Honestly, I'm still astonished that The Moon Sliver has done that well. I expected it to crash and burn.

As much as I complain about Steam reviews and Greenlight comments, it says something that so many Steam users voted for, bought, and liked a game that looks so visually dated, and is such a niche experience.

It's a bit of a flawed analogy though. There should be a genre of indie game under "Pewdiebait" and are a different story completely from some of the "vignette" style things that a subset of devs have been pushing as "interactive" entertainment and cloaking them in buzzwords in order to disguise their actual lack of gameplay, etc. Now, priced adequately and presented honestly, this shouldn't be a problem, but let's take a slightly older example, like Gone Home, which put out a lot of trailers that alluded to suspense/horror elements that never happened, which caused a lot of gamers to go apeshit over it. In some cases, the direct marketing might not have ever mentioned it as being included, but there's a lot of people that will look at the trailer alone and come to their conclusions accordingly. Let's not also forget that despite the plethora of avenues with which to check out much larger games, people blindly pre-ordering based off of hype, then getting pissed off for being burnt afterwards is still a thing.

Now, break that down to your level. How many LPs of your games are out there? How many games are on Steam that may only have a trailer and no LPs out there? For a consumer in many of these cases, a purchase of one of these types of games is a blind leap of faith. For a solid percentage of customers, if a game is terrible mechanically or its content is just poor and boring, they mark it up as a loss and know to never purchase a game from that person or dev again. For another subsection, they believe their lost time should be covered via recompense, and let's be honest, jefe. Your games are a niche of a niche. They may never have broad appeal and thus, your marketing and exposure is going to be a fraction of a percentage compared to most.

Your games have every right to exist. You have every right to be compensated for your work. You have to realize though, that your core audience is a very small one and "gamers" are probably going to be turned off by them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that what you make is bad either. It's not. It's simply not going to be my cup of tea. The difference is, I know you from the forums and I'm familiar with your work, so I already know that you're a forthcoming and extremely honest guy and will present your games as exactly as they are. (Your music is pretty awesome and atmospheric though, so I have to give you propers on that, and I've been meaning to pick up a copy of your album when I have more of an entertainment budget!)


Oh, that's certainly a thing. I don't disagree at all, but I think it's sometimes harder to differentiate the people that are actually putting real work into making not just a "walking simulator," but an immersive experience, and the type of lazy dev who trend hops in order to make quick bucks due to lack of imagination.

I'll be the first person to tell you that those types of games aren't my cup of tea either, but I also don't buy games that are honestly marketed as that, as to me, my entertainment time is small and precious to me, moreso than the money I could potentially lose out on, so I do my due diligence before I make a purchase.

Let's also be honest. Some of the games put out that fall into that genre genuinely ARE terrible, though, and they're the ones screwing it up for the more well produced and thought out projects. It's my hope that once the kinks are worked out of the refund system, as well as the exploits fixed, a lot of those types of devs will have to adapt, or find a new line of work.

Nice, finally Steam has refunds. What games do you have on there? I'd like to play them for free :^)

I'm not quite sure what to think. I disagree with the idea that games only deserve your money if you like them, but on the other hand it's to everyone's advantage for consumers to feel safer about risking money on unknown indies.

As far as my own games go... there are a respectable number of LPs for The Moon Sliver, and only a handful for The Music Machine. There are many for Fingerbones, however, by some higher-tier Youtubers. But that one's free so it's not relevant to this discussion.

I certainly don't think I'll ever be a superstar indie developerl like Notch or Scott Cawthon... nor would I really want to be, truth be told. But I don't agree that "walking simulators" have no potential for mainstream appeal. On the contrary, look at how popular both Gone Home and Dear Esther were. And even smaller efforts like Proteus. And there are plenty of people that hate those sort of games, certainly... but plenty of people who like them, too.

Likewise, I think there's a lot of room in the industry for games that focus on providing a narrative experience rather than just a repeating gameplay loop. I don't really set out to design "walking simulators." Just games that are primarily about telling a story in an interactive way. In the future that might involve more gameplay--indeed, that's what I'm striving for. To figure out how to better combine gameplay mechanics with story in a complimentary way. And that's something that I believe DOES have mainstream appeal. In fact, I'd argue that's the direction the industry is trying to go in (with vary degrees of success).
Isn't that kind of indie games in a nutshell, though? You've got pixel art that's lovingly and faithfully crafted for a genuine artistic reason, then you've got pixel art that's just trying to cash in on nostalgia. You've got Scott Cawthon making something original and clever with Five Nights at Freddys, then you've got hundreds (thousands??) of other devs throwing together something similar to try and cash in on the popularity. I mean, it's not just "walking simulators"

(and to be honest, I've seen very few "walking simulator" cash-ins on Steam. I'd say NES/SNES throwbacks and puzzle platformers are far more of an epidemic :D)

(EDIT: Or, hey, how about early access survival games? There are certainly a lot of those going around)

Oh, you.

I actually went to Kotaku the other day and noticed they ran a little story on The Music Machine. I'm wracking my brain to remember if it was just some thoughts on it, or an actual video. Hmm. Anyway, I thought that was neat. I loved The Moon Sliver and I'm going to pick up The Music Machine probably next week.

*edit* Supposing the Steam sale starts next week, will The Music Machine be discounted? Can you even tell us? ;-)

Erm... umm...

Let's put it this way... whenever the Steam Sale happens, The Music Machine will be part of it. With a heft discount. And will have the first round of trading cards added too (yes, go figure... I don't like achivements but I'm fine with trading cards).

The Moon Sliver, also, if anyone's interested. And both their soundtracks.

Out of curiosity: do you see an increase in sales during a big sale?

Oh, we're not debating their right to exist at all. What I'd like to see is a new category specifically FOR those types of experiences, because boiled down, a game is only a game, if it has...well...gameplay. This holds true for cards, board or P&P, because they have gameplay and gameplay mechanics. So maybe the disconnect is happening due to people feeling like calling them games is disingenuous because they aren't doing due diligence before purchasing? It's tough to say.

That said, I mean, while "cinematic experiences" certainly has a broad appeal to fans of movies, is that really the right direction to move towards? The industry spent decades attempting to differentiate itself from the movies, and in many cases (like say, The Order 1886,) it worked against them because people still expect to be able to play a game. Keep in mind, I don't consider all visual novels as games either, because many of those have all the interactivity of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Which was great...when I was seven.

What I'd like to see, is evolving and more involving gameplay that can immerse a player, not by cutting it out entirely, and I don't honestly believe that the people that spend the majority of their money on the industry will ever want gameplay removed either. All that said, you and I definitely agree that finding the right blend of both IS where the industry needs to go, as well as finding new ways that immerse the player throughout both, without resorting to copout QTEs or lazy design decisions.

Inre: Scott Cawthon, he's sort of the new Slenderman though, isn't he? It definitely falls directly into Pewdiebait territory for me, but I've only seen brief segments of the game, so I can't really judge it beyond what I saw. The atmosphere was pretty well done though.

I'm not a fan of the NES/SNES cashin games either and very few of them have much thought put into them except to be clones of clones of clones. Early access should be the main targets of the new refund program, imo. They are probably some of the guiltiest parties in regards to return on investment out of the bunch. I view it as devs attempting to make customers pay THEM to beta test their games, so they don't have to pay professionals to do it for them, which is imo, a crock. I have maybe one Early Access game, Starbound. Thanks to lack of effort put in by Chuckleheads, it'll probably also be my last one.

Yeah. The Halloween sale last year was a massive money-maker for me. Sales since then not so much. I have a few theories as to why (I think it has to do with some of the ways Steam handles its publicity, as well as the fact that the Halloween sale is more specialized), which I'll be experimenting with during this coming sale. Although now that the refund policy has been added into the mix I don't know if I'll be able to draw any conclusions from the results.

From an artistic perspective, I firmly believe that "walking simulators" are games, and I disagree with any TotalBiscuit-esque attempt to draw arbitrary lines based on subjective tastes.

http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2013/11/videogames-and-virtual-installations.html

However, from a business perspective, there's merit to the idea that such games need their own classification. For my own purposes, as I said, I'm not at all married to the genre. I'm just interested in making the sort of games I would want to play, and figuring out my own way of telling stories in an interactive fashion. It just so happens that I love the idea of exploration, and I love trying to build horror out of subtleties and uneventfulness, both of which mean my games have tended towards the "walking simulator" side of things. For now.

I'm actually quite opposed to "cinematic" games, and to cutscenes in general. And I think games that strive to emulate movies are actually holding videogaming back.

Me too. In fact, I disagree strongly with anyone that says gameplay must be eliminated in order to tell good stories. The problem is, it's not just a matter of layering good writing on top of good gameplay. Traditional "gameplay loop" design is NOT suited well for storytelling. Because gameplay loops are about repeating similar actions over and over again, and it's hard to tell an engaging story in that way. Even today, the overwhelming majority of games can easily be broken apart into gameplay and story. Ideally, the two should act as one, and traditional gameplay models don't really encourage that. And that's not even delving into the inability for most genres to tell stories that don't involve regularly encountering (and probably slaughtering) hordes of enemies.

Another problem lies in the nature of gameplay itself--where everything is simplified into a basic ruleset. At worst, when trying to deal with certain subjects, this can result in a game being an unintentional parody of its subject matter. And even at best it's likely to trivialize it. You know what I mean... think of those old Gamecube-era movie tie-ins, and the way they would reduce parts of the movie into a grotesque minigame or hilariously "gamey" gameplay mechanic.

Anyway, I could go on about this sort of stuff forever. Basically, yes... gameplay and story should act as one, but that's a lot harder to do than it sounds without trivializing one or the other.

I would actually say Five Nights at Freddys is FAR better than Slender. Look past the hype and the irritating fanbase, and there's quite a manaical clever little game, with a nice atmosphere, a neat little story, and a gleefully macabre sense of humor. It's a real shame that it's become so synonymous with Youtubers, because it's actually a lot more deserving than a lot of "youtube bait."

I really don't like the early access model. There are so many problems with it, and very few advantages save for extensive pubic bugtesting. At best, you're going to have a lot of people playing and getting bored with your game before it's even finished. At worst, you're going to have a horde of pissed off fans because either a) you didn't finish the game, or b) the finished product wasn't up to their lofty expectations.

That has no relevance to the discussion at hand. Doctors study for more than 8 years to be able to practice medicine, but I'd still sue one if he cut off the wrong limb.

Just saw this thread, read the OP and the first page or so of comments. One thing that kind of surprised me by a lot of people's thoughts is that many seem to see this as some sort of doomsday scenario for developers and that it will be ripely gamed by con artists trying to pinch off a free game.

GOG has much more broad return policies for a longer time period. You can get a refund on any undownloaded game for like 30 days or something like that, and if you download a game their policy is to return a refund if you can't get it to work and they can't help you to get it to work. In reality if someone wanted to game GOG's system they can say anything to GOG support they want, making up all kinds of BS about the game not working, glitches they experience and throw in some frustration and crustiness and GOG support being the polite friendly bunch they are, are not going to second guess the customer's claim. They will issue a refund most likely without any real fuss.

So technically right here on GOG right now it is easier to game the refunds system than Valve's policies and that does not seem to be any cause of concern to GOG nor to developers that are remaining in the catalogue.

Sure, there will be a small number of people who game the system, but if they do it repeatedly they will be noticed because past returns/dialogue will be on file so it will be obvious if someone is trying to harvest a free game catalogue. Plus, if someone is that desperate to not pay for their games, they can much more easily just hit a torrent site and download the games without paying for them and with no real other hassles other than possible risk of virus/malware infection and possibly not having the latest version of the game, or maybe non-functional multiplayer etc.

The question is whether having a better refund policy draws in more customers willing to take a chance on a game they otherwise wouldn't have bothered with - than the number of customers that abuse the system to scrounge a free copy of the game or not, and even if they do - they still need to crack it after the fact to make it run without Steam (depending on the DRM it uses if any), and if they have to do that effort they might as well just pirate it outright than to fuck around buying it and going through getting a refund etc.

The odd idiot might try to game the system but any real pirates who want to rip off the game without paying for it aren't going to bother paying up front in the first place, they'll just straight up pirate period and not bother.

That was more or less GOG's CEO view on the return policy here too, although they did mention that if they see someone trying to abuse the privilege they can do something about it also.

Overall I say "non-issue" to the whole idea for the most part. As for a game that is only 2 hours long with no replay value, well... as long as someone knows it is a short experience like watching a movie or something in advance then I imagine most people will be ok with that. If someone buys a game thinking it is 10-30 hours long and gets 2 hours out of it and thinks "WTF, that's IT???" then yeah, they might return it if they can. In that case I'd say to be honest up front in the advertising materials that "this is a 2 hour game" worded however is necessary. Another thing to consider is if someone buys your game thinking it is longer and finds out it is only 2 hours and they're stuck with it and can't get a refund - they probably will earmark the company name/developer name/etc. and never buy anything made by them again. If they have an unpleasant experience thinking a game is too short and CAN get a refund then the customer is serviced and feels better about the experience and may return to buy other games in the future.

There are a lot of different ways to look at it. Bottom line though is whether a game is profitable or not. If it isn't under whatever policy is active then it's up to a developer to change the way they develop/market their games to be profitable in whatever the marketplace's rules are at the moment. If 2 hour long games aren't profitable, then maybe 4 hour games are, or 8 hour games etc.

Just some thoughts anyway.

The other thing is in at least some cases a 'doomsday scenario' is needed. Valve refuses to curate their store, they want the control largely in the markets/users hands. They also represent a large portion of the PC market. The recent status quo of mobile ports, half-hearted cashins, misrepresented products, and etc. in the long run is going to harm the market for everyone.

In recent years I've all but stopped buying both indies and bundles for the most part. Partly due to getting burned a few times and partly due to apathy. Weeding through a deluge of shit to find a slightly flawed gem is just not worth the time and energy anymore. Since Valve opened the flood gates the number of indies I actually bother to look at and consider has dropped down to nothing (especially given the average price-creep indies seem to be seeing anymore).

Perhaps though the refund policy will stem this tide. I'm sure some devs will go under and some will surely have to change either their games or their marketing, but this also might renew some faith in the market and improve dev/pub accountability.

I really do hope the people pouring their hearts into their projects fare well moving forward, but the previous status quo was slowly but surely erroding customer confidence (which eventually can be disasterous for everyone).

Having read about this, seems to be a decent idea for people who arent sure of a game, perhaps "demoing" a purchase without fear (as long as u do'nt go over the 2 hour limit playtime wise). Plenty of games on there where opinions either conflict or are mixed...

I can't remember if it was TotalBiscuit or Jim Sterling that said this, but one of them mentioned that if you have such poor faith in your consumer base then you probably shouldn't be making games in the first place.

Indeed, I see a lot of developers pointing fingers at gamers for being supposedly to blame here, but I think developers should really be looking at the real reason that the refund mechanism came to be in the first place - our industry colleagues who have taken it upon themselves to release broken games with little intent to patch them, people like Sergey Titov, Wild Games Studio and Dark Artz Entertainment.

I get Jefequeso's problem, I really do, and I hope Valve comes up with a solution, although I have my doubts that many of the refund requesters would have bought the game in the first place were it not for the refund system. Indeed, he may well find that more people will be willing to take the plunge and find it in their heart not to abuse the system.

The fact remains that gamers who use digital distribution are put at a huge disadvantage when it came to the sales contract between the buyer and seller. They have next to zero protection in a market that essentially lowered the entry barriers so low that it's allowed every snake oil seller to make a quick buck off unsuspecting buyers.