Valve greenlit, then backfired, now pay up!

[Pulsar_t]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/ann ... 1741839763

Some people have so much free time.

[MrNash]

I don't really mind them charging a few bucks to put games up on the service. It'll help keep the trolls at bay, and the money's all going to charity, so it works out pretty alright. =)

[J T]

I think this is a good idea for cleansing out some of the crap that goes on Greenlight, though it seems a tad annoying for a developer. However, the opportunity to have Steam level exposure is huge for these guys, so it's worth the investment if they truly believe they have a shot of getting voted in. It's basically a marketing expense. By being on Greenlight, you are marketing yourself to a small, but reasonably-sized group of people. It also gives you a chance at being marketed to an audience of millions of people if you end up having a game on Steam (which is worth for more than $100).

What I actually don't like about Greenlight is that it is using a populist approach to decide which indie games are valid and worthwhile. Maybe I'm cynical about people's preferences, but I don't think that the most important indie games will be winning popularity contests on Greenlight.

This has to do with my view of the importance of indie games for furthering innovation in gameplay. With the size of budgets of modern games these days, it's really hard to take too big of a chance on an untested method of gameplay. I don't think that something like "Facade" would ever happen in a AAA model. That kind of experimentation has to happen in the smaller indie scene (and prove itself there) before the big money guys start to use it in their highly produced AAA games. I see the indie market as a place where bold innovation is possible. Many indie games are crap and not even worth your attention, but every once and awhile something revolutionary happens, like Minecraft or Defense of the Ancients that establishes a new genre. New genres don't get established by the big companies any more. They provide polish to genres that already have established mass appeal. They make the best lasagna and even use a few unique ingredients, but they do not invent lasagna. Not anymore, anyway, not with modern gaming budgets.

I think the real promise of the indie scene is to provide real innovation. To invent the next lasagna, and then the big companies can use that innovation to apply to their highly produced and mass marketed games. We wouldn't have Team Fortress 2 without its original Quake mod, and we wouldn't have Portal without Narbacular Drop. Indie's often serve as a training ground for amateur developers or as a place where old retro styles never die, but I think they are most important for that segment of the indie game population that takes big risks for radical innovation because its the one place where that can be affordably done.

The whole concept of applying populist voting for that kind of game just bothers me because I think that we need experts deciding which games have promising innovations, not a democratic group. An expert can recognize a diamond in the rough. That's different from showing a game to thousands of people and seeing if they all say "YAY!" A game like Tag: The Power of Paint was meidocre as an indie game, but it really took an expert at Valve to say "Yes! We can use this in Portal 2 and it will add new life to the game!"

[irixith]

The whole concept of applying populist voting for that kind of game just bothers me because I think that we need experts deciding which games have promising innovations, not a democratic group.

I couldn't disagree with you more.

Allowing the public to vote on what they would want to play and buy trumps any "expert". How do we vet this expert? How do we control their bias towards certain types of gameplay? How do we control their bias towards graphical polish? It's impossible. All the "expert" can do is decide FOR people, and that completely goes against the entire point of the service.

If people vote for a particular game and then DON'T buy it, the system is broken. However, it seems people aren't doing that -- scads of folks bought Minecraft in alpha form. Scads more people fund stuff on places like Kickstarter. People seem to like the opportunity to be involved in what they throw their money at.

[gtmtnbiker]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/ann ... 1741839763

Some people have so much free time.

It would be helpful if you elaborated on why you have an issue. Starting a new thread with a link to an article with a few words of commentary is a crappy post. So if you want to have a meaningful discussion, please post some more thought/meat into your initial post.

[lwcook]

The whole concept of applying populist voting for that kind of game just bothers me because I think that we need experts deciding which games have promising innovations, not a democratic group.

I'm pretty sure that's the whole point of Greenlight though. It gives everyone a voice in a AAA title gaming world.

[jfrost]

The whole concept of applying populist voting for that kind of game just bothers me because I think that we need experts deciding which games have promising innovations, not a democratic group.

I couldn't disagree with you more.

Allowing the public to vote on what they would want to play and buy trumps any "expert". How do we vet this expert? How do we control their bias towards certain types of gameplay? How do we control their bias towards graphical polish? It's impossible. All the "expert" can do is decide FOR people, and that completely goes against the entire point of the service.

If people vote for a particular game and then DON'T buy it, the system is broken. However, it seems people aren't doing that -- scads of folks bought Minecraft in alpha form. Scads more people fund stuff on places like Kickstarter. People seem to like the opportunity to be involved in what they throw their money at.

Yes, I agree ixirith.

The issue here is: do we want to have a say on what games we get to choose on Steam or not?

I think the answer is definitely yes. Otherwise we're just stuck with what we had before - a system that weeded out the chaff and also a lot of the wheat. Now we get to at least correct some of these mistakes.

Case in point: Project Zomboid.

[J T]

Does anyone know if Greenlight is entirely meant to replace the talent scouts that Valve used for finding games like Narbacular Drop or Tag, or will those jobs be done in tandem with Greenlight?

I'm not opposed to Greenlight if it is done in tandem with experts that know how to scout good games based on a strategy of seeking out innovation. My point is simply that if there is not someone with an eye for innovation on their team, then indie games are going to be valued based on popular opinion. Popular opinion is already what decides how AAA games are made and the populous doesn't tend to side with innnovation in most cases.

[jfrost]

Being quite blunt here, if a game doesn't have any notoriety or potential public, even if "objectively" it is amazing, why would Valve want it? This isn't charity.

Games, innovative or not, should be made if there's people who are willing to pay for and play them. If there isn't, why do they even have to be on Steam?

This considering that Steam, while dominant, is not even the only venue for selling indie games.

[ZeroAX]

Being quite blunt here, if a game doesn't have any notoriety or potential public, even if "objectively" it is amazing, why would Valve want it? This isn't charity.

Games, innovative or not, should be made if there's people who are willing to pay for and play them. If there isn't, why do they even have to be on Steam?

This considering that Steam, while dominant, is not even the only venue for selling indie games.

For the same reason film studios wanted the Black Swan and not another Transformer (well they wanted another Transformer, but also the Black Swan)