Topic: Steam Greenlight (Read 3342 times)

Kayin · « **Reply #20 on:** September 05, 2012, 02:35:39 PM »

I do not agree.

Short of it: Considering Valve is just picking a random check-mechanism and not profiting off this or using it to offset costs, it seems there are better solutions that do not necessarily have classist after-effects.

It's not going to stop anyone but it's an unnecessary burden for small developers and flies in the face of what Greenlight was originally billed as.

(also the 100 dollars isn't like, Hitler or anything. But it seems a poor, rash decision to me and I really doubt it'll stay quite like that. This is a bandaid. It might inform the final design, but it's still a bandaid.)

Brentai · « **Reply #21 on:** September 05, 2012, 02:39:11 PM »

Can you give us an example of a better solution?

A² · « **Reply #22 on:** September 05, 2012, 02:40:26 PM »

I belieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve they've said as much that this was intended to be a bandaid to keep them from drowning in bullshit while they figure something else out.

Brentai · « **Reply #23 on:** September 05, 2012, 02:47:11 PM »

Weird bandaid though. I don't think anybody would go ballistic on them for shuttering the thing for a couple of days with a note saying "Due to the unexpectedly high volume of submissions, we have temporarily disabled this service while we re-evaluate our submission policies. Thank you for your patience during this time." I mean, okay, maybe some people would, but it'd be a lot less incendiary than "Fine now there's a fee for it."

Kayin · « **Reply #24 on:** September 05, 2012, 02:47:58 PM »

That's why I linked a bunch of words. :| But sure okay lets go.

Both me and Ed Keys had about the same idea. The fee can stay around (though I'm not sure 100 dollar fee is more significantly effect than a 20 or 50 dollar one). My thought is to separate pending entries from active ones. Ed suggests a separate, more inclusive listing, I suggest just NOT listing them. It's up to you to promote your greenlight page your self and get over some thresh-hold of upvotes before you even appear on the greenlight page. Companies who don't want to bother with this can drop a hundo and skip this bullshit but smaller devs can have an outlet where they can test the water without losing money. Even if they are just the gamemaker guy who expects to sell their game to hundred people, the results can show him that "It isn't going to happen". Or maybe your game gets all over some indie websites and you get upvoted a lot and you realize you got something good going on.

System isn't perfect. You can still oversell your self with a fake project and get listed (something most people probably aren't willing to do for 100 bucks) but I think making Greenlight a friendly place to test the waters for your project is good for the service and for users, as long as it can be done without making a shithole of the place.

I'm actually guessing something like this is also the most likely solution Valve will roll out or add themselves.

Edit: as to the bandaid issue and why they wouldn't take the service down: I think this is going to be weeks or months, not days and I don't think they want to totally kill there momentum. In fact, getting only super serious submissions for a good while can lead to a way healthier ecosystem later on and set good standards for the rest of the service.

Büge · « **Reply #25 on:** September 05, 2012, 05:11:51 PM »

Quote from: TA on September 05, 2012, 02:23:43 PM

According to Anna Anthropy, this is CLASSIST and EVIL and being a WANNABE GATEKEEPER.

It's a hundred dollars. That's maybe two eight-hour shifts at minimum wage, after taxes. If that's "classist"*, then who are they "gatekeeping"* this service from? People who can't afford computers?

*

TA · « **Reply #26 on:** September 05, 2012, 05:17:34 PM »

Quote from: Büge on September 05, 2012, 05:11:51 PM

Quote from: TA on September 05, 2012, 02:23:43 PM
According to Anna Anthropy, this is CLASSIST and EVIL and being a WANNABE GATEKEEPER.
It's a hundred dollars. That's maybe two eight-hour shifts at minimum wage, after taxes. If that's "classist"*, then who are they "gatekeeping"* this service from? People who can't afford computers?

*

Well, to quote the full-time professional game designer in question, "my partner and i have to survive on $2000 right now and dudes gonna tell me $100 to submit my game to steam's nonsense lot check is feasible "

Mongrel · « **Reply #27 on:** September 05, 2012, 05:29:16 PM »

Show a couple people your game.

Ask them to invest $20.

Like, Kayin may or may not have valid points about this fee being a bad idea or a poorly-thought-out mess. But $100 is an incredibly low threshold for just about any kind of business venture you, me, or just about anybody living in the Western World can think of.

And anyway, I agree it's just a band-aid for a few weeks/months until they can think of a better way to do flood control. There's not much point in bitching about it at all when it might be replaced with something much better before the end of the year.

Kayin · « **Reply #28 on:** September 05, 2012, 05:39:00 PM »

Well... yes? Like, first off, we all know what 100 dollars in labor is like. That doesn't mean 100 dollars in labor is AVAILABLE. It doesn't mean that they aren't already working as much as they can. And again, this isn't to say that a lot of these people COULDN'T afford it, but is disproportionately burdensome to them, all for the right to be part of a janky popularity contest.

And AGAIN this isn't Valve setting up a business model or something. This isn't your usual cost of doing business This is Valve saying "Prove you're serious. Burn a hundred dollar bill right now. We wanna see you financially hurt your self to prove how serious you are". Also the benefits of having the value as high as it is... is .. dubious at best. To take this in a ridiculous, implausible turn, would it be fair to ask submitters to cut themselves to prove their seriousness? It certainly would cut down on worthless entries, and anyone who was serious about their game would probably suck it up and do it, but I think we'd al lbe wondering "WTF does a willingness to cut your self have to do with my game?"

I don't think Valve is being purposefully discriminatory, nor do I think derogatorily calling them "gate keepers" is far (I mean, they are, but they're the gate keeper for their own home, and they do not monopolize the PC platform), but criticizing the situation for the lot of us who see this as less than ideal is important.

So it's not about this barrier being insurmountable. Like Mongrel said, it's a relatively low one, all things considered. But it's also an arbitrary one -- no one's getting a slice of the pie to provide you services or something. It, to me, just feels really gross right now. People already are finding ways to get over it (there is a whole website for people to sponsor games and stuff), but is that really how the system should work?

Brentai · « **Reply #29 on:** September 05, 2012, 06:00:23 PM »

Well, again, how else would you do it?

(Not saying there are no better answers; they exist and are actually kind of obvious. A prepurchase system like I described earlier wouldn't be hard at all, and really would solve the issue - if enough people have committed to buying your game through Steam to justify putting your game on Steam, then you've already given Valve all they're looking for. I'd just like to see these suggestions put up alongside the assertion that This Solution is the suboptimal one.)

Mongrel · « **Reply #30 on:** September 05, 2012, 06:05:57 PM »

Quote from: Brentai on September 05, 2012, 06:00:23 PM

Well, again, how else would you do it?

(Not saying there are no better answers; they exist and are actually kind of obvious. A prepurchase system like I described earlier wouldn't be hard at all, and really would solve the issue - if enough people have committed to buying your game through Steam to justify putting your game on Steam, then you've already given Valve all they're looking for. I'd just like to see these suggestions put up alongside the assertion that This Solution is the suboptimal one.)

So, basically Valvestarter.

Kayin · « **Reply #31 on:** September 05, 2012, 06:19:38 PM »

Well I already listed my idea, but that said "Valve Starter" seems like an excellent possibility.

Brentai · « **Reply #32 on:** September 05, 2012, 06:34:14 PM »

Ah, whoops, shit. Blame my phone for showing neither the link nor your previous response. Sorry.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #33 on:** September 05, 2012, 07:18:31 PM »

More likely it seems like the $100 will boot out single-person developers in favor of teams. Your opinion on that may vary, but there is definitely an air of "Keep out the rabble" to the whole thing. Seems like cutting it by more than half would make it a little bit more feasible (both for teams and single individuals) while still being a pretty big deal to get your game on there. Although I'm still not big on the "Let's use money as a barrier to entry to control swell."

But what this actually sidesteps is that Valve still can't avoid the nature of online popularity contests. I honestly don't think charging developers is going to make the browsable number of games more manageable.

Kayin · « **Reply #34 on:** September 05, 2012, 07:42:33 PM »

Yeah, discovery is virtually ALWAYS going to be a problem unless the search mechanisms are changed. Theoretically, if discovery mechanisms are good enough, there should be no NEED to block bad entries. Sadly that isn't the case at all so things are awful and I can't even think of a mechanism that would help this outside of better categories and tags -- and honestly, that's only going to barely help.

Beat Bandit · « **Reply #35 on:** September 05, 2012, 07:47:49 PM »

When I was in school a lot of my friends had their own bands. Okay, a lot still do but that's another point entirely.

Anyway, as you can imagine, it's pretty hard for a band to get popular if they don't play shows. It is also hard to book shows when you're not popular.

The universal (as far as I could tell) rule was that if you wanted to book a show and were an unknown, you had to sell X tickets beforehand. Generally the idea was you sold as many as friends you didn't talk into doing the same thing a week ago, and pool the band's money to buy the rest yourselves.

I really don't know get why it's unreasonable to ask people invest at least as much in their game as a highschool garage band to get the word out about it.

Kayin · « **Reply #36 on:** September 05, 2012, 08:46:17 PM »

Beat, if you defended the current system of how bands work on Long Island publically, I think a bunch of bands would show up at your house and hang you from the nearest tree. That system is pretty much universally detested.

Beat Bandit · « **Reply #37 on:** September 06, 2012, 04:03:14 AM »

Well the alternatives I've heard that people seem to be taking seriously are they sell less tickets, everyone plays twenty seconds of music and the audience decides who gets a show or let the bands that didn't sell tickets play but they don't go on the marquee.

But to drop the analogy

100 dollars = listed: This does nothing to prevent Valve from dealing with floods of bullshit, only makes the list seem more manageable to users. Also sets precedent that people who can pay get some kind of V.I.P. status over the "real indie devs".

ValveStarter: does absolutely nothing to make the lists more manageable, leads to way fewer indie games getting lit when people like Hussie decide they want in. Also removes free-to-play.

Less money: the most feasible, but seriously, as someone with less currently in my bank account, $100 is not a ton of money.

Zaratustra · « **Reply #38 on:** September 06, 2012, 06:43:07 AM »

I just have to say, this got me believing in the potential for good in humanity again.

Because I had never seen before a group of people so staunchly against something that directly benefits them as indies on Greenlight.

Let's drop the "money wasted" issue. We're dealing in entirely superfluous, endlessly replicatable goods. The price of a game tends toward what people will pay for it.

Assume n = the number of games in Greenlight, and p = the probability that any given user will give up rating them and calling the whole thing a pile of garbage. p/n is a constant called welcome to economics you may not have heard of it because it does not have pixels.

Once you realize that, if you have an eye for sales, your primary concern is to raise the barrier for entry as high as you can before you're not allowed to get in. In this respect, keeping the fee at $100 is almost laudable: some people are arguing for a $1000 fee.

Yes, there is a lot of games in Greenlight that shouldn't be. But I'll gladly change my mind if I see one non-hypothetical game that should be on Greenlight but isn't because of the fee.

Ted Belmont · « **Reply #39 on:** September 06, 2012, 07:11:19 AM »

Quote from: Beat Bandit on September 06, 2012, 04:03:14 AM

ValveStarter: does absolutely nothing to make the lists more manageable, leads to way fewer indie games getting lit when people like Hussie decide they want in.

Eh, not really. It's not a zero-sum game; just like with the Penny Arcade or Homestuck Kickstarters, it's not like most of the people contributing probably would be contributing that money to other projects instead(especially the PA project, which is still gross for plenty of other reasons, but that's a seperate thread).

Now, you could make the argument that these high-visibility games crowd out the smaller, lesser-known ones, but this is a problem that already exists in Steam Greenlight today.

News:

Author Topic: Steam Greenlight (Read 3342 times)