Pinball Arcade now on Steam Greenlight!

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Wow, huge disappointment. What about Origin?

Origin is EA's own system. The only way onto Origin is to have EA publish Pinball Arcade.

I haven't heard anything from managment yet on the greenlight.

 

[Rudy]

Desura?

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Wow, huge disappointment. What about Origin?

Origin is EA's own system. The only way onto Origin is to have EA publish Pinball Arcade.

I haven't heard anything from managment yet on the greenlight.

I take that back, they opened Origin up to 3rd party developers now.

 

[SilverBalls]

This Origin lot sounds good and no fees for 3 months for developers. Plus it has the added benefit of being able to tell Steam to go and s*rew themselves.

Seriously it does sound good and must be worth considering for FS.

 

[Jeff Strong]

This Origin lot sounds good and no fees for 3 months for developers. Plus it has the added benefit of being able to tell Steam to go and s*rew themselves.

Seriously it does sound good and must be worth considering for FS.

I'd be thrilled if they did that.

 

[Richard B]

Steam sucks anyway. All the additional crap they put on your hard drive that does god knows what to your system.

 

[jrolson]

Origin is pretty bad too, I just reported a bug to the devs last week where Origin would use 46% of my CPU power all day for no reason at all, just being idle... they wrote back it would be fixed in the next version.

I would take Steam over Origin any day... less bugs.

 

[jkonami]

Steam is decent, guys. And that's where the money is for Farsight, like it or not. I think they should be considered a big enough player to skip the greenlight process, though. Greenlight was made for small developers. The problem with greenlight is that it is fully controlled by the force of votes from various internet communities much larger than ours. Places like Reddit, 4chan and the like influence the votes to a large degree, and you can tell because the greenlit games often match the overarching tastes of those communities - minecraft and dwarf fortress clones, slenderman, and so on. I think Farsight needs to pony up like the real devs they are and just skip greenlight. I just think gl will be a tough climb unless they increase the number of games greenlit each time.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Bummer, but I expected this. I'm still wondering what the cost of putting your game on Steam outright is. Kickstarter for that maybe? I would consider it if I knew what the target would be.

Steam is decent, guys. And that's where the money is for Farsight, like it or not. I think they should be considered a big enough player to skip the greenlight process, though. Greenlight was made for small developers. The problem with greenlight is that it is fully controlled by the force of votes from various internet communities much larger than ours. Places like Reddit, 4chan and the like influence the votes to a large degree, and you can tell because the greenlit games often match the overarching tastes of those communities - minecraft and dwarf fortress clones, slenderman, and so on. I think Farsight needs to pony up like the real devs they are and just skip greenlight. I just think gl will be a tough climb unless they increase the number of games greenlit each time.

So you think if they pay a certain fee, they can skip GL altogether?

 

[Heretic]

(to steam)

Ill make you an offer you can refuse!

Freeball pinball tables for a few coins each! With more on the way way?

Waddya say?

(steam)

Sorry our systems just typrying to grab a percentage of the inde mobile market

(my imaginary farsight)

Pussies

 

[jkonami]

That's my assumption. Think about all the AAA developers on Steam, how do they do it? Activision has more money than god, and of course they don't go through greenlight. Heck, even many indie titles clearly made by very small teams got on there before GL existed, and they probably had limited budgets. Maybe they shut it off to non AAA developers when greenlight started. Farsight has been published on consoles for 15 years or so - and console makers are notoriously strict on development teams. What I'm saying is they have the credibility. I'm a seriously collector and I'm proud to have many of Farsight's games in my collection. There's no doubt TPA is quality software and a good game to boot. The problem is the main internet saavy/gamer demographic - who might not have discovered pinball yet or just couldn't care less about it. There are tons of younger/new/uncultured gamers that are going to destroy the greenlight polls. My best estimate for TPA can only be based on the number of comments made. That's around 500 people. Of course not everyone who voted made a comment. But compare it to say Blockscape, which has 3100. So they had that many more votes, at least.

 

[Sir Cheddar]

Does anything speak against going for Steam and for Origin?

 

[Biff]

Steam is already established, the software has a long background and is superior to Origin.
But EA is huge, powerful and stronger than Valve. I think the future of Origin looks bright.
Origin is kind of new. At the moment EA probably welcomes everyone who wants to do business on their platform.

I think it's not acceptable how Valve treats Farsight, the whole greenlight process is a farce.
FS already has a name in the business and TPA is doing well on other devices.

 

[Carl Spiby]

I can't believe this.

 

[ClaudeHenrySmoot]

Didn't see this posted here yet... FS's answer re: yesterday's Steam release (taken from Facebook)

The Pinball Arcade

Fear not! We are currently at 88%, and even though we didn't make it this round, we are still collecting votes and pushing through. Our meter didn't reset or anything, so we aren't starting from scratch either. One of these days!

 

[Void]

I agree with jkonami. Things like Kickstarter or Greenlight are mostly popularity contest. FarSight need to do better job promoting this game. Promo video from Greenlight page for example. It's just few seconds of every table and for someone not familiar with pinball it shows nothing. No funny speeches, DMD animations, mulitballs or cool table features. And it have less than 2000 views not by mistake.
Why not to include this video with Elvira? http://youtu.be/e-hpY7vcl50
Short, funny and spicy, over 5000 views (we know why

Here's trailer for Pinball FX 2 for comparison http://youtu.be/VtWOULvl-PE

Other thing is, if the PC version is ready and functional FarSight can give it to people like TotalBiscuit for review. I do not know if it requires any money (probably yes) but would increase interest in the game.
Or maybe a demo version of some kind outside of Steam.

Project-Giana devs did this (demo available on their site and alpha version review by TotalBiscuit) and game passed Greenlight yesterday.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Good suggestions. A PC demo would be pretty incredible.

 

[karl]

Yes. Agree. A pc demo would be great and also very useful to Farsight. They can get feedback from users, Iron out bugs and other early hiccups. With all the different pc specs out there this must be a huge benefit to Farsight. And since it will not come out before December (at the earliest) now, they still have time to listen to the feedback and make changes. What a wonderful suggestion Void! Are you listening Farsight?

 

[Rudy]

One huge problem with a demo: How do you offset the liscencing costs?

I mean, I think they could probably get away with either a limited version of a game (cutoff at a certain score) OR have a full table with advertisements... but how do you ensure that advertisements work with a game like this?

Plus, it'd need to be an unliscenced game that'll be very cheap to liscence, something like Tales of the Arabian Nights or (if I'm hearing things right and table designers only get a cut for 20 years afterwards) an early game like Gorgar.

 

[Jeff Strong]

One huge problem with a demo: How do you offset the liscencing costs?

I mean, I think they could probably get away with either a limited version of a game (cutoff at a certain score) OR have a full table with advertisements... but how do you ensure that advertisements work with a game like this?

Plus, it'd need to be an unliscenced game that'll be very cheap to liscence, something like Tales of the Arabian Nights or (if I'm hearing things right and table designers only get a cut for 20 years afterwards) an early game like Gorgar.

Well, they have free versions on mobile devices, and demos on 360/PS3, so why does it need to be any different on PC? I guess the only thing hey would need to change for now would be to replace the option to buy the full version with a link to their Greenlight page.