Any more of an arrogant guy and he’d not be talking about selling faith in a deity, but about worshipping him.
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Well the thing is theres only 390 early access games. If people are getting burned with so few games, imagine what happens when the steam gates opens, its going to mean that people dont trust anything but the featured list, so if you got your game on there its going to be a non-starter without publicity. In other words indies are killing the golden platform
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These games were created by big studios who do not go through Greenlight. They wouldn’t have to pay that money for the simple fact that they do not follow the same rules. The AAA games are very rarely bad enough that they are a problem, it is the indie developers who have brought Steam quality down so far.
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Here’s a flipside to the question - does Steam having a ton of crap on it actually hurt anyone except for other indie developers?
As a gamer, I’ve bought around 4 really crappy indie titles - including Neo Scavenger (which has made millions). But in doing so, I’ve also always known that I was tossing the dice on what was probably a crappy game.
The only times I’ve felt like I’ve really gotten burned has been on games with higher production value that just sort of sucked. Because here I felt like I was supposed to get a good game, and instead felt suckered into buying crap.
I think that the only people who really get hurt by tons of crappy games being on steam are the marginal indie developers who are trying to produce something good but also don’t have the resources that larger projects have. It’s really just projects like mine that need to rely heavily on steam’s organic traffic that get hurt by having a lot of noise.
I think that his problem with some of the projects in the video really revolve more about the feedback those games get in the user reviews. Giving games positive feedback to projects based on “I hope this might be good” later does actually cause a problem. And I think he’s right about that.
Outside of ideology - do you as a gamer end up accidentally buying the stuff that Sterling is complaining about?
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It’s not that hard to find actual users complaining about the lack of quality control on Steam. Whether they are actively hurt by it, or just annoyed by it I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think its really relevant though. Customers losing faith in quality control isn’t good for anyone.
And judging by Steam’s behavior with regard to increased greenlights - there are more customers spending more money. As with most businesses the loud, negative voices simply draw more attention.
Valve is a smart company and Steam is heavily analytics driven. You might hear more about Sterling or Greenlight gold because those critical comments go viral. Look at this discussion we’re having now. It’s controversial, and a lot of the stuff is funny (watch his greenlight video series).
But although there are loud voices being raised about ‘quality control’ - the dollars being spent likely tell another story - and explain why Valve has increased the number of greenlit titles instead of throttling them.
That said, I don’t think anyone wants Steam to turn into the App Store. There need to be barriers to entry to stop the flood of crap from being completely overwhelming.
The question we’re debating here is where you draw the line and how high should those barriers be.
Jim Sterling is one of GabeN’s angels. Those who are worthy will abide by his teachings.
That’s the point. I don’t know if Steam has crossed the line, but they are undoubtedly inching closer toward it. Right now, they have precious little competition. That isn’t an excuse to let yourself get sloppy though. Steam wouldn’t be the first dominant force in an industry to become complacent and allow themselves to falter. It’s easy to increase profits when you are the only game in town. It becomes much harder when competitors see your weakness and capitalize on them.
Even though I firmly believe Steam should be an open marketplace with both good and bad games, I do agree with the Jimquisition’s rules for Early Access. There are games users can purchase through Early Access that could barely inspire a decent Work In Progress thread in the forum. Early Access should be for games that are nearly done instead of recently started. That is a valid point. I don’t think Jim’s rules should be imposed by Valve, though. His rules should simply be followed by developers because it will benefit the developers if they follow those rules.
Additionally, Jim’s comments regarding the rating system at Steam are very valid. Steam’s ratings are simple Positive vs Negative, and that does not work quite right. I would prefer a rating system like Amazon has where there is a range from 1 to 5. If a game is in Early Access and a user likes certain things about the game, then that user will often select Positive and then post an explanation saying they hope the game gets better. That is not the same thing as a five star rating at Amazon. At Amazon, a product like that (unfinished; half broken) might get 2 or 3 stars.
The keys to any “Long Tail” style business are the rating and search functions. The rating system at Steam seems simple enough, but it actually protects mediocre games that should be getting 2 or 3 star ratings instead of positive ratings. If a product at Steam has a 90% positive rating, how many stars would that have been using Amazon’s rating system? Most people assume 90% positive rating at Steam would mean an Amazon style score of 4-5 stars, but that is actually wrong. Each positive score could be 3-5 stars, and there is no way to figure out how many of the positive scores would have been 3, 4, and 5 without reading each of the feedbacks at Steam.
Maybe nearly all of the users would have selected 3 stars or maybe they would have selected 5 stars. Either way, it could theoretically lead to a game with 90% positive scores. There is a big difference between a 3 star product and a 5 star product at Amazon. There is not at Steam. At Steam, a 3 star product can attain a 90% positive rating. If Steam switched to a 5 star style rating system, it would clean things up more than any pay barriers or additional rules and/requirements.
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The reality is that there are some fairly unique issues involved with rating systems and indie games. I don’t think a more ‘nuanced’ system would solve this. All it would do is allow for more vocal minorities to amplify their effect by weighting the reviews more toward either 1 or 5.
If you really go through Steam reviews for indie titles in detail (which I’ve been doing lately for research) what you’ll find again and again with kickstarted titles is that the initial backers will almost unanimously give the game top notch reviews. These are potentially large audiences that feel personally invested in a product. This is an audience that will take to the product in mass and hand out top honors to a game, because there are potentially tens of thousands of them who feel like they had a part in the production.
You can see this on tons of games (large and small) that have gone through kickstarter. Backers look at a game they backed differently. Some as part of it, or as having a personal connection to the developer, etc.
Other problems involve ratings for mobile games. “I loved it on my phone” does not mean a phone port makes a good pc game experience, and certainly not at those price points.
The reality is that the pc game industry has changed a lot in the last 10 years. And there is just going to be more games, by boat loads than there ever have been before.
In terms of solving the real problems and ‘long tail’ issues specific to indie games, what is probably best (and what I’m going to guess Steam is going to highlight much more shortly) is the ‘curation’ system. Certain entities or reviewers will end up becoming official gate keepers and traffic drivers much more so than they are now.
I’m no perfectionist but I didn’t even consider releasing my game until I had it mostly finished. I played it through over and over until I was so bored of it I couldn’t stand to play it again. It’s nine hours long, so that was a bit of a job.Then I put it on Greenlight, Amazon and the Playstore. It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty sure (well, perhaps I’m just as blind as those other “devs” and am only fooling myself) it’s miles ahead of what he showcased, and can be played all to the way to end.
I’m tempted to make the crappiest game I can think of to see if I can’t get him to rant about it! That would be funny. I don’t like him ragging on Unity though. He’s really got it his hate on for unity games. Well, crappy Unity games with free assets, but still makes me a bit defensive of my beloved engine!
I don’t think Steam having a ton of crap hurts gamers. It just hurts developers because as the market becomes more flooded, it becomes harder for players to discover indie/small (but possibly great quality) games.
I don’t think Jim is anti-Unity. Based on his videos that I have watched, I get the feeling he is really tired of playing poorly made games that use the stock Unity character controller and many of the same 3D assets as other poorly made Unity games. As a game reviewer, he is probably bored to tears of games like that, so he is making a valid point.
Very few people have enough of both design and coding skills to build an entire game from scratch. Personally, I think it is fine to release games with assets purchased from the asset store. For example, if an indie programmer needs 3D assets, then the asset store makes sense. Similarly, if an indie artist needs some code snippets, then the asset store makes sense. The asset store can fill in some gaps for indies for programmers and for artists. But some people want to make a game without coding anything and without designing any artwork. I think that is what Jim was railing against with his Unity Asset Store comments.
Obviously you could just waver the fee for any game that has made over 100k sales (on or off Steam) to fix that issue. No biggie.
Another suggestion to fix Green Light, hold people accountable for their votes.
Do this, every dollar you spend on Steam you get 1 vote. You can then use those votes in Green Light games with as many votes on a game as you’d like. If the game does not get enough votes, you get you votes back. If it does, you can only get you votes back if you buy the game.
The vote would then fairly represent consumer spending and it would make the votes actually MEAN something and not just someone going “Yeah, that looks cool I guess.”
Of course, then you’d have to do something about vote inflation. Maybe have votes expire with time, or have a limited ammount of votes available at a time and they expire by the oldest votes.
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I believe that it hurts the consumer as well.
There was a time that you could count on Steam-sold games having a minimum level of quality. Even if you did not enjoy the game as much as you wanted, even if you felt you did not play the game long enough to get your money’s worth, you were at least assure of getting something that was a complete game which had been held to a certain set of standards by the people at Valve.
Now you can end up purchasing a game that has no content whatsoever. There is a “game” being sold on Steam whose name I do not remember that was reviewed by Jim Sterling recently. The game sold for something like $40 or $50. You could lurch across the room and down a small hallway. That was it. You could not interact with anything. There was nothing going on in the game. As Sterling basically put it, there wasn’t even enough to be considered a proof of concept.
And yet people had given it a high rating on Steam.
Or just watch Sterling’s two videos on “Air Control”. Seriously. Go watch them. That game was so horrendous that it was hysterical. (At least Steam no longer sells that one.)
I have personally bought two games now that were looked decent, had some very positive reviews, yet were complete garbage. Another game I downloaded the demo for had controls that barely worked, yet also had good reviews.
I don’t know whether the review system is being gamed, or if the human psychological quirk of overvaluing what we already possess is the fault, but for many games you simple cannot trust the reviews. This doesn’t even begin to consider the number of people who review empty Early Access games positively based on what they “hope” the game will become.
Unbiased curating is needed. Valve needs to move Steam back to having every game reviewed by hand by their people before being deemed worth of the service. I am all for requiring an application fee so that there is money to pay those reviewers. Ultimately, I think it will benefit the customers, as well as indie game developers who produce quality products.
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Reviewing each and every game is what is needed I agree. Unfortunately, with the amount of games being produced these days the wait for the review process would be huge unless they had dozens of full-time reviewers.
This is all so reminiscent of the Great North American Video Game Crash. First, people saw games as a quick n easy money maker so everyone started making games. Even cereal companies made games to get in on the action. New companies were formed daily to create games. We can see this same kind of thing happening now only it is basically Indie devs flooding into the game making biz. Second, there was no quality control. Publishers and retailers eager to get their cut of the money accepted nearly anything and everything to sell. There were other factors but I believe it was these two that were by far the greatest culprits.
You can see this by looking at the strategy Nintendo used when they basically single-handedly saved the NA Video Game industry. The two things they focused on were 1) issuing a Seal of Quality. They did not accept any and every game. Each game had to be of at least a certain quality. That helped restore consumer faith in games. And 2) they limited the amount of games that could be produced by their 3rd party developers so the market would not be flooded.
We seem to be heading down the same road now as we were 30 years ago again all driven by people chasing money. We even see the race to the bottom with game prices happening now the same as it did back then. That was another thing Nintendo addressed. They didn’t allow their developers to destroy the value of the game market. You did not see any new games released for $15 or less. People say it will never happen again and maybe it won’t but it is uncanny the way history seems to be repeating itself.
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Oh, I get that, hence the “crappy Unity games with free assets” disclaimer. I’m a lone developer myself and am not much of an artist or coder so I rely on heavily edited premade scripts and art. I agree with Jim that tweaking the assets goes a long way to making it stand out from all the other Unity games with the same assets.And buying assets that all match is a long way from cobbling together a “game” made from all the free things you can find.
I did notice that a lot of those videos he showcased used DAZ figures which makes me wonder if they really paid $500 for a license to release a crappy game. I don’t think so. I even saw some models sold on DAZ that are not covered by the game license. Granted, they COULD be just make 2d graphics from DAZ stuff. It’s hard to say.
I spent years working on my game, learning to do everything I needed to create it and sort of bothers me that there are so many crappy games being sold which I think are much worse than mine (which is floundering in Greenlight) but that just makes me work harder on my next project
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I think that globalization plus new technology, which slashes development costs, which in turn opens the flood gates will soon become the REAL threat to most developers today.
Not a lack of quality control.
Doubt it, whilst workflows for art and engines are still so convoluted it takes hours if not days to even get started and months to get a small scene together worthy of any note. (Provided you have the skillset in the first place) to pull this off, games will always be too difficult and time consuming for average Joe.
Obviously simple games that don’t require many resources are vast and many, (or shit games)…
I’ve yet to see a sign of any development outfits making headway towards simplicity, the day Unity looks like a real-time V-ray renderer packed with in-built modelling tools you just drop textures on, procedural generators that build cities in seconds and drag n’ drop interactive GUI, Cinematic and VFX systems. Is the day we are all screwed, but it’s not going to happen any time in the near future.
I see it as many more will try and many more will fail at this moment. I don’t think anyone is exempt, myself included…
You know how Valve could fix most of the issues?
Have a decent return policy. You can play for up to 30 minutes (depending on the game’s length) after purchase and then decide whether you keep it or not.
The biggest issue with quality control is that it’s arbitrary. Sure, Sterling can look at Air Control and Hotline Miami and imagine that there’s nothing between really crappy and really good, but that doesn’t change the fact that reality just looks a little bit different.
As soon as Valve starts to remove games due to bad quality, there would be (perfectly justified) crying about:
“How can X still be here, if Y was removed?”
“How was X removed, despite Y still being here?”
No, just make sure that lying/deceptive developers are punished accordingly and let me return a game if I fell for it.
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