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[Zizka]

I'm not sure if this has been discussed somewhere else before (probably has) but I'd like to read your opinions about this.

1. What would be an alternative to the upvote/downvote mechanics to keep poor quality game off steam?

2. Why is there no quality control from Steam (from the employees I mean)? It's probably cheaper to have the community do it as they'll do it for free. Could there be some kind of initiative (petition?) that we could start a community so that Steam starts enforcing higher quality standards?

3. What would be a way to deal with scam artist groups on Steam such as YOLO?:




So basically, what's the core of the problem, what solutions are there and what can we do about this?

[Superb Joe]

i am absolutely not clicking on a video to listen to a person who looks like that on purpose

[GarBenjamin]

I think the core of the problem is the "Indie Dream" combined with many different options empowering people with no previous game dev experience to be able to make games. The "Indie Dream" to many folks is simply being able to make a good amount of money (through stories of Flappy Bird and several other games the media has focused on this aspect of "Jane/Joe made a simple little game and soon found themselves making $50k per month"). That is how the media presented it to the general public. Suddenly (and easy to understand why) we had masses of people coming into game dev and with all of the high powered game dev tools available they set out to claim their share of the gold. It's a goodrush plain and simple.

And a lot of people focusing more on the money than anything else just throw out their very first ever completed game onto the markets. Others flip asset kits adding nothing and trying to sell as is. Others may not want to spend the time fixing bugs and so forth.

Steam and other markets cannot thoroughly review each and every game being submitted and it makes sense to empower the gamers (the ultimate buyers) to vote for the games they want to see completed and available for purchase. It also allows game devs an opportunity to build a community around their games during development.

I'm not sure if there is any better way to handle it all. Other than gamers as individuals following the recommendations of Steam curators, popular YouTubers covering games and so forth.

[s0]

2. Why is there no quality control from Steam (from the employees I mean)? It's probably cheaper to have the community do it as they'll do it for free. Could there be some kind of initiative (petition?) that we could start a community so that Steam starts enforcing higher quality standards?

steam used to have "curation" before greenlight. what that meant was, only AAA games and a handful of indie games, most of which had to pass through the IGF and/or XBLA "economy", could get on there.

the current situation has problems as well (scam games like journey of the light, astroturfed user reviews), but is overall still much better for devs. the devs complaining about steam being "oversaturated" now forget that back in say 2011, most of them wouldn't even have gotten on steam. sure there's itch.io, but that doesn't give you anywhere near the same exposure steam does.

besides, i hate to be *that guy*, but there's no real universal metric for "poor" games. ive seen people complain that hidden object games and visual novels are on steam when a lot of people enjoy those games.

[s0]

I'm not sure if there is any better way to handle it all. Other than gamers as individuals following the recommendations of Steam curators, popular YouTubers covering games and so forth.

imo, the curators are useless as fuck. lots of people simply advertising their youtube channel, people who have no idea what they're talking about, unfunny "joke" curators and negative curators (aka nerds airing their grievances). user reviews are useful for finding out whether a game has glaring technical issues but not much beyond that. and again, an overabundance of tired jokes and memes: "vaguely funny thing i did in the game, 11/10 would do thing again XDDDD".

i don't think there's really a reliable way to find good games using only steam. normally when i see a game on steam that piques my interest, i'll google it and do some research and then decide whether to buy it.

[quantumpotato]

There's a social media site that allows 1 post a day.
If a limited number of games were added, curated, that might help.

In another thread I proposed the idea of..

10 people see game, at least 1 person must approve. Then 100 people can see. if 10 people approve, then 1000.. etc. eventually too many people have seen the game or not enough say  and the meme dies.

Other tigsourcers said this was ripe for astroturfing, and they're right, unfortunately. People could just vote down if it's not their game.

This makes me think of a common thread.. game reviews, media censorship, economic survival, immigration, gardens... a system needs gates to prevent invasive species from taking over. Invasive in our case being AAA games that dominate (everyone's heard of modern warware, do you really need to see ads for it?) or waste time (scam games, shit games). I think the answer lies somewhere in curation, but there aren't very many people with developed skills and fame as curators.

If we can solve this problem that'd be awesome but I have little hope. Personally I've stopped playing and buying games for the most part. 2 weeks ago I tried playing my library of humble bundle purchases and most of them just played like shit IMO. I ended up playing my own game ("Make the games you want to play!" - tigsource front page) which is an indie success, I guess, but really unfortunate that I had not way to distinguish "this looked cool" from "damn that's actually not fun".

TLDR: When it comes to music, I rely on a few friends to suggest things. We need professional game curators.

[Cobralad]

the problem with steam is that it has that hippy-ass meritocracy bullshit going on so they are just one building instead of 50 studios around the world. Thats why they are designing systems that should ideally self-moderate and have ther own flow. They simply refuse to hire an community moderators team.
Also what is "quality control"? You can probably pull a game with stolen assets or dodgy content but what is "quality"? Thats a slippery slope right there.
Also if your game relies on steam store place to get money you fucked up. All the "Indie Game:The movie" games were xbox live games that were reluctantly released year or two later on pc. Think about that.

[s0]

Also if your game relies on steam store place to get money you fucked up. All the "Indie Game:The movie" games were xbox live games that were reluctantly released year or two later on pc. Think about that.

that's not so much reluctance as microsoft funding these games and having a timed exclusivity clause in their contract. fez for instance was originally planned for PC until it switched to XBLA in exchange for MS dollars. the revenue on steam was probably higher than on xbla (just an assumption, don't have any actual numbers). back then it was a huge deal that these games were on any major commercial platform at all, they were extreme exceptions to the "indie norm".

those "early" games went IGF prizes => XBLA => Steam. that's what i was alluding to with the IGF and xbla "economy". these days it's much easier for devs to get games funded thanks to kickstarter, plus it's much easier to get on steam. like i said, the situation today is much better for the vast majority of devs.

[quantumpotato]

Also if your game relies on steam store place to get money you fucked up. All the "Indie Game:The movie" games were xbox live games that were reluctantly released year or two later on pc. Think about that.

that's not so much reluctance as microsoft funding these games and having a timed exclusivity clause in their contract. fez for instance was originally planned for PC until it switched to XBLA in exchange for MS dollars. the revenue on steam was probably higher than on xbla (just an assumption, don't have any actual numbers). back then it was a huge deal that these games were on any major commercial platform at all, they were extreme exceptions to the "indie norm".

those "early" games went IGF prizes => XBLA => Steam. that's what i was alluding to with the IGF and xbla "economy". these days it's much easier for devs to get games funded thanks to kickstarter, plus it's much easier to get on steam. like i said, the situation today is much better for the vast majority of devs.

Right, and the majority of devs suck (in my personal opinion) so we have a lot of crappy games. Tradeoffs

[Zizka]

these days it's much easier for devs to get games funded thanks to kickstarter, plus it's much easier to get on steam. like i said, the situation today is much better for the vast majority of devs.

I guess that's a personal preference. I'm more on quantumpotato side on this one. I'd much rather have less quality games and then the situation where it's at right now with the floodgates wide open. All games are equal, some games are just more equal than others.

[s0]

I'd rather have more good games which is what we have right now. No one is forcing you to buy bad games, you can just ignore them.

Regardless, my point was that easier access and less gatekeeping is better for most devs, probably including you.

[Zizka]

I'd rather have more good games which is what we have right now. No one is forcing you to buy bad games, you can just ignore them.

My issue is not about ignoring bad games.

Regardless, my point was that easier access and less gatekeeping is better for most devs, probably including you.

I would rather have to struggle and rework my game because it gets rejected for steam if it means a higher general quality all around then just being tossed onto the pile (so to speak).

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

i used to think like you and the state of greenlight used to affect me (because i was looking at it from a dev point of view.) so i had to understand why it affected me.

-envy (jealousy) , seeing projects that looks like low effort were put in being greenlight (while i'm working my ass of trying to make a quality game)
 ---> learn that it won't affect you on a personal level. Low effort quality games usually don't sell well.
      (especially those who end up in groupee bundle)
      have faith in own project.

-visibility , fear that your project dropped from 1st page of greenlight section because overflow of games.
 ---> relying on greenlight to get an audience isn't smart. noticed that a lot of devs are trying to please everyone. you can't please please everyone. Stick to your audience (even it's a niche one.)
      have faith in own project.


think of steam as just a portal where you can easily sell your game and be thankful that you have an access to it (easy entry). because in the end:
If your game is "good" it will sell (even if it takes time) steam or not, and if your game is average then steam easy entry is good for you.

[Zizka]

Very enlightening message, I can't help but agree.

There's also GOG galaxy which seem to provide another alternative although it doesn't provide the kind of visibility steam does.

[ProgramGamer]

Steam is just a convenience for the consumer. Also, remember how Minecraft was sold through its own website and it made billions? Your distribution method doesn't matter a whole lot. What matters is your advertising campaign.

have faith in own project.

[s0]

Steam is just a convenience for the consumer. Also, remember how Minecraft was sold through its own website and it made billions? Your distribution method doesn't matter a whole lot. What matters is your advertising campaign.

i wouldn't use minecraft as a model. minecraft's mega success is in many ways an anomaly that had a lot to do with it being the right game getting the right hype at the right time. trying to be the "next notch" is a shitty business plan.

btw: one thing that steam opening up did was make niche games more profitable. a game like caves of qud (one of my recent most played games) would have never gotten on steam under the old "system" because it's too obscure, too niche, too unpolished, the devs don't have any notable "credentials" etc. basically lots of devs doing good work with limited appeal can make more money from that work, which is a good thing.

[ProgramGamer]

Fair enough. I hereby declare that Minecraft be banned from every discussion on game marketing/success ever. Now to enforce this rule...

[s0]

also banned: flappy bird and every other anomalous success story that gives people the idea that indie dev is some kind of get rich quick scheme.

[ProgramGamer]

Actually, pumping out simple games devoid of much depth in the hopes that they make enough money collectively to turn a profit is a valid strategy and is actually encouraged by some people. Not to confuse with "fail faster", which is a design philosophy that encourages learning rather than profit.

[s0]

i know, but flappy is a different story