Cocnerns about Steam Greenlight

[radajin]

I've read in a few different post's and forums that RPG maker games are having trouble getting green lighted through steam.


My question is, I'm looking to post my game to steam here at the end of the month should i be worried about getting through the greenlight process?


I feel I have a pretty good quality of a game. I do realized it's going up as an early access but the game is roughly 50% finished and polished. The game has four chapters and chapters 1 and 2 are going to be fully completed before release. This means grammar and story and gameplay balance are all going to be nearly finished and the second half of the game will be available for final release as well as any major gameplay updates to the first 2 chapters.


The first two chapters through my personal play testing are roughly 14 hours for chapter one's story and about 6-10 hours for chapter 2's story, this includes some exploration and doing side things as well. so it's about a 24 total hours game at this point.


So i have put a ton of work into the project. I guess is what i'm asking is should I be worried? Should i start the greenlight process before i need to in case it takes longer? I've had a successful kickstarter to fund the game but i'm worried that won't be enough to get it put up on steam. If i continue to develop the game as i have it'll be ready for early release by the end of the month with an aim to have everything fully finished by the end of the year. 


The game has custom art and will feature some custom music that I've had an artist and a composer working on for me as well so it all won't be just default graphics and audio.


I guess you could say i'm overall concerned but i just don't want to see this project fail and want it to succeed as much as possible. I'm working to deliver a high quality project and wish to see it be a successful one.


Edit* Also I'm looking for Information on what i can do to in case it doesn't make it through steam, Like what are viable alternatives. Also what i can do to make the game more appealing to Greenlight.

 

[mlogan]

I don't know much about the Greenlight process. But what I will advise is make sure you put it through thorough testing first. Sometimes there are things that others will see or catch that you don't.

 

[Andar]

If your game has a good enough quality, it should make it through greenlight especially if you advertise for it. There have been a lot of RM games that made it through that, and the number is increasing.


The problem originally was that Greenlight was free and every fanboy tried to get a low-quality thing (that couldn't be called a game) through it for some dreams of quick cash. Since Greenlight now requires a fee that is something of the past, but it took RM a while to get past that bad reputation (that had nothing to do with the engine but with the wannabe-developers then).


However, because of this you'll still be at a disadvantage, especially with "early access" - again there have been too many cases where developers tried quick cash with "early access" and abandoning their incomplete games.


Let others your game quality before trying to go there - don't ask your friends and family on it because those often don't want to hurt your feelings. But you'll need a honest (if harsh) critique to get to the quality needed for success.

 

[The Prince of Sarcasm]

Kind of building off of what Andar said, my advice is to not submit it to greenlight before you are completely finished. Of course there are probably going to be some things you missed that you might need to fix after submission, but the label "Early Access" can turn some people away. You probably want it to be finished first, so nobody will have to be worried about whether you will finish it or not.

 

[radajin]

I've been working on the game extensively for a year or so of work, and i have a team of testers helping me test the game out. I was just worried, that just it being RM alone would cause issues. The game feels good and fun especially since it got moved to MV and the plugin system has allowed me to do a great deal with it. thanks to yanfly and the others and their amazing work with plugins. Every time one of my testers plays a go through i catch like a huge list of little things that i didn't catch in my own testing so i see how important it is.


I feel like it's a good product and i think it will do well I just had concerns is all. I think we all get this fear of failure from time to time haha. I've not got a lot going for me in the advertisement department any recommendations? i know there is a community here, and I've started to build a presence through kickstarter and facebook and twitter. Any other suggestions?

 

[The Prince of Sarcasm]

Just a suggestion: You could release a short demo here, and ask for people to give feedback here, and on steam. I'm always more interested in a game when I get a taste of it first.

 

[radajin]

I do have a demo of it, but it's a vx ace version. i was waiting to make sure i had all my MV ducks in a row before i release a MV demo. I think maybe it's come far enough for a new demo. Do i submit that in the feedback section?

 

[Helladen]

If use any of the default characters in your game, then you will get a lot of crap. Make sure you spent at-least several weeks thinking about the game then making a pretty well designed world. If you use all the RTP in the game, people will notice and flame you for not being original. Yes, that's what happens when you give people free commercial art, it gets stale and the world cringes cause people hate seeing the same stuff.

 

[radajin]

I am using a lot of the original RTP for the battlers from both VX Ace and MV, I used the character generator on all the Player characters. and i'm using the pre-built sprites for towns folk. I've also been gathering resources from the resource threads here. So hopefully people won't mind. i'm having an artist do the portraits and bust's for the game for the conversations and menu's. I'm also using a lot of the base tile sets as well, and i have a composer working on getting me some custom music for the game.

 

[mlogan]

There will be people who will mind period that you are using "RTP" resources. Be prepared for that. There will likely be harsh comments about it. However, if the game really is solid, you will get positive feedback as well. So focus on that and any helpful criticism and try to ignore those that hate simply because it's RM. They are out there.

 

[Helladen]

Using RTP isn't bad I want to add, I am using them for my game. You just got to present the RTP in a new light, try to make it look as much different from a generic RPG Maker game as possible. Try to be creative and original with the game, this will make less people hate on it. Parallax mapping/etc. are good ways to do this. I haven't seen any RPG maker commercial game use parallax mapping yet.

 

[Matseb2611]

I would highly advise you to put the game there when it's in late stages of development, or at least once you've applied enough polish to it and taken out the placeholders. You have to put your best foot forward in order to win over the crowd there, and even then you'll still have to promote the game a lot, or ask someone to do it for you if you're bad at the marketing side of things (like me).


I'd also suggest against releasing it as Early Access. Although it might go down well, there are a lot of people on Steam who steer away from Early Access games due to many developers not coming through with those and abandoning their games mid-development. This goes for all games, not just RM. And then there are also many people who simply don't wish to play an incomplete (and possibly a buggy game), so they tend to wait till full release before they buy it. In general, Early Access is very risky if you're an unknown developer.


Having said this, I would definitely encourage you to go for Steam. Steam is the centre of PC gaming nowadays with an enormous userbase. You'll have a much easier time selling your game and getting exposure on it. Since you have a lot of custom assets in your game, that should work in your favour and make your game more appealing than an average RM game (probably). Just make your game description sound as intriguing as possible and have a nice trailer (additional gameplay videos are a bonus), and keep promoting the game regularly.

 

[radajin]

just wanted to swing by this topic to let you all know that i put a demo up in project development.