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Mega digital distributor Steam announces 'Greenlight', a way for small developers to pitch their game ideas to be approved for distribution on Steam. Coming August 30th developers will be able to make a project page (with info, videos and screenshots), interact with possible customers and seek community votes to achieve approval for distribution.

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Ideas are a dime a dozen, drive and execution are far more rare.

Wow, thanks for sharing this Mack. This sounds like a really encouraging opportunity for some great independent games to make it onto Steam. Who knows... we may even see some projects from our community on Steam someday.

Oh man, this looks awesome. Bring on the ideas!

On the surface this looks like a fantastic idea. But .. something tells me that it won't be as great as we'd like to it to be.

For starters: I suspect it will be a popularity contest, not necessarily a great game. Joe Bimblehype creates a game where you fart to jump and throw boogers at 'evil' Catholic priests and babies. Crappy game ,crappy art .. but Joe has thousands of friends all over the nets because he's active in other communities. Joe get's "greenlighted" and off he goes with his "BoogerFart" game into the Steam store.

MEANWHILE, Harold GoodGuy makes a quality game, tasteful and fun. Sadly, Harold is also a wallflower and has one hundred friends between facebook, twitter and his email - most of his family is Amish. So, Harold's game, which coudl be epic, gets ignored because of lack of draw.



I also see an influx of hipster indie games ... no offense to fans of the 8bit revolution, but games like SuperMeatBoy, Swords & Sorcery and Last Survivor may have looked epic in the mid-90s but now, to me, they seem sad. BUT for some reason they get a lot of clout for ... only God truly knows ...

I can rant for ages on this sort of thing. Greenlight, I think, could be good for those who can already push themselves into the light and perhaps get a following. However, for some people (myself included) that really don't have a lot of a following, people just dont' know who the snack you are .. kind of get shuffled off. Regardless of the game.

Maybe it won't be that way, but it is a concern.

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But if all Harold can't muster support for his game, how can he muster sales?

Ultimately, games do well based on how well the (gamer) community likes it, so this really isn't a whole lot of difference. I also find it unlikely that Joe is so likable that he can that he can convince a larger number of people to ignore their gaming senses and vote for him rather than any other good game on the roster.

As for the "hipster" indie games, have you played the ones you mentioned? I have not tried Swords & Sorcery and Last Survivor yet, but from what I hear, they stand out because of impeccable game design. Particularly Last Survivor was hailed as a hands down amazing survivor horror, when all the other mainstream survivor horror failed to deliver.
I did play SuperMeatBoy and it's one fantastic feeling platformer. The puzzles are built very deliberately and the appeal is more than a callback to old time. The game design is carefully crafted for challenging and rewarding playthrough to a level very few AAA titles can achieve.

Indie titles injected a whole new fresh creativity in gaming medium dictated by publishers.
Why would they be sad? Is it graphics?

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Q.E.D.

Greenlight will feature some sort of kickstart-esque funding built into it. As part of Valve's ongoing approach to make Steam the end-all destination lifestyle defining core of your gaming life its a great call. This will only help them nail and promote projects they might have missed or would have languished in approval limbo. Which happens....... (angst)

I like the sound of it.

The notion that social clout alone will generate game approval is baseless. Do you know anyone with 50k+ facebook friends who makes games that isn't famous for making games? (see the DoubleFine KS for evidence that street-cred alone is enough within the pertinent field, but that's not what is being suggested) I suppose everybody clicks all of those accursed Farmville notices on their FB feeds too //sarcasm (we know they don't, zynga said so).

This is offtopic imo but, Sword and Sworcery is great. Killer presentation, groovy art, very engaging. Super Meatboy is a modern classic that deserves every drop of praise it's recieved. Last Survivor I haven't picked up yet... I watched some gameplay and it didn't look terribly appealing but I imagine I'll grab it in a bundle at some point.

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