Talking about releasing our game on Greenlight.
Overview
I know that for some people getting on Steam Greenlight might not be that big of a deal. After all, you just need 100 bucks, a video of something, anything from what I can tell, and that is about it. However, I made sure we were at a BETA level and fairly bug free before even starting this process.
I have read all the articles and blogs regarding the greenlight process, but hope to share my experience in hopes of helping anyone else that might want to try this.
What I know
This isn't much except what I have read on here at this stage. The way Steam picks who gets lit and who doesn't almost seems like some sort of weighted neural net algorithm where nobody but steam can understand the neuron layers before output and after input. If you understand neural net programming you will know what I am referring to.
A Theory I have
I have read many articles stating that you have a better chance of getting lit if you publish on other sources as well, such as GOG or Humble Bundle. So I was wondering...do the people at steam watch these other stores and figure, "Whom, they are selling blah blah and blah! and making some money. Maybe we should greenlight them." I have to laugh when I think about this scenario, but if I was them I probably would do cross market analyzeation myself.
Initial Launch
As expected, all your family and friends will get on and vote 'yes' just because they want to placate you even if they don't play games....this lasted about a day. Maybe I should get more friends...
After that, the real votes started coming in. I was terrified by the number of "No" votes...then I found the stats button and was excited that we weren't too far off the stats of the top 50! Which also bothered me a bit that there are a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of haters out there. Even the top 50 games on greenlight struggle to keep 30%. Most of the time (from what I see from day to day) they are under that. So I started watching that instead of the vote counts. So if you put something up, don't have a heart attack at the negativity until you look at the stats of others.
The Haters
I feel I should address this. I don't know where it comes from, but there are a lot of angry people out there. Maybe they didn't get breast fed, got dropped a lot as a baby, or are just evil. I don't really know, but there are some people that will leave you the most sheathing hateful comments you could think of. Again, at first I took it personally, then I went to other greenlight games and one after another after another the same people were writing hateful stuff. I then looked at thier profiles and they are always usually the same...some guy that bought one FPS with 200 screen shots and a thousand badges of the same game. He is angry because your game isn't exactly like what "he" wants to play so therefore, you are a bad person with a bad game :) Thankfully Steam knows about these people and allows for you to delete their hate. I try not to delete anyone's comments, even negative, if they are legitimate. However, I found that people that don't create games are always the most critical. It goes with the territory. I just hope as a teen I wasn't that mean and hateful. In the end, like I said, we are doing fairly well as a percentage so I figure even the best games deal with this.
Check it out
I guess at this point since I don't have anymore data, I can only ask for your help. To vote and let us sell our game on Steam and generate some more revenue to build even bigger and better games! So please go here and click 'yes' :)
Until later when I have more to report, and in the spirit of Tiny Tim "God Bless us Every one!" :)
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