I actually had a blast on my first minecraft “day”. had no idea how to do anything, but the standard control scheme made it easy to move around and survive.

Still, it is true that a tutorial mode would’ve helped, and had the community not being there to spread the word of it’s awesome, maybe it would have failed.

World of Warcraft, on the other hand, is an excellent example of how to spread pacing. Not only are the starter zones well paced and fun to play, you’re always learning new stuff (new dungeons, new puzzle mechanics) as you go along, rather than reach a plateau and spend 100% of the game time grinding (as most other MMOs did).

Then again, it’s all subject to taste, of course.

Regarding Final Fantasy, I think the games work for the same reason minecraft works, the dedicated fanbase is willing to look beyond the flaws. I personally can’t get into a game that gets “better” after 20 hours. It’s my personal taste, of course, but seeing how most of the AAA market lives and dies on satisfying a player base with short attention spans, I can guess that Final Fantasy wouldn’t hold as well without the clout given by it’s reputation as a franchise, not as an AAA title at least.

But I’m also of the opinion that, no only being niche is OK, I’d rather have more niches being explored than more massive mainstream megasuccesses. But that’s just me.

Edit: Forgive the unfocused mess this post is, I’m half-zombified by a nasty cold.

@konidias – most of what you wrote seems irrelevant to my original point, and i’m not sure what your point is. what does it mean for a game to be “created on steam” anyway? you talk as if you are oddly unfamiliar with those games. gish won the igf! it was edmund mcmillen’s first big game, and you never heard of it? spacechem was made by the person who made infinimer, which is the game minecraft was inspired from. i also never said unknown developers could easily get games on steam, so i’m not sure why you bring that up

i think you may be wandering off from my original point into something entirely different. my original point was just that there are games which are on steam which could not have gotten through greenlight. i wasn’t saying that games that look terrible from unknown developers could (or should) get on steam. i was just saying that good games, that look good, and are fun, can still have trouble getting on steam due to how greenlight works. my example was la mulana, which is on steam, but took many years to get there and was rejected three times, despite having a large fan base, despite looking presentable, and despite being thought of as one of the best indie games by many people knowledgeable about indie games (such as indie game review websites). there are many other games in la mulana’s position: games which are great, look great, and are fun, have a good number of fans, and yet can’t get on steam or get through greenlight

@oskuro – i find the combat of minecraft pretty bad, although when i first placed it it didn’t have enemies yet (or a crafting system for that matter). back when i played it it was just blocks, i thought the first 10 minutes of it was interesting in that i could tunnel really deep and then dig my way out. but later on notch added a day and night system and changed the intro so that you have to survive at night, which i felt made the first 10 minutes of the game boring because you were basically forced to spend half of the game time sitting inside of some shelter doing nothing but waiting for the sun to rise. that’s not really my idea of fun

also i don’t think it’s true that gamers have shorter attention spans than they used to. there are plenty of games that require an enormous time investment and which are very popular: league of legends and starcraft 2 are two easy examples, along with minecraft which i mentioned. i actually think attention span of gamers was much *less* when i was a kid, back in the 80s. a game like minecraft (or some 2d equivalent of one, such as terraria) probably would not have done as well back then as it does today, because there was the expectancy back then that a game was something you played for short periods for fun when there’s nothing else to do

i mean, look at any classic arcade game: centipede, pac man, galaga, defender, etc.; they’re all built for very short play sessions. the atari 2600 doesn’t have a single game that lasts more than 10 hours, and 90% last less than an hour. if you want to talk about short attention spans, the games of 2013 are *not* about short attention spans, the games of the atari 2600 are. i tend to think attention span is improving as time goes by. to use an example of RPGs, the average RPG for the nes was perhaps 15 hours long, on the snes it was perhaps 25 hours, then up to 35-45 for the ps1 and ps2, and now 60-80 hour RPGs (or even more) are common. the amount of time people want to dedicate to RPGs has gradually increased over the last 20 years, to the point where, with skyrim, you can spend easily more than 200 hours if you want to do everything in it, and skyrim’s probably the best-selling modern RPG. players do have pretty decent attention spans, it’s the gatekeepers and marketers who do not

i don’t really think that’s the reason steam did that; i think steam was just caving in to indie pressure, since if they establish a precedent, indies will all begin to skip greenlight by going to publishers, and steam doesn’t want that because they’d have to again pay people to play games, which isn’t cost-effective for them

also i never understand the ‘it’s flawed, but it works!’ mentality. if it’s broken, it’s broken. if it works, it works. and in this case it’s broken; even valve doesn’t like greenlight, has called it broken, and wants to replace it. valve fanboys defending valve from charges that even valve admits are accurate makes no sense to me, even though i’ve seen it time and time again on the greenlight forums

One problem with Greenlight and similar systems is that you have to promote your product page, but if you have to promote your product page, you might as well just promote your website.

In that respect, Greenlight is similar to Elance. On Elance, you’re not going to get any business by merely registering your presence and hoping clients come to you. You have to drive traffic to you and constantly reach out to prospects.

Ultimately, with services such as Greenlight and Elance, you end up working for the platform. However, there’s no incentive to put a middleman between you and the customer if you’re going to do all of the work to bring in customers anyway.

I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet, but Gabe Newell himself has spoken against Greenlight.

“Greenlight is a bad example of an election process. We came to the conclusion pretty quickly that we could just do away with Greenlight completely, because it was a bottleneck rather than a way for people to communicate choice.”

Personally, I think indies would benefit more from a service such as IngramSpark tailored for games.

Hey gamers!

Totally agree with your take on RPGs and the learning curve. Sometimes it takes a bit to dive into the mechanics and appreciate the depth of a game. Final Fantasy 13-2 did a stellar job, right?

And spot-on about games not needing to be instantly fun in the first 10 minutes. Minecraft is a prime example – not an instant thrill, but it became a phenomenon. It goes to show that there’s more to a game’s success than just the initial experience.

Speaking of success, if you’re looking for guidance beyond the gaming world, consider exploring book publishing services online. Just like mastering a game, publishing a book can benefit from professional assistance to ensure it reaches its full potential.

Happy gaming and writing!