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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

This is an odd comment as Steam Greenlight is currently one of the main drivers of getting indie games exposure when it would be near impossible otherwise.

Yes, Steam Greenlight has quality control issues, but it still has a purpose of getting games to the store without going through a publisher.

The environment has been better-than-ever for indies, especially as increasing costs make AAA games harder than ever to make. (in 2015 alone, we have Rocket League, Ark: Survival Evolved, and Undertale)

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The environment is good overall, but marketing has become more complex for indies, since it's no longer directed through a platform owner - it has to go to an audience beyond "game players" to make a big impact. This has stymied a lot of developers who are new to marketing, but it also points the way forward.

I guess the idea is that Steam Greenlight has grown the indie market and thus given him more competition.

I don't think it's necessarily so zero-sum. The videogame market is continuously growing, and competitively-priced indie games can still be a big success.

You don't even need to be a big success like the previously mentioned Undertale, Rocket League or Ark. For small teams there's an extremely viable middle ground between the game not selling anything and it going huge.

Exactly, AAA games have to make back their multimillion dollar budgets, indies don't have that same pressure.

Gunpoint and Risk of Rain are really good low-budget games that fall into that middle ground category. I'm fairly certain each were made by a single developer, but have been very successful.

Risk of Rain happens to be one of my favorite games! I'll have to check out Gunpoint.

And if you like Gunpoint, don't forget Ronin, also indie and also made by a single dev (and with a general aesthetic similar to Gunpoint, but different gameplay).

I agree. The initial impression is that Greenlight makes it too easy, flooding the market with a lot of junk that makes it hard for the gems to shine through, but I've only seen more indie successes on Steam since its inception.

I think if a developer is relying only on Steam Greenlight to market their game then they'll likely have issues, but if they market in other ways then (if their game is worthwhile) they'll quickly build an audience.

I agree, and I think the flood of low-quality games has actually had the opposite effect that people were predicting.

Rather than drowning out good games, it is becoming easier to tell which games have some love put into them. It reminds me of the movie Idiocracy[0]. What might have been a C game before Greenlight suddenly looks pretty damn good compared to all the F's floating around them.

[0]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

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