But still there are more new indie games than AAA titles out there I care about, it's not a tragedy if there only 2 to 6 outstanding games per year that reach me through the noise, mostly by direct recommendation.
The best thing about Greenlight is that pre-2005 games get some new exposure and even patches, like in the case of Jets'n'Guns. So if you want to stretch the music industry analogy as others did, you currently not only competing with the ever increasing amount of new releases but also with back catalogs on the same platform.
Another problem with an awful lot of indie games (especially those 40% unplayed fillers games from bundles, which are not even always strictly speaking Indie) is that you can see that there was little to no user testing, so they are just not fun or even impossible to play on specific not too exotic configurations.
Just to name a few (each of these happened in at least two games):
- no way to remap keys
- no way to remap mouse buttons or game ignores windows swapped buttons
- fixed resolutions
- optimized for small resolution,
resulting in insane mouse travel on today's native screen resolutions
(just drop that retro stick if you just cant effort a proper artist please.)
- no way to run a game windowed
- touch optimized ports from Android don't even register windows touch events.
- Content is cropped off screen
with wider aspect radios with no way to change resolution.
All those quality issues are a big deal. Sadly, the industry (and customers) as a whole reject quality checks and validation.
Valve does less QA of steam releases than they used to (because this was a part of the reviled 'curation'), Microsoft and Sony have been forced to incrementally phase out certification checks (because developers complained constantly about the cost of those checks), etc.
The end result is utterly broken games go up on Steam and have to get pulled, and patches roll out on consoles that corrupt saves and do other nasty stuff like that. It's a mess.
On the bright side, this does increase access to storefronts, so the one or two marvelous games by people who can't afford cert or get the attention of Valve's curators are able to sell to their customers now. (Assuming they actually reach them, which hasn't actually gotten any better... that's gotten worse.)
Comments
But still there are more new indie games than AAA titles out there I care about, it's not a tragedy if there only 2 to 6 outstanding games per year that reach me through the noise, mostly by direct recommendation.
The best thing about Greenlight is that pre-2005 games get some new exposure and even patches, like in the case of Jets'n'Guns. So if you want to stretch the music industry analogy as others did, you currently not only competing with the ever increasing amount of new releases but also with back catalogs on the same platform.
Another problem with an awful lot of indie games (especially those 40% unplayed fillers games from bundles, which are not even always strictly speaking Indie) is that you can see that there was little to no user testing, so they are just not fun or even impossible to play on specific not too exotic configurations.
Just to name a few (each of these happened in at least two games):
All those quality issues are a big deal. Sadly, the industry (and customers) as a whole reject quality checks and validation.
Valve does less QA of steam releases than they used to (because this was a part of the reviled 'curation'), Microsoft and Sony have been forced to incrementally phase out certification checks (because developers complained constantly about the cost of those checks), etc.
The end result is utterly broken games go up on Steam and have to get pulled, and patches roll out on consoles that corrupt saves and do other nasty stuff like that. It's a mess.
On the bright side, this does increase access to storefronts, so the one or two marvelous games by people who can't afford cert or get the attention of Valve's curators are able to sell to their customers now. (Assuming they actually reach them, which hasn't actually gotten any better... that's gotten worse.)
Thanks again, if you did that Escape Goat port for Steam, is a stellar example of a properly tested release.
Had much fun with it and works like a charm with the Xbox 360 Controller.