively high quality indie games out there because Valve doesn't want all of them on their store for whatever reason.
That titles such as Cognition or La-Mulana may or may not be available on Steam is the problem.
See Minecraft. You don't need Steam, but it certainly helps. Your game just has to be good enough that someone wants to tell their friend about it or make a youtube video about it and it'll go from there. Of course, there are the bunch of people that won't buy a PC game if it's NOT on Steam, but realistically they are in the minority of PC gamers.
I dont agree with this at all, I even think your argument as to why it isnt in a great place actually shows that its in a great place.
You talk about "having to be on steam" as if indie PC game development had anywhere to be before. Steam made Indie PC game development a highly profitable thing, it basically just didnt exist before, certainly not at this extent.
as a service like Steam grows you start to see the disadvantages a supposed monopoly like that could bring, but I think the PC audience is smart, and I (although apparently im in the minority) dont think Steam wants to transform into that, and I think greenlight is part of their effort to prevent it. There's plenty of examples out there of indie games making good outside of Steam.
Maybe idiot was a strong word but this has nothing to do with elections, it's in regard to popular genres and mainstream appeal overshadowing other interesting projects from being greenlit and having the chance to thrive, interesting projects that may very well have that mainstream appeal yet never given the time of day due to this system. Like I said, they shouldn't just greenlight the 10 most voted for products, but have a system based around ratios or tiers.
And yet they dont want a ton of bad games on Steam. Steam said that they would adjust the level needed for each genre of games. So I do trust Steam for this one. At worst, the indies can go on the other services like GOG or any other platforms.
charlequin
Banned
Right. This is a definite concern.
I think a lot of the complaint in this thread is pretty silly because it focuses on this artificial (and incorrect) presumption that it's worth getting tremendously worked up about the current state of the platform when (contra the sclerotic console manufacturers) Valve have always maintained a platform that's constantly seeing iteration of its basic functionality. When people are saying that this is going to have an inevitable and dramatic negative effect on the indie market, or drive everyone away to Origin, or mark the end of indie games on Steam or whatever, you know things have gotten a bit ridiculous.
I think it makes more sense to do what you're doing here and try to identify the concrete areas where certain improvements would make Greenlight worthwhile.
- There's some debate in the thread, but I think just about anyone reasonable agrees that the best possible results will come through a mix of hand-chosen curated selections and group-vote interest marking. This way, anything obviously appropriate can get rushed through, while still giving fans a way to express their interest in games that slip through the cracks.
- One significant improvement would be to consider games by type or genre. Almost every genre that has at least a strong niche fanbase on PC should be considered for inclusion (the pinball games are a great example here, but I'm sure there are other niche markets that have a similar issue.) Considering the top games by genre as well as overall would ensure more diversity and also help certain types of games get their foot in the door when otherwise they could be easily overlooked.
- The pace of greenlights should be significantly increased. By my count, Steam added 54 new games in October (in addition to various Mac releases, bundles, new DLC releases, etc.) That suggests to me that there's probably room to up the Greenlight count to 20 (or even quite a bit higher temporarily) without completely flooding the store.
- Although Concepts is a first move in this direction, Greenlight really needs to firmly separate projects by readiness. There should be one section that consists only of games that are already released and playable/purchaseable elsewhere, to help fill in the backlog of existing quality indie titles. This category should require lower thresholds for acceptance and be adding something like 20-30 titles a month, at least to start. Another category should include games that are in serious development and can make available a stream of screenshots, videos, and demos to keep people abreast of development. In the long run this will be very beneficial because devs in this category can get their games approved to be on Steam at launch, which would be great. And then anything that's truly speculative, intention-driven, or otherwise incomplete can go under Concepts.
Am I missing anything major here? What other changes are really needed to help make this process better and contribute to getting everyone's good games onto Steam?
SteveWinwood
Member
Read what you typed again. That's not true in any way, shape, or form
There is a market for Goreporn. When I was still at school, people loved to watch Hostel or Saw. I hate those movies, but if people like it, why not? Does not affect me in any way, shape or form.
They will go on steam if they are popular enough, and I'm pretty sure those 2 will.
Before Greenlight, it was all done in shadows. Steam choose what they wanted and what they did not want, and we could rage, but we could do nothing. Before Greenlight, a game like McPixel or Towns may have never got on Steam.
I prefer this system to a more closed system.
plagiarize
Banned
many major developers can't cut a trailer or take appealing screenshots. what you are suggesting makes it so that the games which rise to the top are the ones with the best description, best screenshots and best trailers.
at least a game which is actually on the service can thrive through reviews and word of mouth from people who have actually played it.
if i'm competiting against other pitches instead of other games, i'm going to need to make sure I have someone who can put together a good pitch, since my game can't be part of that pitch.
Yup, I read it again. Some of arguably high quality indie titles are released on Steam, but not all of them.
plagiarize
Banned
something was broken in the submission process. greenlight as an alternative route onto the service hasn't fixed it. i'd feel a lot better about this move if the improvements you suggested had been implemented *first* before forcing yet more competition onto the service.
that things may yet ultimately get better doesn't give me much solace as we stare into the likelihood of things getting worse. who goes all in on something that doesn't work yet?
It as everything to do with Elections. Elections are a popular vote. People do not care about policy and all that non sence. Most people vote because they like this guy more than this guy because he look cool, he's more cute or he have more money. Its like that on every kind of vote system imaginable. Put COD vs Half Life and I'm 99% sure that people will want COD before Half Life.
They have the Top 10, and then the next batch, it will be number 11 to 20, except if a new popular greenlight is more popular than 19 or 20. They cannot release everything at once. They need to have sparse release.
Demos. Though arguably that generates bandwith issues. I mean at that point they might as well put out the game, right?
SteveWinwood
Member
I'm on 3 hours of sleep and read all as any
but this is true of every game trying to sell anywhere, man. You always have to sell your game to someone. It's how it always worked, it makes sense, and there's no changing that.
charlequin
Banned
I just don't get the handwringing. In the time since July 9, 100+ more indie games have been added to Steam. The generally plausible case to me here is that they keep futzing with Greenlight (as they've been doing since they put it up), there's maybe a 3-4 month window where indie game submissions are screwed up, eventually the situation rights itself and there's some sort of relatively responsive submission process going that works well from there on out.
I don't really see the incentive for Valve to sit around with a broken system for long and I don't find the idea that they want to cut back on the amount of indie titles they sell plausible. So I don't really see why people are so convinced that everything is completely, irretrievably fucked from here.
Warm Machine
Member
Download and sales numbers tell the truth of this I'm afraid. I know what our sales numbers are for our title.
Generally, all a game needs is to be of a good enough quality, polished, and get storefront visibility. As soon as people go to a portal and are informed that your game exists and can be easily purchased the downloads skyrocket. That is the same for all stores. It is why iOS storefront visibility it so important and people do all kinds of things to get in there. When we were featured on the Xbox Dashboard we sold more copies in a couple weeks than we did in three months.
Indie Game The Movie talks about this directly when Super Meat Boy came out and didn't have a dashboard tile.
When our game hit Greenlight people realized it actually existed and was available to buy. We sold more copies in that month than since launch due to Valve Greenlight visibility. The power of Steam and the micro percentage of Greenlight visitors to our Greenlight page absolutely trumped all that came before it. As it is, our XBLIG sales are still far higher than PC and even then our XBLIG sales are not great either.
Minecraft is a one in a million success story, Notch himself admits to this. It is an anomaly or the exception that proves the rule.
plagiarize
Banned
imagine if the only music you could buy was whatever was in the top 10 in the charts on the first of each month. that'd suck right? but wait, that's not all. right now stuff that's ready and quality is being held off of Steam by stuff that isn't even finished.
no spot for a finished game should be taken by an unfinished game. the focus should be on releasing X number of games a month. you can't do that without separating the games that are done from the games that are not.
the fact that number 20 one month might never get into the top 10, but that game could stay at number 20 for an extended period of time and never get greenlit, demonstrates why what they're doing right now is stupid.
This is like the core complaint about Origin though, right?
When EA launched the service, it was dysfunctional and bare bones, and offered an unarguably worse experience than the existing system.
We know EA updates their products constantly, so it was obvious that as time went on it would become a significantly better product than when it launched, but the problem that existed was that, at this point in time, it absolutely wasn't.
What advantage is there to putting indie game approval entirely on Greenlight before it has been turned into something that is - at bare minimum - as good as the current process?
Except that Steam is not a monopoly. There is many many other services, and you can also buy the on the website. Minecraft is on no service on PC and it sold over 8 Million copy on the website alone. And you can play stuff like An Untitled Story on the website of the creator. The Indie scene is alive, even outside of Steam. Steam simply made it easier to go through Steam for the games that the people want.
plagiarize
Banned
why make greenlight the only way for an indie game to get on steam for even one week before greenlight is fixed? all of the improvements you suggested can be implemented before it's the only way for a game to get on steam. it's not like the only way to get it fixed is to rely solely on it for a while.
the handwringing comes from those of us that have been waiting for a particular finished game for longer than 3 - 4 months already. forcing even more titles into the system, including popular titles that would normally have been approved by the old fashioned way isn't going to get those quality titles we're being denied onto steam quicker. it's going to make it take longer.
that's really frustrating.
but how is this not a good thing then? if something like just being on greenlight itself was a good thing for your title?
I mean I get what you mean about the necessity of being in Steam, but when something that simple helps I dont necesarelly see the bad about it.
The reason why Steam is so succesful it's because there was nothing before it. Other DD Services are now profitable, even if not nearly as much, and Steam is pretty good about visibility and rotating highlighted games
charlequin
Banned
Well: my objections to Origin were always pretty specific:
- EA is a garbage company run by garbage people and I don't trust them enough to do business with them
- Pulling games from Steam was an obnoxious move that copied one of Valve's more obnoxious policies rather than moving in a positive direction (all games available on multiple storefronts/services.)
Beyond those I was always kind of like, well, might as well try to launch a competing service and see if you can manage to establish a useful niche!
Oh, there's definitely no advantage. They should just turn the submission form back on until Greenlight is ready for prime-time, and even with GL in place and functioning they should hire more full-time game approvals people.
I don't understand why you're defending the current system. Valve could redesign their store to accommodate a larger number of indie releases and polished games like Warm Machine's one (which was good enough to be featured on Xbox dashboard) could be (almost always) guaranteed to be available on Steam?
what current system? greenlight or the regular one?
im defending greenlight and mainly its potential. I absolutely agree about a redesign and an overhaul of both the client and greenlight's page, along with a different release system and such. Mentioned it in a couple posts.
Think of it this way, pretend you're a developer talking to steam:
So you're telling me, before you can sell my sandwich.... I have to sell my sandwich to the people you're going to sell my sandwich to, even though I've already sold my sandwich to you and proved that you can profit off of my sandwich selling it to these same people.
So you're telling me, before you can sell my sandwich.... I have to sell my sandwich to the people you're going to sell my sandwich to, even though I've already sold my sandwich to you and proved that you can profit off of my sandwich selling it to these same people.
been thinking about this since posting here and I think I agree, but then again I really dont think they're axing the previous submission form how the title states. In any case I think they're not using it for new indie devs and I think they havent since Greenlight was released.
Otherwise how would you decide what games go on greenlight and what games skip it? there's plenty of "hey no fair! why dont I get in when X guy got in!" type of complains to be born out of that
but no one's telling anyone anything, you just pay $100 and your game is up there. It's not like you talk to Valve, are ready to go, and then they say "nope do this first". Although supposedly that's what happened in this one wadjeteye case, hence why we need some clarification directly from them
Was interested at first, lost interest fast.
Green lighting games based on videos is also dumb. The process isn't mature and not enough of their users care about it.
This is a billion dollar operation with garbage customer service and now this. Valve is a company that seriously needs some introspection.
Steam is a private company who does what she want and is pretty successful at doing that. I mean, you can always go sell your sandwich on the other side of the road. Sure, its less popular, but you can make a profit for it. Steam is not the only platform.
Everything in that list is worthless
level editor that should have been with the game day 2, some edits that if it was put into the hands of someone with a whip at the devs backs would have done the same shit in 1/10th the time, some updates you can stick 10-20 people on for updates/slowly leaking in content and changes (most of which are fundamentally minor), etc
Oh but hey, I hear it's like working for google!!
Warm Machine
Member
If the game was on Steam, instead of seeing a 400% increase in sales via Greenlight we would be looking at a 40000%+ increase in sales. Meaning the diff between $1200 and $120,000. Which is the diff between questioning the viability of making another PC game and going to iOS, or simply pushing for a publisher and giving up independence. That is where game dev is at with and without Steam. Ask Feep his pre and post Steam sales for Sequence and he'll tell you it is a night and day difference. Steam let him make a profit off Sequence and set up for his next title.
I want to make this clear, this isn't just about me or my company, or my game. We have the same issues that a lot of other developers face. We constantly see really seasoned developers moving away from PC to iOS because at the end of the day they know they can get their game on the App Store. That is what game devs want, a guarantee of release on a portal with very high traffic. We are also seeing the rise of Kickstarter where by the risk of distribution disappears due to dev cost being covered by what amounts to fully paid preorders.
Steam is succesful for a number of reasons. Curation is often place too high on the pedestal as to why it is. What Valve did that no other DD store could do is give developers access to real world game development specific tools for online play, leaderboards, player profiles, and integrated community building via Steamworks. No one goes into Steam because they know they only sell good games, they go there because that is where their friends are, that is where their library is.
-Workshop give infinite replaybility to games like Dungeon of Dredmor or Serious Sam 3 or even Skyrim
-Same for Portal 2.
-A console Steam is really really great for people who want a console experience with a quality of PC experience
-Greenlight allow a better visibility for indie games.
-The new Community allow you to see screenshot and recommendation way more easily.
-For Video creator who do not want to rely on GMod anymore this is really really important.
Seriously, what.
Haunted
Member
The type of gamer to vote for projects on Greenlight isn't necessarily representative of all types of people browsing the store. If they're really trying to automate the process (which all the ranking business and taking the top games every month would imply), I wouldn't trust the first group to make the best decisions for everyone.
I'm desperately avoiding the expression with the unintentional gun discharge here, but it really seems like Valve is gimping themselves here. Supplemental Greenlight, yes. Replacing the previous process completely, no.
I know it's early and they might have some sort of tie-in planned for the next sale, but the way it's looking right now, I don't like it.
I'm desperately avoiding the expression with the unintentional gun discharge here, but it really seems like Valve is gimping themselves here. Supplemental Greenlight, yes. Replacing the previous process completely, no.
I know it's early and they might have some sort of tie-in planned for the next sale, but the way it's looking right now, I don't like it.
100% agreed.
Valve is often hailed for being revolutionary in the way they run their corporate structure, but areas like customer service are absolute shit as a result.
BudokaiMR2
Member
But for all intensive purposes it is. Anyone with any sort of relevant data will tell you the same. And please no more pointing out Minecraft! Yes there will always be one in a million success stories but I don't think it is wrong to hope for a stable and proven storefront like Steam to be more accessible.
oh my god please not this shit again, we had like a thousand pages of this already
totally, but what I ask is how is this Steam's fault, and how is Greenlight not helping in making it a simpler process once it gets properly ironed out. At the least you got that 400% increase in sales as opposed to nothing, with the possibility of reaching 40000%
the appstore has it's share of advantages and disadvantages, same goes for Steam. I personally prefer the service to be how it is but with the proposed advantages of greenlight than just leave the gates open for the flood.
I think the one thing we can all agree here is that it is maybe too early in Greenlight's lifetime as a service (and the level of polish it has) for them to be making this sort of decision banking on it. Im guessing and hoping that we'll see a big push and changes in the near future to go along with this FAQ change.
Are you for real? There's a fundamental difference between Valve and a sandwich vendor (or any other retailer) - Valve has unlimited shelf space; on top of that Valve does not need to pay for the products they sell before selling them, worrying about unsold/aging units etc. There is no reason why they should not offer a game on their store unless the game is garbage (like that Bed Simulator 2013).
Haunted
Member
Steam is in a really dominant position, though.
Which is fine if they're doing things right as they (mostly) have up to now, but when trouble arises... yeah. There's a reason why Steam's critical voices have become stronger during the last year or so.
Its not wrong, but we are debating on a single news, without any details. If every game is suppose to go through Greenlight, then they may open more slots, or have a more frequent Greenlight process.
We dont know. Steam is not known to be stupid, we will see what they will pull out.
bandwith costs money
a slot covers a slot for other games, there's only a limited amount you can properly highlight
big etc
people thinking Steam can just put out everything and are being somewhat evil about it as if the only interest was to not tarnish the look of their store are wrong.
-could have been out way sooner if valve actually had a whip to crack
-see above
-plebeians
-good idea, but should have been established years ago, their submission/approval process is still too goddamn transparent
-having used these, i don't feel like the integration does anything of any redeeming value for the time spent designing it
-I suppose, yet most of the creations I see come out of it is porn of alyx having sex with commander shepard or something.
Well, we just have to combine a few statements:
Develop said:
If your tools aren't good enough to develop ambitious prodcuts, and when you work on tools and core technology you can't ship products since the engine is unstable, you can't release new products that aren't either smaller scope adn made with the old tools (like Dota, which needs one map and a bunch of character models made in Maya), or are completed parts of the toolchain itself (like Source Filmmaker).CVG said:
Its like saying that since the iPhone is popular, the Android market does not count. Except that it does. And since the App store is so closed, people choose to go on Android. Which made the Android grow bigger. And now Android is over Apple.
If people dont like Steam, they will move to GOG or any other website. And from what we know, Steam did nothing wrong to date. We will see what happen .
charlequin
Banned
I can see you have a promising future as a faceless middle manager at EA.