What a crazy day it has been with two very, very exciting bits of news not only for indie developers but especially for UK based indie developers. Being one of those, the excitement levels are high indeed! The two bits of news which are causing me almost orgasmic levels of excitement are : Valve annoucing Greenlight and Kickstarter annoucing they will let UK based games be funded.
Why is this exciting?
GreenLight – Getting a game onto steam has always been rather of an opaque process, with no idea why a game has been rejected/accepted. Greenlight is going to address this by letting the people who play games on Steam actally rank/vote and get games into the approval process. You need only a very small amount of information in order to get your game into Greenlight – even having a playable demo is optional ( though probably a sensible idea if your trying to grab votes 🙂 ). To get a game on Greenlight, you’ll need the following :
- A square branding image (similar to a box cover) to represent your game in lists and search
- At least 1 video showing off your game or presenting your concept
- At least 4 screenshots or images
- A written description of the game along with tentative system requirements
(taken from the current Greenlight homepage) That is a pretty low bar to get something into the system – my biggest worry is having good projects lost due to the inevitable deluge of ‘I WANTZ 2 MAKES A MMORPG LIKE WOW BUT WIV CARZ AND STAR TREK ( AND PONIES!!11one)’. Having said that, with community feedback, it allows someone to tweak and adjust their ideas – a useful side effect to this system. Gamers getting games they want to play into the approval system makes a lot of sense, and promises some intresting times ahead 🙂
Kickstarter allowing UK funding – I honestly can’t decide which is getting me more excited, this of Greenlight. Simply put, it was tricky to get crowd funding for indie games in the UK. Not impossible, as many sites offered an alternative venue for crowdfunding games – however, none of them really compared to the pull that Kickstarter had. Now, with this adjustment, it will be possible for UK based indies to get their game crowd sourced, without having to trust a friend in the US to handle the cash for you 🙂
Why is this so exciting to UK Indie developers?
GET MONEY + GET APPROVAL AND FEEDBACK ON STEAM = HAPPY INDIE DEVELOPER 🙂
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