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Author Topic: Wheres the Steam GreenLight  (Read 18025 times)
DrunkZombie
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« Reply #15 on: September 02, 2012, 09:19:56 pm »

I wouldn't see any harm in a greenlight entry. It is really quick to set up (I have one) and there's no "new entry" page so getting in at the best possible time isn't an issue.

Also it looks like it could take a lot longer with this new submission model than previously. Weeks, perhaps months to get the number of votes required to reach "pending", then "accepted". So if DB waits for the game to be ready, they may end up on Steam much later than they might like.

That being said, being on steam means pressure on price and doesn't necessarily mean that much more exposure. Being in a huge catalog with lots of readership is great if you're easily accessible. If you're lost in the vastness of that catalogue I'm not sure it would bring that much benefit.

People tend to use success stories as examples, but take Winter Voices for example. The devs went bankrupt despite being on Steam. Winter voices sold for $5 and Steam may have forced that price down and actually caused the failure (but I can't be sure).

That is what I am worried about.  If they join steam, they may be forced to offer Dead State for a lower price than they want.  It may be better to wait and join Steam after Dead State has already been released for awhile.  Once they have sold what they can on their own, then join Steam to reach more people.  At that point a lower price will not matter as much since the people getting it on Steam wouldn't have bought it anyway.
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Zachstar2015
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« Reply #16 on: September 03, 2012, 12:30:48 am »

Steam Price isn't much of an issue. The game is paid for. And if somehow they cant get enough from Steam even at low prices they can always just open another kickstarter for an Expansion.


There is one thing that is unknown tho. Will Valve allow companies that are Greenlit for the first time to use the preorder system? The answer to that determines when they should spend the time to make a greenlight page.
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OlderMan
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« Reply #17 on: September 03, 2012, 07:26:40 am »

That is what I am worried about.  If they join steam, they may be forced to offer Dead State for a lower price than they want.  It may be better to wait and join Steam after Dead State has already been released for awhile.  Once they have sold what they can on their own, then join Steam to reach more people.  At that point a lower price will not matter as much since the people getting it on Steam wouldn't have bought it anyway.

Agreed. But there are a few unknowns:

1. How long does it take to get accepted on Steam with their new system? My impression is it could take a very long time, even for the entries that are best off and only have 3-5% with tens of thousands of pageviews.

2. How much longer will Greenlight be of much interest to Steam users? Right now it is shiny and new so everyone is checking it out but my guess is three months from now the traffic to new entries will be dramatically lower. I see no reason why there should be much fewer entries compteting for their attention. While some of today's contenders are existing games my impression is that most are under development. There will always be many games under development hoping to get a spot on Steam.

I don't think it is as important to be on Steam as so many people seem to think. Most games in the Steam catalog are buried and get little value out of being there. But this greenlight event looks like an opportunity for much needed exposure and I don't think that opportunity will last.
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Tuco Benedicto Pacifico
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« Reply #18 on: September 03, 2012, 10:14:36 am »

Well, Project Giana has gone from 4% to 3% then up to 5% and down to 4% again. So either a lot of people return and revoke their vote, the systme is bugged and messes up vote counting or the downvote trolling is having an effect. Which seems most likely? This is the internet we are talking about.

Look, there is very little that Valve confirmed so far about how Greelight works behind the curtains, but one of these few things they stated clearly was that downvotes aren't piled up with upvotes, but are on an entirely different (hidden) counter.

Also, they stated even more clearly (in the FAQ) that no one should mind the "percentage" so far, because they have no idea of what kind of traffic they should expect and the whole thing still is going through a lot of re-calibration.
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Karasu
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« Reply #19 on: September 03, 2012, 04:32:05 pm »


Why everyone keep *blabbing* about the "downvote abuse" on Greenlight when
1) no one has the slightest clue of how (and IF) Valve is taking those votes in consideration
2) no one actually *knows* how many downvotes projects are receiving.

Also the "downvote trolling" is more than likely statistically irrelevant on a large scale sample of users.

Anyway, there's only one right thing you said, and that is: there's no need to rush for the Greenlight page. They have all the time to set it  in any moment from today to the next year.

Well, Project Giana has gone from 4% to 3% then up to 5% and down to 4% again. So either a lot of people return and revoke their vote, the systme is bugged and messes up vote counting or the downvote trolling is having an effect. Which seems most likely? This is the internet we are talking about.

They did say the actual counting could change and depend on how well the other games do. And I expect there are plenty of other factors than the "unique visitors" and the favourites, not to mention we don't see how many votes they had up and down...
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melkathi
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« Reply #20 on: September 04, 2012, 06:25:10 am »

Well, Project Giana has gone from 4% to 3% then up to 5% and down to 4% again. So either a lot of people return and revoke their vote, the systme is bugged and messes up vote counting or the downvote trolling is having an effect. Which seems most likely? This is the internet we are talking about.

Look, there is very little that Valve confirmed so far about how Greelight works behind the curtains, but one of these few things they stated clearly was that downvotes aren't piled up with upvotes, but are on an entirely different (hidden) counter.

Also, they stated even more clearly (in the FAQ) that no one should mind the "percentage" so far, because they have no idea of what kind of traffic they should expect and the whole thing still is going through a lot of re-calibration.

The FAQ says nothing whatsoever about downvoting and how it affects percentage. It is completly useless in making your point. All that relative interest means is that if trolls were to downvote all project, then their downvote would mean nothing, just as a person who says they wish to support any kind of creativity and all indy devs by upvoting all projects again would achieve nothing.

As far as teh meaning of downvotes go, here is a quote:
TomB: Down votes do not nullify up votes. That bar is not the progress bar towards acceptance. It is to show the developer the ratio of up votes to down votes. We've removed it since it hasn't proved to be useful data thus far.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=32641782&postcount=9
Which again says nothing but that it is not an actual number they care about but the ratio. They care again about relative numbers. And yes, downvotes will affect that ratio.

So your comment about statistical irrelevance is not just an assumption, but seems also to not be "more than likely".
Because right now we know that:
We don't know how exactly they will decide because the people at Valve themselves have no idea yet. (probably why they call tests tests...)
We do know that they find relative numbers interesting and we do know that they find ratios of upvotes to downvotes interesting.

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OlderMan
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« Reply #21 on: September 04, 2012, 07:38:53 am »

I think a star system would have been much more relevant. The current system is all or nothing. To determine how a game will sell, a star system would have been so much more informative.

Take two completely different games with the exact same data with the current system. With a star system an upvote could have in fact been either three, four of five stars. Those two games could have been ranked by number of 5 stars.

Also it would have made the niche games stand out. A mainstream title might have gotten many 3-4 star ratings, but not generated the real excitement a niche game can (like AoD or DS). Such games would have fewer ratings but a higher percentage of 5 stars, which would indicate the amount of sure buys. These games are great in a catalog because they REALLY please a small percentage of users. Having a few in each niche would add up to REALLY pleasing a significant part of their audience, whereas a catalog full of mainstream games people like but rarely LOVE would be much less effective.
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Tuco Benedicto Pacifico
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« Reply #22 on: September 04, 2012, 09:56:21 am »

The FAQ says nothing whatsoever about downvoting and how it affects percentage. It is completly useless in making your point.
I'm not sure if you can't read of you're trying too hard to play dumb at this point.

That's what I actually wrote:
Quote
Also, they stated even more clearly (in the FAQ) that no one should mind the "percentage" so far, because they have no idea of what kind of traffic they should expect and the whole thing still is going through a lot of re-calibration.
Which is entirely different.

I never, *ever* claimed  that they talked about downvotes in the F.A.Q.
They posted about it in their forum, on the other hand.
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melkathi
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« Reply #23 on: September 04, 2012, 09:58:35 am »

I think you have a point there OlderMan.


Personally I am a bit bothered by the whole Greenlight system since it seems to me to simply be turning into a lazy feature on behalf of  Valve. They take the quality control of indy games out of their own hands and make it the responsibility of the community (which they are currently trying to reshape with their whole new steam community look). Instead of needing a small QA team, now all they'll need is a moderator to check reports, while a script can evaluate community ratings for projects.
I would wager that the problem why not more indy-games could be offered is one of band-width and storage space on their servers. I would guess that even small sums add up eventually (Though I am only a user, not some proffessional techie person).
With that in mind I would have prefered if they had continued doing their own QA and then simply put up a smaller number of games (still more than they would have normally approved) and had the community vote on those (one user - one vote). If for example they had the capacity to add two more games a month, then they could have six games up for vote for a month and at the end of the month the two top ones would get added. All others would stay up (having gone through QA and being already seen as high quality) and two new ones would get added to the list for next month. A consistent third place could then be marked as a bronze medal winner and get auto-added for release if it won third place for four or five times in a row, while a onsistent last place could eventually go for re-evaluation.
But something like that would not make things as easy on Valve as the current "throw 'em to the wolves" approach.
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Brian
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« Reply #24 on: September 04, 2012, 01:21:28 pm »

About Greenlight - we'll be submitting through the regular Steam process at some point. Aside from not having time to set up a Greenlight page right now, I'd like to see how it's working out in a few months. We're not coming out soon, so we can wait on this one for a bit.
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melkathi
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« Reply #25 on: September 04, 2012, 01:58:11 pm »

About Greenlight - we'll be submitting through the regular Steam process at some point. Aside from not having time to set up a Greenlight page right now, I'd like to see how it's working out in a few months. We're not coming out soon, so we can wait on this one for a bit.

Good call.
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OlderMan
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« Reply #26 on: September 04, 2012, 06:27:45 pm »

They changed the rules again. Now the question is explicitly asked: "Would you buy this on Steam" and the number of favorites is only visible to the dev.

I think I will also stop following this until they settle down.
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melkathi
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« Reply #27 on: September 05, 2012, 01:10:08 am »

They changed the rules again. Now the question is explicitly asked: "Would you buy this on Steam" and the number of favorites is only visible to the dev.

I think I will also stop following this until they settle down.

Kinda silly question to ask. Does that mean I get to downvote any and every sports game , shooter and/or world war 2 game because I wouldn't buy them even though they may be amazingly made? Smile
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OlderMan
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« Reply #28 on: September 05, 2012, 01:45:58 am »

Yeah it seems to totally go against all the back-pedaling they tried to do when all the rage about downvotes broke out. Now downvote spamming is completely justified.

"I was merely answering a simple question".

But it also makes the NOs completely useless data.
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Zachstar2015
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« Reply #29 on: September 05, 2012, 01:46:20 am »

About Greenlight - we'll be submitting through the regular Steam process at some point. Aside from not having time to set up a Greenlight page right now, I'd like to see how it's working out in a few months. We're not coming out soon, so we can wait on this one for a bit.

Waiting it out is a very good idea. They are changing things quite rapidly and there are bugs with the percentages display. Better yet, with the new fee in place it gives them time to go pull out all the crap and troll projects so that Dead State does not have to compete against "CAN I HaZ HALOz?" pages.

I don't think Dead State is going to have much of an issue getting Greenlit folks.
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