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EddieBytes
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« on: September 17, 2015, 07:25:21 AM »



Hey guys,

We launched our Greenlight campaign less than 24h ago.
I am trying to understand that graph a bit better. There are a few Greenlight items whose progression puzzles me deeply.

Take item #20
You may be able to see for about a day it has a curve similar to our own. Then, suddenly, it steepens. What could be the cause of that? Some kickstarter campaign or press coverage?

Item #10
This one is very interesting. I am imagining at around day 5 you are off the front Greenlight page listing and that is the reason the graph flattens/stagnates/slows down. Yet #10 keeps going past that at the same rate. This is so curious, I am not able to explain it at all. I have seen this in other graphs on the internet too. How do you think that happens?

Other spikes
I have seen other spikes in other people's reports, happening during the long tail, slow down period of their Greenlight campaign. What can cause such spikes? Any speculations?
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oldblood
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« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2015, 11:06:10 AM »

Don't read too deeply into the graphs. They're not much help in terms of predicting trends. My current game was Greenlit in 11 days and: (1.) It wasn't even in the Top 100 games and (2.) It had a little under 1,000 Yes votes. So it's hard to know how Valve makes these decisions...

Spikes you see in the graphs late into a campaign are ALL driven by the dev getting promotion (YouTube, Press etc) driving people to the link. Once you're "New Greenlight" wears off, you're organic views will plummet dramatically and there will not be other spikes coming from Valve promoting your GL page.

If you don't have a strong first week, you may be in GL for awhile unless you can drive more traffic to your page... I get the feeling that the Yes/No %'s are probably the highest indicator for Valve on how quickly a game is greenlit.
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EddieBytes
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« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2015, 11:52:49 PM »

Don't read too deeply into the graphs. They're not much help in terms of predicting trends. My current game was Greenlit in 11 days and: (1.) It wasn't even in the Top 100 games and (2.) It had a little under 1,000 Yes votes. So it's hard to know how Valve makes these decisions...

Spikes you see in the graphs late into a campaign are ALL driven by the dev getting promotion (YouTube, Press etc) driving people to the link. Once you're "New Greenlight" wears off, you're organic views will plummet dramatically and there will not be other spikes coming from Valve promoting your GL page.

If you don't have a strong first week, you may be in GL for awhile unless you can drive more traffic to your page... I get the feeling that the Yes/No %'s are probably the highest indicator for Valve on how quickly a game is greenlit.
I kind of disagree. They help you spot potential improvements. Our greenlight not getting many page views, so we changed our greenlight preview icon to an animated gif and the views increased.

I am still curious about the cyan graph and how they are able to keep up that pace of yes votes. We are almost off the first greenlight page and our views are already decreasing
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oldblood
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« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2015, 05:16:30 AM »

I kind of disagree. They help you spot potential improvements. Our greenlight not getting many page views, so we changed our greenlight preview icon to an animated gif and the views increased.

I am still curious about the cyan graph and how they are able to keep up that pace of yes votes. We are almost off the first greenlight page and our views are already decreasing

If you notice, I didn't say the graphs were worthless. I simply said they won't help you predict trends.

Games with "sustained" votes like that were probably Greenlit in 2-4 days and had 60-70%+ Yes votes. Compare those against your own stats. They likely didn't "do" anything other than make a game that connected with the majority of the audience and everyone was giving it a thumbs up. Whether or not they had GIF thumbnails or not probably didn't matter much. Great games will get large numbers of Yes votes and will organically get more views and votes because they will likely also get coverage.

IMO-- there is no secret formula to Greenlight. It's 100% driven by your game. Like I said, I don't think views or even the total number of "yes" votes factor in that deeply. I think Valve is looking for games with high %'s as indicators of the opportunity. But thats just pure speculation on my part. I've had 3 games greenlit and the process appears to be evolving every year.
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EddieBytes
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« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2015, 05:23:41 AM »

You misunderstand. That graph, regardless of popularity, should have curved a bit once it's off the new games page, yet it didn't. It has nothing to do with it's popularity and more to do with how the audience reaches that game.
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oldblood
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« Reply #5 on: September 21, 2015, 06:19:51 AM »

You misunderstand. That graph, regardless of popularity, should have curved a bit once it's off the new games page, yet it didn't. It has nothing to do with it's popularity and more to do with how the audience reaches that game.

You're missing an important part of the data: Those graphs are an aggregation of views. Top projects don't stay on Greenlight very long. What you're seeing is the average Top 10 game is Greenlit in 7 days (generally less) as such- the data isn't going to "curve" because the Greenlight is over. Rather ironically, games that have been in Greenlight for a year may have thousands of "Yes" votes and the subsequent "curve" but don't have a good enough "Yes/No" ratio to get the Greenlight from Valve even if they're well into the Top 100 games...

All of that is why I say the graphs aren't that helpful. You could have a game thats #15 on Greenlight that isn't going to be Greenlit anytime soon and my game that was around 80% to the Top 100 was chosen. Because of facts like that, it's almost impossible to gather useful information when the process works like this as that renders most traditional information useless... Because Top 100, Top 50, Top 25 etc are all basically not relevant to how close a game is to actually being Greenlit. Grass Simulator was the #1 game on Steam Greenlight for what? 6 months straight without a greenlight?

In summary:
Don't read too deeply into the graphs. They're not much help in terms of predicting trends.
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EddieBytes
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« Reply #6 on: September 21, 2015, 06:29:59 AM »

oldblood, you're well intended but I don't think you know what you are talking about. The graph curve I am talking about happens after about two days, when the projects goes off the first page and experiences dramatic change in visitor count. Every project is, or should be subject to this.

I've researched this a bit, and one possible explanation I heard from numerous sources is Greenlight games with a voting ratio above 50% get pushed more into the voting queue and thus takes them slightly longer to flatline. This would explain the perfectly straight lines that also go on for longer for top projects. Now that is a proper explanation, not what you tried to give me.

Another possible explanation is marketing/press coverage. But the exposure needs to be pretty big and contribute significantly more than first page on Greenlight exposure contributes to yield such a result. This is plausible but less likely, and I don't think it would yield such a straight graph line. The straight graph line seems more like the result of an algorithm that proportionately selects how much to expose each game, which is why I am leaning towards the first explanation.

I hope this helps you get a better picture of how Greenlight works. It has helped me.
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oldblood
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« Reply #7 on: September 21, 2015, 08:56:12 AM »

oldblood, you're well intended but I don't think you know what you are talking about.

That's probably true. I don't know the actual algorithms or processes that Valve use to Greenlight games. My opinions are based on my own personal experiences, and thus are speculation. I've only had 3 games go through Greenlight successfully... But you've "researched this a bit" so... who am I to counter that?

I hope this helps you get a better picture of how Greenlight works. It has helped me.

Thank you for helping me to understand how Greenlight works. Hopefully my 4th attempt will go better with this new explanation! You study those graphs! I'm relieved someone was able to crack Valve's process.
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EddieBytes
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« Reply #8 on: September 21, 2015, 10:30:11 AM »

Oh, touchy I see. Roll Eyes
Yes, I can see how documented your 3 games has made you. I also see there is no point to this debate, you believe what you will.
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oldblood
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« Reply #9 on: September 21, 2015, 11:16:47 AM »

Oh, touchy I see. Roll Eyes
Yes, I can see how documented your 3 games has made you. I also see there is no point to this debate, you believe what you will.

You cut me to the quick Eddie...

I will try not to leverage my own experiences going forward!

Keep us posted on your Greenlight stats. Excited to see how you leverage the power of the graph as you become a "documented" developer.
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EddieBytes
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« Reply #10 on: October 06, 2015, 04:54:21 AM »

Alastair, that is from last year, not a few weeks ago.
They greenlight batches about once every 6-7-8 days.
You can check on this website.
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Cranktrain
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« Reply #11 on: October 06, 2015, 09:34:24 AM »

I've documented my experience with Steam Greenlight, and the graphs, in a blog post here.

I think The Cat Machine followed a very standard pattern, first two days of 'natural' traffic from within Greenlight, then a dip for a couple of days, then another surge once PC Gamer, Kotaku, etc posted about the game.
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« Reply #12 on: November 04, 2015, 06:19:09 PM »

I don't know much about Greenlight but it seems rather arcane. Our game got Greenlighted much faster than we expected and rather out of the blue. We made a small post on our website in case you want to read more about our experience. However, I'm a bit with Oldblood, I believe the graph won't tell you much. I've seen so many graphs and so read so many articles and pretty much all cases are different. Don't really have the slightest idea how Greenlight works.

Here's the link to our post in case you want to read more about our experience:

http://operationhardcore.com/2015/07/29/weve-been-greenlit/

Maybe someone will crack the code soon heh but for now, I'd say Greenlight operates in mysterious ways...
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« Reply #13 on: May 22, 2016, 06:50:36 AM »

That's probably true. I don't know the actual algorithms or processes that Valve use to Greenlight games. My opinions are based on my own personal experiences, and thus are speculation. I've only had 3 games go through Greenlight successfully... But you've "researched this a bit" so... who am I to counter that?

About 9 months on and the game is still not Greenlit.

If I was on the receiving end of this I'd be on the phone to 911 because I wouldn't be able to handle this roasting.

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AMAXANG-GAMES
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« Reply #14 on: May 30, 2016, 09:16:07 PM »

In my opinion, understanding Steam Greenlight Stats is not possible because it's a bit confusing part which Valve have not clearly stated otherwise. It's been two days since my game is on Steam Greenlight and I am only 15% of the way to the top hundred which I think is not good at all. It's disappointing.

Can you provide suggestions for increasing traffic to the Greenlight page? The traffic to the greenlight page has decreased in 2 days, I guess.

Thank you.
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readyplaygames
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« Reply #15 on: May 31, 2016, 12:19:35 PM »

Our greenlight not getting many page views, so we changed our greenlight preview icon to an animated gif and the views increased.

I never even thought of that. I need to change my icon right now! Thanks!
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