| Matt Robb |
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Um, it's a voting system. Doesn't that basically require it to favor hype?
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| John Polson |
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"established fan base" is interesting to dissect. I looked up some of the new picks on Twitter, and several games/companies have under 100 followers (and similarly small Facebook "likes"). I have nothing against Twitter or FB, but I find it interesting that in a day of so much social media hype these games get the popular vote on Steam but are not so popular otherwise.
I guess this reaffirms to Valve that they are their own social media machine. How devs go about establishing a fan base, if not on Twitter on Facebook or by using one of these gaming tropes that keeps getting voted, would be worth exploring then, perhaps? I feel like indies are told FB and Twitter outreach is vital to their growth, but it seems unnecessary to get Greenlit, which in their world, is the holy grail. |
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| Maria Jayne |
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I've been voting regularly on steam greenlight recently, I'm surprised how many games aren't even ready to go on steam, yet they have a marketing pitch anyway. That seems wrong to me, like they are being voted for without any real evidence of quality.
I was also a little bothered by the amount of iphone/android games being ported over with apparent minimum effort. I worry this sort of system is pandering to what players hope for rather than what is actually produced, if that turns out to be the case, the quality of games on steam will decline. |
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| Kenneth Blaney |
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The title, I think, is not surprising. Fear is a fairly easy emotion to tap into on a low budget... in fact, the history of film would suggest that the low budget helps. That is, the less you see of a monster the scarier it is. In earlier horror films the low special effect budget required directors to work in such a way that didn't reveal the obvious 'fakeness' of a monster. The answer was to simply show less of the monster and more of the human reactions to the monster.
That trend is alive and well today in video games. Consider two well known horror games that are known for being scary (not action or whatever): "Slender" and "Amnesia". Both games are centered almost exclusively around not knowing whether or not you are in danger at any given moment. In both cases, the major monsters are mostly hidden from view and you are generally spending your time running away from them. When you really spend time to look at the 3d models, however, all of the horror drains away (The Slender Man is actually a pretty silly model if you look at a still). To that end, since deciding to vote is based on ability to draw an instant emotional reaction, and fear is readily tappable by low budget teams, horror games are supported by Greenlight. |
| Justin Sawchuk |
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Yeah at least its not more inidie platformers I could do without ever playing one of those again.
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