how Steam Greenlight brought classism in the indie game development world to the surface
(this is a crosspost from an article i wrote on alpha six productions. it's recommended you read the article on the original site.)
when Steam Greenlight first launched a year ago, it was hyped up beyond belief. indie developers all over, including myself, were getting ready for the grand opening of this service. āholy shit, we finally have a way to get our games on Steam? this is gonna be so fuckinā killer, dude! we can finally open our games up to hundreds of thousands of people and we could potentially make a lot of money and go full-time!ā stuff like that.
the launch was a mess. fake games, clone games, and people posting games that already existed were running rampant. Valve tried to find some way to contain this problem, and so they introduced a $100 fee in order to āfilterā out the āseriousā games and the ājokeā games. what Valve didnāt consider (and probably still arenāt), is that there are thousands of indie developers who canāt afford to spend $100 on a gamble. thatās essentially what Greenlight has now boiled down to: $100 to get verbally assaulted for your non-zombie game and essentially throw your money towards something that you have a less than 5% chance of achieving. not all of us can do something like that. i certainly canāt, thatās for sure.
a few months ago, i ranted on twitterĀ about Greenlightās $100 fee and how it fucks over almost all of us small indies who are struggling to make endsā meet while quietly hoping that we can create a game that gets enough attention that we donāt have to worry about bills for another 30 days. most of my major points were retweeted by fellow game developer Sophie Houlden, whoās also written some very wonderful pieces about Valve and Greenlight on her website (and i really suggest that you read them), and this is when my eyes were opened. my mentions were filled to the brim with all sorts of arguments.
(please keep in mind: iām paraphrasing here, as this was months ago so i canāt remember most actual details)
āwhat, do you just expect Valve to let any rando with a program get on Steam for free?ā ā$100 isnāt that hard to come by.ā āIf your gameās complete enough, put it out there. If itās good, it can make the $100 all on its own.ā āif you arenāt willing to sink the Relatively Cheap One Hundred Dollars, then you obviously arenāt confident in your idea.ā āyou mean, Valve are focusing on the games that matter, like a business?āĀ Ā (pretend i read this one in a really snarky high pitched voice.) āiāve spent a lot more money on my game, quite frankly the $100 doesnāt bother me.ā āmaybe your games just arenāt worth paying for.ā
these werenāt just random Dumbass Gamers With Opinions, either. most of these wereā¦ indie developers.
Indie Developers.
OTHER INDIE DEVELOPERS!
PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING THE SAME THING WEāRE DOING!
i honestly couldnāt believe it. how can anybody whoāsĀ ever tried to make it as a full-time indie try an argue these things? āa game will make $100 itself if itās good enough?ā are you kidding me? do you really think thatās how the industry works? you fucking WORK in it like the rest of us do! is this inflated ego or something? the only absolute way i could see somebody arguing this kind of thing is if they grew up or were conditioned in an area in which they never had to worry about finances. in other words, privilege. and of course, duh, thereās gonna be privileged people in just about any profession.
but the absolute sheer amount of people advocating the exclusion of their fellow developers for being unwilling to invest in a complete financial gamble was too staggering for me to ignore. and as i began to follow more and more developers and words theyāve said, i canāt help but get this disgusting whiff of capitalism trailing off of everything they say. money, money, money. wow notch is so great!!! jon blow #1!!! double fine kickstarter!!! letās find the best way to monetize our players!!! if your game isnāt āprofitableā itās garbage!!!!! i had always felt odd about the way my āpeersā in game development acted, that itās strange that they would cheer for the big dogs getting bigger while they, themselves, still continue to break their backs just to get page views. it never really occurred to me that this was capitalism and classism at work.
even now, as i meet more developers and watch others, it feels like so many of them are getting so much closer to this toxic mindset that things should stay the way they are because we should be Working Our Bones To Dust For Our Art, and that if our games arenāt financial successes, theyāre garbage, worthless, and probably shouldnāt have been made. these people donāt want change. money isnāt a problem for them, so it shouldnāt be for anyone else. they donāt think their toxic systems are harming anyone, because they themselves arenāt being harmed by it.
Ā i want to get a little personal here for a sec.
iāve been developing video games since 2008. in the last 5 years, iāve designed about fifty games. 15 of those games have gameplay systems in place, and 2 of those have been released. iāve worked my ass off almost nonstop ever since i decided to pick up this profession. i knew game development was never going to be a profitable thing as someone who just started out (because the system wasnāt designed for people like me, and for the most part, it Still Isnāt), so in order to make enough money to move out and get my life started, i took up commissionary pixel art jobs. naturally, i had to do a lot of these so i could pay my bills, because art was the only real Job i have. i spent so much time doing all this paid work, that i never got the opportunity to actually focus on my games, which is what led to most of my projects being canceled.
between the 2 games iāve released at the time of this post, iāve made about $150 since 2011. $100 of that, i will literally never see in my life, because Desura has a $500 minimum requirement before payment can be claimed and sent to you. the other $50 was spent as soon as i got it in order to continue being able to eat. so donāt tell me thereās nothing wrong with the ecosystem in place right now.
any money that iāve made that wasnāt a result of commissionary work has been mostly from friends playing and liking my games, or buying my music. i literally have not taken a vacation since i started working 5 years ago. the only ādays offā iāve taken are days in which i was too depressed to work, or too burnt out from consecutive working. and even then, iāll usually only take 1-2 days off, max, a month. i take my work everywhere i go. if iām not at home, i have my laptop with me. i bring my work with me to my friendsā house, and i bring my work with me whenever i spend time with my family.
i donāt have the benefit of a āfanbaseā like a lot of these big name developers do. i donāt have the privilege of being able to say āiām making a video gameā and have 500 preorders in a day. i make stuff that i want to make when i have the time to do so and i put it on the internet in the hopes that someone will like it enough that theyāll be willing to chip in for my dinner for that night so i donāt fuckingĀ starve. i donāt have $100 to spend. i donāt even have $50 to spend. people like me canāt just look at $100 and go āitād be cool if this got me on Steam,ā because a lot of us actually NEED that kind of exposure so we can continue doing what we love to do without staring straight down the shotgun of capitalism. why the fuck would i, or anybody in a situation like mine (because trust me, thatās most of us), throw $100 towards something that is more likely going to do absolutely nothing except cause me additional mental stress, when i could throw that $100 towards making sure i have a roof above my head for another month?
does that really mean that iām unworthy of being a developer, or that i donāt care enough about my ideas or my profession to literally murder myself over it? i sure hope not, because making games is something that i really love doing and itād be really great if i didnāt absolutely have to be a rich white guy in order to be successful doing it.
Ā i guess all i can say is, thanks, Greenlight, for opening my eyes and showing me that indie communities and AAA communities really arenāt that different, after all.
