Here's my plan for Valve going forward:
- Keep enhancing Greenlight's reporting stuff. Having suggested release date is a good step. I voted for Dream, but I really wouldn't have if I thought it was a 2014 release, that's mental. Consider revising what counts as a concept and what counts as a game.
- Greenlight the top 10 every month, just as you are now.
- Fast-track or greenlight anything in the top 50 to 75 that are actually released, commercially available games... with an editorial veto for stuff that's manifestly not qualified. This helps tilt the balance towards release-ready or release-near games.
- Pick a few games as an "editor's choice" every month. Say 3-5 games, regardless of votes, based on apparent quality. If you don't want to do this, have guest editors every month (Invite Terry Cavanagh to be your first editor, let's say Derek Yu as your second, one of the guys from RPS to be your third). This helps avoid obvious oversights. The IGF thing sort of applies here as well--there's an infrastructure built up outside Valve that can make this process easier. Use it.
- Provide a clear standard for smaller publishers to get full publisher status so that they can put content on Steam without having to be greenlit. The standard obviously exists now, so codify it.
...
- Consider paying people for Greenlighting. I have two possible routes: One is that, say, every 100 votes gets you, say, $1 in credit on Steam. Even if the incentive is miniscule, it might get more people considering it. And it's not really all that subject to abuse, since there'd be maybe $1 in credit every month. Block new accounts from voting like you do with anything in the trading system. And the second route is a lottery. One greenlight vote (up or down) = one ticket, every month do a few draws.
Sincerely,
Stumpokapow (991 Greenlight votes)