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Too many (Indie) games being relased on Steam? 53 released since Dec 1st 2013

People are complaining that the PC's getting too many good games. Now I really have seen it all.

So what's the answer, OP? Start arbitrarily Greenlighting less games so that the ones who make it through are playing on a less-crowded field? Seems kind of unfair to the guys who don't make the cut, don't you think?

What's going to happen is that some games are going to rise to the top and others are going to get lost in the shuffle, even though they're good games and probably deserve better. That's just the way things are. The only real solution would be for people to stop making good games, or for some of these small developers to go back to releasing their games as shareware/freeware rather than selling them for a profit on Steam, etc. I don't see small devs doing either voluntarily.

The indie gold rush is on. Things are becoming more crowded, and it's only going to get harder from here. This was pretty much inevitable.
 
MightyHedgehog said:
I feel that, if looking across the PC space, too many good games at once was kind of always the problem for anyone making them. Curation helped to give some a real shot at ensuring meaningful success, at least, instead of an entire forest falling over with no one to hear it. Having some help in gaining visibility by breaching that canopy of trees helps.
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Curation means arbitrarily deciding who gets a chance and who doesn't, often it'll just come down who you happen to know. Let the consumers decide instead.
 
Hari Seldon said:
They are fucking up my feed of new games. If I was a midrange studio I would be pissed at this crap on steam. Ghetto the indy games into a seperate tab or curate only the good ones.
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Then make better games. And if there's too many good games out there? Then make different games. People not wanting to purchase your game is people not wanting to purchase your game. Saying there's too many good games out there that nobody is buying (whether that's because they already bought a similar great title, or for another reason) is just confusing to me
 
This reminds me of how most musical artists have pretty much stopped selling records in recent years, but many of them can fall back on touring for financial support. I wonder what could be an equivalent solution for indie game designers...
 
eot said:
Curation means arbitrarily deciding who gets a chance and who doesn't, often it'll just come down who you happen to know. Let the consumers decide instead.
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At some point, too many is simply too many to be useful to anyone involved. I see nothing wrong with taking the reins to steer your platform/e-store forward in a way that better benefits some rather than being of much less use to all. For everyone else, there are other competing platforms/e-stores and the opportunity to sell on your own site/service.
 
I see no problem. System seems to be working as word of mouth and great games still comong to the top.

Steam gives these Indies the tools and storefront to distribute early releases, demos, trailers, dlc and other things that were unheard of a few years ago to a few guys in their basement.


Open the flood gates let te unregulated market decide.

I love the social engineers here trying to Tell Valve to steer the audience. This is the company that always trys to put power in the hands of their consumer. Its a complete diacotomy to what they want to do and what they say their beliefs are.

Face it Valve and its non structure are the anarchy vs the massive control the industry has come so accustomed to.
 
xtrasauce said:
This reminds me of how most musical artists have pretty much stopped selling records in recent years, but many of them can fall back on touring for financial support. I wonder what could be an equivalent solution for indie game designers...
Click to expand...

Indies need to think outside the fuckin box. Minecraft is one example. Just do away with everything conventional. AAA studios do not get to try crazy different ideas that are only in your dreams. Indies do, but they're falling into this trend, this model, this way of making an indie career. Makes me sick, somebody with great technical prowess and vision, quit giving fucks and just do it
 
xtrasauce said:
This reminds me of how most musical artists have pretty much stopped selling records in recent years, but many of them can fall back on touring for financial support. I wonder what could be an equivalent solution for indie game designers...
Click to expand...
There is no equivalent. The music scene is very unique in that it has two distinct sources of revenue(retail/digital media and live events).

This might simply be one of those problems that *doesn't* have a solution. I suppose the only thing I can think of is to make an extremely stand-out game and do everything you can to advertise the hell out of it. If all you think you're capable of is a 'pretty good' product that isn't particularly unique, then be wary of investing too much time and money into that project. Or at least go in with low expectations in mind.
 
bdouble said:
I love the social engineers here trying to Tell Valve to steer the audience. This is the company that always trys to put power in the hands of their consumer. Its a complete diacotomy to what they want to do.
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Steam simply needs more competition instead of being the defacto PC game seller for the market to best-served.
 
Might be bad for the indy studios but it works out pretty damn well for me. I love loading up Steam, seeing what new games came out or were updated and taking a look at them and if they seem interesting then getting them. I'd say I've probably bought MORE games due to this than before. Also, I'm a bit selfish in that if a game can come out at a time it should mainly because I'd be annoyed at a game being ready to go and just sitting there for a "better" release date. That's my greedy problem since when a game releases can direly affect it's sales.

I love finding new games. It's like how Borders was before it closed when competing with Barnes and Noble and they had those buy one get one half off tables or the "Recommended Books" table and such. I'd just browse through em and if something looked interesting I'd pick it up. That's mainly how I found new books and for games in this situation, this is mainly how I find new games. I understand it isn't that way for a lot of people but it is for me and I play games for me...so it's working out pretty good, honestly.

Really happy to see Risk of Rain being a better seller than anyone expected though. Neat.
 
Stumpokapow said:
The problem isn't the quantity of bad games, the problem is that so many good games are being released. Even if you stuck only to indie games released on Steam that received significant positive notice or impressions here on GAF, you wouldn't have time in the run of a year to play remotely all of them.

Too many people are making too many good games.

It's not just Steam either because the same would be true going through the humble store or widgets or GOG so I'm not convinced lack of curation is a problem.
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tumblr_mloa08X1v91rq3i3ro1_500.gif
 
They fix what people complained about and then the people complain about the fix. Consumers don't know what the hell they want.
 
It seems like indie games are the new garage band. Lots of people want to do it, very few people can make a career out of it. Not sure if that's good or bad, but it is what it is.
 
Rayge said:
Consumers don't know what the hell they want.
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My day, every day. Great salesmanship is figuring out what they want from what they say and don't say and somehow turning that into a pitch for people who don't understand.

This is my professional career and I still don't know what the hell I just typed.
 
Pretty much every greenlight title I've seen has been kinda crappy.

As long as Steam doesn't end up like the Android market it'll be ok.
 
It isn't "bad" but I will agree it is kind of overwhelming. It's hard to settle on what you want to play and at times the best option seems like delaying purchases.
 
This is the inevitable outcome of the Indie game explosion. Holding games back to stick to an arbitrary release scheduled just hurts consumers and indie developers. I say throw the games out there and let the market decide.
 
I don't even pay attention to the new releases anymore. There are so many games that I don't want to bother weeding through them to find something interesting. I'm just waiting on daily\flash deals during Steam sales to notify me of a possibly good game.
 
Enco said:
Pretty much every greenlight title I've seen has been kinda crappy.

As long as Steam doesn't end up like the Android market it'll be ok.
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Uhh

Released greenlight games I think are pretty bloody great:

- Eldritch
- Deadly Premonition
- Rogue Legacy
- Papers, Please
- Survivor Squad
- Hammerwatch
- Cat Lady
- Leisure Suit Larry
- Waking Mars
- Giana Sisters
- McPixel
- Organ Trail

So like, I don't really agree.
 
Indie or not, Marc Echo's Getting Up was released on Steam today. I think we can all agree that not enough games were released until this point, and now we can all pack it up and go home because Steam has served its ultimate purpose.
 
I think there are too many games being made nowadays. And yes, a lot of them are good. The whole industry is a mess. In a perfect world I'd curate the Steam store myself. :)
 
Pretty stupid to release ANYTHING on Steam in the window between the Thanksgiving Sale and the Christmas Sale. Not many people are going to be spending money on the platform during this time.
 
ashecitism said:
Well, this is what people wanted...
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Exactly. There are no good options that will please everybody. The best you can hope is that people understand the purpose and value of marketing and don't assume that having your product available for purchase means the masses will find it and flock to it.

Kinda basic stuff any kid that sold lemonade or mowed lawns can grasp but full grown adults in the gaming space seem to struggle with at times.
 
Why is the onus on Valve to market your game by trickling them out slowly over time? You want to go without a marketing department at a publisher, then market your game.

Look at what those 4 dudes did for No Man's Sky. They weren't waiting on Valve to promote their game by trickling it out on Steam. Make a game worthy of talk and people will talk about it.
 
I don't understand. You think less indie games should be released so that the ones remaining get more exposure?

I mean, it could work I guess but is that really how you'd like to see Steam operate?

Personally, I can manage my interests just fine.
 
Don't care at all. The more games on Steam, the more stuff that I might like to buy, the less likely some game goes console only. There are TONS of games coming out and the floodgates aren't closing. Plus, I already own a bunch of these Greenlight games from bundles, so I'm not complaining.
 
Well if the service doesn't have the game I want to buy it is 100% useless. If releasing more games somehow impairs its usefulness that's still never as bad as not having the game at all.
 
It is entirely plausible that it will be bad for business. Increased consumer choice often results in decreased spending in a variety of fields, from food products to mutual funds.

I want to emphasize something here: I do not mean that each individual game sells less, although that is also true. I mean there is literally less money spent overall. If 10 games produce, say, 100 dollars in revenue, it's entirely possible for 50 games to produce 90 dollars in revenue.

This may seem counterintuitive, but actual research supports this conclusion. Not always, of course. Sometimes increased choice does create increased revenue. But often.
 
Steam needs a better recommendation feature, I agree, but PC gaming thrives quite well off of word of mouth, it's one big separator between it and consoles.

All I've been playing lately are indie games I've bought off Steam, so I'm hardly surprised there are great deals of them being released. I pretty much sidelined big, shiny new retail games I've bought recently just for more time in Risk of Rain, Starbound and several other titles I acquired in the Steam Sale (eg; finished Gone Home, still futzing around with Rogue Legacy).

Ultimately I just agree with Stump, as well, which is why people bitching about any one given segment of the market and the DOWNFALL OF GAMING are just utterly insane individuals. We are spoiled rotten compared to when I was growing up, so many games, so much variety and there are always promotions ans sales.
 
pswii60 said:
Well, it'll end up like iOS.

There really is some absolute shit on Steam when I scroll through the New Releases section though.
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I think this was my concern about Greenlight -- that eventually there will be so much junk, everything might need to be free or $2 or it won't sell, and/or even good games will not get noticed because the signal to noise ratio is so low.

Hari Seldon said:
I'd rather Valve just hire someone curate in order to keep out the crap shovel-ware. Steam is going to turn into the piece of shit ios app store pretty soon.
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Valve used to do this. People complained about it a lot. Valve added Greenlight, but only let through the top entries. People complained about it a lot.

Now Valve has opened the gamevalves, and people are complaining about that too. :P

Opiate said:
It is entirely plausible that it will be bad for business. Increased consumer choice often results in decreased spending in a variety of fields, from food products to mutual funds.

I want to emphasize something here: I do not mean that each individual game sells less, although that is also true. I mean there is literally less money spent overall. If 10 games produce, say, 100 dollars in revenue, it's entirely possible for 50 games to produce 90 dollars in revenue.

This may seem counterintuitive, but actual research supports this conclusion. Not always, of course. Sometimes increased choice does create increased revenue. But often.
Click to expand...
This is both interesting to me and sad to hear. I hadn't heard about actual research/stats on this, but I'm not too surprised it's true. People can develop an "eww, looks like crap" attitude glancing at a bunch of releases, when previously they might have looked more closely at each game, and as a result they buy NONE of them. (just a theory, might be totally inaccurate)
 
Opiate said:
It is entirely plausible that it will be bad for business. Increased consumer choice often results in decreased spending in a variety of fields, from food products to mutual funds.

I want to emphasize something here: I do not mean that each individual game sells less, although that is also true. I mean there is literally less money spent overall. If 10 games produce, say, 100 dollars in revenue, it's entirely possible for 50 games to produce 90 dollars in revenue.

This may seem counterintuitive, but actual research supports this conclusion. Not always, of course. Sometimes increased choice does create increased revenue. But often.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing that when people are overloaded with choices they stop paying attention altogether?
 
lightning2k3 said:
I'm guessing that when people are overloaded with choices they stop paying attention altogether?
Click to expand...
Or when the perception is that in general, a collection of [things] is junk, so only heavily advertised or publicized [things] draw their attention.

*edit* That experiment below is interesting, thanks.
 
Opiate said:
It is entirely plausible that it will be bad for business. Increased consumer choice often results in decreased spending in a variety of fields, from food products to mutual funds.

I want to emphasize something here: I do not mean that each individual game sells less, although that is also true. I mean there is literally less money spent overall. If 10 games produce, say, 100 dollars in revenue, it's entirely possible for 50 games to produce 90 dollars in revenue.

This may seem counterintuitive, but actual research supports this conclusion. Not always, of course. Sometimes increased choice does create increased revenue. But often.
Click to expand...

In a California gourmet market, Professor Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth of samples of Wilkin & Sons jams. Every few hours, they switched from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon good for $1 off one Wilkin & Sons jam.

Here’s the interesting part. Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar.

That study “raised the hypothesis that the presence of choice might be appealing as a theory,” Professor Iyengar said last year, “but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating.”
 
I was thinking and I think I solved it

it needs a tab like on Amazon where you can choose 'most popular' and 'best reviews'

Especially now people leave reviews, that way you can see what games are getting very positive reviews.
 
Blizzard said:
Valve used to do this. People complained about it a lot. Valve added Greenlight, but only let through the top entries. People complained about it a lot.

Now Valve has opened the gamevalves, and people are complaining about that too. :P
Click to expand...

Yeah I prefer the old way better. Prove your unproven studio or game outside of steam with awards or sales on your website before you get the free marketing of steam. Now there is too many games that no one is getting any marketing.
 
Ferrio said:
Yep, overall the whole industry is flooded with a lot of quality products.
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Isn't that literally The worst possible outcome for the gaming industry? That to me, sounds worse than being flooded with bad games, it means that there isn't enough money circulating into and out of the eight channels, when very clearly, there Is more than enough money when CoD and GTA reliably sell millions. Maybe we need to turn the dudebro's into people who buy all games. But how do you do that? Journey didn't do that. Bastion didn't do that. How?


jim-jam bongs said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

The perceived mental exertion required to make a choice becomes higher than the expected enjoyment from the outcome of the choice.
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Elder Scrolls in a nutshell.
 
I've said this before. Indie developers saw that big publishers treated December as a desert, so they dumped everything they can for this month. Here's what I'll have to finish before GOTY season, bloody hell.

Broken Sword 5
The Novelist
Not The Robots
Teslagrad
Murder in the Hotel Lisbon
Dungeon of the Endless

Good thing holiday has started, so time for the marathon gaming! XD
 
jim-jam bongs said:
Uhh

Released greenlight games I think are pretty bloody great:

- Eldritch
- Deadly Premonition
- Rogue Legacy
- Papers, Please
- Survivor Squad
- Hammerwatch
- Cat Lady
- Leisure Suit Larry
- Waking Mars
- Giana Sisters
- McPixel
- Organ Trail

So like, I don't really agree.
Click to expand...

Let me add Valdis Story: Abyssal City and 99 Spirits to that list.
 
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