What do you think about a GarageGames Steam?

#1 Considering the very vocal negative response to Steam (regardless of me never having a problem with it...but then it was also making illicit use of I2 routers to get me my content), I'm not sure if it's the best idea right now. A lot of investor dollars have been put into Steam, and as any keystone attempt, it's had quite a spurious beginning. And I'm sure that the entire industry, both indie and commercial, are watching it. Kind of like city renewal projects are looking at the Big Dig in Boston or the Chunnel Project.

Even your comments on the registration "crap" is a consumer versus a company protecting their IP. It's like the Ignition program, which was created during the IP redistribution scare. It's there if companies want to use it to protect their IP, but it's also something that a developer can opt out of.

#2 I think Garage Games simply needs more regular marketing. Personally, I think Steam is ok ... but I don't want a different version of steam running for every place I buy games from. I am always checking out different games here and I like them I think the next guy would do the same thing ... IF they knew about Garage Games. Now I know Garage Games is probably the most widely known Independent games publisher with the most successful "gamers" indie games out of one place ... but it still isn't that widely known. I keep seeing mention of Garage Games in more and more magazines (especially since their are some games on XBox Live) but it's going to take some more time. Basically, I think Steam is so so and Garage Games shouldn't go that route. Let people come to the games ... don't shove them down their throat with an invasive program like Steam. The only reason Valve gets away with it is because they made Half-Life ... you're not going to see many companies get away with something so invasive.

#3 As of Jan 05 they reported 1.7 million copies of Half-Life 2 sold thru retail. Every copy of Half-Life 2 requires to have Steam running to play.

As an indie working on a game which uses alot of shaders and will have gameplay attractive to a hardcore audience... Valve is at the top of my list of people i will talk to for distributing our game. So Steam has its uses for indie developers with the right product.

Still Stream is very invasive and GGs should do something better than that.

#4 The problem with a steam-like system for GG is that it would require a standard version of torque. And as anyone can see by just looking thru the resources here, my guess is that every single game to ship thru GG has at least one engine source code modification.

#5 @Jeremy (& others)

If you guys want GG to market more you will have to do more than just say "market more" but also help do your part too by not only purchasing items that are sold here on GarageGames but also getting out there and letting your friends, family and other people you know to come check out GarageGames too for the products it offers.

Marketing costs a lot of money, so in short if you want to see more of it done, then ante up to the table and do your part to get involved. Its recipricol so the more you help, the more they can market.


My Thoughts on a "Steam" like system here...

I personally think that this is barking up the wrong tree here. Steam is simply a system put into place to enforce control on a product with a side branch of some marketing to push Valve's wares (ie. products).

Also a huge issue that you get when you personally dont control the deliver method is that you don't know who your users are and who has purchased the game. Once again this falls back into the "control" category with Steam because Valvue knows who has and hasn't purchased the game and collect a whole variety of stats and information from each user which would normally be restricted to the publisher. I will generalize here and assume that none of you guys have released a commercial application or game, but speaking from personal experiance this is a huge benefit for the developer to control, but to get it you would have to personally offer a "steam" type system, this is not something a publisher will freely give to you.

What would be more beneficial for products sold on GarageGames would be something like Real Arcade where you can see a list of games that are offered as well as track recommendations from other users (this can go beyond games to GG resources, urls, etc.) and so forth based on user tracking, profiling and comparing you to other profiles in the system. Now what is really interesting is this is what Project CodeBaby initially started out as before it moved to an intelligent agent helpdesk program. Obviously here the developer of a product does not get the control, but it works better as a marketing tool.

Logan

#6 In a perfect world, where all developers work together and source code is not jelously guarded for fear of giving away game secerets a system like steam could be incredible for torque..

You could download a signle copy of the torque exe (maybe 2, 1 for 3d games 1 for 2d games) and then through a steam like system you can simply download the files that are non standard... or different for the game you want to play...

we are no where near that.. every copy of torque is customized to a point, and no dev team really wants to take there years of work, and start to merge it with another teams years of work, so that a user can save a 7mb download.. its just not effective.. in terms of advertisting, what exactly would GG advertise?

#7 I think that you guys have taken the comparision to Steam and gone to far with it. The idea that I had for this application was basically a hook to the GG website. It wouldn't make you get on the internet to run the game or anything like that , it would just be a way to notify people, who don't come to the website everyday, what was happening in the Indie Game world. It also wouldn't download people's games as an update to Torque, it would just allow the user to download a demo, or purchase the full game from GG just like you can now over the website.
It wouldn't be any more invasive than the user wanted. If they didn't want an application running in their tray that told them about new game releases they then wouldn't need to download it.

Perhaps a better comparision would be an RSS aggregator. It would just be a way to pull in info on the indie gaming scene, what's new, what's hot, stuff like that.

#8 Something along the lines of Stardock's app (can't recall its name) would be nice. It gives you a list of their games and shows which ones you have installed and whether there are updates. Updating their products takes a single click. It's also optional, you can download games/demo/patches from their site as well.

#9 I don't like steam at all, IU downlaoded the HL2 demo, all 700mb of it, then had to wait another hour for it to update the demo and patch steam etc. meanwhile I couldn't browse the net, check email or anything.

This is on my shiny new system, on my old one it simply crashed lal the time. And it leaves tons of junk on your HD too.

Its a pile of poop.

#10 Please no! Steam-like stuff sucks!

#11 Honestly, I like the idea of steam but not where it is now.

#12 There are merits to a non-evil streaming approach to content delivery. The key is making it non-evil and useful to the user. GG will look at all forms of distribution if we think it can help the cause of selling more games and making it easier and better for the customer. That said, there will be no streaming content delivery system for GG any time in the near future. Our fucus will is getting TSE complete, making TGE and T2D better, and making a better toolchain and documentation set than you can imagine.

-Jeff Tunnell GG

#13 I much prefer that direction anyways Jeff... I wouldn't trade neither TSE's new spiffy water and terrain nor T2D or TGE 1.4 for a steam system

personally I think if you want this in your game you could do it yourself, have your own content system for users to download modifications, etc etc...

but thats barking up another tree

#14 I think updating the engines and getting updated docs is better...

#15 I appreciate your comments Jeff. I agree, I wouldn't want anyone at GG to stop working on the engines. My idea isn't so much that GG has to do something like this for us but that, as a community, we need to start thinking about ways to help get the word out to gamers. There are good games on the Internet that you can't find in a store, and this application will help keep you updated on those games.

In some ways I was very excited about the Phantom console because it was trying to deliver games to people without the retail store middleman. (I talk about the Phantom in the past tense because I'm afraid if it does come out it won't have an impact in the face of the next-gen consoles). If we really want a new kind of delivery medium that will allow Indies to reach the largest markets, namely the console crowd, then we need to work on a viable delivery solution for the PC first; one that can go beyond web marketing.

#16 I always thought that a system more like All Seeing Eye would be of better use than say, something like Steam. I personally like having a central place where you can chat, browse games, make buddy lists, get links to demos and so on, would be most beneficial to independent developers. I actually though someone was working on this or somethign similar some time ago....?

I don't begrudge systems like Steam. Anything that can potentially help ESD into the main stream is ok by me. I also don't mind not having to wait in line or search for patches whenever a new one comes out :P

#17 I personally HATE WITH A PASSION steam. For a few reasons.
A. My game's keep dissappearing.
B. Its invasive, i HAVE to run it to mod, i HATE to run it to play.
C. I believe it deleted a file in my SDK, and never updated it for me.
D. It takes up memory.

If you were to make something better, and not limit to those 4 things. Go for it. It'd be awsome. (sorry for lack of enthusiazm, or info, its 3AM, kinda sleepy.)

#18 Bad publicity is pure gold. Maybe GG should reveal its breasts at a public event, make the news and thus attract millions of curious herds ;)

Seriously, I tell people about GG all the time...problem is, I'm not that social and don't have a wide array of people around me. Oh well.
Putting a link on your site back to GG is one good way. But I think that a non-evil system would be very helpful....I don't think that Steam would be the answer, or should be the answer.

#19 I don't get out much either. The monkeys(theoretical) keep me working in my little room.