South African Greenlight Submissions :) and Greenlight as a whole.
Hey all,
Was wondering how many South African Greenlight submissions there are. I know of one or two but I was wondering if there are more?
We are one of said submissions and our game can be seen here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93144574
Please if there are any others I would love to get in touch and we can hopefully create more of a presence on Greenlight.
Lastly what do you guys think of Greenlight?
Thanks,
Dom
Was wondering how many South African Greenlight submissions there are. I know of one or two but I was wondering if there are more?
We are one of said submissions and our game can be seen here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93144574
Please if there are any others I would love to get in touch and we can hopefully create more of a presence on Greenlight.
Lastly what do you guys think of Greenlight?
Thanks,
Dom
Comments
We've had a few Greenlight submissions around here, like Zx, Broforce, and a couple others. I thiiiink the general consensus seem to be it's a channel that should be used but not relied on, as well as if you actually have a good game you shouldn't need greenlight. But let's see what they say about it from first hand experience :)
Actually mostly just wanna say you got a pretty cool game there, Pixel Boy. Looks good and has interesting mechanics :) Best of luck!
Question: How does the procedural generation work? Cellular automation? Grids of pre made objects? Wizardy? It looks like it works pretty well
And awesome work on Pixel Boy! I love the aesthetic and you seem to have included some of the things I really desire in a roguelike (like a huge customizable combination of attack options).
And I agree with the Cynical Brit. The music combined with the graphics provides a really appealing atmosphere. I guess I see it as a bit Fez-like? I wish more games felt like that.
I'm seeing in Pixel Boy a lot of inspiration from Binding of Isaac (or games like Binding of Isaac) and maybe some inspiration from Diablo 1? (the village at the start with the scary dungeon hole is always a great setup). Love the spell combination twist. Your trailer made it look like it produces an astounding variety of combinations.
In terms of other South African games on Greenlight there is also: Darkout, Rook's Keep, Night Watch and Toward the Light (in concepts). Robolegs might be going up soon (although they've gone quiet). I may have left out some.
Have you considered using this community for some Alpha testing and feedback on new features? (that's what this community exists for) Or are you doing that independently through your website or something? (Or am I misunderstanding where you are in the development of your game?)
... Regarding Greenlight itself... That's not what Steam thinks. And I can't think why you would want to bypass it (unless you have a bad game and cannot get through Greenlight). I mean, AAA studios have the marketing budget to wrinkle their noses pityingly towards Greenlight, but for everyone else I believe Greenlight is a gift. So I guess I disagree with the consensus.
My impression is that it is an awesome source of marketing. The fricken Cynical Brit reviewed your game in Alpha! That's awesome! I wish Cynical Brit reviews on all my friends! I can't really know how you got that review but going to Greenlight may have helped. (Please correct me if I am wrong, I'd love to know).
I'm saying: Going to Greenlight, like going to Kickstarter, is a great story that fits into an easy narrative arc for journalists and reviewers to discuss.
Succeeding in being Greenlit has boosted the profile of every game that's been Greenlit so far (of course there are only 30 as of now). The number of views the top 10 or 20 games on Greenlight received has been staggering (like 100s of 1000s), and if your game is appealing enough to get into that top 10, and if your game has received that many views, then you can know your game is going to sell. In the entertainment industry any amount of certainty is priceless. It enables developers to invest more love into their games. Obviously this is great for both consumers and developers as they get better games to play and make, respectively. Personally I'm super appreciative of Steam for setting up a system that allows for (relatively) guaranteed win.
And the incentives are all right. Making an appealing game that excites people is what will get you through Greenlight, and this is what you should be doing anyway. But now you have constant feedback about how exciting your game actually is (rather than having the word of your community and the occasional review to go by) which empowers you as a developer to make better choices. I find the metrics Greenlight provides unbelievably valuable.
And here's the thing. I think that if you cannot make it through Greenlight then you'd be unlikely to do well on Steam in any case (and would have been rejected outright before Greenlight). So it'd be silly to say "Greenlight is bad" as their previous submission process rejected games regularly and often with even less informed reasons.
It's not always nice, but Greenlight also gives you early feedback as to whether you should shelve a project and develop something that better suits your skills as a developer or is better positioned to command market demand instead.
I do think that the Greenlight algorithm could be improved, it seems to use raw numbers at the moment and I'd like it to take into account niche genres who have passionate but smallish audiences. I think that could lead to greater diversity in the games Steam users play and that would be liberating for many indie developers who want to develop in experimental or niche genres. I'm pretty certain Steam is working on this (I think fixing this sort of problem was one of the goals of creating Greenlight), though I'm sure with Steam it is: Players first, Developers second... and that's fair enough.
Bottom line is: Greenlight tells you how much people want your game, there's no fairer way for Steam to evaluate who gets to be accepted onto their platform, and passing up an opportunity for the amount of press and views the Greenlight process generates is foolish unless you have a massive marketing budget engaged in solving that problem independently (and even then I'd suggest it would be to a AAA studio's advantage to go through Greenlight).
To be clear: I've been told by publishers that they've heard indies complain about Greenlight and that as publishers they would help us get accepted into Steam and bypass Greenlight. I've found such offers slightly insulting, like someone offering to help get you into a party that's being held in your honour, but the point is that there definitely is this feeling like "Greenlight is too hard" in the Indie community. Tuism is correct about what the consensus is.
I think Greenlight isn't too hard on the indies - it's too hard to discover and find things in there. Or at least, for me, they haven't struck the balance between spammy and ninja yet, and discoverability I think is the important thing there. People seem to believe some games are "entitled" to make it. But nope, no such thing as entitlement in my mind.
In our experience, most of our "yes" votes have been from people outside Greenlight coming into Greenlight. I suspect this is the experience for the games that made it to the top on Greenlight. Whenever someone reviews our game positively we see a noticeable spike in the people voting yes for us.
The amount of people voting "yes" on our game through the Greenlight Steam interface is pretty low in comparison, which is fair I feel, we're sharing the attention span of Steam users with thousands of other games.
I suspect that developers are meant to have to rely on outside press to drive people into Greenlight. Again, getting press outside of Greenlight is something developers should be doing anyway. Greenlight is giving developers incentives to behave in a way that benefits those developers.
While I think that the discoverability of games users appreciate could be improved (so that they get to see games they want to buy), I think that this might in fact be unfair for developers and hurt diversity (because the pressure then would be to make games similar to existing games that Steam can get metrics on). In terms of producing the best possible games the current system is better (and I care about that kind of thing).
Although I might not be thinking of every possibility. @Tuism, what would you like in order to discover better results as a user?
I think collections of games and friend's list favourites will become more useful in time.
I think to make things more discoverable they could...
1) Improve the in-Steam browser (it's laggy and kinda irritating to browse in)
2) Make the navigation between games friendlier (think App Store), the current mess is less than intuitive or quick.
3) Put some kind of highlighting of some Greenlight games (that can be based on algorhythm like stuff the current user hasn't seen before or similarity (proposed) to what the user likes) on Steam's main page somewhere.
4) I only realised now that they got that queue thing that works like that... That's pretty cool...
But I guess any of these could be construed as being too pushy by customers...
Whilst if Steam users were funneled towards games they might actually like (based on their purchases and previous yes votes) then the already popular genres will get even more exposure (thus dooming games in less popular genres, like Pixel Boy).
But I totally agree that the Steam browser is embarrassing.
I think they could improve collections perhaps. Right now collections seem kind of vestigial, but if they were to feature collections or allow users to rate collections then maybe collectors will take their role more seriously (most collections seem rather random at the moment... largely I guess because of the user discoverability problems that @Tuism highlighted).
My fight, as with many, is publicity. Generating interest, etc :|
@Tusim, Yes this was my first post in the community :) The developers of Desktop Dungeons (Brilliant Game! I highly recommend buying the beta) recommend this site to me, until then I didn't even know there was one >.< They have been super kind and supportive of my questions.
@Stray_Train, The random gen algorithm uses a grid system in combination with a ray cast and seed system to generate dungeons randomly whilst making sure that no rooms in the dungeon are not enterable. The grid generates the majority of the dungeon based of various parameters designed to make sure that side pieces don't generate in the centre and such. The ray casts are used to make sure all rooms are enterable :) The game is being made on Unity
@BlackShipsFilltheSky, First off, thank you for such an in depth response :D! With reference to green light, the green light page has helped us get credibility in the scene which I am sure has had knock on effects with reference to reviewers looking at the game. For the cynical brit review I actually had his email address from when he had 30 000 subs and emailed him on that one >.< Was redirected to his employee/partners and they allowed me to send a build of the game to him and at that stage he was to decide whether he would review the game or not, obviously looking at a lot of variables. As for alpha testing I would love to do some through the community, I must just speak with my partner about dishing out builds of the game (haha don't want to upset 50% of the company ;) but it does sound like an awesome opportunity for testing.
Also we are busy adding multiplayer to the game to try and give pixel boy that special something to differentiate itself from the rest of the action RPG and rogue like games :)
@BlackShipsFilltheSky, the system causing users to be gravitated towards games they like has caused a decrease in views on our page since the start, we were on green light on the first day and received a lot more views prior to this change, it is difficult being a niche genre on green light haha but hopefully fun communities such as this one will help build some excitement :)
@ShadowBlade Please link me to your game! would love to give you a thumbs up and check it out :D
We want to release a demo of the game where players can play the first 4 dungeon levels (of 20) and fight the first boss (of 5) but are concerned that this could have negative impacts, what do you guys think? Also if we offer pre-order we would offer it at 5$ (50% of full price) as an incentive sale :)
Also with the addition of multiplayer we do need a lot of testing, mainly to route out multiplayer bugs, currently the server system works like Minecraft (with direct connect IP's to ports of your choice). I would like to get a South African server up for multiplayer testing if there is enough interest :)
I forgot to link our website and Devblog haha :P For all those interested here are the relevant links :)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pixelboygame
DevBlog: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/143025-Pixel-Boy-Pre-Beta-(WIP)
Website: http://pixelboygame.com/
Thanks all for being so supportive!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=101812044&searchtext=
On the other hand, I'm 100% behind a demo/alpha build, people LOVE to try out something before they buy, and if your game is any good it will do wonders for your sales. What negative impacts, specifically are you worried about, and how do you see this coming about?
The truth is you probably don't have much to spend on marketing, a playable demo/alpha/proto-type can be a fantastic way to build hype or advertise your game.
@atomicdomb I'm not too sure how far along you GiantBoxGames is with Pixel Boy, so I'm not sure how appropriate my advice will be.
Are you thinking a "demo" as in presenting a limited version of the final game, or a "demo" as in a playable introduction into the current development state?
We like to release playable prototypes of our games. I believe QCF does the same and for the same reasons.
What we usually do is get people from this community to play our game first, and then we use their response to fix things or change things based on their advice (it's always good to be able to see something through someone else's eyes).
Then when/if we're happy we're getting a positive response we try to get the public to play it.
The thing that concerns me about your game (and this is just based off of the Cynical Brit review) is that the start of your game might not be the most compelling demonstration of why someone should want to purchase it. It seems to me that the later stages are where the good stuff happens (based off of your trailer).
So I'm wondering whether, if you plan on releasing a playable of the first 5 levels, you should spend some time making the combat at the start of the game a little more appealing. This is all based on the Cynical Brit review.
Maybe even do a small demo build for your testers (I don't know who's been playing it, I gather some people from the Unity community) and also get some people from this community to try it (the more feedback the better), and only include the just first 2 levels. If you can get some feedback on that, maybe change some things, and manage to get players hooked by the 2nd level then you'll be sorted.
I mean, I think you could get some testing of a five level build with a boss as well. But maybe if you get some testing of an even shorter build first you can maybe isolate the problems the Cynical Brit spotted and try fix those.
I hope I'm not coming across as negative or overly critical.
In general I do believe releasing early versions of a game or releasing demos is a good idea to get people aware of your game (like QCF achieved). Though I feel that getting early testing and feedback is often even more valuable.
[Edit] @LexAquillia beat me to it! Yes, and the things he said!
But it doesn't make it much easier, really :P
I've been wondering about the "infectiousness" of various games via Greenlight (and to be fair, marketing in general) a lot recently. I feel like there's a key thing that every game needs to do in order to be successful: Be valuable for people to pass on to others.
Some games, *cough* Farmville *cough*, actually build that value into the game directly: If I spam you and you join up, I get ingame shit to reward me for doing that. Obviously that's more than a little morally bankrupt as an entire marketing strategy, but nobody's saying it doesn't work.
People pass on Broforce videos because they want the be the guy that showed someone that awesome video, like, dude, you have to see this! I'd love to properly study the value that people get out of passing on games, I think it would be completely fascinating...
I feel like a lot of the games and concepts that are complaining about Greenlight are failing in this "perceived sharing value" category. There's simply no reason for people that DO discover the game to pass it on to others. I'm also relatively certain that one of the reasons Greenlight seems to be getting people useful numbers is because of it's unapologetic focus on "Help us make this game NOW!", many game websites don't ask for support as blatantly. You kinda need to do that right up front for best results... I know we're pretty stupidly coy on the DD site.
@BlackShipsFilltheSky, No I fully agree with you on making the early stages of the game more compelling, that was one of the first things we addressed after the Cynical Brit review. We have already tweaked the enemy spawn algorithm to generate much more enemies in the rooms and generate larger variety of enemies in each room, it was previously capped at 2 Enemies max spawn per room, it is now 4! Meaning that players can get a much more epic feeling running away from 12-16 monsters coming from different rooms (obviously balance was adjusted to help with balance). We also added a shield function where the player can hold space to create a shield to block all incoming damage, this shield lasts 1.5 seconds and the player can move with it, however whilst on the player cannot shoot and won't be able to shoot for 0.75 seconds after use, this allows players to use this as another combat element to get out of sticky situations and to better position themselves in rooms with many monsters. What do you think about offering an easier version of some of our more advanced AI's in the earlier levels? Because we originally had it that the player would fight Only ranged on level 1 and 2, be introduced to melee in level 3, be introduced to bouncing skulls in level 4 and introduced to monsters which have power ups equipped in level 5, do you think we should introduce these features sooner?
@Tuism, 100% agree! haha on that note, go to my green light ;) Jkz
@dislekcia, Hey! yeah thanks for recommending it man. Having people pass on your game or talk about it is key to success, I've always thought that the best want to get people playing the game is to create a game which you would want to talk about, the whole idea behind Pixel Boy was having people try different builds to try beat the game, only problem here is that this requires a higher time commitment from players :) However with the players we did test it with they loved the power ups and different guys used different builds with different stat and power up combos to win the game. Sadly TB's video doesn't really show off how players are supposed to synchronize those systems. Also with DD I was wondering about the last Dracul Puzzle, My Sanguine buff isn't working so I can't get health from the blood pools and I can't beat the final boss, I get him down to like 20 Hp, Is this a bug or is Sanguine disabled in this puzzle or did I do something which disabled it? Thanks :) (I Love your game if you couldn't tell, puzzles were the best addition, have beaten gnomes, trolls, starter pack, taurog, glowing and halflings)
I like the community feedback from green light, it is just so hard to create a video which truly highlights what your game is about :) haha
There current submission guide only has green light as an option so I am assuming we cant actually approach any other way. Obviously there is another process for established publishers with a market history and marketing budgets in the >$ range.
I don't thing virility is the only measure of a games potential success. However no matter what happens, there is something to be said for the additional exposure we will get from been on Greenlight.
I'm still basing all of this on the Cynical Brit review.
One thing that struck me was he was confused by the exploding barrels. The first exploding barrel he shot didn't seem to have the effect he expected, so thereafter he didn't try use the barrels (he actually says something to the effect that the barrels don't work).
I'm not altogether sure that the exploding barrels in Pixel Boy can be used to the player's advantage, but I'd assume that the spray they shoot out does damage enemies?
I guess I'm saying that the explosion effect should be more predictable. If it kills enemies in a range the range should be somehow conveyed to the player. If it's a scatter of bullets then the bullets must have a noticeable effect on the world (e.g. killing an enemy).
I guess I'm saying the exploding barrels should be adding strategic options for the player that the player can learn how to master and enjoy exploring. But in the current Alpha, for whatever reason, they're kind of unreliable, and as a result aren't adding to the fun (see the second I article I link at the end). I think "fun" can be more complicated than that. But I believe, when it comes to my own work, that giving the player options (that are intuitive and have predictable results) is ALWAYS good. But I'd expect some of this is personal taste, I really do enjoy highly interactive and self-interactive action games.
Of course you've got to decide what your users desire, I'd expect you could add a few more things for users to learn in the early game to give your players a greater feeling of mastery from the start (assuming this doesn't make the final stages boring).
So I really hope I'm not coming across as condescending here. I don't know how much popular game theory you've read or even how much experience you have. But here are some articles that I think explain what I'm trying to convey (but in abstract terms):
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/166972/cognitive_flow_the_psychology_of_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/129948/the_chemistry_of_game_design.php?page=2