100 Games Greenlit
This is kind of old news now (28th August):
http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/announcements/detail/1585553420145694979
Just wondering what people's thoughts are.
Valve want to continue "increasing the throughput of (their) games from Greenlight to the Steam store. "
My interpretation on this is that more games are going to be Greenlit in future more rapidly... and as such each game isn't going to be guaranteed the same marketing exposure as all the other games on the Steam store.
I'm curious as to when the first story happens which goes like this: "My game got onto Steam, but it didn't appear on the front page and I received 250 sales in total. Steam made zero effort to promote our game and offered us no opportunities for sales".
I'm not sure if that is going to happen, but I'm curious. It seems like a probability now.
What this might mean is that it is now more important that Greenlit games market themselves after being Greenlit, and it might make getting good reviews more important (so that Steam feel confident in promoting your game).
I'd think this is a step towards opening up the Steam store. I'm curious about whether they'll try implement user created stores soon (to help curate the heavier flow of games that Steam seem interested in Greenlighting).
Anyone have any other predictions? (or links to insightful speculation about this).
(Alternatively, this might have been done as a Vendetta against Paranautical Activity (who have said fairly nasty unsubstantiated things about the Greenlight process which were picked up by journalists), so that Paranuatical was Greenlit in the biggest bunch of games and received the least exposure for it)
http://steamcommunity.com/games/765/announcements/detail/1585553420145694979
Just wondering what people's thoughts are.
Valve want to continue "increasing the throughput of (their) games from Greenlight to the Steam store. "
My interpretation on this is that more games are going to be Greenlit in future more rapidly... and as such each game isn't going to be guaranteed the same marketing exposure as all the other games on the Steam store.
I'm curious as to when the first story happens which goes like this: "My game got onto Steam, but it didn't appear on the front page and I received 250 sales in total. Steam made zero effort to promote our game and offered us no opportunities for sales".
I'm not sure if that is going to happen, but I'm curious. It seems like a probability now.
What this might mean is that it is now more important that Greenlit games market themselves after being Greenlit, and it might make getting good reviews more important (so that Steam feel confident in promoting your game).
I'd think this is a step towards opening up the Steam store. I'm curious about whether they'll try implement user created stores soon (to help curate the heavier flow of games that Steam seem interested in Greenlighting).
Anyone have any other predictions? (or links to insightful speculation about this).
(Alternatively, this might have been done as a Vendetta against Paranautical Activity (who have said fairly nasty unsubstantiated things about the Greenlight process which were picked up by journalists), so that Paranuatical was Greenlit in the biggest bunch of games and received the least exposure for it)
Comments
With regards to the more games on Steam vs. exposure:
Valve have been saying for some time that want to remove themselves are a barrier to distribution. So this is kind of that, the result was always going to be more games, and less potential coverage of those games.
If I was one of that games Greenlit I wouldn't be that worried though. Since instead of your market pitch being "Hey guys vote for our game so we can launch it on steam and you might be able to buy it" as opposed "Hey guys check out our cool game that you can buy on steam in 2 weeks"
The latter of the two messages is a much easier sell to potential purchasers since there is no implication of a failure for the game to be play, the game itself might be shit but you can still buy and play it. And that what the traditional sell to journalists/the press has been. So I think it might make the overall marketing easier.
Greenlight kinda forced indies to understand the PR and marketing are things, and hey they aren't evil or anything it's actually kinda cool thing to do since you go out and talk about you game and games, and fuck you make games so that is cool. I know there is a myth of the bedroom developer who does things and like woah insta recognition and they are amazing, but that doesn't happen you have to be visible.
As Eitan Glinert said "We're not competing with each other we're competing with obscurity" I think that's the biggest problem. I won't say greenlight is a perfect system: it is far from it. It is a flawed gem, but a gem none the less, and without it it would have taken a lot longer for the truth of Eitan's words to reach me, and for that I am thankful to it.
Whether you do it because you are trying to get through Greenlight, or because you are soon to release a game on Steam does it make that much of a difference that you were Greenlit with 99 other people?
The way I see this is that marketing and PR are going to become even more crucial as you're going to have actively pursue tastemakers (who will consequently become kingmakers). Time will tell if this was a smart move by valve, it's definitely going to be interesting to see how it pans out. I do think though that the indie fantasy of "get onto steam and get all the monies without doing any more work" is sadly heading towards extinction.
That list of 100 games was daunting... tried having a look through some of the games but it's too much at once.
Self publishing to workshop (dev pages) but with a anti-vote from players, if your rated below the median range plus a threshold over a certain amount of time then your game is removed...also pre-release votes almost like greenlight will determine the amount of steam front page exposure you get - and they will get some smart ass indie coder to develop these smart ranking algorithms based on public vote regression blah blah ha ha