We’re fans of the Steam platform here on Tap. Yesterday saw the launch of its new system for submitting and discovering indie games: Greenlight. Being a fan of both indies, and of Steam itself, I figured I’d check it out. Here, generally, is how it works: developers submit a game to Greenlight, including sample screenshots, promo videos, and whatever else they have handy. Then the community votes on which games they’d like to see end up on Steam.
So far, great idea, but there are a few problems that I can see…
1. Too many games. This is a problem in my life in general. Way too many games are on Steam already, and this is more games. I am overwhelmed. I will never be able to play all the games.
2. Connected to that, is the problem of “discoverability,” well-documented in this Gamasutra article. How do you find the best games from this cross-section? Especially if anyone can submit anything, and some things submitted may not even be close to done games, or games the submitter has the rights to submit.
3. …Which leads to a third problem, which is “people not getting it.” The idea is to submit a game you’re developing, but since only people savvy to indie games even get this, people just submit games they don’t own, but “want on Steam.” Unfortunately Valve may have just overestimated the intelligence of its userbase here. Valve seems to be hammering down these violations fast, but they still keep popping up and cluttering the works.
All that being said, I know I’m gonna pour myself an amaretto sour tonight, dive in, and get to the upvoting. What are your thoughts? The future of indie on Steam? Terrible idea to start with? Something in between?
Email the author of this post at aj@tap-repeatedly.com.
For discoverability, I think the collection feature will help a lot for people who don’t want to sift through everything. I created one to easily link to my friends, instead of linking them every game I found interesting. Then I noticed other people were visiting it as well, which is great! I have found quite a few I might have skimmed over by looking through some of the better collections.
Top Rated Collections:
http://tinyurl.com/9v3al5a
My Collection:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92971960
Besides, how many roguelikes do we really need, anyway?
I’m interested in the idea, definitely, and I think it’s great that Valve is (a) working to help increase awareness of indies and (b) very cleverly offloading the huge task of sorting through Steam applications.
The problems AJ mentions are precisely the same ones I’ve been wondering about since they announced the idea. But at the same time, I guess it doesn’t really cost anyone anything if there’s a lot of gum in the works… or, rather, it might cause great indies to get lost in a crowd of mediocrity, but that happens already.
I don’t know if the idea will work out, but I think it’s well meaning. And if even a handful of great games I’d have otherwise missed appear on Steam (while some that no one gives a shit about stop appearing on Steam), that’s all right with me.
Oooo, Project Zomboid.
I will add, though, that I had Steam Greenlight open on the other monitor, glanced at it, and returned my attention to this page to write the above comment. In the about two minutes it took me to do so, four or five other games appeared on the Begging Queue.
So there may be more gum in these works that even well-meaning voters can handle… but still I like the idea.
Oooo, a 2D top-down roguelik-AHEM
There’s a sort of by-its-cover problem with the interface, too. I predict in a few weeks there’ll be no fewer than a trillion games listed. Starting at page 1 (of 6,572,781 and scrolling through is going to be a hell of a slow process. The ability to sort by tags and platforms is nice; still, it seems that the Big Rulebook For Succeeding On Steam Greenlight already has its first few lines:
1) Get a hella concept artist to do your small square thumbnail thing. Even if the game sucks more people will click you.
2) Make sure you gain a commanding power over your language when writing the pop-up blurb.
Oooo, a block-based building game.
It also apparently thinks you want to vote something about every single game!
That little square thumbnail is the difference between success and failure right now.
Another filter they desperately need to add is “Game is Finished”. I think your concern #2 may wind up being the most serious, Amanda… of all the games I’ve looked at so far, like three were actually released products just trying to get onto Steam.
I’m too lazy to look, but is there some way to keep a game from being submitted multiple times (by different people)? I know that’d probably only hurt the game in general because it might get lots of votes that aren’t counted, but I’m curious if there’s something to check that. I’d wager a lot of people wouldn’t be bothered to search if they are misunderstanding the “you should be the person who made the game” part in the first place.
Right now it seems there’s no real incentive to be choosy about your votes. This seems to me to be something that’s looked at things like Kickstarter and thought that was an awesome idea, but Kickstarter has the advantage of requiring submitters to convince you to give them actual money. Greenlight seems like…why wouldn’t I just vote for everything to show my support for indie developers, for example?
I mean, I wouldn’t, personally, but if I hit my head very hard and convinced myself that was a good idea…?
It’s a thoughtful idea, I checked it out today, but the execution is sloppy more than anything else. It’s just…Who knows how many games, in a giant list with dozens of pages and the descriptions of the games appear to be completely home brewed by the authors of each title, because from the looks of what I saw many of them are appropriate summations of the core game mechanics, while others try to be cutesy and say “My game is like [Minecraft],” “This game is a clone of [Myst]” or “It’s quite apparent I enjoyed [Limbo]” etc.
Each game I voted for had no more than 1% of the support it needed. In the end I have to have faith that the cream will rise, while the majority of these indie game makers remain buried in obscurity.
Steam has no doubt been a life-changing vehicle for some developers, but this initiative is a bit foggy in my opinion.
I think where Valve can really tweak this based on what it’s learned in a weekend of release is in the filters. First, separate games that are DONE from games that are NOT DONE from games that are CONCEPTS. Tidy up organization by genre, too – and possibly even take a bit of what xtal describes and run with it. You know, in the submission questionnaire, have a section that flat out asks – “what were your inspirations here?” “What other game does yours most resemble?” That seems silly but might be useful to some voters.
Realistically, any game that’s not done and playable shouldn’t even be in Steam Greenlight, but controlling that might be hard. As I understand it the system was envisioned as a way to get Steam users to help the company’s internal green light team with the massive workload of looking at and approving indie games that WANT TO BE ON STEAM. To be on Steam your game has to be done and fully playable.
They should also ask developers what price point they’re thinking about. I’d buy a lot of indies I’m unsure of for two bucks, but if I see one that I’m on the fence about and they want to charge $15 for it, that might change my vote.
Another useful addition would be a short, checkbox-driven questionnaire for why you voted yes (or no). That would probably help Valve and the indie developers. Comments are too… wild and free.
I only need to see how well Immortal Defense is (not) doing to realise that this idea just isn’t working yet (I know it’s early doors). Immortal Defense was completed in 2007, it’s an amazing game that transcends its genre and absolutely should be on Steam but for various reasons Paul Eres has never managed to get it through Valve’s esoteric selection process (while many other lesser games have made the cut over the years). It took me several pages of searching after filtering strategy games to find it and lo, it’s nowhere near being greenlit. In fact it’s at 0%.
The Oil Blue is another gem that’s 0% towards getting released on Steam.
These two games don’t stand out amongst the other games, how can they? All they’ve got is a thumbnail and a name. Like Steerpike says, it’s like choosing a book based on its cover. With such a massive influx of games, some finished, some not, some good, some bad, how can the cream rise to the top? At the moment it’s, at best, guesswork unless you’ve already played a particular game or heard good things about it. The only thing I can think of to give your game a fighting chance is external exposure/marketing and down that road lies a faint whiff of madness. Lots of publicity to get votes on Steam Greenlight so it will be sold through Steam? I could see this paying off but… aieee!
Also, does this mean that all ‘new’ indie games will be dumped into the Greenlight swamp for the masses to dig out or will Valve still select certain games themselves? Perhaps based on Greenlight votes?
I’m really not sure what to make of it all to be honest. I like the idea, but we’ll see how it all pans out.
Well, I think Gregg just nailed it there. If you have to search for a game like Immortal Defense, a game that’s finished and playable and brilliant, amidst 10,000 concepts that are – at best – in pre-alpha and of which maybe 2% will actually get finished, that’s a big problem.
The thing that surprised me about Greenlight is how “amateur” the execution is. This is a draft; it sounds like they gave up on iterating to a perfect design prior to release and have promptly decided to crowdsource the development. There’s just so much in Greenlight that just isn’t thought through which is doesn’t strike me as Valve style.
We all know they will be listening and acting on feedback. But I wonder if Greenlight is a naturally troublesome concept which is why what got released to everybody was second-rate.
P.S. I voted for Immortal Defense already.
Randy Smith: “We’re established indie devs with a strong background (having worked on titles like Thief and Deus Ex and our own Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor). We made a custom professional video to demonstrate our game on PC, our game already exists and has heaps of glowing press quotes with a very strong metacritic rating, and yet we’re buried alongside flash game prototypes made by hobbyists. I’m glad hobbyists get to share their game ideas; the coolest promise of Greenlight is that it may help rising stars with awesome ideas get recognized. But at the moment, there are very few reliable means by which the higher quality material can rise to separate from the chaff.”
Great article/feature on RPS.
@HM: Me too, it was the first thing I tried to find.
Looks like Valve are implementing an elegant solution to many of the problems: you want on Greenlight, it’ll set you back $100. Proceeds go to Child’s Play Charity.
I like it. Discuss!
I also like it. That’s a lot of money to a kid, who is all like ‘YOU SHOUDL PUT TEH HALOS ON IT,’ but not really a lot of money to a developer with a finished game. I mean, even if I were a starving artist I could PROBABLY find a hundred bucks to get onto Greenlight.
Biggest downside I can see right now is there are some people who likely would not want to go through Penny Arcade. (I mean, I know, it’s really for sick children, but it’s affiliated with Penny Arcade.)
ETA: Of course, some people hate it, and… they have a point, it does shut out the little guy a little bit. The fee could be lower, but they needed to do something.
I still tend to think that if the “little guy” has the time and resources to make a complete game, even a small one, he can probably locate the $100. I’d be wary of a game developer, even an amateur, who wasn’t willing to pay that amount, even if it required some additional sacrifice on their part.
Heck, if you’re a little guy with an awesome game but can’t find a hundred bucks, make a video and try to get $100 on Kickstarter.
I will say that I know a game dev who is currently trying to scrounge up 100 bucks in loose change just to prove it’s possible.
I think it is worth pointing out that it’s a one-time fee to unlock posting to Greenlight, rather than a per-game fee which some seem to think it is.
It doesn’t seem like a big fee to me. Seems pretty average, on par with the fee to develop for XBLA or iPhone for example. But I acknowledge I’m very lucky that it doesn’t seem like a big fee to me.
It’s $100 for a *possibility* of getting onto Steam. It’s $100 for the privilege of making a home for your game on Greenlight’s books – in addition to your own web site. It’s $100 which might go nowhere at all and cost you not just in money – but time to support. For people who are scraping by on just 100-200 sales a year, $100 is going to be a big deal. Another $100 on the radioactive red hot credit card?
I feel like Valve don’t really have an idea how something like Greenlight should work. I mean, nobody does – discoverability is considered to be *the* indie problem today. The intent is there… but there’s no execution, as if crowdsourcing was going cure cancer. There’s a slight false logic here too; if crowdsourcing was going to do it, then why hasn’t the greatest crowd of all – the internet – already made these indies a success?
What is Greenlight for? Completed games? Embryonic kickstarter-type ideas?
“They needed to do something”
Money wouldn’t have been my first choice and it certainly wasn’t Valve’s.
Off the top of my head, I’d prefer a two-tier approach. A validation system to get something promoted from, say, a queue of waiting thin-detail candidates onto Greenlight proper (say, grass roots support Steam users who have at least one purchased game on Steam are allowed to propel it forward, validating the submission, there’d be some sort of approval minimum required), followed up with moderators who can be notified of something bad somehow making it through the first hurdle.
I think the fact that nobody is for sure yet how many votes you really need to get on Steam is a big problem still.
I think for a two-tier system, I might even go so far as saying a supporter has to have purchased an indie game on Steam. Though that might be hard to actually figure out what counts for that.
Now I was under the impression that Greenlight is for completed, or almost-completed games, not concepts. But I know that has never really been very clear, except in a statement they issued to the effect of the concepts section of the service being put off in development for right now.
I don’t actually think a service like Greenlight is the place for a concepts section, though. That’s just me.
“I’d be wary of a game developer, even an amateur, who wasn’t willing to pay that amount, even if it required some additional sacrifice on their part.”
This isn’t $99 to get on XBLIG. This is $100 to make a glorified web page which might get you into the hallowed ground of $team. And there are plenty of indies that are just getting by. Wasn’t it Amon26 that just recently threatened with homelessness and asking on Twitter for donations? And Jonas Kyratzes is constantly battling against a lack of funds. It’s irrelevant whether you like their works or not: if you’re interested in some of the bleeding edge cases getting some proper coverage on Steam, they might pony up the $100, they might not. Maybe they already spent $100 on building their own website.
“I will say that I know a game dev who is currently trying to scrounge up 100 bucks in loose change just to prove it’s possible.”
What… what does this prove? That some people can find $100?
“I think it is worth pointing out that it’s a one-time fee to unlock posting to Greenlight, rather than a per-game fee which some seem to think it is.”
Oh that’s new information – I wasn’t aware of that. There’s definitely some confusion about that on the major sites. Although Greenlight T&C are clear on this point.
Personally, considering how much up in the air Greenlight is at the moment – what we see right now is not what we’re going to see in six months time – it would be interesting to know what you’re actually paying for. (As you say, Amanda, we still don’t know how this is going to work.)
To be honest, I actually don’t think Greenlight will eventually solve the problem it is intended to solve, but it might throw some indies a few extra dollars they would not otherwise not have. Hopefully more than $100 though.
The weird thing is I think – right now – that most people that would vote “YES I WOULD BUY THIS ON STEAM” for completed/near-complete projects already bought the damn thing some other way. Everyone else will be like “yor video suks ass” or “better graphics will help you do better next time haha”.
@HM
For people for whom that entry fee would be a major expense, I doubt it would be worth it for them right now. Not at least until there’s some proof that Greenlight works in getting games on Steam and works in getting those games to the right customers.
I think the communication on Valve’s side, both to devs and consumers, has been poor here so far. I hope this improves, though, because: I love indie games, and I want to see more of them being successful.
It seems to me this is in many ways an advertising expense, when it comes down to it. There’s no guarantee it will get anyone any sales, but it does raise visibility. If you get on Greenlight, even if you *don’t* get on Steam, some of those people who saw your game on Greenlight could be compelled to seek out your title some other way.
I think the greater degree of exclusivity the paid model provides will also significantly increase the odds of those that do get on Greenlight getting noticed at all. Before that, even though it was free, it seemed pointless because of the amount of noise – as everyone on the entire internet has observed. I *wish* the free for everyone model would work, but the way users responded, by and large, demonstrated it would be an exercise in futility, at least as it was.
I do agree that as it stands this is probably only a worthwhile expense for indies that can afford it fairly easily, because of how unknown a quantity it is. (Admittedly, I don’t know the going rate for web advertising these days, so it still might be a tremendously good deal from that perspective.)
$100 just doesn’t seem like much for a finished game that isn’t on Steam, but has the chance to be. I admit it could be a hardship, but it’d be a small price for Steam-level exposure in most cases. While I agree with HM that it may not be the best approach, it is an immediate control to deal with some of the more significant immediate problems that Greenlight has. And since Valve isn’t pocketing the money, the whole thing remains very egalitarian.
I love the idea of Greenlight – getting indie games in front of players, and lessening the crushing burden of evaluation currently on Valve alone – but the last few days have shown that it needs something, even if it’s a temporary fix, to deal with some of the issues that could make it a nonstarter otherwise.
One question I have here is — why wasn’t Immortal Defense on Steam in the first place? Assuming Gregg is right that it should be on, that sounds like Steam has something broken in their process to begin with (I mean, surely someone working for Valve is clued in enough to realize that ID is pretty cool). That seems like a bigger problem than you can fix with crowdsourcing.
I don’t know Valve’s process, but certainly games many would assume “should” be on there (like Immortal Defense, or Armageddon Empires, or Solium Infernum, all of which were turned down) points to an issue. That said, Valve has made it clear that they receive hundreds of submissions a week and simply can’t keep up. I doubt they even played most games that were submitted, and I can explain why.
If you look at Greenlight, as we’ve discussed above, currently success or failure depends entirely on that tiny thumbnail image and the quality of your writeup. If you have a video (that’s good), more points. Beyond that, there’s no way of knowing if the game is actually any good.
Assuming Valve had a similar process in place prior to Greenlight’s launch, a lot of good games probably fell by the wayside because they didn’t, you know, package themselves properly. The best game in the world can be killed by shitty presentation. Look at System Shock from 97 – its absurd box art was probably responsible for costing it tens of thousands of sales (in a time when tens of thousands of sales was a big deal).
Of course I don’t know what Immortal Defense or either of Vic Davis’s submission packages looked like, but that that’s what the Valve folks had to go on, and they made their decision about whether to play based entirely on that stuff, it explains plenty.
After all, would you really get Immortal Defense without hearing the music? Without playing (not just seeing, PLAYING) the game? Possibly without making it enough missions in to really see the depth of the storyline? I can think of a million ways to package Immortal Defense that would make it look like a crappy crapheap of crap from crapington, but only a handful that would demonstrate it for the magnificent work it actually is.
So I agree with you, Matt W, that there’s a larger scale problem with the process. My hope is that Greenlight – once many many many kinks are worked out – will help address that larger issue too… because gamers could have easily told Valve that Immortal Defense belongs not just on Steam, but up on the rotator for a few weeks.
“gamers could have easily told Valve that Immortal Defense belongs not just on Steam, but up on the rotator for a few weeks.”
Well, that’s the thing. It’s not the music or playing the game that lets me know how great ID is (every so often I cruise on over to the page, scroll all the way down, and stare longingly at “Mac version coming soon”) — I know that it belongs on Steam because I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how awesome it is. And that seems like a better way for Valve to crowdsource entrance to Steam than having everyone and their aunt vote on a bunch of crappy thumbnails. Why not hire someone to read gaming blogs and say “Dude, everyone is talking about this game and it sounds cool”?
I didn’t even get to Immortal Defense as I scrolled through the pages! I [i]did[/i] see and vote up The Oil Blue.
ID would do so well on Steam. It’s the perfect type of game you could charge $5 a pop for, though it really is an invaluable game. Is it still at 0 per cent? That would be a shame if it never rose from relative obscurity. ID is a classic, I’d say one of the very best in…er…recent history.
Like Steerpike said, I’m guessing that pre-Greenlight a lot of games lived or died (or, rather, got on Steam or didn’t) based on something equivalent to an elevator pitch.
I’m sure some of it has also been subject to the tastes of the person looking at that submission: like with, say, a novel pitch to a traditional publisher, you might have a great thing for some people but the editor that sees it may not like it or, at least, see the value in pursuing it. At some point someone has to decide they’ll support this or not support that, and they best they have to go on is a guess as to how worthwhile the return.
That said, I do wonder why Valve hasn’t previously been more aggressive about possibly backpedaling and changing their minds in the face of critical/consumer acclaim. It may be a question of manpower, but that seems a dubious explanation.
One thing I continue to admire about Valve is their approach of, “we don’t really know, but we think we’ll learn a lot.” People are overlooking, right now, that such an attitude is often why they end up catering to their users so much, in ways other companies don’t.
At launch it was clear Greenlight was not fully thought through. There were simple blunders that could have been avoided. But part of Valve’s appeal is their adaptability. They are learning. Unfortunately, their learning curve in the case of Greenlight is literally costing people money.
We can’t say Greenlight has failed. Thus far, it is not working as well as it could. But it is not over, and will continue to change.
Long time no see, Jordan, good to have you back! 🙂
I agree, Valve’s approach for anything except its games (which it tests agonizingly until there’s no more to learn or polish) is to release, iterate, study feedback, etc… and I bet they’re already working on improvements to Greenlight.
To be honest, I don’t mind that there’s a fee to list on Greenlight – though maybe down the road that fee will be lower, like… $10 per listing or something. Just a way to cut out those who want nothing other than to break the system. Beyond that, it’s really a matter of filters, of interface, of finding ways to ensure that finished candidates are what the audience sees, and then finding ways to help the audience see the finished candidates that most interest it.
If nothing else, once perfected Greenlight should prevent the obvious problems of deserving games not getting onto Steam. The earlier Immortal Defense example being quite prime in that.
This is a little hashed over by now, but I don’t think the “Make a video and find $100 on Kickstarter” argument works. No matter how you slice it, the $100 fee is going to come out of some other budget, unless it spurs the developer to raise money when they wouldn’t have been raising money anyway. Let’s say that you have development costs, and you can raise $1000 on Kickstarter — well, now out of that $1000 you can only use $900 to develop your game.
Or, more poignantly, you might need that $100 for rent, food, or diapers. That’s the situation people like Jonas Kyratzes and Anna Anthropy are in; it’s not like they can’t raise money at all, but they need the money they raise.
Anyway, in the state Greenlight appears to be in now, it doesn’t sound like a good use of anyone’s $100, unless that isn’t a good part of the budget. If I were a dev I certainly wouldn’t be ponying up the fee until after they’d fixed some more of the problems.
(Anna put it shorter: “GET A HUNDRED PEOPLE TO DONATE TO A HUNDRED DOLLAR KICKSTARTER SO YOU CAN GET A HUNDRED PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR YOUR GAME ON GREENLIGHT SO STEAM CAN MAYBE POSSIBLY DECIDE TO HOST YOUR GAME”)
I hear you, I do. But I’d argue that the $100 isn’t a fee to get on Greenlight so much as it’s a deterrent AGAINST people submitting games to Greelight for the hell of it, or before they’re done and playable. Personally I think that that Valve needs to institute that rule immediately if they already haven’t:
RULE: Steam Greenlight is not Kickstarter. Our objective is to help Steam fans determine which indie games should be available on Steam. To qualify for Greenlight, your game must be finished, playable, and release-ready, either as a full standalone title or an episodic one. At this time we do not accept concepts or games that are in development.
Like I said, I haven’t checked on Greenlight recently, but if that’s not a rule it needs to be.
Then if people want to break the rule, Valve could pull its $100 charge and simply allow voters to eliminate games by catching ones that aren’t done.
IMO a game shouldn’t be on Greenlight unless it’s ready to be on Steam, and Steam only distributes complete software, not concepts or projects in development. A miniscule number of exceptions exist, but they’re hand-vetted.
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