Why Nobody Has the Time to Make Greenlight Work

NuclearKangaroo

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Covarr said:
But Yahtzee is correct, it still needs "a few more hoops". Personally, I'm thinking of a few things:
  • [li]Higher Greenlight fee - $100 is a good token fee, but $300 to $500 might do a better job keeping out scammers, or developers who whipped something together in Game Maker in ten minutes.[/li]


  • if that was the case most people in my country couldnt publish games on steam, since the government a few years ago put a retarded barrier on how much money one can spend on imports, it was 400 dollars, this year it was reduced to 300 dollars

    Covarr said:
    [li]Stricter video requirements - Currently, a Greenlight submission needs "At least 1 video showing off your game or presenting your concept". I don't think that's enough. Anyone can make a trailer in After Effects. I think Greenlight would be more effective if they required at least one minute of uncut gameplay (non-cutscene) footage. This can be IN ADDITION to a fancy trailer, but the point is it allows people to see where the game's actually at. This will help keep out the dishonest developers who aren't building something as good as they'd like voters to think.[/li]
    this could be nice


    Covarr said:
    [li]Less democracy - It's great that customers can have a say in what products come to the market, but in the end it needs to be Valve who gives something the yay or nay. As it turns out, a game studio has a better idea what's good and what's not than the average sheep customer, who will vote for anything that has zombies or calls itself "survival horror".[/li]
    i think this is kind of how it works, you could ask valve to be more picky tough

    Covarr said:
    [li]Low-vote thresholds - Require a certain minimum yes votes based on how long a game has been in Greenlight. I think it would be more effective as a whole if there were fewer games for voters to dig through, and getting rid of the stuff people obviously don't want will help the cream rise to the top more easily. Allow and encourage resubmission of games that get knocked off for low votes, without charging another submission fee, but make the developers wait (maybe 2-3 months) before they can resubmit, so that they have time to improve their product and/or concept.[/li]
not a bad idea at all
 

Aitamen

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Personally, I think that genre-level analysts would make great first-barrier people for a lot of games (Shmups and fighters come to mind as primarily easy to quantify). That'd leave a lot left sitting in the "no major genre" pile, but it'd be a nice way to rank games against each other for recommendation.

Certainly, a tiered approach is the only way this would work to begin with... now it's just figuring out the logistics thereof.
 

eBusiness

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Sep 19, 2012
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I think by far the biggest problem with Greenlight is that it asks people to review games that they can't play. It's like reviewing a move based on the poster.

Change Greenlight to only allow submission of finished games, or at least games that have reached a functional entertaining stage.

Ban the use of any excuse post-fix (alpha, beta, pre-release etc.) in the marketing of the game on Steam.

Give the game to 10.000 users and let them review it.

Be sure to give the reviewers some options beyond a score or a simple approve/don't approve system. For instance a tick-box labelled "Promising, but not ready for release" would probably see a lot of use for some of those games that just ain't release-ready. Couple the review data with play statistics and it should be reasonably easy to classify the base merits and lack thereof for each game, with minimal effort from Steam staff.
 

Tohron

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One possibility would be for the game creator to identify storefront-runners who they think would like their game, and send them review copies. It requires a bit of initiative on the part of the creators, but does mean that the storefront runners only have to consider games within their general interest areas, rather than all games coming out on Steam.
 

RaikuFA

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Steve2911 said:
There are hoops to be jumped through to get a show on TV?! I'm pretty sure if I filmed myself looking for Atlantis in my back garden for an hour and edited it out into 5 episodes (80% of which is clips from previous episodes and hype pieces for future episodes) I could get on the History channel by the end of the week.
You could do that in 5 minutes, not an hour. Add in the Loch Ness Monster and Aliens all in a Taco Bell and you'll be rolling in dough.
 

Tarfeather

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Er.. Why would someone need to look at every game? Every game needs to be looked at by someone(and not necessarily the same person), then they can choose to recommend it or not. That's how youtube works, also.
 

Antsh

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May 15, 2012
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The corkscrew needs to be above 100°C as to cauterize the wound and prevent any infection.

Gotta be humane about this, Yahtzee.
 

sageoftruth

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Jan 29, 2010
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One obvious and unavoidable disadvantage game markets have compared to something like youtube is that the games cost money to play. I'm no fan of free-to-play, but suppose all the games came with an optional free trial that ended after a set amount of time (either a fixed time limit or one selected by the developer). Unlike a demo, the indie developers wouldn't have to put aside extra time to make it, meaning all the games would have it, and unlike basic free-to-play games, you'd only have to pay one time, when the time limit runs out, and then it's yours.
To prevent abuse of this option from customers, Steam would probably have to block this option from people's accounts after they've tried the game once, but it would definitely give people a way to try absolutely any Steam game before they buy it, and not just the ones that come with demos. Thoughts?
 

Altered Nova

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eBusiness said:
I think by far the biggest problem with Greenlight is that it asks people to review games that they can't play. It's like reviewing a move based on the poster.
This is the entire problem with Greenlight in a nutshell. It's nice seeing long-released good indie games like Unepic finally get released on Steam, but I've been sceptical of greenlight since the beginning because the vast majority of the "games" being voted on are concepts or unreleased early aphas, and our only information you get is a biased marketing pitch from the creators. And yet we are somehow supposed to decide whether this game is worth buying? No wonder so much crap gets onto greenlight, the system practically encourages dishonestly.