As I lay awake at night, I think about the things that most people lose sleep over. How much money do I need to set aside in order to pay the bills this month? Did I remember to shut the stove off? How many game developers are out there without anybody playing their games? Thanks to the magic of Steam Greenlight, new developers can now go out and face the world, but can it actually have a large impact?
I think many people are skeptical of Greenlight simply due to the fact that it isn’t a guaranteed money-maker. You could do all the work, toss your life’s work up to the community, and get shot down to the dirt. Sadly to say, that’s a huge part of life and I personally believe the risk is worth the reward. The community can be really harsh sometimes, but I think if you have the determination to push forward, the willingness to review your games, and the ability to make changes and alter your original creation based on feedback, you can create a game that somebody, somewhere, wants to play.
Throughout my writing career, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with several Greenlight developers. Two developers stand out to me the most, so the rest of this will be based around my experiences with them. Both developers sent me semi-finished versions of their games to play and review. At this point, they were both very small and were just beginning to really get the ball rolling. One dev team had some experience with game creation, as they had created one game prior to meeting me. The other dev team consisted of two teenage boys who started their game for fun and noticed how quickly it was actually developing. Several emails had been traded back and forth between myself and the devs, and I quickly began to really understand the struggle behind Greenlight. Both games picked up a lot of speed early on, but after a few days, they almost fell off the map. They had to rely on promotion, reviewers, and word of mouth in order to get their games through the finish line.
At this point, both developers are Greenlit and they worked very hard to get to that point. If you’re expecting easy cash from Greenlight, I would suggest you find a different path to take, or even a different profession. I think that every new developer has to climb through a huge obstacle course to get noticed, and even if you make it to the end, there might not be green grass and balloons waiting for you. Greenlight is a fantastic way to reach out and get noticed. These two dev teams that I interacted with have now made several connections with reviewers, fans, and the general public via social media and the written articles about their work. Steam can absolutely help you get a ton of publicity and allows you to really make a name for yourself, but being an independent game dev is not for everybody. There are way too many people who think that their game is the best electronic creation that anybody has ever seen, as if Zeus had cast a thunderbolt down upon their lonely soul and filled their brain with the greatest plot line and cast of characters that could have ever been imagined.
To sum this whole thing up, yes. Greenlight can absolutely get you famous and it can pay off too, but not without hard work. For the sake of the article, I would like to throw a shoutout to Deceptive Games and their game, The Secret Monster Society, as well as Frisky Fatal Games and their title, Soulless. They are the two developing teams that I worked closely with and I wish them the best of luck in their journey! Both games have been Greenlit and will be available on Steam shortly. If you have a creation that you love, why not throw it up on Greenlight? You never know what kind of reaction it will draw from the community and it might be the next big hit. If it’s not, who cares! You still tried and you can get helpful feedback to make it even better! I hope this didn’t go on for too long and you all took a little something from this article. I hope to see all of your crazy ideas on Greenlight soon! It never hurts to try!
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