[NSFW] Air Control or Why we need greenlight not self publishing on steam

Nope. I don't drink and I don't need your approval.

 

Don'tcha have a simulator you need to be getting back to?

 

Good for you. Have a cookie.

 

Better yet an attitude more befitting one that doesn't have the talent to be Billy Connolly. You may find the same.

You're attitude. It's crap!


...see it doesn't work does it?

Toot-a-loo.

 

Those here who advocate for a free market system where votes determine the chance of a game should know what has happened in other industries that rely on voting for exposures. For instance in the indie e-books industry.

There are two giants where readers can go to gauge the particulars of a book: Goodreads and Amazon. Because unscrupulous indie authors and publishers have used sock-puppets, shady marketing, and other unsavoury business practises both Goodreads and Amazon tells you nothing about the quality of the book. In fact, as a reader you have to assume that these sites are lying to you.

If this system was imported into gaming, then the same thing would happen to games. This is the best argument for relying on gate-keepers. If the gate-keepers shaft you, they die. It's in their interest to be careful. Their livelihoods depend on it. Which kind of sucks, but the other industries have shown that some unethical indie writers, musicians, etc will game the system for advantage - turning the whole system unreliable. The same thing would happen to games.

 

The same thing has already happened to games even with gatekeeping.

 

I'd be surprised if this would happen on desktop, at least to the extent it does on mobile. It mostly comes down to play session length. Mobile gaming sessions tend to be pretty short, which goes very well with the f2p model. Now, sometimes people can play a mobile game for a long time (several levels of Candy Crush, for instance), but the games are chunked up enough so you can pick them up and put them down on a moments notice.

Desktop games tend to be a lot more engrossing. They require longer play sessions so you can pay more attention to details over time. It's like watching a 2 hour movie instead of a 30 minute sit com. I'm not afraid of Steam being overrun by 30 minute sitcoms, because there will always be people who like 2 hour movies instead.

 

This is a troll title, and i lolled, and its got quite an impressive feeding it seems. I thought the reviewer was just trying to sound badass by saying 'F***' and meandering up his own posterior

 

Oh and nice video Murgilod - it's worth noting that if you're unable to check the quality of a game yourself before spending money that would put you in the 'sucker' demographic rather than the ' forsaken by valve'. If you can't figure out if a game is up to scratch when you're sat at your computer then supermarkets must be some unholy terror. I would take a self publishing move from Valve as a nice step towards not patronising their users - this isn't a favour by Valve, mind, it's a sensible decision in logistics and kind of impossible to argue with unless you wish to enjoy only the games the non-city population Steam QA like or big publishers can pay (and get paid) to push

 

What do you expect with a game that is worse than Big Rigs. At least some effort was put into that...

 

You haven't played Big Rigs.

 

I'd pay $1 for Big Rigs, honestly. The glitches are pretty funny. This game has no redeeming values.

EDIT: Plus, they had to make their own engine. That's more difficult and takes more effort than what went into Air Control.

 

Then... don't buy it?

Like, I guess that's the thing. If a product is bad, don't buy it. Don't call on everyone else to make sure it doesn't get sold to you unless it is broken in such a way that it can cause damage to your computer.

 

Er.... you said/implied that Big Rigs was worse than this game (Correct me if I'm wrong). I was just stating that I disagreed. Nothing more.

I don't think anyone here is going to buy Air Control.

Problem is, it's hard to notice a flower if it's surrounded by 100 weeds.

 

Don't knock weeds man. This things is not a weed. Weeds grow and some are useful and some are fun. Air Control is a steaming pile of crap.

 

Big Rigs isn't just a collection of "funny glitches." It's actually far more crash happy than Air Control could ever attempt to be.

If only there was some kind of... games related review system... staffed by members of the games press to help with this.

 

Personally I'd just have an optional curated market you can apply for. Please everyone.

I don't see the problem with steam having a curated side and a normal side. If you're rejected from the curated side, people can still find your app with search or browsing steam (like right now). Except the curated side is what valve considers to be a better quality product.

Not quite the same as being featured - but currently the only option is being featured in some way.

 

Yeah, but you can still go Warp 3... in reverse... and then stop on a dime. And become Winner! (Although, admittedly, I think Air Control takes the "butchering of the English Language" award). This game physically made me feel ill from the background music.

The reviewers still need to FIND your game so other people can hear about it.

I'd like that.

 

Unless you select Nightride. Then it crashes. Or if you leave the menu idling too long, then it crashes. Or if you spend too much time going in reverse, then it crashes.

You mean they might have to do their jobs? Heavens no. And if you buy a game with literally no revues, you've got nobody to blame but yourself.

 

That's still kinda funny.

I'm not worried about me buying a bad game. I'm worried about other people not buying my game.

 

I'm kind of late, but at least Big Rigs worked on pretty much any system, and still does.

 

"Big Rigs: The Game That Runs On Your Computer"

And no, it was notoriously crash happy and in some cases wouldn't even launch. Don't try and rewrite history here.

 

The problem is all that curation takes a lot of work on Valve's part, which is probably why they created Greenlight in the first place. Then you have another problem: where exactly do you draw the line? One game gets picked, and another doesn't even though they are pretty close in quality. But in the end, one gets a huge advantage over the other because, why? Because Valve employees thought one looked slightly better, or played slightly better, or was slightly more fun?

Then you have the business connection thing going on. Lots of people are obviously going to want this premium placement, so should people with better Valve business connections get an advantage?

Me: starts coding Big Rigs clone!

 

This game is a gem.

 

I am attitude?

 

While we're at it, make sure to check out imdb bottom 100.

So bad it's good.

My favorite: Troll 2.

 

I made a graph:

I think "The Room" is Good-Bad-er. That flower shop scene...

 

Reviewers claim Watch dogs is at 8".
If a beast like that is not a 10 these days, that explains a lot of why devs can't care too much about what gamers like/want because no game whatsoever will be that good. They learned to ignore their fans' opinions, copies will sell anyways.

 

Watch_Dogs doesn't deserve a score of 6, let alone 8 or higher.

 

It's has flaws (according to the reviewers), and is therefore not a perfect game. Hence the score.

 

Im only a few hours into watchdogs and it seems pretty mediocre (after watching tbs video I didnt really have high expectations). I think its like a subpar GTA 5 game set in the future with some hacking thats not really fun. I quit playing the game like 3 times today because I found it so boring, I kept trying to go back to it to hope i could get into it.

I didnt find the info gathering very interesting, even within the first 1/2 hour i noticed that the info you got from people's heads actually repeated.

 

What do you mean by "a beast like that"? Games shouldn't get a score based on their budget, team size, or scope, but on their quality. I've been loving Watch Dogs and I certainly disagree with a lot of the hate it's been getting, but I also see that it's not perfect and think that 8 is probably a fair enough score.

I also don't expect perfection from... well, anything. The flaws in Watch Dogs don't bother me in the slightest because so far they haven't lowered its enjoyment at all. Aside from some of the most obvious bugs (which seem to be caused by the Ubisoft overlay rather than the game itself) the flaws most people pick on don't lessen the experience in any way I care about - who wants to play spot the difference on building reflections when on the run from the Fixers or whatever? To me, what'd make it closer to a 10 is ironing out the overall experience, and that's not really something that's possible to do on the first iteration of a game.

As an aside, if the jump between Watch Dogs and its sequel is similar to that between Assassin's Creed and its sequel... well, lets just say that'll be a game I'm totally pumped for.

To me this is kind of like the complaints about behaviours looping after a few minutes in Bioshock Infinite. Do players honestly expect that a literal city's worth of information is going to be created? The amount of information required to stop noticeable repetition for something like this is mind boggling.

I don't think the issue is the amount of information. I think it's that it's all so strongly characterised that it's hard not to notice the repeats. The stuff you hear or read from people randomly hacked isn't generic monotonous diatribe like most day to day conversations. Most of it is confronting, funny, or otherwise entertaining and memorable, so it sticks out like mad when we hear it even a second time some hours later. As crazy as this is to say, I think the game would have benefited from more unmemorable crap in that regard. Entertaining snippets should be the diamonds in the rough, not the typical case when hacking a random on the street, though that of course brings design challenges of its own.

 

Bad games on green light are getting released because dumb people vote for them. I think out of the 1,000 games I have viewed maybe 25 I said I would buy. The fact that around 40 games are getting green lit a month is amazing to me. I think after a game gets green lit people who voted on it should have the option to buy it now. If they don't buy it within a month the game should be pulled or be put into a review from valve to help prevent having such a mess on their pages. You don't want Steam to become the next app store. I don't know, just crazy to me that some of these games are getting released when a lot of them just look awful.

 

This is a terrible post that contains a terrible idea.

 

Lol. Ya, pretty much

 

I would love to see steam actually charge developers, say a thousand bucks, then take that cash and pay people to actually sit down and play the game for an hour or two. If people are complaining that the game doesn't even work, or everyone is confused by the steaming pile it is, then it won't be put on the market. They could even crowd source it and pay people in steam bucks.

 

You have to pay 100 bucks just to put your game onto Green Light. Go and look at the games on there and tell me why someone paid to throw their game on there. I like the idea of paying people to play your game to test it and give honest feedback. Maybe the 100 you put in should be used to pay people a buck in steam dollars if they play your game for an hour or more and leave feedback.

 

Maybe Steam Greenlight should require a demo for each submitted game, and then require people to vote after they have played the demo.

Also, Steam should not allow anybody to set the game description to "Try the best flight simulation in the history of computer games today!" That description makes it seem like Steam members endorsed that game as being the best, which is clearly not accurate. Steam should have and enforce some restrictions on phrases in the game description that make outrageous and inaccurate claims. Even after many people have called Air Control the worst game on Steam, Steam still lets the author leave that "best flight simulation in the history of computer games" claim in the description.

 

Or

You could do your research yourself, since that doesn't actually make it sound like Steam endorsed anything.

 

But that means that Valve are distributing unchecked demos. That's asking for trouble.

 

What some here can't see is: Steam is a platform. Surounded by bigger platforms.
If they don't follow the path they're going now, someone else will do it and they die. Steam is the major PC gaming store, yes, but due to the fact they was so closed like before indies were feeding other PC gaming platforms whose was rapidly growing around Valve's business. But S*** like that game is a complete joke and if ppl voted for that, I'm sure they didn't see any actual game footage and the "dev" cheated on community's good will.

Is not that easy to earn 10.000 votes to pass greenlight, something is missing for this whole story make any sense.
Maybe Valve is silently starting a movement to bomb greenlight and close it already.

 

There's not much you can do to prevent subjective statements like these. The word "best" could mean different things to different people. Maybe the developers thought it was the "best" because it's the funniest, and that's what they like the best. Your best friend may not exactly be the best person in the world, but you still think he or she is the best.

 

lol

The problem is people vote for and then buy these games.

and Steam has never been a gatekeeper (Steam is there solely to make money, ~30%, sounds like some other online stores I know)

Then again if people find it entertaining then who are we to judge perhaps its a new style of video games sort of like jackass or monty python or even benny hill of video games someday to be cult classics.

After the success of Air Control I even hear Sergey has plans to bringing back Big Rigs, "Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing Game Of The Year Edition" where he promises to add multilayer support to his cult classic. He even trademarked "YOU'RE WINNER !", so you know he means business!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rigs:_Over_the_Road_Racing

buy your copy today at Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Rigs-Over-Road-Racing-Pc/dp/B0002BQMFY

 

Big Rigs is from 2003? Unity's terrain looks exactly the same 11 years later?
Wait, that's not even Unity is it?

 

No, Unity's terrain is just garbage