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Steam Greenlight: 1000 games and counting, more Greenlit every few weeks

P

Platy

Member
Stumpokapow said:
I upvoted the dtp stuff across the board--not because I really want to play Venetica, but because I have no idea why a medium-large publisher who already has a ton of games on Steam wasn't able to get the rest of their games on Steam :p
Click to expand...

It sounds to me that unless you are being published by companies like Capcom or EA, you WILL need steam
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
You know, there is something that Steam could do to get perfect value out of Greenlight...

Sell games on it.

- Take the game as it stands if it is ready.

- Have the dev set their own price.

- Expose the game to the audience.

- Whoever buys the game counts as a sale and track sales with those buyers.

- Steam takes the 30% cut that is otherwise currently going to the retail outlets that carry the game.

- When the game hits a financial, interest, or sales threshold, approve it to go to Steam proper and allow full Steamworks integration.

- Give Steam keys back to those who have bought it on its initial run so they can enjoy the full benefits of what they bought and supported.

Right now they are tracking "maybe" sales, not sales. It is nebulous and inaccurate. The only metric that really matters is actual sales. This way no one is pitching ideas or concepts. You get the game done, you can at least get some sales on Steam Greenlight which are going to be at par or better than current outlets that will take the game.

The $100 fee is gone, community members get exposed to actual games, and Valve actually makes money. Steam proper isn't hurt by this as the initial support audience knows exactly what they are getting in to.
 
Sentenza

Sentenza

Member
Warm Machine said:
.
Click to expand...
Sorry but your idea doesn't make any sense to me.
You are basically saying that Steam should just sell anything, without any filter of any sort, and then take some games and "sell them FOR REAL THIS TIME" (?) if they are successful enough on Greenlight.

It isn't just convoluted, it's senseless.
 
H

HoosTrax

Member
Oh god, the app store idea. Keep it far, far away from the regular Steam storefront please. Do people really want their game to get lost amidst a sea of shovelware that no Steam user would bother to sift through? I mean, isn't this the problem with actual App store and XBLIG? The lack of curation?

I certainly wouldn't waste my time sifting through all that to find things worth my money. I might have my attention drawn to a particular game in an non-curated store, but only if I see it featured on a site like RPS. In which case, we're back to square one, and nothing is solved.

The perspective of the user is not weighed carefully enough imho.
 
D

Dog Problems

Banned
HoosTrax said:
Oh god, the app store idea. Keep it far, far away from the regular Steam storefront please. Do people really want their game to get lost amidst a sea of shovelware that no Steam user would bother to sift through? I mean, isn't this the problem with actual App store and XBLIG? The lack of curation?
Click to expand...

Other than the occasional game that rips off on something else, it's not really an issue on the Appstore. The good games usually get the attention they deserve and the crap is forgotten or never even made aware of.
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
Sorry but your idea doesn't make any sense to me.
You are basically saying that Steam should just sell anything, without any filter of any sort, and then take some games and "sell them FOR REAL THIS TIME" (?) if they are successful enough on Greenlight.

It isn't just convoluted, it's senseless.
Click to expand...

No, it makes perfect sense. You have a game. You want to sell it. Steam Greenlight allows you to sell it to their Greenlight audience on the Greenlight page (which is fractional of the real Steam audience). It doesn't reach the Steam store proper until it has hit a sales target. It is a secondary sales portal seperated from the main Steam page. This way, a giant volume of poor games don't crap up the main Steam storefront.

Right now, if someone wants to buy a complete game that is trying to get on Steam, they are going to Desura, Gamersgate, Indievania, Impulse, etc. where it is available and Steam is actually actively losing money that they would otherwise be making. Their buy vote effectively counts for nothing because they have found it somewhere else.

If you look at Greenlight, there are some games on there that look like pretty good and have cost in excess of $500k. If a game with that kind of budget cannot reach *some* of Steams paying audience, PC development from independents and medium sized players is a little screwed.
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
HoosTrax said:
Oh god, the app store idea. Keep it far, far away from the regular Steam storefront please. Do people really want their game to get lost amidst a sea of shovelware that no Steam user would bother to sift through? I mean, isn't this the problem with actual App store and XBLIG? The lack of curation?

I certainly wouldn't waste my time sifting through all that to find things worth my money. I might have my attention drawn to a particular game in an non-curated store, but only if I see it featured on a site like RPS. In which case, we're back to square one, and nothing is solved.

The perspective of the user is not weighed carefully enough imho.
Click to expand...

You just pointed out the exact reason why Greenlight isn't reaching Steam's wide audience. People don't want to wade through crap to find something they might want to buy. If you do find something you might want to buy, you can't even buy it. At best you can vote to buy it later when you might not even end up putting your money where your click is.
 
P

Platy

Member
Warm Machine said:
No, it makes perfect sense. You have a game. You want to sell it. Steam Greenlight allows you to sell it to their Greenlight audience on the Greenlight page (which is fractional of the real Steam audience). It doesn't reach the Steam store proper until it has hit a sales target. It is a secondary sales portal seperated from the main Steam page. This way, a giant volume of poor games don't crap up the main Steam storefront.

Right now, if someone wants to buy a complete game that is trying to get on Steam, they are going to Desura, Gamersgate, Indievania, Impulse, etc. where it is available and Steam is actually actively losing money that they would otherwise be making. Their buy vote effectively counts for nothing because they have found it somewhere else.

If you look at Greenlight, there are some games on there that look like pretty good and have cost in excess of $500k. If a game with that kind of budget cannot reach *some* of Steams paying audience, PC development from independents and medium sized players is a little screwed.
Click to expand...

Please read this

Platy said:
Awesome text In Defence of Steam Greenlight
Click to expand...

SPECIALY this part

Rodrigo Monteiro said:
[...]
Greenlight is primarily a tool to help Valve gauge interest in your game. Remember that Valve is not a charity dedicated to fulfilling the dreams of the indie developers of Earth – they are a BUSINESS. The objective of Greenlight is NOT to promote your game. It’s NOT to make an unknown game discoverable by the masses. On the Greenlight announcement meeting, Valve was clear that it was a tool that you would use to drive your fan base into supporting your game. It’s STILL your job to market and popularize your game. That said, many indie developers are claiming massive increase in sales thanks to the advertisement generated by Greenlight.
[...]
Click to expand...
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
I completely agree that Valve is not a charity and they have no responsibility to developers or anyone else who wants to, or has, made a game. I've ALWAYS maintained that stance. It is Valve's store. They paid for it, they grew it, they own it. They don't need to answer to anyone.

What is happening though, in the world of PC development and sales for the vast majority, is that if you are not on Steam you may as well never have existed. No one is going to bankroll a PC game if it cannot reach the vast majority of the buying audience.

If everyones eyes are on Steam, they only see what Steam shows them. This isn't unique to Steam, this is the general case on all marketplaces with mass following. Why, if you are loyal to Steam would you ever go look at what Desura is selling?

This forum sees the attitude of no Steam, no sale all the time. It comes up in near every thread about new PC games. Remember, that this isn't Valve creating this attitude. In no way is Valve running around actively encouraging people to not look elsewhere. They are encouraging people to stay in Steam, which is exactly what a business should be doing, and they are incredibly good about it.

For any PC game out there that isn't on Steam, your sales will drop and you are probably more likely to be pirated when people do discover it, seeing as though they cannot buy it on their favorite portal.

With low sales you can't go to Valve and claim the game will be good for their store. It really makes you wonder what the 10 sales a particular game got off of Desura would equate to on Steam, especially if your game hit Steam day one with the other portals not factoring loss of interest over time.

Steam was thought to be 70% of the PC market in 2009. It wouldn't surprise many that it is 90% now.

This is why I'm *suggesting* that Valve opens up some of their userbase to go to Greenlight to try to encourage them to step out and give other games a shot. Nothing speaks louder than sales. It would be good for the PC game industry that players get exposed to more games and that developers have a chance to sell into a piece of Steams audience.

The "I would buy this" button is ripe for abuse the way it is now. Nothing is stopping anyone from getting Steam friends to up vote something in quantity. The only way to manage what people want to buy is to actually have them buy it.
 
P

Platy

Member
Steam created that monopoly exactly because it is so hard to get, so it only have the "best".

And you can be the person with most friends on the planet and you STILL cannot get a game on steam with only your friends voting.

Putting games to sell on greenlight will only minimize the "actual" steam sales and destroy the actual porpuese of the system !
If they wanted something like that they would have made a partnership with desura or something =P

The idea is TO BE SELLED ON STEAM you need to prove yoursef, so what changes if you start with the begining of selling on steam ?

Lets not even forget the quirks like steam have to have your game on their servers, create a working page for it, administrate all the money and all the human work that needs to be done because of that (think of refunds and stuffs like that)

They are doing a market research.
What you are asking is changing years and years of proved market research to just a "fuck market research, lets just put our product on sale and see what's happen"
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
Platy said:
They are doing a market research.
What you are asking is changing years and years of proved market research to just a "fuck market research, lets just put our product on sale and see what's happen"
Click to expand...

Not at all. I'm suggesting that they use Greenlight as a secondary sales outlet.

Rodrigo actually says it best...

That said, many indie developers are claiming massive increase in sales thanks to the advertisement generated by Greenlight.
Click to expand...

So, Valve could actually be making money off of this instead of indirectly referring people elsewhere. They already have the infrastructure to do this, so partnering with Desura is irrelevant. Really, if their customers ARE going over to Gamersgate, Desura, or the like then Greenlight is ALREADY a store. Just one Valve makes no money on.

Steam didn't necessarily become the best by curating the store, they became the best by ALSO creating player profiles, online community, simple updating procedures, navigatable storefront, and developer tools for online written by actual game developers among other important features. As well, they have a built in ability to create their own killer apps that you generally cannot buy anywhere else.
 
H

honorless

We don't have "get out of jail free" cards, but if we did, she'd have one.
With regards to removing the thumbs-down button: If I know I'm not interested in a game, what does my abstention solve?

If you think about it, doesn't removing the no button make any hypothetical abstain/skip button the de facto no? The lack of an explicit no simply lumps people who aren't interested and people who don't want to contribute an opinion together. But they're both in the "not buying this game" category as far as anyone can tell—otherwise they'd vote yes.

As for massive amounts of troll downvoting: As long as they've got games on the service, they're Steam customers even if they do mindlessly shit on anything 2D and shriek MINECRAFT CLONE at everything else. And if they can't vote no, it's not like they're gonna suddenly turn around and vote yes—making abstention the de facto no again.

The important thing is how Valve decides to handle "no" votes when it comes to looking at what submissions will qualify. IIRC, it was mentioned in this thread that right now they don't have much (if any) weight.

I think there would be value in having a "Let me think about it" button that saves games for you to vote on later, however. There have been a few things I was on the fence about and would have liked to bookmark while I either did some more research or waited for the dev to put up more materials...
 
indigo-cyclops

indigo-cyclops

Member
That game Cradle, posted earlier, I totally forgot about it. I am much anticipating it. The artwork threw me off quite a bit though. Thanks for the reminder.
 
Wok

Wok

Member
There is a McPromo this weekend, to encourage voting for McPixel on Greenlight, by downloading the game from TheP*****Bay or Paying What You Want on the official website.

8aTfO.png
Click to expand...
 
H

HP_Wuvcraft

Banned
PixyJunket said:
What, exactly, does he "get?"
Click to expand...

Exactly my thoughts.

He just needs to put this on his own site for free download. By putting it on a torrent site (and The Pirate Bay, of all places), he's basically saying to people that he encourages piracy, even if that is not true.

Hell, we live in an era where people think making your game DRM free is saying "pirate The Witcher 2, we don't care".
 
Wok

Wok

Member
PixyJunket said:
What, exactly, does he "get?"
Click to expand...

Marketing.

HP_Wuvcraft said:
Exactly my thoughts.

He just needs to put this on his own site for free download. By putting it on a torrent site (and The Pirate Bay, of all places), he's basically saying to people that he encourages piracy, even if that is not true.

Hell, we live in an era where people think making your game DRM free is saying "pirate The Witcher 2, we don't care".
Click to expand...

I remember seeing a post where he explained the game was uploaded on TPB but not by him, and he encouraged people who tried the game and liked it to buy it. So he knows he cannot do anything against pirates, and he uses a smart move to get more buyers and upvoters.
 
M

MasterOfPastures

Banned
How much does it cost to be published in proper steam? Like the big and mid level publishers? They way I thought it was, anyone could publish a game on Steam, as long as they pay the upfront server cost and logistic for putting the game on the store. If this is true, how much is that? 1000 dollars? 5000? More?

Instead of just voting for a game, how about turning Greenlight into a system where every game has to reach that upfront "proper steam" cost through 1 (one) dollar donations ONLY, from each user (who can only vote with their dollar once). Once the mark has been reached, no one can vote (pay) any further.

Once that number has been reached, it can be authorized and it's moved to Steam proper. In return for that exposure, the developer could give steam keys to each person that voted early and monetarily supported the project in it's earliest phase. A limit in voting (stops after reaching the fee amount) would keep it from being an early price steal. Or even 50% off from the final price is also good.

I'm just spouting ideas here. I'm sure people can figure out the holes in this system. So far, I've only voted for BM.
 
F

Family Fry

Member
I will genuinely love the dev that inserts a clickable link into their game demo to vote for it on Steam Greenlight, someone make this happen.

Shantae on Steam is SO up voted.
I've personally have got through 144 games so far, finding the new method of refreshing the game list and not really knowing how many games are out there is good for me. Don't feel under pressure to vote them all at once, trying to catch up as that's never going to happen.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
MasterOfPastures said:
How much does it cost to be published in proper steam? Like the big and mid level publishers? They way I thought it was, anyone could publish a game on Steam, as long as they pay the upfront server cost and logistic for putting the game on the store. If this is true, how much is that? 1000 dollars? 5000? More?
Click to expand...

I don't think it costs anything besides the 30% (we're guessing, they don't let people say for sure) cut of sales that Valve gets.

I voted for Cradle and Shantae and Gray Matter, those look pretty neat!
 
K

ksimm

Member
Holy crap at FRACT OSC
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93104891

This looks / sounds amazing, they mention it's like a mashup of Tron / Myst and Rez. The first video shows the synthesised music puzzle aspect followed by a main hub that lets you create your own electronic music.
However you need to check out the second video, it has a really cool Tron feel to it.

I tried the demo prototype at http://fractgame.com/ and there's no instruction, the first puzzle alone was really cool. You get to walk about in this crazy world, finding the puzzles - voting up!
 
Wok

Wok

Member
ksimm said:
Holy crap at FRACT OSC
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93104891

This looks / sounds amazing, they mention it's like a mashup of Tron / Myst and Rez. The first video shows the synthesised music puzzle aspect followed by a main hub that lets you create your own electronic music.
However you need to check out the second video, it has a really cool Tron feel to it.

I tried the demo prototype at http://fractgame.com/ and there's no instruction, the first puzzle alone was really cool. You get to walk about in this crazy world, finding the puzzles - voting up!
Click to expand...

I tried the prototype a long time ago and was not convinced at all.
 
D

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller
Wok said:
This is a really poorly phrased opinion. What does he mean?
Click to expand...

As he says after:

"If you are unable to get $100 selling your game on your own site, you are unlikely to make $5k on Steam.."

"... Why would Steam want to sell a game that nobody wants to buy?"

"Show me one person ever in history *ever* who has made a Steam-quality game and didn't have $100."
 
Wok

Wok

Member
This dev looks sad. Here is his game: Ballistic Bonbon.

pyd4n.png
Click to expand...

For the little story, the dev had a marketing idea which was the following: since I guess his game was not selling good for 5€, he would make a contest to win 1000€ and sell the game for 25€ during this period of time. He realized the contest would surely make him broke since it was likely someone would finish the 25 levels before at least 40 new participants pay the high price for the game and enter the contest, and it would have been likely a previous buyer would just win in less than two days. So he decided to cancel the contest and make the game free.

The 1000€ Challenge of Ballistic Bonbon
on Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:05 pm

Hi you,

no you're not dreaming, I, [G***** C*****], personally offer 1000 euros to the first person that beats my game in its current form, that means the 25 existing levels. This is not an official contest of any kind. It's a personal challenge I set you, and I do it with my personal money, and I swear before God you will receive your money. This is a public announcement and I would be ridiculous if I change my mind once someone has beaten the challenge. I'm just tired of people who claim they love or hate my game, judging it quickly just by its graphics, but don't really try to beat it until the end. And as far as I know, noone has beaten it so far. So this challenge is my answer to them. Casual game my ass!

Note: I would like to take a screenshot of my Paypal account with the money on it, but I can't transfer the money on my account yet due to a new Paypal rule (/roll his eyes to the sky). Paypal asks me to print a paper and send it to my bank before, and it should take 8-10 days. I will send these papers asap, but I'm not prevented at all to send money to someone. So I will make the transaction as a gift anyway.

I will post the announcement of the winner, as well as the Paypal screenshot of the transaction, on this blog as soon as a person has passed the verifications.

What do you have to do exactly to receive your money?
-beat the 25 levels (haha)
-contact me through the Contact page of the site
-pass the verifications
-accept that your name and surname will be made public after your victory
-accept to be paid via Paypal

Note: if necessary, I may have to update these requirements or this page in order to clear things up.

What are you waiting for? Go: [CONTEST CANCELLED]

In case you just want to try the demo:
http://www.xinkgames.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=4
Click to expand...

Ballistic Bonbon to become 100% free
on Sat Sep 08, 2012 5:53 pm

Hi,
you might have seen my previous post, and I removed it. For a simple reason. I have lost enough money and time with this game, and don't want to go further...
The bad news is that the development is probably completely dead this time.
The good news is that from now on, Ballistic Bonbon is going to be free. I will update the site and the download during the week end.
Click to expand...

I did not enter the contest but I did try the demo (10 levels out of 25) and finished it in easy mode, the normal mode is frustrating because of the short number of balls and the short amount of time. The game is not bad when you understand how to adjust the trade-off between precision and speed with the mouse-wheel.

QDlsR.jpg
Click to expand...
 
H

HoosTrax

Member
Wok said:
This dev looks sad. Here is his game: Ballistic Bonbon.

For the little story, the dev had a marketing idea which was the following: since I guess his game was not selling good for 5€, he would make a contest to win 1000€ and sell the game for 25€ during this period of time. He realized the contest would surely make him broke since it was likely someone would finish the 25 levels before at least new 40 participants pay for the game and enter the contest, and it would have been likely a previous buyer would just win in less than two days. So he decided to cancel the contest and make the game free.
Click to expand...
Why bother filtering his name out? He's a GAFfer and he's posted in this very thread.
 
Wok

Wok

Member
HoosTrax said:
Why bother filtering his name out? He's a GAFfer and he's posted in this very thread.
Click to expand...

He deleted the post I copied and pasted from here. That's why.

If he decides his name should not be filtered out, or the "The 1000€ Challenge of Ballistic Bonbon" post should not be quoted now that the contest is cancelled, he can ask it here and I will edit the post.

As I mentioned above, the dev looks sad right now from his two previous posts and I would not like to add to his bad mood.

Now that you mention he is from GAF, his game should be added to the collection.
 
G

Glass Rebel

Member
yeah I added the game to the collection, missed it the first time when it was posted itt.

did I miss anything else perchance? I added everything that was PMed to me.
 
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