Steam Green Light

That's nice but it's still no Drox Operative.

fangblackbone wrote:

This game "Rawbots" looks really cool:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...

It was featured in the Groupees create-a-bundle a few weeks ago.

But don't worry, Shadow of the Eternals got their greenlight! This system is so broken.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

But don't worry, Shadow of the Eternals got their greenlight! This system is so broken.

All Greenlight means is that they get the offer to sell the game through the service when the time comes. I would expect the system is automated to a large degree and it probably just slipped through the cracks.

The system is broken for other reasons though. I'm still amused that Escape Goat was finally Greenlit with the sequel releasing in a couple weeks.

EDIT: Also, I think the Greenlight contract is similar to the old "once you're in, it's a lot easier to publish your titles" contract devs have talked about before. Space Ace (ie. the follow-up to Dragon's Lair) recently appeared in the store and that wasn't Greenlit yet Dragon's Lair was. Which makes it all the more weird that Wadjet had to go through Greenlight to get Primordia on the service since they were a known quantity to Steam at that point. Hopefully the next Blackwell game won't have the same fate.

It's more the fact that a game which wasn't even funded yet managed to win the popularity contest (which is all Greenlight is) and thus, another game that may be well into development and close to release had to be sacrificed for it. Could Shadow of the Eternals still find funding and come out? Sure but who knows when or if that will ever happen, yet they get to sit on that Greenlight approval indefinitely. This would be easily sorted by Valve simply instituting a rule that crowdfunded titles can't be approved from Greenlight until they are successfully funded but that would require Valve to actually change the way Greenlight works, rather than just continually talk about how they know they need to.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

This would be easily sorted by Valve simply instituting a rule that crowdfunded titles can't be approved from Greenlight until they are successfully funded

I think this would be fairly unpopular given the symbiotic relationship between Greenlight and Kickstarter/IndieGoGo/etc. Traffic from one source is used to drive eyeballs to the other either for votes or cash, and I think someone at Valve said they take crowdfunding interest into account as well when selecting the games for each batch.

Even if a project is crowdfunded there's no guarantee it'll be completed anyways, and the same is true about self or publisher funded titles. As it stands, the ratio of Greenlit to released titles is nearly 3:1. So it's not like Greenlight is really lighting any fire under devs to get their games out the door, and it's certainly not like there's a finite number of games they're planning on approving through this service. And there's still alternate ways to get on the store such as the recent Intel LevelUp program/competition, the IGF, Make Something Unreal (?), etc. All the SoE approval means is that someone has to wait another month to see if they get approved through Greenlight.

By the sound of it, this giant list was a stress test to see if they can move toward either larger approval batches or more frequent batches. Plus, it finally cleared the voting queues of a bunch of games that were popular but failing to crack the top of the charts despite being available on other platforms like GoG or the eShop.

The system is still problematic because the core it's a popularity contest as you say. But if they're moving toward more frequent or larger approval batches that'll hopefully clear out the top slots faster which means smaller but popular titles like Artemis or Mutant Mudds won't be left kicking around the soggy middle for all eternity.

Crossposting from the Steam summer sale thread.

Greelight sale

50 greenlight games discounted now through the weekend. Ends Sept 2 at 10 AM PDT.

Yes! In for Dropkick. Doing my best to hold back on Papers Please and Rogue Legacy until I have more time.

shoptroll wrote:

The system is still problematic because the core it's a popularity contest as you say.

I think the system is broken because because it tries to do too many things and uses the same judging criteria for all of them. The approval of game "ideas" and the approval of actual tangible released games for sale in the store are very different things. The games that get approved are the ones who win the popularity contest and it doesn't matter what state of completion the game is in. On the one hand you have stuff like Drox Operative which is a complete game, has been patched many many times and even has a full on expansion! Previous publisher relationship be damned (see: Depths of Peril and Diin's Curse). And on the other hand you have games that are utter sh*t that waltz onto the steam store and bypass greenlight completetly! What they set out to accomplish was to automate the approval process to get more games onto the store quicker. It didn't work, and it's because they didn't automate anything. You have humans trying to appease crowds of yelling humans and things are slipping through the cracks everywhere because of the lack of organization.

What they should have done was to split Greenlight into two separate systems meant for different things instead of having it fail at both of them. Something like this:

Steam Social Media Circlejerk (which is all that Greenlight is at the moment):
- Games are ranked (by genre) based on the number of user votes.
- Submissions are divided among two-month periods which are judged separately, this way incoming games don't constantly bump others to the bottom.
- Allows players and developers to generate buzz, especially in regards to funding projects
- Supplies traffic between sites
- Approval here DOES NOT MEAN the game will be sold in the store! Only that it will receive Greenlight status IF AND WHEN the game is in a state where it can be played.

Greenlight (how it is supposed to work)
- Greenlight is an entirely different queue which is for playable games ONLY. A game MUST be released on PC or another platform, or be in a demo state which is good enough for Early Access before it can be added.
- Games are ranked by user votes, users can only vote on three games per month. If unused these do not carry over.
- Users can also vote by pre-pre-ordering games on Greenlight. You simply pay at least a dollar from your steam wallet and stake it onto a specific game. Your money is locked in for one month after which you can remove it any time you wish. If and when the game goes on sale you get the money back as an automatic discount.
- Approval on Greenlight means the game will be sold in the store or put up for Early Access. Games are selected based on popularity and how long a game has been on Greenlight, this way less popular games don't languish at the bottom indefinitely. If a Greenlight game reaches a specific amount of pre-pre-order funding it is automatically approved, allowing people to put their money where their mouth is.

That's a very interesting set of ideas and I think a lot of them could work. I really wish Valve would actually look at making changed to the system rather than just talking about how they need to and leaving everything as it is. They were making very rapid iterations to Greenlight after it first launched and since then, it's just kind of sat, despite all the well publicised flaws that have been found.

fangblackbone wrote:

This game "Rawbots" looks really cool:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...

It is. I bought a few copies some time ago and it has a lot of promise.

And now I'm tagged into this thread. I hadn't seen it until now.

Latest Greenlit list...

Next Car Game
Camtasia
Candle
Dusty Revenge
DwarfCorp
Eden Star: Pre Alpha
Gimbal
Grimm
Higarashi When They Cry
Humans Must Answer
Lacuna Passage
Long Live The Queen
Monochroma
Mount Your Friends
Postmortem
SeaCraft
SUPERHOT
Syder Aracde
theHunter
U55 – END OF THE LINE
Valdis Story: Abyssal City
Warsow
World of Diving
WWII Online: Battleground Europe
Zombie Tycoon II

tanstaafl wrote:

Zombie Tycoon II

ahw yeah!

tanstaafl wrote:

Latest Greenlit list...

...
theHunter
...

I know at least a few people around here will be happy to see that.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

Latest Greenlit list...

...
theHunter
...

I know at least a few people around here will be happy to see that.

Good to see it finally approved. It's been stuck in Greenlight Hell since near the start of the program.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

Latest Greenlit list...
theHunter

I know at least a few people around here will be happy to see that.

Is that the game that the podcast crew couldn't stop talking about on the show about a year ago?

MeatMan wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

Latest Greenlit list...
theHunter

I know at least a few people around here will be happy to see that.

Is that the game that the podcast crew couldn't stop talking about on the show about a year ago?

Yes

And still no Drox Operative? How many times to I have to repeat myself?

tanstaafl wrote:

...
Mount Your Friends
...

Okay, now Valve is just trolling Soldak (and everyone else).

mrtomaytohead wrote:
MeatMan wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

Latest Greenlit list...
theHunter

I know at least a few people around here will be happy to see that.

Is that the game that the podcast crew couldn't stop talking about on the show about a year ago?

Yes

F*uck yeah! Finally!

Also you can Play SUPERHOT now. It's awesome!

New batch!

Good to see Race the Sun is finally in. Also, do we really need another Slenderman game on Steam?

shoptroll wrote:

Good to see Race the Sun is finally in.

The lesson: make a big public stink and Valve will notice you. Squeaky wheel, meet grease.

This will probably only work once, though. There are thousands of games that want "in" and they can't all command this kind of attention.

Another batch!

Here's the list according to Eurogamer:

Alien Swarm FP
Blood of the Werewolf
CastleMiner Z
Elder Sign: Omens
The Fall
Fester Mudd: Curse of the Gold
The Fifth Day
FOTONICA
Fortress Forever
Fran Bow
Half-Life 2: Capture the Flag
Hot Tin Roof
Ikaruga
Infinity Wars
InkFish
J.U.L.I.A. Enhanced Edition
Metal War Online
Montague's Mount
Neighbours from Hell Compilation
Neverending Nightmares
Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart
Portal Remake Mod
Ravensword: Shadowlands
Real World Racing
RimWorld
Starship Corporation
Steam Marines
Tiny Barbarian DX
TowerClimb
The Sparkle 2: EVO
(un)Lucky7
Underhell
Universum: War Front
Violett
Wrack

Ikaruga?

Better late than never, I suppose.

psoplayer wrote:

Ikaruga?

Better late than never, I suppose.

It entered Greenlight at the beginning of October.

cyrax wrote:
psoplayer wrote:

Ikaruga?

Better late than never, I suppose.

It entered Greenlight at the beginning of October.

Not late getting through greenlight, but late getting onto the PC at all. It's almost 12 years old at this point. (still pretty great, though)

psoplayer wrote:

Ikaruga?

Better late than never, I suppose.

I will happily buy that again on PC just to give Treasure more money.

Awful lot of mods and MMO stuff in this batch. I don't see anything especially appealing, heck I probably won't every play any of those except for Alien Swarm FP. Still waiting on that Drox Operative. Would it hurt them to include some actual finished games in each release?

Tamren wrote:

Still waiting on that Drox Operative. Would it hurt them to include some actual finished games in each release?

Fester Mudd has been done for a while... does that count? I think Fotonica, Tiny Barbarian DX, and Montague's Mount are all finished or nearly finished too.

I rented Ikaruga once for the Gamecube, and it was crazy hard. I doubt I still have any ability for it, but given a sale I probably couldn't say no.

cyrax wrote:

I rented Ikaruga once for the Gamecube, and it was crazy hard. I doubt I still have any ability for it, but given a sale I probably couldn't say no.

The worst thing is, the unlimited continues unlock requires you be punished for put in 10 hours of play time. That's the only way I beat it, but I was at the point I could get to the final level / boss just before the unlimited unlock. Never did get much better..