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From the perspective of allowing more and more games to exist and do well on the market Valve is doing amazing. This talk goes over some of it https://www.gdcva

From the perspective of allowing more and more games to exist and do well on the market Valve is doing amazing. This talk goes over some of it https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025672/2014-vs-2018-The-Shape https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025672/2014-vs-2018-The-Shape but essentially there are 1000+ games right now on Steam with over 100 concurrent users. One of my games got about 80 concurrent users at its peak and it made a small but fair amount of money (especially for someone's first game), so it's easy to see how 1000+ games with that many players means a lot of financial success to a lot of people, way more than ever happened before for game developers. One of the things that amazes me about Valve and the way they run Steam is that I released my game, had thousands of people buy it, pushed updates, communicated with users, got paid, and I had to speak with 0 human beings at Valve. It all just happened in a very predictable, clear and highly automated way. This lack of friction is absolutely amazing for developers, especially people like me who live in a third world country and would otherwise have more difficulty going through these processes for any number of reasons. So IMO they're doing something extremely valuable which is properly acting as a platform so that other game developers can succeed and make more and better games for everyone.

b_tterc_p 7y ago
Care to share more about your experience releasing a game? Did you do any marketing? How much did it make?
- adnzzzzZ 7y ago
  https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/44 https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/44, https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/35 https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/35
  - codesushi42 7y ago
    Thanks for sharing. That is a pretty good amount for a first game and what looks like a niche title. Are you making indie games for a living?
  - PatrolX 7y ago
    That's really cool to see, well done for sharing and inspiring other game developers.
  - hnick 7y ago
    It's not one you linked but I ended up at https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/31 https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/31 and really liked the bit about Premature Generalization. It's something that has stalled me out a bunch of times, trying to find the 'correct' way to implement things, rather than just charging through and trying to see if my ideas even have merit to stick around long enough to desreve improvement. It has obvious links to the famous saying about Premature Optimization too. The bit about globals and team vs solo matched my experience too (especially the part about how much you can fit in your head at once).
    - b_tterc_p 7y ago
      The part about it being ok to break rules more freely as a solo dev because it’s all in your head also resonated with me as something I think about but stray from due to needless guilt
      - hnick 7y ago
        The usual counter-point is that even when you're solo you're not - it's you writing the code today, against you reading the code in 6 months or more and not remembering anything. I think that's often overblown in importance though.
chaostheory 7y ago
The PC game revival probably would have taken much longer without Steam. The things that Steam does seamlessly like installing required frameworks, a regular update delivery system, cloud saves, and a cloud-based library with a low price is really easy to take for granted now that it's everywhere. Before Steam, it was a chore to play a game on PCs. Also being able to stream a PC game to any device is really cool. I liked their games, but I like Steam better.
- Tomis02 7y ago
  > Before Steam, it was a chore to play a game on PCs. I disagree. It was somewhat more elaborate but the experience (having an actual physical copy, a manual/books, sometimes nice installer screen) made it feel more special. Nowadays most games feel the same, you just hit a button on Steam, it downloads itself and then you play. But it's mundane; the charm got lost along the way.
  - zorked 7y ago
    It was indeed a chore. Your local shop might not have the game - it might not have been released in your country. Media could be damaged. DRM that wouldn't work on your system. You buy that huge box and all it has is a leaftlet and a CD in a paper sleeve. The game might not actually run, depending on a patch that you had to huntdown in some slow FTP server somewhere. Long live Steam and GOG.
    - maeln 7y ago
      One thing that I kind of miss from "physical" game was the leaflet/manual. Some of them were truly awesome. For example, the original boxes for guild wars had those huge manual with concept art, lore, and explanation about the whole game. It gave you something to do while downloading all the updates on a 256k connection ;) . When you buy games on GoG, they sometimes give you access to the old manual in PDF, but most game don't really have any anymore or it is really just a barebone manual on how to install and play the game.
      - 7y ago
nbaksalyar 7y ago
> allowing more and more games to exist and do well on the market Valve is doing amazing Not to mention their efforts with Linux gaming. Proton [1] is amazing: in under a year a lot of AAA games just work with it. Something you couldn't even imagine happening for the next 10 years. [1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

b_tterc_p 7y ago

Care to share more about your experience releasing a game? Did you do any marketing? How much did it make?

adnzzzzZ 7y ago
https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/44 https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/44, https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/35 https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/35
- codesushi42 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing. That is a pretty good amount for a first game and what looks like a niche title. Are you making indie games for a living?
- PatrolX 7y ago
  That's really cool to see, well done for sharing and inspiring other game developers.
- hnick 7y ago
  It's not one you linked but I ended up at https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/31 https://github.com/adnzzzzZ/blog/issues/31 and really liked the bit about Premature Generalization. It's something that has stalled me out a bunch of times, trying to find the 'correct' way to implement things, rather than just charging through and trying to see if my ideas even have merit to stick around long enough to desreve improvement. It has obvious links to the famous saying about Premature Optimization too. The bit about globals and team vs solo matched my experience too (especially the part about how much you can fit in your head at once).
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    The part about it being ok to break rules more freely as a solo dev because it’s all in your head also resonated with me as something I think about but stray from due to needless guilt
    - hnick 7y ago
      The usual counter-point is that even when you're solo you're not - it's you writing the code today, against you reading the code in 6 months or more and not remembering anything. I think that's often overblown in importance though.

chaostheory 7y ago

The PC game revival probably would have taken much longer without Steam. The things that Steam does seamlessly like installing required frameworks, a regular update delivery system, cloud saves, and a cloud-based library with a low price is really easy to take for granted now that it's everywhere. Before Steam, it was a chore to play a game on PCs. Also being able to stream a PC game to any device is really cool. I liked their games, but I like Steam better.

Tomis02 7y ago
> Before Steam, it was a chore to play a game on PCs. I disagree. It was somewhat more elaborate but the experience (having an actual physical copy, a manual/books, sometimes nice installer screen) made it feel more special. Nowadays most games feel the same, you just hit a button on Steam, it downloads itself and then you play. But it's mundane; the charm got lost along the way.
- zorked 7y ago
  It was indeed a chore. Your local shop might not have the game - it might not have been released in your country. Media could be damaged. DRM that wouldn't work on your system. You buy that huge box and all it has is a leaftlet and a CD in a paper sleeve. The game might not actually run, depending on a patch that you had to huntdown in some slow FTP server somewhere. Long live Steam and GOG.
  - maeln 7y ago
    One thing that I kind of miss from "physical" game was the leaflet/manual. Some of them were truly awesome. For example, the original boxes for guild wars had those huge manual with concept art, lore, and explanation about the whole game. It gave you something to do while downloading all the updates on a 256k connection ;) . When you buy games on GoG, they sometimes give you access to the old manual in PDF, but most game don't really have any anymore or it is really just a barebone manual on how to install and play the game.
    - 7y ago

nbaksalyar 7y ago

> allowing more and more games to exist and do well on the market Valve is doing amazing Not to mention their efforts with Linux gaming. Proton [1] is amazing: in under a year a lot of AAA games just work with it. Something you couldn't even imagine happening for the next 10 years. [1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton