Project Greenlight, the fabled and in some cases awaited event is here but what exactly is going on?
It seems to me that most of us dont even really know what the heck it is. I'll do my best to explain although I may be wrong since the details are very murky right now.
Greenlight is a vessel for Indie developers to eventually sell their games on Steam. People vote up or down on a project they would like to see on Steam for sale. Sounds simple but let's take a walk down this confusing road.
"Help us find games you want!" says Steam. This leads to people screaming HALF LIFE 3! and SYSTEM SHOCK 2! even Gears of War and other stuff like that were asked for. Seldom does the scream go out for an Indie title... which of course is the purpose of this project. On top of that many users were upset with the whole Indie aspect of Greenlight and viciously thumbed down every project they could out of spite when they found out this didnt mean HF3 or whatever else they were hoping for would be coming.
On top of that Reddit 4chan and other similar sites launched a campaign to cause havoc on Greenlight. They're prank/joke sites this is to be expected ya know? Well apparently Steam did not expect this even after the infamous Mountain Dew fiasco. http://www.manolith.com/2012/08/15/4chan-shuts-down-mountain-dew-naming-contest-after-hitler-did-nothing-wrong-gets-most-votes/
Many bogus entries and bizarre comments were made on top of negative voting and such. Steam had no filter for internet trolls or pranksters. Some poor developers are so deep in the hole with negative feedback they may never recover unless they re-launch. Good luck on getting back whatever positive feedback you DID get though. So they didnt anticipate this and I suppose hindsight is 20/20 but this IS the internet fellas. You mean to tell me when this thing was set up no one asked "What about bogus activity (both positive and negative)-how do we prevent it?" Maybe someone DID ask this and likely this person was locked in a broom closet for the duration of the meeting.
Another tough thing about Greenlight is that there is no real chance for discovery. I've been cruising around on there for the past few days and have seen the same games in different orders on the pages. I have not seen anything new beyond say six dozen games maybe? I know there are way more on there but every time I click the next arrow I see the same stuff as before with maybe one or two different games thrown in there. There is no search feature either. I can not search by most recent, genre, most popular etc. Just a gaggle of games and if you're lucky enough to be one of the repeating titles on the pages good for you. If not good luck with anyone finding you. They may have since fixed this during this article so cut me some slack.
The amount of bogus material on or already shut down by Greenlight is quite a bit. People post Max Payne 3 Half Life 3 etc basically people either mocking the system or trying to show Steam a want for something non existent. Either way Steam more often than not bans the users who do this. This to me seems heavy handed since the outline of project Greenlight is fuzzy at best. "Help us find games you want!" So you ask for Half Life 3 and are banned. Now the thousands of dollars you spent on games are gone because Steam was unclear about this project. I suppose if a developer who already had a game to market and did not want to be on steam saw their game on there submitted by a user that it may ruffle some feathers. But since no money is being made by those bogus pages Steam wouldnt need to worry about a lawsuit so banning is still heavy handed. Remove the content, suspend the user in some cases, maybe I dunno explain Greenlight better and move on.
The amount of fanfare needed for a title to make it is laughable. Projects on there with over 10,000 favorites are deemed to have 2% of necessary positive activity. We can safely assume they probably have a similar amount of up votes as they do favorites so lets break out the calculator. 10K=2% so that means 500K=100%....for a fucking Indie game!? Hell most will be lucky to come out of this with 50K in positive actions. If a game can garner 500K fans they don't need Greenlight. I mean with that kind of action a developer could say "Buy my game on my website". Those fans go and do that and now Steam gets no percentage in profits because they attached insane standards on a group of guys who built a game in their garage. It appears that Steam doesnt quite understand the Indie market and how to "exploit" it.
The current voting system is bogus as well. I already cited one reason but there are others. The whole idea that a game can be down voted is stupid. A down vote means "I have no interest in buying this game" That's fine, that's cool. A down vote will cancel an upvote though. So a customer who would like to buy the game wont be able to because someone else doesnt want to buy it. That makes no sense. Established titles come on to Steam all the time and there are always a clutch of people who hate that game and have no interest in buying it. Yet those games come on there anyway. I have yet to see a game hit Steam where EVERY single one of their users buys it. So why should Indie companies be held to an even higher standard than AAA games? Everyone must like your game or you can't come in. Again if a game had that much fanfare they wouldnt need Greenlight.
It also appears that voting doesnt mean a damned thing at all. “The specific number of votes doesnt matter as much as the relative interest in a game compared with other games on Steam Greenlight" So what the fuck does that even mean? HOW do you gauge popularity then? Why have a voting system if it "doesn't matter"?
Greenlight is an amazing idea but in desperate need of re-organization and polish. It SHOULD be a simple process. Put your game up there, if 20K-30K are interested buyers congratulations. I say this since Indies are lucky to have that many customers by year's end on a title. Even stuff like Recognize and Oniken are barely making a dent in the process to be on Steam. This means the system is screwed up or Steam really does have no clue as to what people want and what is popular. Hopefully all this stuff is just some gaffs in launching. If it isnt and this is how this operation is intended to run it is one big fat disappointment to fans and Indie developers.
No comments:
Post a Comment