| the_dengle said:
Nintendo made a mistake seven years ago. |
Five. WiiWare launched in 2008.
Not that it really matters... >_>
| pokoko said: First, you're going to have to back up your claim that Steam is anywhere close to being as bad as Nintendo was. As far as I can see, it's not. Simon Roth has worked on indie hits such as Frozen Synapse and is currently developing his first solo title - which he plans to eventually submit to Greenlight in the future. "Greenlight is a brilliant idea," says Simon. "Beforehand, in my opinion, the Steam approval process was somewhat broken, opaque and counter intuitive." http://www.videogamer.com/features/article/steam_greenlight_what_do_developers_really_think.html Steam's problem is that they get more games asking for entry than they can handle. The intention with Greenlight was not only to filter out some of the spam but to give developers feedback directly from the fans. The main problem so far is that the fans, generally speaking, kind of suck. "Valve gave the gaming community a chance with Greenlight," says Strongman Games founder Erlend Grefsrud, pointing out that Valve is under no obligation to offer a 'free ride' to anyone. That it did so originally should be an important factor in Valve's defence and should help highlight that the real issue isn't some classist debate over the relative value of $100. Besides that, you're comparing a system that just launched recently to something that Nintendo just now fixed. You're also trying to put words in my mouth, as I never said anything about 'malice'. I never even said I supported what the guy in the OP said, as I've given Nintendo props elsewhere for their efforts. What I've had issue with in this thread is the vilification of Steam in order to make Nintendo look good. Not only are they in much different situations, with Steam being a much, much smaller company that gets many times the submissions that Nintendo does, but the idea that Greenlight was born of the same kind of corporate apathy as some of Nintendo's more notorious restrictions is just ludicrous. |
You seem, to me, to be employing something of a double-standard here. Or at least, in trying to assert that Greenlight isn't the bogeyman it's made out to be, you're swinging way too far in the opposite direction. Greenlight's weakness stems from the fact that Valve steps back and does the absolute bare minimum for deciding what goes on Steam. That strikes me as far more apathetic than WiiWare's requirements that developers demonstrate some seriousness about developing and selling their games. Even the third quote you include, while superficially defending the service, reads more like a slamming indictment of Valve's apathy.
You can't even use the size excuse: Valve is more than a tenth of Nintendo's size, while developing and publishing far, far, far fewer games. Steam is Valve's primary moneymaker: WiiWare was nowhere near Nintendo's top priority. So why is it then that Valve was the company that decided it couldn't be fussed to properly monitor its own bread-and-butter, and simply threw the barnyard doors open? Greenlight isn't even really a "system that just launched": by Valve's own admission, it was an attempt for them to make their own lives easier by abandoning part of their quality control duties.
