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Valve have pushed another 50 games through the Steam Greenlight system, which by my count finally pushes us over the limit. There are now officially too many games. Please cease and desist all game manufacturing immediately. This is not a drill.

As always, Valve explained the way methods by which these particular fifty games were selected:

These titles were selected on the same criteria we have been using in the past: Votes in Greenlight give us a hugely valuable point of data in gauging community interest along with external factors such as press reviews, crowd-funding successes, performance on other similar platforms, and awards and contests to help form a more complete picture of community interest in each title.

This doesn’t mean you can buy the games on Steam yet, just that they’ll be getting a contract, a release manager, and will be able to release on the distribution platform when the game’s are ready. Some of them are already available to buy elsewhere, so it shouldn’t take too long for a few to appear. Catlateral Damage, RymdResa and No Photos, Please are amongst those accepted this time.

Steam Greenlight’s problems are well-documented, though many of those qualms have been replaced a different kind of concern: that there are too many games. Notably, Jeff “Avadon” Vogel writing about the ‘indie bubble’ bursting as the market is flooded. I’m unconvinced.

But I do think the now constant influx of games, through Greenlight and Early Access and elsewhere, is changing the industry faster than anyone can keep up. It’s hard to review a game when that game is likely to have changed significantly within a day/week/month of your words being published. It’s hard to decide when to review a game when they’re sold before they’re finished. When is a game even “out” now? We’ve come to rely on platforms, shops and critics as filters, helping us to decide what games to ignore and which to pay attention to. The filters are now getting clogged, and some of the filters aren’t even filters anymore. Some are taps.

It’s still better than the alternative, which is fewer games, less to write about, less that’s innovative and interesting, and fewer developers who can afford to eat. So, you know. Don’t actually stop. Check out the full list and think back on the bad old days.

Thinking back to the mid-80’s and the golden age of indie (‘bedroom’) programming, the bubble only burst during the emergence of 16 bit systems with more complicated coding requirements and the rapid acceleration of graphical power (who wanted to play Jet Set Willy when you could have Shadow Of The Beast?). Seeing as graphics have pretty much come to a standstill and barriers to programming have dropped somewhat, I’m pretty sure the ‘indie bubble’ will be around for a while yet.

*goes off down the newsagents to buy some 1p sweets, PROPER Roast Beef Monster Munch with nuggets of beef flavour at the bottom… and the new Dizzy game for £1.99*

Anyone have an idea why Drox Operative isnt making the cut? Are there too few people voting for it while there is a vocal minority of fanatics pushing for it? Soldak already has one or two games on Steam so I dont see what the hold up is or why they would even need greenlight to start with.

Probably. I knew it would be mentioned repeatedly here if it didn’t make the cut but I have no idea what the game is or what it’s about. I never hear anything about the game, the only time it’s mentioned is in the context of greenlight, so honestly I just brush it off as the internet being the internet and bitching about things. Hell even after this spiel, and taking the time to write this out, I still won’t even bother to Google it. I suspect I’m not in the minority.

“Votes in Greenlight give us a hugely valuable point of data in gauging community interest along with external factors such as press reviews, crowd-funding successes, performance on other similar platforms, and awards and contests”
That seems like a lot more information than they’ve given in the past as to what their criteria are. It sill pretty much amounts to: “We’re Greenlighting the games that we want to, but we’re pretending there’s an objective metric that we use to make the decision.”

The relative transparency of Greenlight when compared to the rest of a very murky approval process has led the community to view those votes as a driving factor when they’re likely just another item on a long checklist. The numbers objectively show how many people voted on a thing, but all that generally says is whether or not a game is a complete dud in terms of consumer interest, which is valuable but extremely limited market data.

A few months ago people were bitching and moaning how to few games come from Greenlight to the store. Now they are bitching and moaning that too many games are coming from Greenlight to the store. I did not expect this to happen at all…

This has all the symptoms that we are heading towards another massive gaming crash like in the mid-80s of videogames. Just too much mediocre crap comes out that people get frustrated and loose interest completely.

The PC gaming scene isn’t a single scene it’s thousands of niches and a few giant publishers. AAA PC gaming going the way of the dinosaur wouldn’t really be a huge loss, if it was replaced with a bunch of inventive B games.

The indie PC gaming scene isn’t all gems, though, it’s a bunch of retro shovelware and Minecraft clones with the occasional jewel thrown in if you look hard enough. Let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking the state of indie is really any better than the state of AAA.

I’m waiting for the inevitable batch of greenlight titles that features nothing anybody has ever heard of, at least anybody who doesn’t spend every day faffing about examining the list of potentially greenlit.

I have only heard of Catlatteral Damage and the zombie MOBA that I have already forgotten the name of (Dead… something?), both via RPS. Not an exceptional showing.

I have been waiting forever for them to greenlight Diadra Empty.
Every batch, I hope to see it. It never comes.
What annoys me is there was stuff in this latest batch that was only on greenlight for like, a week.
How does that work :(