There are no less than eight major platforms available to an independent developer looking to release his/her game to the world. That covers fours mobile devices (Apple, Kindle, Android, and Windows phone), three personal computing operating systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux), and one console (Xbox 360). Across those platforms, there are at least as many options for releasing one’s game to the public, and the number just increased by one thanks to the Steam Greenlight program. Unlike so many of those development/release options, however, Greenlight is doing things a bit differently.
Greenlight's a great initiative, but as it is for the moment, it should be renamed and subtitled for little/unknown indie developers to: 'The Coliseum' - throw your game to the lions and get it published if it survives.
- Anonymous Indie Game Developer
What Is it and How Does it Work for a Developer
Let’s first look at what Valve says Steam Greenlight is:
Steam Greenlight is a new system that enlists the community's help in picking some of the next games to be released on Steam. Developers post information, screenshots, and videos for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution. Steam Greenlight also helps developers get feedback from potential customers and start creating an active community around their game as early in the development process as they like.
So what does that really translate to? Essentially, any indie game developer may upload his or her concept to the Greenlight program and start gather interest in it and feedback about it from the Steam community. I stress concept as the only requirements, and indeed the only things allowed by Valve, for submitting a game to Greenlight are these:
- A square branding image (similar to a box cover) to represent your game in lists and search
- At least 1 video showing off your game or presenting your concept
- At least 4 screenshots or images
- A written description of the game along with tentative system requirements
Amongst those requirements, nowhere does it list “a working demo of the game.” You are free to include a link to a demo of your game (should you have one) within the written description of the game, but it isn’t needed. So, unlike Apple’s, XNA’s, or Google’s developer programs, which require a developer to submit his/her final game for review and approval before it’s posted to the appropriate distribution platform, Steam Greenlight merely asks for an idea, something with which to tantalize the gaming community and see if there’s interest in it. It is, in essence, an elevator pitch to the general public with the hopes that that same public shows enough interest to get Valve’s attention.
Wyv and Keep has received great community support, and while we have no idea how long it'll take for it to be greenlit (we're still only at 1%... whatever that means!), until then the system provides us a great way to connect to hundreds of thousands of possible new fans. The 'collection' system may prove to be invaluable for developers as it gives players an easy way to find say, local co-op games, but I wonder if it will put pressure on journalists and big players in the community to either make their own collections or stay neutral.
- Jesse Bull, Lead Artist/Designer, A Jolly Corpse
The Power (?) of Voting
One major advantage (or disadvantage, depending on your viewpoint) to Steam’s Greenlight program is that it allows the gaming community to directly interface with a game’s developers. When looking at a game on Greenlight, you’re presented with the choice of “Would you play this game if it were available on Steam?” You select either “Yes” or “No thanks/Not interested,” and then can immediately go on to the next game. Voting “Yes” reveals a box that lets you know how many of the “necessary positive ratings” the game has received thus far, along with options to share your excitement via the usual social media outlets (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, reddit). As this yes/no mechanic can be a bit vague (and completely inscrutable to the developer), each game page includes a comments section where a member of the gaming community may leave a comment for the developers about what he/she specifically liked or disliked.
These comments would then, hypothetically, inform the developer about what he/she needs to do to get even more positive ratings and put a game out there that would be “Steam-worthy.” The developer may also use the comments section to reply back and get more feedback and ideas/thoughts, thereby improving his/her game. This is clearly the intention of this feature, but as with so many open forums on the Internet, the opportunity to voice one’s opinion can be a hard thing to resist for some. Comments like “meh; not supporting cause blatantly asking me to donate” or “nice clone of X game” are quite common, not to mention suggestions like “improve graphics” or “change the gameplay mechanics” for a game that is finished or nearing completion and is just seeking a new distribution outlet. These are certainly not all the comments that are left, and many gamers are trying to be genuinely helpful. It raises the question, though, of exactly how beneficial these comments can be.
This, essentially, ends the gamer’s part in the process; look at a game, read the description, possibly play a demo or even the full version of the game (if a link is provided), leave a comment, and then vote on it. “Word of mouth” marketing can be done by the gamer to his/her friends in order to try and increase the votes but it is Valve, ultimately, that has the final say about whether a game will get “greenlit.” Valve’s requirements for that to happen are still uncertain, as a game doesn’t need a 100% positive rating in order to get greenlit (the first 10 games that Valve has selected didn’t reach that point). This may leave some developers wondering what, exactly, does my $100 get me?
Right now I think it's too early to tell how Greenlight will do, but for the most part I think it's really limiting the chances of smaller indie devs of ever getting on Steam. That said... the $100 fee (or something slightly smaller) should have been there from the start, in my opinion.
- Nick Puleo, Lead Designer/Programming, Brain Shape Games
What Benjamin Franklin Can Do For You
The final requirements for submitting a game on Steam Greenlight are monetary in nature. In addition to a $100 fee, potential developers need a “valid and non-limited Steam account;” that means owning a game on Steam, so the total cost is around $105. Valve has said that they’re not interested in making any money off all this, so the $100 goes to the Child’s Play Charity (a good move on their part), and that the reason there’s even a fee in the first place is to keep the program from being flooded with joke submissions. There has been, of course, some reaction to this from the community – and with reason. Here’s a quick breakdown of what one Benjamin gets you from the various services out there:
- Microsoft Creators Club ($99): annual subscription fee to submit up to 10 games on Xbox Live Indie Games and all games are reviewed by peers within the Microsoft Creators Club community. Games may be developed using XNA tools for the PC for free, but a distribution platform (e.g., Steam, Desura, or your own website) would have to be setup
- iOS or Mac Developer Center ($99): annual subscription fee to develop as many apps for either mobile or Mac App Store and apps are reviewed by Apple
- Amazon Mobile App Developer ($99 per year, first year free): annual subscription fee to release as many mobile apps as you can develop and apps are reviewed by Amazon
- Android Publisher ($25): one-time fee to register a publisher account to release as man apps as you’d like and all apps are reviewed by Google
- Steam Greenlight ($100): one-time fee credited to Steam account that allows as many submissions as you wish with all submissions being voted upon by the gaming community to gauge interest in buying the game were it released on Steam platform
Looking through those offerings, one can see that there’s a stark difference between what Greenlight’s offering and what its “competitors” offer. An indie developer looking to get their game out to the public certainly may be better off going with one of the other choices out there, as there’s more of a guarantee that the game will see release. The benefit to this service (as it currently exists) would likely be seen more as a marketing venue, as opposed to any kind of easily accessed release platform for the game. The carrot being dangled - a full release on Steam - is enough to make it very tempting for the budding indie developer, provided he/she can be vocal enough within the Greenlight system to be heard above everyone else.
Crowd-sourcing the Steam selection process via Greenlight is a brilliant idea, if you're Valve. Valve is big on metrics, and before, it was hard to quantify whether an indie game's supporter base was a very vocal minority or if there actually was genuine demand for the title... In doing so, Valve is also helping to encourage indies to start community building pre-release, which can only ever be positive.
- Dylan Barker, Game Developer, Cadenza Interactive
Signal to Noise Ratio (Living in a Modder’s Paradise?)
Perusing the 700 games that have already been submitted to Greenlight is rather revealing. A fair portion of these games are constructed as mods to existing games released by Valve (e.g., Half-Life) or using the Source SDK. The developers of these mods currently offer them from a variety of sources for free, and indeed state within the written description on the Greenlight page that the mod will continue to be free. This raises a rather important question for Valve to answer: what constitutes a game?
That question isn’t meant to imply that mods aren’t games, as there have certainly been a number of mods released that could be considered full-fledged games in their own right (DoTA is a great example); it’s more to raise the idea that a game that’s built using existing tools versus a game that’s build from the ground up would have different assumptions and ideas surrounding it. Additionally, if part of the idea behind the Greenlight program is for independent developers to have a chance to “make it big,” then wouldn’t shifting attention to a free mod deflate some of that?
The submission of these mods definitely serves to increase the sheer number of games that gamers would have to sift through in order to find those that they would be interested in seeing through to completion. All of that noise can make it difficult for any one game to really make it through, unless it receives a lot of attention from other sources (e.g., gaming sites). This is where the modders have a slight advantage as the modding community within PC gaming is quite large. Thus, any new, fully-developed game that’s submitted to Greenlight would have to compete with the attention and votes that a popular mod would receive, in addition to the other games out there that are already receiving attention. A better search tool within Greenlight that would allow gamers to maybe search for games versus mods may prove to be beneficial, for a variety of reasons, though there is still an underlying issue that Valve may need to address at some point.
Again, none of this is to discourage or stifle submissions, merely to address some of the potential problems and issues surrounding Greenlight as it currently exists. Fortunately, there may be hope.
[Greenlight] seems like a good thing for indies, because it gives you a place to organize your fans, generates feedback on your game's marketability, and helps some games get noticed by Steam. Plus, Greenlight helps Steam identify users want to buy your game, and that means they can target exactly those users once you launch. It's an interesting experiment, and we'll be watching carefully to see what comes of it!
- Tim Ambrogi, Developer, Final Form Games
The Potential and What the Future May Hold
Though the Steam Greenlight service is only 2 weeks old, it has already seen a few changes in just that brief span of time. The $100 fee, for instance, was an almost immediate reaction to the sheer number of submissions, many of which were jokes/fraudulent, that came in within hours of the system going live. The voting system also saw some slight tweaks, as initially you could see the yes vs. no votes for a game. While these tweaks can be good or bad, depending on to whom you speak, the general consensus does seem to be that at least Valve is reacting and reacting quickly. Valve may not have all the answers just yet, but it’s not unreasonable for one to have hopes that they might at some point down the line.
Personally, I see Greenlight as having the potential to do what it’s currently doing (with some improvements), and adding in some Kickstarter-like features. Many of the games that have interested me thus far actually have Kickstarter campaigns and it raises the question in my mind, “if I’m interested in seeing this come to Steam, why am I not contributing more than just a vote to make that happen?” See, even if I do contribute to the Kickstarter and the game is successfully funded and made, it still doesn’t mean that it’ll end up on Steam. Money is a powerful tool/voice (“What's worth doing is worth doing for money” - Gordon Gecko) and I would think that there would be no better indicator of a game that could make it on Steam than how much I and others would be willing to pay to make it so.
For now, though, Greenlight is more of an, as one indie developer put it, “El Dorado” - a dream and hope for many indie developers to transition game development from passion to profession. As the system currently exists, too, that dream may be further off than they first realized. Regardless, Greenlight is a valuable outlet for gamers to make their voices heard and to vote for what kind of games they’d like to see be made, as well as being a more structured approach for developers to hear that kind of feedback. The barrier between game player and game developer has thinned more and more as the years have gone on, and Greenlight could very well be the system that provides the kind of constructive and creative environment for those with the passion and drive to make the transition able to do so.