Valve gives community Greenlight

Recently Valve announced a brand new system that will use community support to choose some of the next titles we will see in the Steam Marketplace. This system is called Steam Greenlight. From everything that I have read, this system seems very much like the crowd funding services like Kickstarter or LEGO Cuusoo. Valve describes this system as follows,

[quote]Steam Greenlight is a new system that enlists the community’s help in picking some of the next games to be released on Steam. Developers post information, screenshots, and videos for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution.[/quote]

This seems like a great idea, especially for Indie developers who have  great ideas that appeal to broad audiences. One of the things that I like about this system is the breath of time value is willing to let a developer post their information. If a developer is willing they can even post as early as the concept phase. In fact, they encourage such postings.

[quote]We encourage you to post information about your game as early in the development process as you are comfortable with. Greenlight will let you define whether you are posting your game as a concept/early build or as a playable game that is nearing completion.
We ask that you only define your game as ‘playable game’ if you have a playable build that demonstrates the gameplay mechanics and at least one level of your game. Otherwise, please classify your submission as ‘concept’ until its far enough along that the community can reasonably evaluate the mechanics, scope, and style of your game. Either way, you will probably get great feedback and a good start in building a community of fans around your game.”[/quote]

Moreover, developers will be able to update entries as development progresses.

On paper it looks like a Kickstarter for gaming. That alone is exciting. Potentially consumers will be able to follow the development of a game as it develops. I am currently following a few developers working on some exciting projects. If they were on steam throughout their process it would be even better.

Valve does admit that they are unsure of the number of votes a project will need in order to be selected because, they don’t know what kind of traffic to expect with the new system. If this system gets as many hits as there are active steam users I doubt they will have any issues with traffic.

Now, I doubt such publishers as EA will need to use such a system to get their game on Steam, but this is a massive step forward for indie developers.

Valve expects Greenlight to launch in the end of August 2012.

For more information concerning submitting a game or an idea to Valve Greenlight see the sited link.

I’m interested to see how well this crowd funding system works for Valve. Only time will tell.

[toggle_simple title="Sources" width="Width of toggle box"]http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight[/toggle_simple] [signoff1]