Steam Greenlight: What the devs think

[Mack]

Steam Greenlight launched at the end of August and right out the gate hundreds of games poured in for the affection and attention of millions of gamers native to Valves digital distribution service. Gamasutra contacts a series of developers to get their feedback on the still fledgeling crowd source approval system:


"(it's) actually kind of nice for me. My big fear for Greenlight was always how much work was going to be involved. Kickstarter projects require an immense amount of preparation work, and I was worried that Greenlight would be the same. By having such a simple system, Greenlight doesn't take much time away from development. Which is good, because the last few months of working on a game are pretty hectic." Incredipede developer Colin Northway

However, Northway is very aware of the fact that getting ahead on Greenlight is simply a popularity contest. It doesn't matter too much how good your trailer, screenshots, and description are if you can't play the marketing game properly.

"The skills required to make good games are very different from the skills required to dominate a 'vote for my game' contest, so I'm worried good games will be lost in the shuffle," he notes.

[CPUFreak91]

I don't like the popularity contest aspect, which Kickstarter seems to have less of. But I will try both (one of these days) before I render too much judgement.