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Steam Sales 2015

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51–60 of 92 posts

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#51
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ET The Extraterrestrial is a legendary case.

The Lion King movie game on PC was almost enough to shake confidence in the viability of Windows as a gaming platform

Why? I loved it. Both it and Aladdin? - they also were dos games.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#52
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ET The Extraterrestrial is a legendary case.

The Lion King movie game on PC was almost enough to shake confidence in the viability of Windows as a gaming platform

Why? I loved it. Both it and Aladdin? - they also were dos games.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#53
post #34
post #9

>Indiepocalypse is cancelled, you can stop worrying now. I think I speak for quite a few people when I say thank God . I have nothing against indie games in general but the sheer volume of low-quality DayZ/Minecraft-inspired early-access survival game clones that were all broken in the same ways that were never finished by the developer have left me jaded.

If you think the bottom has been reached, look at the "best of" of the Play store. That's the cess pit the PC game market will be turning into, and I have no hope that Steam's Greenlight will prevent this.

But those games have always been there. Go in your local store that carries physical copies of games and count the shovelware. Steam isn't supposed to be a curation service - there are tons of those, find a reviewer you like and follow their recommendations. Steam should be as full as possible a repository of paid games you can download.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#54
post #33
post #9

>Indiepocalypse is cancelled, you can stop worrying now. I think I speak for quite a few people when I say thank God . I have nothing against indie games in general but the sheer volume of low-quality DayZ/Minecraft-inspired early-access survival game clones that were all broken in the same ways that were never finished by the developer have left me jaded.

That is true but I'm (as a customer) still happy with it since I got one single game out of it that I can't stop playing and this is a feeling I had not since...college. The game is Rimworld and it's a early-access clone of prison architect. The game is far from done, the dev left for a long extended break but the game is still a endless source of joy. And I haven't even touch the mods. The sheer diversity and new id…

Another Rimworld player here. The parent post was complaining about knock-off survival-style games, and Rimworld assuredly isn't a knock-off. The developer, Tynan Sylvester, put a ton of thought into the game mechanics and created a simulation masterpiece--made even better by the extensive modding community.

Tynan also wrote a book, "Designing Games," which is worth checking out.

Also, the similarities to Prison Architect are coincidental. I've played and followed both games for a long time, and neither is a clone of the other. (However, I do wish that Tynan would clone PA's user interface--Rimworld's UI is clunky by comparison.)

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#55
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a problem with the catalog or a problem with the store? I've found steams interface for searching and finding new games is pretty bad.

I am both a gamedev and a avid game player, of some niche and strange genres included. I found out that Steam catalog, despite "opening the floodgates" is quite limited on some genres, some niche genres have the nicest games don't even volunteer for steam (usually because the nicest games have perfectionist devs that don't want to be "another shitty early access", for example Starsector, the game has been being sold…

So where do you go to discover non-Steam games? These days I only browse for new games on Steam, and I know I'm missing out on some great stuff, but I don't know where else to look.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#56

Ah! Double Y axis charts! I have been arguing with another founder about the double-y and how we should not use it. What are peoples' response to the charts in this post? Do you find them easy to read/helpful/giving good insight into the data?

I find I have to think about them too long, and I think the rendering details contribute to that. There is nothing wrong with double y-axis graphs if you don't just slap them together because the x-axis has the same range. I think the lack of concern for the rendering details make these harder to immediately read than they should be.

Why are the axis labels not colored the same way the lines are, or the entries in the key not positionally associated with their axis (rather than being in the center). The triangles and circles on the lines on "Steam Sales" offer no utility (except, perhaps, for color-blindness or if it was printed in black-and-white, but then dotted-vs-solid would be a better choice). There are horizontal tic marks, but they are separating the dates, not centered on the datapoint, meaning the data is being presented as a column, which a line graph is not best for (that is, the choice of graph given this data may not be the best one).

And that's just the problem with one graph. There are two graphs on this page, and both have different rendering details. Consistency is important because it means understanding the rendering of one graph translates to the understanding of the other. Why doesn't the second graph have shapes over the data points? Why doesn't the second graph have tic marks along the x-axis? Color is used inconsistently: the unit for the blue line is units sold in the first one and dollars in the second one, and the side the graph the blue line is associated with switches. Despite that the axes that are denominated in dollars are showing different things (totals vs discrete values), there is value in having them both on the same side of the graph (and in the same color)—that the blue one switches sides means the viewer needs to concentrate harder on the key and layout leaving less time for interpreting the data. It would actually be better if four colors between the two graphs were used since there are four different domains of data being shown. They both show the same time range, but the dates are not formatted similarly along the x-axis.

In both cases, the units on the labels are too exact. "60.00%": why is this 4 significant digits, a whole number percentage would do. At this size, the decimal point and percent sign almost get lost with the unneeded zeros. "Steam Sales" has units that are so big with so many zeros you have to think about the order of magnitude; these should be truncated to "$300M" and "65M".

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#57
post #9

>Indiepocalypse is cancelled, you can stop worrying now. I think I speak for quite a few people when I say thank God . I have nothing against indie games in general but the sheer volume of low-quality DayZ/Minecraft-inspired early-access survival game clones that were all broken in the same ways that were never finished by the developer have left me jaded.

You can't really fight fads. Did you see Dying Light clearing nearly $45M? Yeah, its not some indie half-cooked turkey, but its a completely forgettable and short zombie shooter/parkour game with milquetoast story and gameplay. Can you blame these other devs jumping on the wagontrain? There is so much money to be made in this space. It should be Steam's job to keep out halfcooked games but apparently they disagree. I…

I disagree with your assessment of Dying light. It's a beautiful game on xbox one, I enjoyed it at full price. I'll get back to it when I feel like it but the mood and scenery are fantastic and quite memorable. I'd give it a 7.5 - 8, and I can see somebody rating it a 9.5 depending on their taste.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#58
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reluctant to breathe a sigh of relief yet. I've been visiting the Steam Store a lot less since they opened the floodgates to any and every game under the sun as I believe discoverability is now horribly broken and the queue and recommendations features both fail to mitigate the issue.

> I believe discoverability is now horribly broken and the queue and recommendations features both fail to mitigate the issue. I agree, my queue is littered with genres I have zero interest in. After the 10th anime dating sim I marked not interested in, it should prevent those games in the future.

Yeah, I mean, you dump 100 hours into one crappy anime dating sim and they never let you forget it...

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#59
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lion King movie game on PC was almost enough to shake confidence in the viability of Windows as a gaming platform

Why? I loved it. Both it and Aladdin? - they also were dos games.

http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster...

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really fight fads. Did you see Dying Light clearing nearly $45M? Yeah, its not some indie half-cooked turkey, but its a completely forgettable and short zombie shooter/parkour game with milquetoast story and gameplay. Can you blame these other devs jumping on the wagontrain? There is so much money to be made in this space. It should be Steam's job to keep out halfcooked games but apparently they disagree. I…

I disagree with your assessment of Dying light. It's a beautiful game on xbox one, I enjoyed it at full price. I'll get back to it when I feel like it but the mood and scenery are fantastic and quite memorable. I'd give it a 7.5 - 8, and I can see somebody rating it a 9.5 depending on their taste.

Agreed. I know many people that enjoyed that game quite heavily, and it is far from a knockoff zombie sequal/ripoff. It may appear like an Assassins Creed / CoD of the zombie world, but it's definitely not, imo.

Infact, in the genre (which is lacking in general), i think it's one of the top.

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