"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together"
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
So today we
are going to talk about our experience getting the game out to the light. We’ve
used Valve’s Steam Greenlight platform to do so and it has been an incredible
experience for the team, as it was our first time on this platform.
But what is Steam Greenlight?
"Steam Greenlight is a system that enlists the community's help in picking some of the new games to be released on Steam. Developers post information, screenshots, and video for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution. Steam Greenlight also helps developers get feedback from potential customers and start creating an active community around their game during the development process".
Let’s speak
first a bit about it.
Greenlight has replaced the previous submission process
of Steam and now it is the only way to get your game into Valve’s platform. To
submit a game you need a non-limited Steam account, plus you have to pay a
one-time small submission fee, but do not worry, because they donate the fee to
a charity called Child’s Play. If you want to know a bit more about the
charity, click here.
Ok, so now
you can submit as many games as you want. Everyone can post a game, whether you’ve formed a company or as
individual. Once submitted, thousands of users will view and possibly vote
or comment on your game.
How to get your game approved by the community?
Steam is… a
bit short in explanations about this. The only thing they let you know is that
your game must rank in the top of the games currently voted, and to do so it
has to receive a majority of yes-votes and a high amount of votes.
What they
don’t tell you is exactly how high have your game to rank in order to get the green light, how many games do they approve at the same time or when are they doing it.
We’ve read
somewhere that in order to get the Greenlit a game must have around 12.000 and
16.000 votes, and more than 20.000 to make sure of it, but the truth is that
Freedom Poopie received the Greenlit even before we arrived to the first
thousand votes, so this is not entirely true. Of course, it’s a good target to
aim if you’re submitting a game, and hope to get it before that.
How do I get more votes on Greenlight?
Well, first
of all, you have to understand that Greenlight is some sort of popularity
contest. If there are a lot of more popular games out there, your game is going
to be grounded into the deeps of the platform, and it will never see the light.
Luckily, we have a few tips that might help you:
- Use Social Media: your game doesn’t have to become viral to get the green, but working hard on content to your Facebook, Twitter or main page can do wonders for your Greenlight campaign.
- Keep an open channel with Greenlight's community: this means, updating with news and content on a regular basis, and encourage the community to comment on your page.
- Make a video about it: It has to show the best aspects of your game; don’t make it boring, and it doesn’t need to have the length of a movie.
- Make a demo: At the beginning Greenlight didn’t let developers post demos of their games, but now it is a tool you can use, and if the game is in advanced development stage, it can help you connect a bit more with the community.
How about running a crowdfunding campaign?
We didn’t
mention it as a tip because even if it is true that it can help to give the
last push your Greenlight campaign needs, and vice versa, it can also be very
risky for your game.
The good
thing about it is that Greenlight and your crowdfunding campaign will have a
ton of crossed traffic almost for sure. But before you take that decision into
account you must know that maintaining two campaigns at the same time can be a
lot of more work to do, and sometimes it can be better to just focus on one of
them at a time.
That said, we launched a Kickstarter campaign and our Greenlight at the same time. It was
very difficult, a lot of hours of work, but it worked for us, and it was all
well worth it.
We’ll make
a post only to talk about Kickstarter soon. We hope any of this helps you get
through Steam Greenlight.
