Indie Devs Aren't Happy With Steam Greenlight

[rasputin0009]

"Look at these pictures I drew! No, I don't have anything else to show... Please, like my game!"

Wading through that shit isn't fun. I don't care if there's a gem or two hidden in that shit-hole, I'm not swallowing crap to find them.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Like I said in this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.407828-Swindle-Dev-How-Can-Consoles-Improve-Ties-With-Indies] article, I think the biggest thing indies want right now is an exposure of their games that is equal to that AAA games are given. They're getting really tired of the same-old genres getting the spotlight again and again while their new takes on genres that have been forgotten and deemed "outdated" are thrown by the wayside, being only discovered by the few people who are curious enough to go beyond Steam's store front page.

 

[hutchy27]

I know it's there but everytime I look, they look terrible and the only ones I like the look of are greenlit already.

 

[FreakofNatur]

The fact is, without some form of advertising, Papers, please wouldn't get as easily greenlit. Indie devs can't throw games at green light and expect audience. They still have to poach their votes, as it were.

It's an accurate metaphor. It might be a greenlight, but you still have to walk your game through it. Don't expect views to drop from the sky, go refer people to the enabling platform.

That said, there's too much junk on greenlight. Like a previous poster did say, It's like looking for gold in a landfill.



Except everything is gold in color.

 

[Reyold]

I think the biggest issue with Greenlight were all the complete garbage submissions piled into the service before Valve started limiting applications. A lot of original visitors got tired of wading through the mess and gave up on the service, only visiting games promoted elsewhere (Kickstarter, Official sites, friends, etc.)

That's definitely one of Greenlight's issues. I check it on a semi-regular basis, and while I do occasionally find good games, there also a loads of games that are obviously crap. Some people don't have the patience to wade through it all, and I don't really fault them for it.

 

[grigjd3]

"I understand that but it's not enough. You have millions of members and maybe 15k regular Greenlight viewers. Something is wrong," - this has got to be one of the most whiny, entitled things I have seen since the last time I read a comment made by a developer. Effectively, this guy was saying his game hasn't gotten enough attention so there must be a problem. It might be refreshing if some of these indie developers realized that there are a whole lot of indie developers out there and I just don't have the attention left after work to rummage through a bunch of half-baked ideas and rehashes of game types that were already dead on the twelfth version on the NES. I seriously have no more attention left for any more 16-bit Final Fantasy 6 knock-offs. So yeah, if your game stands out and is different, it may deserve more attention. But if so, it is your job as an indie developer to go get that attention. Don't pretend like I, as a consumer, have any special duty to rummage through the crap that gets shoveled onto Green Light searching for something good. I have a job already.

 

[Alexander Dergay]

"I understand that but it's not enough. You have millions of members and maybe 15k regular Greenlight viewers. Something is wrong," - this has got to be one of the most whiny, entitled things I have seen since the last time I read a comment made by a developer. Effectively, this guy was saying his game hasn't gotten enough attention so there must be a problem. It might be refreshing if some of these indie developers realized that there are a whole lot of indie developers out there and I just don't have the attention left after work to rummage through a bunch of half-baked ideas and rehashes of game types that were already dead on the twelfth version on the NES. I seriously have no more attention left for any more 16-bit Final Fantasy 6 knock-offs. So yeah, if your game stands out and is different, it may deserve more attention. But if so, it is your job as an indie developer to go get that attention. Don't pretend like I, as a consumer, have any special duty to rummage through the crap that gets shoveled onto Green Light searching for something good. I have a job already.

It's easy to get focused on bad things instead of the good ones. ANY amount of voters or Greenlight viewers is more than what would a developer have without Greenlight. Why not being grateful at least for that? And while as a dev I would love Valve to do all the work for me on promotion, looking at things realistically I know this is not happening and to get attention to my game is my responsibility. Valve can do some steps to further make Greenlight better but what's in place now is not bad at all.

 

[grigjd3]

It's easy to get focused on bad things instead of the good ones. ANY amount of voters or Greenlight viewers is more than what would a developer have without Greenlight. Why not being grateful at least for that? And while as a dev I would love Valve to do all the work for me on promotion, looking at things realistically I know this is not happening and to get attention to my game is my responsibility. Valve can do some steps to further make Greenlight better but what's in place now is not bad at all.

Thanks for showing responsibility and self-reliance as a dev. Of course, these things coming through the media means I am only going to hear the most unbalanced statements out there (and often taken out of context). My understanding is that Greenlight was a response to players complaining that certain games weren't being allowed on Steam that they wanted. As a gamer on Steam, I am all for Greenlight being made into a better service for both devs and players. The sticking point is that players don't have a good reason to go to Greenlight. No amount of promotion will fix that either. Seriously, I see the Greenlight ads all the time and I purposely ignore them. The service needs to become more enticing to players.

There are tons of great games out there that I can already spend money on and there is no reason I need to go hunting for one. I mean, my already owned and to be played list is already long enough to last me for a two or three years. I also have access to almost infinite resources to describe to me what games may be interesting to me and while I am ultimately responsible for curating my own game collection, I don't have the time to curate every idea someone posts (even after the 100 dollar requirement). Maybe if the service allowed my steam-friends to make recommendations to me and I could look through those and I could make recommendations to my friends, I would have a tool to allow me to narrow down the effort required to give it attention and this could bring me back to using the service. Perhaps if I could use a filter to help narrow down the list, that would help as well. At any rate, in considering where this moves, steam and the developers need to consider what the service means to their customers. There doesn't need to be freebees or anything. The system just needs to be set up so that players don't feel like they are doing a job when they expected to be relaxing.

Developers also need to learn to better use the service. I would say that over half of all game previews I watch on Greenlight don't reveal anything about the game until a solid minute has passed. It's particularly grating when they try to do that dark ambiance opening BS which is just a complete waste of time. The very worst case, and I've seen this more than once, is making it 40 seconds into the preview without actually seeing anything. That's 40 seconds of a dark screen. If you're Bethesda and you're making the next Elder Scrolls game, I'll sit through it. Otherwise, I don't have the time. If I am expected to look through twenty games on a Saturday afternoon, I don't have five minutes per game. That would mean that I would be spending an hour and forty minutes of my scarce time off doing a chore in an effort to help other people whom I've never met. It's disrespectful of me and my time. So to be clear, if your video doesn't catch my attention and get me excited about the game in the first 20 seconds, I'm voting the game down and moving on.

I know that indie developers put everything they can into their games. It's like their children. I respect that. However, developers need to respect their customers. We're individuals with busy lives and precious little free time. It's not like Indie games are largely bought by kids with all the free time in the world. Most of your customers are older (well, in their thirties) and have acquired finer tastes in games. With that age comes responsibilities. This often means 60-hour a week jobs, marriage, possibly kids, a dog, a cat, paying a mortgage, keeping up with old friends and who knows what other responsibilities. For people that fit that description, gaming requires a sacrifice but we do it anyways because we love what the medium can be. Now I believe there are lots of devs with awesome games out there that aren't getting attention. Most of the time, however, that's the fault of the devs. Learn who your audience is and realize what needs to be done to connect with them. Otherwise, you'll be ignored and it will be your time you are wasting.

 

[Alexander Dergay]

grigjd3, I am not going to quote your post but thank you so much for putting your thoughts in writing, it gives me (and hopefully other devs too) a better understanding of the whole process from a player's perspective.

Well, another thing is that there are way too many negative reports about the Greenlight in the media recently. I sat down and wrote a pitch today for an article and send to Escapist editors today. I think when put into perspective Greenlight can be recognized for what it is - a good step forward and experiment in progress.

I think that the majority of traffic on Greenlight comes through direct links though, not through browsing the entire collection of games available. In many ways Greenlight is similar to Kickstarter with the only difference that in Kickstarter developers are asking for money and on Greenlight they are asking for votes. And I think the effort is the same - organic traffic on both sites is low and you need to work with press to bring attention to your game. On the other hand, when I hear suggestions like "talk to popular youtubers, go to major sites" - that's not easy to get attention from them, really. It's just there are way too many games out there and you really have to stand out or present your game in some very appealing way. We are still in process figuring out how to do that. I think it requires more effort than what we are currently doing and we need to produce more promotional materials and make our early beta easier to play.

Recommendations of Steam friends seems like an interesting idea, do you mind if I voice it somewhere? Be it in Steam dev group or in an article? I am currently compiling a list of suggestions of what Steam can do regarding Greenlight and yours seems very appropriate and not very hard to do for Steam, hopefully.

I agree that there are quite a bit unprofessional presentations out there. We tried to ours as best as we could, maybe that's why we have more votes than average... As for being busy, that's fully understandable. I realize that not many people can spend a lot of time on voting. I've been following Greenlight since day 1 and I voted for every single game out there but it's impossible to expect others to do that. It relates directly to my job and that's why I don't feel overburdened by it.

As for our game, we always wanted to make something more easier to play but we end up with hardcore game anyway This was the case with our first title and that's the case with our current. So, I think our audience is probably older, not really teenagers...

 

[GAunderrated]

Honestly, I forget it exists too until I go over a games kickstarter page and they go "Vote for us on steam greenlight!"

This is pretty much what happens with me as well. It seems some devs think Greenlight will automatically promote their game. It does, but they need to put in some legwork as well to get up to the top.

I agree at first I was checking all the games on greenlight but the amount of games that don't jive with me makes it a pain to cycle through all the games to find a gem.

I believe that is what happened with most people is at first they started searching greenlight but after they thumbed up a few games and realized how long it took to get release and find good games they just forgot about it.

As for promoting its on the steam front page all the time. However, people do not have unlimited free time to personally and blindly search your unknown game, thumb it up, wait a few months, and hope they can play it if they are still interested by then.

 

[Alexander Dergay]

Go into any shop and you find the best selling items are more prominently displayed than the not so good sellers. Valve is business and they will make more money per sale and sell more AAA games than indie games, so greenlight gets pushed to the back of the store. It would help your business to be more prominent but it would not help Valves. The only real way its going to change if cost more than $100 to get on greenlight and Valve examines all applications and accepts only those its thinks are good.

You are right about best selling items. However, I don't think Steam wants to idle just by selling AAA items - there are not so many of them, so they are filling the gaps with good indie titles.

As to your suggestion to charge more than $100 and accept only that they think are good - this was before Greenlight, when they were looking at submissions themselves. And charging more would be like buying shelf space which woulnd't be such a popular move I think. $100 by the way doesn't go to Steam, it goes to a non-profit foundation and it's used merely as a barrier against all kinds of joke submissions like "head of Gabe Newelll floating in space".

 

[Royas]

Frankly, it's a lot of effort going through the Greenlight submissions, trying to separate the crap from the good stuff. There's a lot of garbage on there, it's like slogging through parts of the Google Play store. When I start up Steam, it's because I'm planning to play something, I'm not particularly interested on doing their vetting for them. Some days, if I have a free 15 minutes and I'm bored, I might open it up and look at a few entries, but frankly I usually have more productive things to do with my leisure time.

 

[Karadalis]

Another problem is that most games dont really have anything to show but a handfull of concepts and maybe the odd screenshot.

Customers will not vote for your product on promises alone... nor will they vote on a product that has yet to even reach alpha state. Give them something more substantial like a Demo or a real gameplay video.

There really is no sense in going to steam greenlight when your game might still be years from releasing.

This might sound harsh but if Steam Greenlight would only allow games that are finished maybe people would use it more since it would cut down on projects that might not even ever see the day of light or wont be available for a long time.

Also offering alpha builds for testing whats allready there seems to really help. Minecraft showed how its done and the people behind kinetic void and all the early access games have peoples attention.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Hell there are even games on there that are made with the RPG maker software...

Well, To The Moon was an RPG Maker game and that was pretty successful and quite high quality. It's a decent tool for what it's designed for. Most RPG Maker games are crap because the low barrier for entry attracts new/bad developers, not because the program itself is terrible (even if there are better tools out there).

 

[WashAran]

Because that is why I have steam installed on my PC, to vote on indie games.

 

[grigjd3]

Alexander Dergay, feel free to use it. I haven't exactly fully thought out how recommendations on Steam Greenlight would work anyhow. The key issue with Greenlight though, from a player/gamer perspective is the large number of games that are not something one might be interested in and that the process is asking a great deal from customers who would otherwise prefer to spend their time actually playing great games. I get that seeking media attention is hard and you have to do that if you are trying to sell a product like this. Generally, however, gamers are only going to vote up games on Greenlight where we already know we want it.

It seems like many developers are approaching the system like you might approach a pitch given to a publisher. The thing is, we have far less motivation to sit through a pitch than a publisher. I'm not saying that Eisenwald or Discord are games that necessarily have been badly presented or even badly presented for Greenlight (honestly I haven't seen the titles before I looked up your company after your comment), but Greenlight is already overrun with presentations that will get skipped automatically twenty seconds in. You (and any other dev) needs to way to stand out from that mess. Reporters are hard to get the attention of so it might be better if you had ways of getting to gamers who were well connected and if they were interested, they could recommend the game to their friends list. If gamers had the right to choose whether it was ok to get in touch with them, it wouldn't be invasive at all. Taken that way, gamers might consider it a point of pride that they were connected enough to warrant the attention of developers, themselves becoming something of a pseudo-professional curator. Further, this could reinforce their connections because if they get a reputation for recommending good games. Disclosure: I have something like five friends on Steam so I am not someone that would be targeted as such.

Completely OT: I took a look at your description of Eisenwald on your website. Your description of the gameplay seems like it could be interesting. Have you ever considered doing a video in the "Let's Play" style where you show the gameplay and simultaneously talk about what is actually going on? The description by itself leaves me wondering what you mean and if I had visual that you were directly describing, I might get a better understanding. At any rate, if you tag me on Steam (same handle), I'll take a look at your Greenlight page.

 

[Alexander Dergay]

grigjd3, I agree with you on pretty much everything. I am trying to look at the Greenlight process both from a point of view of a developer and of a gamer. That's why I am against of proposition of some devs to make Steam like an AppStore. As a developer, I would be happy with that, more or less though not entirely. But as a gamer - hell no! Digg through tons of things trying to find something useful, thank you but no thank you. Actually, as a dev I am kind of against it too - getting to Steam is a good promotion on its own, and release there is even bigger. So, yes, Steam has to work on some ways to make Greenlight more attractive but they don't have to do all the work, both gamers and developers can voice some well thought suggestions and bring it to Steam attention.

Regarding well connected gamers - this sounds like a great idea! I wish I knew where to find them. We have a small community that supported us at Kickstarter and also those who pre-order our game, and they are a huge help. Anyone who wants to make some suggestions to us we listen to, and I talked personally to quite a few of them being the only English speaking person on the team. Anyway, both Kickstarter and Greenlight are really good learning experiences about game industry. And while Kickstarter is more or less recognized and acknowledged, I wish the same for Greenlight. Maybe Steam guys or reporters would actually interview some of the successes there - either just greenlit or released and see how it was for them - instead of focusing on those who complain.

Regarding OT: I was thinking about it but holding off because the production of such a video is relatively hard and because I think it's better done with someone who speaks English without an accent or without much. However, what do you think if we do this kind of video teaming up with a reviewer, not very well known though, on youtube? I feel it might be better for that.

 

[Albino Boo]

It's easy to get focused on bad things instead of the good ones. ANY amount of voters or Greenlight viewers is more than what would a developer have without Greenlight. Why not being grateful at least for that? And while as a dev I would love Valve to do all the work for me on promotion, looking at things realistically I know this is not happening and to get attention to my game is my responsibility. Valve can do some steps to further make Greenlight better but what's in place now is not bad at all.

I have had look at your game on greenlight and your presentation looks professional and I voted for you. I think you have missed a trick though in not using your steam group. A few years ago I was one of the admins that setup the no heros tf2 servers and we found in the early days that the steam group was a good way of promoting the servers. The admins invited anyone who played on the server to the steam group and about once per day we used the announcement system to fill the server. I think you could go through the people that made comments on your greenlight page and invite them to your steam group and encourage them to invite their friends to it as well (you can manually go through their friends list and invite them too but that takes a lot time). You could make an announcement about once a month or so and hopefully that will bring you more votes.

 

[grigjd3]

Alexander Dergay, if you go with a reviewer, make sure you state up front on the video that this is a promotional video and not a review. You don't want to run into the kind of crap that the big publishers do.