Games based on depression, an award winning game we’ll never get to play, and other interesting titles in today’s Indie Links.

How Jason Rohrer Won The Game Design Challenge (RPS)
“A real high-point of every GDC is the Game Design Challenge. Well, was. Sadly the tenth year of this annual treat was the last, with organiser Eric Zimmerman bringing proceedings to an end. And wow, did it go out in style. With the apposite topic, “Humanity’s Last Game”, some of the biggest names in the industry put forth their pitches for the last game we’d ever need. And one man entirely stole the show. For a second year, that man was Jason Rohrer.”

Voiceless and forgotten: facing depression through play (VG247)
“Depression Quest and Actual Sunlight are two games based on depression. Dave Owen speaks with their creators to find out how they can help.”

The Cat that Got the Milk sequel revealed, leaps from freeware to commercial (IndieGames.com)
“The Button Affair super stylish developers, now called Modern Dream, have announced The Cat that Got the Milk will receive a sequel. Titled Abstract No.3, it will expand on the series’ twitchy, path-weaving gameplay and will be the team’s first commercial release.”

Mobile review: Ridiculous Fishing (Shacknews)
“Fishing is a tough endeavor, one that isn’t as easy as it looks on TV or in the movies. Homer Simpson once had an idea to dump a plugged-in bug zapper into a lake and it resulted in a whole lot of easy-to-catch (if somewhat high voltage) fish. That’s a ridiculous idea. Yet it’s not as ridiculous as some of the heavy artillery that’s used in Ridiculous Fishing, the latest iOS title from Vlambeer (Super Crate Box), Greg Wohlwend (Puzzlejuice), and Zach Gage (Halcyon).”

Storyteller preview: In the eye of the beholder (Joystiq)
“”Wait, save that. No one’s done it that way before. You made it more complicated.” Daniel Benmergui reached out to grab the mouse and save a screenshot of my panels in his comic-book narrative game, Storyteller, where I had just concocted a tale of love and loss based on the page’s prompt, using a trio of static characters. One click and Benmergui let me regain control – he resumed his place over my shoulder in a quiet room off of the main GDC concourse, paper and pen in hand, taking notes on my visible thought processes as they played out on-screen.”

Preview: Hiversaires (TIGSource)
“After years of releasing engaging short-form games, prolific digital artist Aliceffekt is nearing completion of his first independent commercial project, Hiversaires, for iOS. Committing himself to full time development at the beginning of February, Aliceffekt has worked solo on the game, handling design, code, art, and music.”

Little Inferno scores big sales (Destructoid)
“Little Inferno didn’t have a lot to help it become a financial success. A fireplace simulator made to parody and critique current trends in videogames isn’t exactly what the big publishers would call “a surefire hit with a huge pre-installed fan base.” Thankfully, word of mouth, positive reviews, and the reputation of the game’s all-star development team seemed to have made up for any lack of marketability.”

Second Thoughts with the Chick – Terraria (Indie Gamer Chick)
“I reviewed Terraria for PlayStation Network/Xbox Live Arcade. I said that I did have fun playing the title, but I didn’t recommend it because it was too glitchy and unfinished. I also said that I had lost interest in the game. Since then, there hasn’t been a review up at my blog. Why? Because I’ve been busy playing Terraria. So allow me to eat some crow and do a 180 here. Terraria IS worth your time, glitches and all.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Intangibles

Last year, indie developer Hitbox Team released their first game, Dustforce, on Steam. A little over a year later, Hitbox Team is happily reporting on their financial success and providing valuable feedback to other developers within the indie game scene.

In a blog post, on the official Hitbox Team website, developer Terence Lee went into detail about the specifics of the team’s financial strategy going into developing their first game as a team, and the inspiring outcome of their risky endeavor.

“Now that we’ve finished our own first project, we’d like to contribute our own data about Dustforce to the growing trend of transparency in indie game development,” Lee explains. He goes onto explain that the origins of Dustforce began in the rush to complete the original prototype in the months leading up to the 2010 IndiePub Games Independent Game Developers Competition. In the end, the prototype won the team a $100,000 check, and armed with financial stability, the team was able to completely focus on developing their prototype into the game as it exists today.

Though, Lee pointed out, just like motivation and patience, money will eventually run out, and so the team set a strict deadline: have Dustforce completed by January 2012. An invitation by Valve to release Dustforce on Steam and some positive press following the prototype’s award provided the extra boost to get the project rolling.

Lee goes on to discuss how the four-man team figured out living expenses, and established monetary goals that Dustforce would have to meet, in order to be considered a financial success.

“We had no idea what to expect. We could only speculate, using sparse data points and ballpark figures. Was the past year and a half worth it? Of course it was, —we worked the hardest any of us have ever worked, and we created something we were truly proud of. Yet, there was a lingering uncertainty of financial expectations. Our goal was to just make enough money to be able to do it again. If we could work on our next project independently and without being restricted by a financial cut-off date, then we’d consider Dustforce a financial success.”

Nine days following Dustforce’s January 17th, 2012 release date, the game was a financial success. After the initial surge of post-launch sales, Dustforce was selling 30-50 copies daily. Then, in the first week of May, Hitbox Team got their first taste of a Steam Sale.

“Over the 3 days of the promotion, we sold 17,462 copies of the game, more than the amount we sold during the first 3 days of the January launch. Of course, at 50% off, the revenue was a bit less, but it was still an instant 37% boost in lifetime revenue.”

Hitbox Team’s Steam Sale Figure

When the Humble Bundle 6 launched in September of last year, Dustforce was one of the games included. The Humble Bundle promotion not only brought Hitbox Team roughly $153,915, but they also saw an uptick in Steam sales, following the conclusion of the promotion.

“Dustforce was our first finished game, and we went into it without much experience, especially in the business side of things. Through this project, we learned firsthand that time is money, and that sacrifices have to be made when resources are limited…We are really grateful to have a strong start, and are very happy with how the game turned out…We are all humbled and elated by how well Dustforce has been received. The joy from our players is enough to keep us making games, —the financial success is just an incidental blessing.”

In January, following the one-year anniversary of Dustforce’s release, Hitbox Team announced their next title, Spire.

Follow Hitbox Team on Twitter, and visit the team’s official website.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Hitbox Team Reveals ‘Dustforce’ Earnings, Talk Steam Sales And Humble Bundle Participation

Learn in today’s Developer Links why to use the Lua scripting language, what kind of social media policy to decide on, and how a developer raised money from pirates.

Mew-Genics Teaser Week 17, Cat Fight! (Team Meat Blog)
“As many of you might have guessed from the song “Cat Fight” in the Ridiculon video post, Cat fights are a large part of Mew-Genics. How will these fights go down?  How will the game actually play?  Why have i been using faked graphics for all the cats ive posted in the past 17 weeks of updates? find out next week! when we finally announce what this damn game is!”

The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of Feb 15 (Zeboyd Games)
“Not much this week in terms of new kickstarters to look out for, but I did spot two that I thought sounded interesting. The first is Throw Trucks With Your Mind – a multiplayer FPS where ‘you’ll fight entirely through NeuroSky’s MindWave headset peripheral that reads the electrical activity of your brain.’ It’s up to $11k of its $40k goal with 26 days left to go. The second is Genocide Dolphins. I have no clue why it’s called that, but it’s a FPS with a really trippy visual style. It’s only at £417 raised of its £5k goal with 12 days left to go, but the goal is modest enough that I could see a last-minute recovery.”

Democracy 3 Development Blog #1 (Cliffski.com)
“A short video with me going through the new stuff in Democracy 3:”

Why Lua? (AltDevBlogADay)
“A question that I get asked regularly is why we have chosen Lua as our engine scripting language. I guess as opposed to more well-known languages, such as JavaScript or C#. The short answer is that Lua is lighter and more elegant than both those languages. It is also faster than JavaScript and more dynamic than C#.”

Drafting A Social Media Handbook Policy For Developers (Gamasutra)
“Big companies have recently gotten into hot water by trying to govern employee social media use — but the right way to do this is even more complicated than you might expect, so Gamaustra presents this article, written by an attorney, to help put you on the right track.”

The Witness Audio: 1000 Subtle Layers (The Witness)
“I didn’t think Witness was going to be an easy project by any stretch, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be one of our biggest creative challenges. I’ve worked on nearly 80 projects spanning feature film, games, ads and other sorts, and my job as sound designer had always been to broaden the experience in every possible way. The Witness inverts this notion.”

Indie Dev Makes $12k Through Piracy Promotion (Develop)
“An indie developer has made more than $12,000 after advertising its game through the Pirate Bay. In a blog post, Sean Hogan wrote a post-mortem of the experiment to advertise action-adventure RPG Anodyne through piracy channels, and noted a significant upturn in website hits, Steam Greenlight votes and sales.”

Rocket Report #6 (Rocket Bear Games Blog)
“Last week was quite exciting, development-wise. Guess what?  Those helicopters that I added to the game last time can now do airstrikes.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Interest Groups

I hope by now everyone is fully aware of the fantastic FPS Natural Selection 2 (NS2). Released last year by Unknown Worlds NS2 was the long awaited sequel to the original mod and one of the best asymmetrical FPS of all time.

Unknown Worlds have been working tirelessly over the past year to develop NS2 continually post release along with fostering an e-sport community,  and considering it is an online only shooter this is vital. Amongst all of the new maps and updates that have come out over the past few months we now see the actual Decoda integrated development environment (IDE) being released to the public. Decoda was the IDE used to create NS2 with, no doubt many developers have eagerly anticipated this day.

Unknown Worlds co-founder Max McGurie stated the studio was now in a position to give something back to the community and felt Decoda would be a great open source asset for all. Unknown Worlds hope the community will now look to play around with NS2 and their own games using this powerful development platform to create something awesome.

This is great news for developers and modders looking to tinker with some of the tools in the IDE or to start developing their own projects using this powerful system. This should also encourage user mods for NS2 and in time maybe a whole new genre defining game itself.

It’s really great to see Unknown Worlds opening their IDE to all, who knows what next. You can always find out more about Decoda on the official Unknown Worlds site.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Unknown Worlds Release Decoda IDE Open Source

A dungeon editor, a movie-themed puzzle racer, and a game about a robot photographer (that is, a robot who takes photographs, not someone who photographs robots): these are some of the subjects of today’s Indie Links.

There’s Something Primal About Super Hexagon (Gamasutra)
“Super Hexagon‘s success on iOS has taken developer Terry Cavanagh very much by surprise. The game, an expansion on Cavanagh’s original Pirate Kart entry Hexagon, sold more than 10,000 copies in its first three days on sale in the App Store — a total that the dev never dreamed was possible for a seemingly niche experience.”

Joe Danger 2 – The Movie Review: High-Ish Voltage (Joystiq)
“Like a lot of film sequels, Joe Danger 2 sounds good on paper, in a bigger-better-more-explosions kind of way. Promoted from stuntman to star, Danger’s garage and scenery are now fuller and more diverse. One minute he’s skiing away from an avalanche, the next he’s jetpacking through a jungle and breaking dinosaur eggs. With an action-packed variety of backdrops and vehicles, the 2D puzzle-racer never looks the same from one level to the next. This is a quality not to be sniffed at; many games would do well to break out of their beloved grey corridors and empty brown plains.”

Friday Flashback #31: Watching It Hatch (Broken Rules)
“Refreshed and filled with new-found energy, we’ve looked at the feedback received during PAX Prime and are back to working our minds off to improve what needs to be improved and polish what needs to be polished. Faster than ever, Chasing Aurora fills up with content and takes more and more shape. It’s a bit like watching a bird hatch from its egg.”

Beyond Minecraft: Notch On Fame, Pressure, Sequels (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Notch is Minecraft. Minecraft is Notch. A year ago, those statements might have been true to some extent, but not anymore. The man behind the most pervasive invention since the wheel (which he achieved by simply putting the corners back onto the wheel) hung up his pick axe late last year. That does not mean, however, that he’s escaped from the shadow of the monolith he created. Notch and his creation are still synonymous, for better or worse. And so, during PAX, I spoke with the quick-to-smile yet surprisingly introverted developer about the pressures of overnight fame, having people hang on (and quote) your every word, the current status of 0x10c, and tons more.”

Grimrock Dungeon Editor: Steam Beta (TIGSource)
“After four months of hard work the Legend of Grimrock team has released a level editor beta for their first-person dungeon crawl. Due to Steam’s rapid updating capabilities, the editor is currently only available for players who own the Steam version of the Grimrock. To try it out, right-click on ‘Legend of Grimrock’ in your Steam library and select properties. Then click on the ‘Betas’ tab and opt-in to begin downloading the editor.”

Snapshot: Snapshot (PC) (Joystiq)
“Finally, someone made a game for all the Instagram hipsters in the world. All those crazy kids with their fancy smartphones, taking too-close photos of burritos and Starbucks cups, only to crop them, blow out the saturation, and add kitschy comments bookended by less-than-three hearts for all their digital friends to see. Retro Affect’s Snapshot is exactly like all of that, except way cuter and not at all like that.”

Love, Hate, And Xbox Live Indie Games (Gamasutra)
“For all the bad press that the Xbox Live Indie Games platform has received over the years, it’s easy to forget that, for some developers, XBLIG is a dream come true — a way for them to publish their games to a proper home console in a relatively easy manner. And while it’s also easy to dismiss Xbox Live Indie Games as a breeding ground for Minecraftclones and silly Avatar games — as I myself have done numerous times before — there are, in fact, many wonderful gems to be found on the store if you know where to look.”

Interview: 600k Downloads But Gasketball Still “Feels Like A Dud” (Hookshot, Inc.)
“Following the success of Sopliskier, two-man indie team Mikengreg spent a year developing their follow-up: physics puzzler Gasketball. The game released a month ago to positive reviews from both critics and consumers. But the hope that offering their creation as a free download would lead to a dramatic increase in in-game sales hasn’t paid off.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Stone-Faced

At the Eurogamer Expo earlier today, Introversion Software founders Mark Morris and Chris Delay revealed that their Kickstarter-like experiment acquired over $100,000 in only three days. Prison Architect’s funding was obtained through a setup akin to what we see from Kickstarter campaigns, with Introversion Software offering the game directly through the game’s official website, using a tiered-price system.

The price tiers range from $30, which get buyers instant access to the Alpha build and the full game when it launches, up to a $1,000 tier which allows the buyer to work with Introversion Software to design game assets, and of course, comes with all the rewards for all the previous tiers.

Morris and Delay reported that over 2600 sales have been made so far, four of which were for the $1,000 tier.

Launched only 72 hours ago, the alpha build of Prison Architect is reminiscent of 2005′s ‘Prison Tycoon’, which featured a similar objective of building and maintaining a prison. Introversion Software promises that players will have to deal with prison fires, tunneling prisoners, riots, staff budgets, gang activity, and more.

Judging by the staggering numbers already generated by the funding campaign, clearly fans have more faith in Introversion Software and Prison Architect, then they had with Virtual Playground and Prison Tycoon, which generated universally low scores upon its release.

Introversion Software developed 2006′s Defcon, and 2005′s Darwinia, which were both well-received by critics.

Join the Prison Architect alpha on the game’s official website, here. You can also follow Introversion Software on Twitter for more updates.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Prison Architect’ makes $100,000 in Three Days

The past few months have been amazing. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a golden age for gamers, if not developers. Between bundles, sales and new releases, I now have a backlog of indie games so massive, my brain struggles to comprehend just how long it would take to get through them all. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where I dive in and cut the pile to size. At least one game enters every single day, and none leave without judgement being passed from above.

Today’s Target: Eryi’s Action for Windows PCs. Developed by Xtal Sword & localized by Nyu Media. RRP: $5. Available Direct, via Gamersgate & Desura.

Well, clearly someone’s a fan of Kaizo Mario and I Wanna Be The Guy. The opening screen of the game tries to lull you into a false sense of security by showing you some easy, casual platforming, only to yank the rug away the moment you step into the game. Any attempt to walk off the very first screen – a short introduction, telling you that Eryi is off on an adventure to recover her stolen dessert melon – is greeted by an instantly lethal falling basin; a staple of Japanese slapstick comedy. There’s a lot of potential for frustration here, and that’s how the game bills itself – as a platformer for masochists.

That said, I think it manages to sidestep the worst of cruel and unusual behaviour that you’d expect to see in games like this. There’s still the occasional invisible platform hidden just where the apex of your jump would be, but those seem few and far between, with the focus of the game being on some rather clever puzzle-oriented gameplay with fairly regular checkpoints. It’ll take a few deaths to understand the rules of each puzzle, of course – an experience perhaps comparable with sweeping for mines by rolling your face along the ground – but you can learn over time, if you don’t mind some pain. At least you have infinite lives, right?

A good example is the end of the first level – there’s a Mario-esque level completion flagpole, and if you touch it, the game takes over and walks you off the right edge of the screen, right into a falling spike-ball trap. As the game is in control at this point, you can’t evade, avoid or otherwise do anything to escape death. The only way to survive is to somehow break the game. What you need to do, then, is pick up and carry a sprinkler (effectively acting as a jump-pad) from a screen or two back, and use it to vault over the level completion pole. You can now dodge the spike-ball, and exit the level, right? Well, no. You’ve not touched the pole, so you just walked off the level to your death. Go back to touch the pole, and you auto-walk into the (now stationary) spikes.

So, after a little experimentation, I found that in addition to bringing over the sprinkler, I needed to (carefully) pick up an explosive bomb-type enemy, jump over the flagpole with it, evade the spikes, throw the bomb and clear the path. THEN touch the flagpole, and let the level ending sequence play out properly. Bypassing videogame logic in order to get it working again – it’s kinda clever, in a weirdly dumb sorta way. This seems to be the general thrust of the gameplay – puzzles that bend or abuse the logic of the game and require some actual thought to get through, with the platforming itself being not too hard to get through.

Every few levels the game throws a boss battle your way, and these are genuinely tough platforming/reflex challenges that are probably the most frustrating element of all, although there’s nothing that can’t be conquered with a little patience. It’s nowhere near the sadistic difficulty of I Wanna Be The Guy. At least, not yet. The game itself actually looks quite nice, and the music feels appropriate for a Mario-inspired platformer. I’m still some way from the end of the game, but I’m actually having fun with this, which I honestly didn’t expect.

The Verdict: Maybe the difficulty spikes hideously later on, but in spite of frequent deaths, I’m actually having enjoying puzzling my way through Eryi’s Action. It feels almost like a puzzle game disguised as a sadistic platformer, and there’s a strong vein of humour running through it all, even if the player is the butt of all the jokes. I may well go back to this one once my backlog is a little shorter, so consider this a guarded recommendation. Now, on to the next – check back tomorrow for another indie game on The Chopping Block.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Chopping Block – ‘Eryi’s Action’

With nearly five-thousand bundles sold (at the time of this writing), Groupee’s Build a Bundle 3 is in full swing.

The Build a Bundle concept varies from other indie game bundles in that it allows the buyer to select the games they want out of a predetermined set. For this specific Build a Bundle, there are nine games available to choose from. The minimum price is $1.50 for two games (50 cents cheaper than the last Build a Bundle), and of course buyers can always pay more, as 20% of every sale will benefit Child’s Play charity.

The games to select from are:

Secret of the Magic Crystals (PC, Mac, Steam, DRM Free)
Detour (PC, Steam only)
Omegalodon (PC, Mac, Desura, DRM Free)
War in a Box: Paper Tanks (PC, Mac, Desura)
APOX (PC, Steam only)
CreaVures (PC, Mac, Steam, DRM Free)
Chrome/SpecForce (PC, Steam only)
Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World (PC, Mac, Steam)
99 Levels to Hell (PC, Mac, Desura)

At checkout, buyers are given the option to choose more than just two games, and the required minimum automatically updates as more games are chosen. Also, Groupees does not email product keys out. Instead, buyers can find their product codes on their Groupees.com profiles.

Groupees is also offering bonuses for each sales milestone that the bundle makes. So far, the community has unlocked eleven soundtracks and albums. The next milestone comes at five-thousand units sold (soon) and will unlock a Steam copy of ‘Avencast: Rise of the Mage’ for everyone.

Build a Bundle 3 lasts for another week, so head to the Groupees website here, and get started picking out your games.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Build a Bundle 3′: Choose Your Games, Choose Your Price

The last few weeks have been packed with news about Steam’s new peer-to-peer approval service, Greenlight. Though meant to help indie developers bring their games to a larger market, the service has criticized left and right by consumers and developers alike while Valve have been steadily tuning the outlet to their liking. Everything from changing the text on rating buttons from “Like” to “Would you be interested in this game if it were on Steam” to more major  actions such as censoring certain games for sensitive content has been done at this point, but nothing seems to have struck a cord as much as their most recent change.

Since being announced as a free service accessible to all developers, Greenlight has been met with a flood of submissions. While mostly from legitimate developers, many have come from trolls and civilians submitting the works of others, somewhat diluting the legitimacy of real Greenlight entries. To remedy this, Valve decided to institute a mandatory $100 dollar donation in order to submit ones project; their way of keeping submissions true to Greenlight’s intended purpose.  When word of this mandatory donation reached the public, it was met with mixed commentary from the public as some felt Valve were going back on their promise of a free chance for all indies to make it on to Steam.

The subject especially interested us here at IGM, so we decided to sit down and get our opinions out to the public. We have asked writers from around the office as well as a wide net of developers to present their stance on the Greenlight fee and this is what we’ve come up with.

IGM Staff

Dominic Tarason - Senior Editor

There’s nothing quite like a $100 fee to make people stop, read the rules, and then question whether you’re serious about trying to get this game marketed and on a major storefront. The clever twist here is that Valve aren’t pocketing the money themselves, but rather forwarding it to the Childs Play charity. In theory, time-wasters get filtered out, and some sick kids get happier.

Personally, I’m in favour of it, with some small reservations. The number itself can be argued to hell and back, but it’s not a figure outside any serious commercial developers reach. I poked around for a point of reference, and the price for an indie press table (the smallest you can get, with no additional promotional materials) at the San Diego Comic Con is $500. While there’s some grumbling on Twitter about the chosen figure, it does bring us back to the purpose of Greenlight: It’s a system whereby established indie developers can forward their existing audience to a voting page in order to fast-track them onto Steam, where they have a good chance at making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you’re not sure that your game has a market to begin with, and you’re unwilling to put $100 on the line, then there’s nothing stopping you from releasing via Desura, the Humble Store, directly to your audience or via one of a hundred other routes and raise some money that way. Steam is the biggest and most high-profile store, but it’s not always the first and last step. Even indie classics like Aquaria started out selling direct to fans before getting a larger distribution deal.

In the end, the simple fact of the matter is that something had to be done. It’s not unreasonable to say that the majority of submissions to Greenlight were from people who either failed to read the rules to begin with (lots of people putting their favourite non-Steam AAA titles up), or were trying to market games that never would have had a chance to begin with. No shortage of ‘my first game’ projects using FPS Maker or similar drag-and-drop toolkits. Personally, I think this should stop the worst of it. If it manages that, it’ll have done its job.

Alex Wilkinson - News Editor

Valve had to change some policies regarding the Greenlight project as when it originally launched it was far too open to abuse from people submitting ridiculous ”joke” ideas. In small numbers, this can be vaguely funny, however with the continued string of absurd titles being placed on Greenlight, Valve needed to create some barriers to entry. The $100 entry fee is a suitable interim solution as it will stop most people dead in their tracks and so will solve the problems, however this is not a good long term solution. It does slightly alienate a lot of new developers of course $100 is not a great deal but I feel Valve would be remiss if they do not consider better development of the Greenlight project beyond what they have already produced.

Gareth Kay (the developer from Vineland) did sugest to me on this matter that Valve should reduce the fee and instead have a valid website and company name to have to prove authenticity. This i feel is already a better idea that would work for the medium to longer term, although it is anyone’s guess where Valve will end up on the Greenlight project I have every faith it will work out, hell look at Steam when it first came out compared to now!

Jamell Brown - Editor-in-Chief

While I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague’s, I think I’m going to play somewhat the devil’s advocate on the subject. Honestly, the idea of a fee — or mandatory donation — seems like a quick and easy way to incentivize developers to take a more serious look at their product before moving to that outlet. With no barriers to entry, what reason do I have to not throw the Pacman-esque flash game I just created on Greenlight? Worst case scenario, it sits there and I’m no worse off, best case it gets on Steam and I make tons of money! What I think most people are more upset about is how sudden and random the institution of this fee seems.

Valve is a pretty big company with plenty of experience in the digital distribution market. Greenlight is far from the first channel developers have had to go digital, Desura, the Humble Store and others like them have shown that there are tons of indies out there looking to jump into a larger market. As seasoned as Valve is, it seems like they would have observed these markets and known that there would be  a lot of people trying to get onto Steam right away, thus giving them a reason to institute some barrier from the offset to stem the tide entries. By starting off as a free service and then hastily throwing a fee into the mix, Valve virtually promised every Steam hopeful the world before shutting the doors in their faces. Greenlight has gone from an attempt at equal representation to a $100 lottery ticket over night, and in that sense, Valve has somewhat let their community down.

What I would prefer to see is Valve pocketing the money instead of hiding behind this “donation” as a way to try and offset some criticism. If the money could provide incentive for Valve to put more resources behind moderating the content and comments on Greenlight, the overall quality of the service would improve and more people would actively scout the games there, increasing everyone’s chances of getting on to Steam. Whatever Valve decides to do next should be carefully planned and calculated, hastily throwing out solutions is only going to make their audience more irritated.

Developers

Sergey Mohov (@krides)

In my opinion, Valve did what was best for Valve in all regards. Greenlight is not a charity system, it’s not meant to help anyone per se, it’s only there because the old Valve’s review process could miss some of the potentially lucrative titles (and god knows it did: Offspring Fling was first rejected, and we all know that story). Now, I personally don’t think that there’s something wrong with this situation: acting in your company’s best interest can hardly be a reason to blame anyone. On the other hand, I think that we, as developers, should also act in our own best interest, or at least that is what I am going to do.

I am not ready to pay $100 for an objectively thin chance of getting published: whether this money goes to a charity, to Valve, Microsoft, Apple, US government or Willy Wonka. I just don’t have $100 to throw away to be a member of this elite club. Fortunately, paying the XBLIG and AppStore fees still means that you get your game(s) published and is likely to stay this way. Clearly, Valve believes Steam to be superior than all the other platforms, and, to be fair, in a way it is. I just don’t believe that it can work miracles. As far as I can see, publishing still doesn’t automagically mean profit, so what you are really buying when you pay the Greenlight fee is a chance to get a chance to sell a game, which is of course not exactly money well spent.

For now, I will stick to this belief and see how Greenlight develops. So far, everything already went wrong in it, and, hopefully, Valve will come up with a somewhat more feasible system to banish trolls from the system rather than building a dollar bill barrier. The good news for me is that I’m not forced to pay for Dédale, since it’s already in the system. As for my next project, I am beginning to think that, for all of its flaws, Windows 8 is a more indie-friendly environment now.

Phil Charlise (@zoombapup)

I think the $100 thing is a red herring. What concerns me more is the quality of the comments on games. Not very mature. Ultimately paying $100 to be hurled abuse at like I just posted a puppy video on Youtube is not my idea of good business.

Craig Stern (@sinisterdesign)

The amount is excessive, and will disproportionately hurt small developers barely scraping by on their sales. Weeding out fake entries is a good idea, but there are other ways of doing it that don’t hurt small indie developers. At the very least, they should make it a deposit that gets returned when a game is found to be a legitimate entry. If they’re really concerned about discoverability, though, they need to fix their interface and implement smart sorting. Charging an arbitrary fee just to be considered is a lazy way of trying to boost discoverability.

Cale Bradbury (@netgrind)

If the game is really good enough for Steam and your completely strapped for cash you could probably find someone to cover it. People need to stop worrying about Steam in the early, still concept games, just build cool shit.

Michael Louisseize (@micleee)

We think it’s great, it insures that all the projects on Greenlight are from actual serious developers. If you can’t put down $100 on your game, you aren’t serious enough about it.

As you can see, there are as many sides to the argument as there are people to argue the point. Since the first wave of games moved from Greenlight to Steam, most people are really beginning to see Greenlight in the more positive light I believe it deserves. What do you think about the matter? We want to hear your thoughts. Drop a comment in the area below, or head to our forums to strike up a real conversation. If you want to check out some of our favourite Greenlight projects, keep an eye out for IGM Limelight every Friday afternoon right here on IGM.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Problem With Greenlight – An IGM Roundtable