What’s transpired in the last few months? Seems like a lot of things have changed.
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You can publish without having to play the boring and repetitive game known as Greenlight.
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There was a massive increase in the number of new games added to Steam per month. It is now easier than ever to get a game on Steam, but harder than ever to get the game noticed once it is on Steam.
Seems like it would discourage frivolous submissions. Why pay $100 to publish a game that you don’t expect to make anything from?
Smaller games might be forced into bundles.
Has this improved the overall market place from the “fields of shovelware” that discourages us so?
People don’t work like that though. They will keep spending if they can afford it. You get it back once game hits $1,000 in sales. No idea why they bother, but there you go.
They should simply have a curated market and an uncurated one. It costs $500 non recoverable fee to attempt the curated market. This fee covers curation and quality.
People will take offence though as they want to be in the curated special one and they don’t want to pay $500.
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Yeah as they said the Greenlight went away. Absolutely awesome thing to get rid of that. I think it will be good for niche games as well as just bringing in a much more diverse supply of games. As a gamer I am quite happy with the changes I see.
Each week I’ve been checking it out and finding some cool stuff. And some I don’t think would have been on Steam or at least would have been greatly delayed due to the targeting groups that were monitoring Greenlight. So glad to have them out of there! 
Pixel Traffic:Circle Rush (no idea why it is called Pixel Traffic) it seems like a very simple well-made little games that young kids would love. A good clean introduction to gaming. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it was addictive enough to let an adult waste a few minutes here and there.
Still Not Dead (watched Jim Sterling do a review on this. Looked like a very solid fun game to me. And Jim said the same so that might count for something… maybe… not really a Sterling fan but I do find he covers so many games that others miss)
Overall… maybe others don’t see much difference or don’t like the more level playing field that has been introduced but I see more games that I want to buy than ever before. And of course I think this is the big concern of game devs really. So far I am keeping up with them fairly well. I think there are probably 1 to 2 games released per week that I will buy. And the nice thing about that is just the sheer variety ya know? I like games where I can just jump in and play some and get out. And having a variety of different experiences like that just makes it even better. Of course, ideally can save progress and be playing through a dozen or so games bit by bit over time.
I don’t know I just like it. I think putting Greenlight in the trashcan where it belongs was the right thing to do. It’s a much more level playing field now. And that is a good thing IMO for gamers and for some game devs.
Of course, the proof is always in the actual gameplay. And I only just now bought Necrosphere, Xenia and Still Not Dead. That will be it for my purchases this week and possibly next. Will be checking these out sometime this week. Maybe tonight.
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I was browsing through the steam new releases and it looks like (based on number of ratings) unless your game gets not going to sell anything (lets say less then 1k units). And it wont matter if its bad or mediocre, unless its “excellent”, or great.
Castle Story
Release date: Aug 17, 2017 Price: $24.99
Score rank: 8% Userscore: 49% Old userscore: 48%
Owners: 207,627 ± 15,286
http://steamspy.com/app/227860
Darkwood
Release date: Aug 17, 2017 Price: $14.99
Score rank: 92% Userscore: 95% Old userscore: 95%
Owners: 81,757 ± 9,593
http://steamspy.com/search.php?s=darkwood
West of Loathing
Release date: Aug 10, 2017 Price: $10.99
Score rank: 99% Userscore: 98% Old userscore: 98% Metascore: 87%
Owners: 79,404 ± 9,454
http://steamspy.com/search.php?s=West+of+Loathing
Super bloody hockey
Release date: Aug 17, 2017 Price: $7.99
Score rank: 68% Userscore: 88% Old userscore: 90%
Owners: 7,352 ± 2,877
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@Aiursrage2k Yeah I’ve been keeping an eye on that Blood Hockey game. I can see why that is so popular comparatively speaking. It’s just a very cool idea and seems well made. It’s unique, right? First, there aren’t many hockey games on Steam to begin with so it helped fill that hole. And second it seems like it is the only one in 2D like those old 8-bit/16-bit sports games people used to love. Then throw in the blood hockey aspect and… kind of no competition.
The few other hockey games that are there seem to be mainly manager simulation games or 3D VR games. I’m not big on sports video games but BH at least looks like it would be fun.
This game looks great I found it while searching.
Release date: Jul 27, 2017 Price: $14.99
Old userscore: 91% Metascore: 65%
Owners: 2,647 ± 1,726
And darkside detective i followed after playing a demo on gamejolt.
Release date: Jul 27, 2017
Price: $12.99
Score rank: 92% Userscore: 95% Old userscore: 95% Metascore: 71%
Owners: 9,411 ± 3,255
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@Aiursrage2k Those look interesting. I remember you telling me about Darkside Detective. Some very nice looking pixel art but I don’t often play games like that. That would be one I’d grab real cheap on sale to try it out but otherwise I’m not the target so wouldn’t pay $13 for it. $3 sure. And that does have some meaning there because there are a lot of games (COD and just many others) I wouldn’t buy even for $1.
I just checked out the 3 games I bought. Necrosphere is very interesting. Very well done. I’m not so keen on the twitch reflexes needed for some areas but so far it has been pretty easy (challenging but not outright frustrating) just a couple of spots required Flash-like reactions. 
Still Not Dead is very solid and interesting as well. I’ll have to give that another go. Xenia I intended to play for just 5 minutes and then get some work done around the house and ended up playing it for nearly 30 minutes.
As soon as I was walking around and thought “wonder if there are any secret areas? Because this would be a perfect wall here to make breakable” struck it with my sword CRUMBLE and opened a new area with treasure I was pretty much sold. I hate pressing up arrow to jump though. Someone in the modern Indie times seemed to come up with that and it always throws me off. It’s still a good bit of fun but they need to make that another key. Or actually might just be much better with a controller. I didn’t waste time hooking one up earlier.
But yeah that Xenia… I am the target market for such a game. And would have been happy (so far at least) had the game cost more than the $4.50 I paid. Easily $7 to $10 for it.
I think it goes back to what you’ve said and I’ve said many times. A person just needs to find the people in the target audience. That’s it. If someone sees a game that is exactly what they like and have been looking for $10 won’t scare them off (unless other reviews are all bad which I hate the dumbass trolling groups on Steam trying to eliminate games they feel aren’t “good enough” but that is another ramble and at least they are out of Greenlight now). And if it is a game (even very well made game) a person has no interest in even $1 they won’t buy it. I am dead serious many games (including modern AAA games) I wouldn’t spend even $1 on. Heck more than that if they were on Steam for Free I wouldn’t play them.
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Xenia doesn’t look as good as Rastan from the 80s, so I don’t think it’s good enough for me. I appreciate the author wants to make the game but I would find it difficult to enjoy, even though it is more detailed than Rastan. The reason for this is that Rastan is better made and has higher production values.
I suppose there is a quality bar, even if it might be the retro originals.
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I used to like Rastan… mainly for the theme and hope that it would have more to it. I couldn’t care any less that Xenia doesn’t have graphics like Rastan. The actual game is much better than Rastan ever was. Now sure if it did look like Rastan I wouldn’t be opposed to it. lol But it not looking like it doesn’t change how it plays one bit.
It’s definitely not perfect… the up arrow to jump I hate that… it never feels right in any game I’ve played that uses it. But overall I can see I will easily get my $4.50 (and even $7… possibly $10) worth out of this. Honestly for the price it is spot on I think. Very good value for the money.
I played this game Atomine because I liked the art style and its the same type of game I am making (but it felt very underdeveloped in terms of gameplay (especially for a rogue like where you have to keep repeating the same gameplay loop – and I am not even working on a roguelike).
Atomine
Genre: Action, Indie
Release date: May 4, 2017 Price: $9.99
Owners: 1,765 ± 1,409
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Looks to me like if you put in the effort, you can bypass the weird crowd-pleasing aspect and go straight to the store.
People will play anything if it’s well-made and fun, it seems.
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Now I just wish the app stores would follow, and start charging $100 per game submission too.
Currently the app stores are not rewarding innovation in any way, they’re rewarding asset flippers and low effort game re-skinners. Of course the big boys get a season pass as usual, but us struggling indies, we’re stuck in the middle of all this.
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Yeah exactly I want to buy immortal planet and darkside detective and the $10+ wont matter to me. For the still not dead i would pay $5 for it because it would be an impulse buy for me. The other games I wouldnt be interested in no matter the price. And pricing your games too cheap you might get people who arent that interested in taht type of game and give it a lower rating.
Price has no impact on the sales, infact steam is geared to promote top grossing. I also think by pricing your game higher you will have higher exceptions of the games quality and therefore give it a higher chance of doing well.
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Nobody knows your product’s value better than you do.
Granted, there’s a lot of people trying to sell lead for the price of gold in this world, you never see anyone doing the inverse.
As insidious as consumers make high prices out to be, a good product sold too cheaply is an affront to God.
I absolutely agree this is a risk and does happen. In fact, I think if the price is very cheap like just 99 cents or maybe even just $2 or so I believe there are people who would buy it just to leave a negative review to “make a statement”.
So first there is the risk that they probably won’t like it and are only buying it because it is cheap so that leads to a negative review. And then you have a bunch of people who seem to be on some kind of crusade on Steam who I believe buy many games that are super cheap just to leave a negative review (easy to spot… some cheap game will have many positive reviews and then mixed in every once in a while is a review with nothing to it except something along the lines of “Why is this garbage on Steam?” etc).
So it is probably a 50/50 chance of getting that negative review if a person is simply trying to price according to value and they figure well it doesn’t have great presentation or is otherwise rough so I will make it cheap. Or possibly even more like a 60% to 70% chance of getting a negative review by pricing any game too low that does not have superb presentation or seems like a mobile game (which then turns into a review “another pos mobile game on here”).
Remember that people don’t need to pay anything for a game if they just want to leave a bad review. They can buy the game, play it briefly, write a nasty negative review, and then refund the game.
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I think the lower the price the more likely they are to do that. I’d need to research more to know for certain but I suspect that such people likely buy several games in a batch to negative review. At $1 or $2 each it would be much less of an obstacle than if $10 or so each.
I just don’t the understand the logic of these people trying to control things. If they would sit back and think but a second or two it all is basically the way it should be.
If someone has labored long & hard on all areas of a game and set the price at $10+ accordingly that makes sense and of course most people don’t seem to have a problem with that.
With just a bit of logic… someone laboring on graphics but nothing else (or maybe they did but graphics is their strength and logic isn’t so) the game plays rough and they price it at less than $10 maybe say $5 that makes sense and shouldn’t be an issue. By that same token if someone has labored on the game all except the presentation or again maybe they did but graphics are not their strength… so they set the price at lower than $10 accordingly again that makes perfect sense.
Steam basically seems to be the way it should be when I look at games and the prices devs have set. Just there are people on some kind of holy crusade.
Like they lack the common sense to understand yes the game is rough to play that is why it is $5. Or yes the presentation is not so great and that is why the game is $5. In both cases if everything was top notch the price would most likely be $10 or more.
That is just logical. If a game was more than an achievement hunt it would be more than $1 or $2. It does not take a ton of brainpower to “get” this.
The only real issue I see is that too often devs seem to be pricing games too low. I rarely see them pricing them too high.