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[SodiumEyes]

Personally, I really like the idea of Greenlight. Sure, democratization always has its downsides, but Greenlight provides one thing that the current process was always missing: Transparency.

Right now, developers can only hurl their game into the black box that is the approval process and chew their nails for a few weeks to see if it made it through the other end. With Greenlight, you at least get a much better indication of your likelihood of acceptance, as well as an idea of your game's flaws. It also gives you an active goal to pursue (raise awareness of your game) rather than just checking your inbox every few minutes.

If your game gets rejected from the current system, what does that tell you? Nothing really, given the high rejection rates for even good games. It could be that your game isn't up to snuff, or there was lack of sales data, or the evaluator took a look at your gameplay trailer and didn't like what they saw, or you missed a dll in your submission demo and the game didn't even run.

With Greenlight, it's a lot easier to see why your game doesn't make it through (though probably not any easier to accept). If your game has been posted for six months and your vote count is still in the double digits, odds are you need to go back to the drawing board.

I think we'll have to see firsthand if the system really works, but I'm certainly optimistic.

[NemoDev]

but if you are making a classic RPG with retro graphics for PC, I don't think it'll be very succesful on anything outside Steam for example

Umm.... that's pretty much what Defender's Quest is, and we've done pretty well without Steam so far.

It's not a TD game in it's main part? (haven't played it but that was my impression). If it's a game like FFI-VI, and it sold that well on a browser you have my full respect because that would be unheard of before

Also, Steam is by no means a guarantee of success - there's been plenty of games who have got on there only to have so-so sales.

Definitely not a sure fire way for selling, but that would mean they do even worse on other channels. On PC, Steam is the place for most people to achieve success. Exceptions are always there, but they don't cancel the rule when 80%+ still works that way (although indie bundles did shake some things up)

[larsiusprime]

@NemoDev:

It's a half and half hybrid. It's like a tactical/strategy RPG where your characters are the "towers" in the TD sequences.

But if you're looking for more "pure" classic-style RPG's that have been successful on places like Kong/NG, I can refer you to these:

Sonny (This was number 1 for a really long time)
Mardek RPG (series)
Epic Battle Fantasy (series)

Sonny and EBF use vector graphics, but Mardek RPG is pretty retro-styled. All three are some of the top games on Kong.

I will grant that if you're accepted on Steam and can't be successful on a place as big as that, you're probably going to have a hard time in general

[Chris Koźmik]

Now you're going to have to win a popularity contest if you want to get your game on Steam

Isn't this what selling games was always about? We always need to win some sort of popularity contest so our games are the ones that end up being bought by the player. The contest being run by players is much more reasonable than a contest run by experts.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

there's a big difference between a game being popular enough to get a few thousand sales from a niche and a game being popular enough to get an above-average rating from the average gamer. both of those are a type of "popularity", sure, but each are very different kinds of popularities -- one is being generally appealing to a mass audience, the other is being strongly appealing to a specialized audience. not all games that are the latter can also be the former

here's an example. imagine if novels had to be positively rated by the readers of oprah's book club before being published. goodbye to many of the books you probably like to read. the "long tail" is an important part of any industry, especially the entertainment industries

but i think it's too early to judge this quite yet. that is just my prediction as to what will happen (less niche genre games, more lukewarm mass genre games). we'll see if the prediction is accurate in a couple of years. steam already had problems getting games on it, for other reasons, so this may reduce the problems it did have but cause others, but the trade-off may be worth it overall

[emacs]

I have a plan for steam, see signature

i dont speak spanish pls translate to english thx

[JMStark]

Some aspects of this remind me of Lego Cuusoo. This could be really cool, but it will be interesting to see if it will have any repercussions on the developers or community. As long as it solves more problems than it creates, it is a move in the right direction. Steam has definitely come a long way.

[VDZ]

here's an example. imagine if novels had to be positively rated by the readers of oprah's book club before being published. goodbye to many of the books you probably like to read.

Except that's the whole point of Greenlight. It's not being reviewed by an exclusive group (whoever were responsible for accepting games on Steam originally), it's being reviewed by anybody who wants to rate it. Your example would only make sense if instead of 'Oprah's book club', you'd say 'random novel readers'. Games don't have to be positively rated by a specific audience, they have to be positively rated by a significant number of people, wherever they come from.

I have a plan for steam, see signature

i dont speak spanish pls translate to english thx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

oprah's book club *is* random novel readers, since it makes up such a huge segment of the population. it's about equivalent to 'steam users' since almost everyone who plays games on the pc uses steam. so that's exactly what i meant.

[Masakari]

This can be a good thing or a bad thing. I'm mostly on the good thing camp, but I do second Paul's concern that it may mean less niche, more mass market stuff.

On the other hand, this is a Kickstarter-ish approach without involving money or rewards, and several niche / limited appeal projects have been funded on KS which wouldn't have seen the light of day otherwise. Judging from their text, even Valve don't quite seem to know the exact scope and potential this system will have.

However - and this will be important - if Steam still have their submissions team looking at the market, hopefully they will still approve some titles that they simply like, regardless of popularity (at least, that's the notion I've always gotten from what I've read on it, sometimes a few games got accepted and even contacted by Steam first solely because the reviewers like it).

[chubigans]

I feel it's kinda nuts that I'll be submitting a game to Greenlight that was rejected by Steam three times, but hey. 

[Udderdude]

Steam's indie games section is practically already a popularity contest, this just makes it official. :p

[SodiumEyes]

I have to wonder if the sheer quantity of games put on Greenlight will make it impossible to get any real attention from within Greenlight itself. I mean, how many people will want to dig through pages and pages of terrible games to find the few good ones?

Hopefully there's enough categorization to give games enough breathing room, eg: games are split up by development state (Concept, Beta, Finished) and by genre...

[Udderdude]

I have to wonder if the sheer quantity of games put on Greenlight will make it impossible to get any real attention from within Greenlight itself.

Which leads me to believe that the only games that will get "Greenlighted" are ones popular enough to end up on Steam anyway.

[Masakari]

I have to wonder if the sheer quantity of games put on Greenlight will make it impossible to get any real attention from within Greenlight itself.

Which leads me to believe that the only games that will get "Greenlighted" are ones popular enough to end up on Steam anyway.

Maybe, but even with those, there's always a few cases per year of critically and community acclaimed games that Steam for some reason rejects.

[Udderdude]

I have to wonder if the sheer quantity of games put on Greenlight will make it impossible to get any real attention from within Greenlight itself.

Which leads me to believe that the only games that will get "Greenlighted" are ones popular enough to end up on Steam anyway.

Maybe, but even with those, there's always a few cases per year of critically and community acclaimed games that Steam for some reason rejects.

Valve still has the final say .. although if they reject too many games that were voted up, people may start to backlash and see it as a giant waste of time.

[Chris Koźmik]

here's an example. imagine if novels had to be positively rated by the readers of oprah's book club before being published. goodbye to many of the books you probably like to read. the "long tail" is an important part of any industry, especially the entertainment industries

Indeed. But no matter what selection process they implement, I highly doubt Steam would ever go for long tail. They are operating under the old "top hit" model, for whatever reason they might have.

Personally, if if it has to be hit model, I prefer it being judged by a crowd than unknown low paid experts using unknown criterias. Still, I would love if there was a good, big and profitable, long tail style distribution newtork...

[TeeGee]

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/FAQ.php

At the moment Steam is currently not accepting new game submissions as we transition to our new Steam Greenlight process.

So, does it mean it's only Greenlight from now on? I thought they said it's going to be an addition to their submission process, not a complete replacement.

[Tuba]

From what I understand, games signed with big publishers obviously won't need to go through greenlight.

But for indies, it's greenlight only.

[moi]

yeah I thik for mega awesome games or super popular games (sthg like minecraft for example), the devs won't need greenlight.