The Real Problem With Steam

[@ACGreviews]

Also now I know what you meant when you tweeted about consumer reviews and mine. I get you now. More people need to embrace that there is a massive sh*tton of titles between classic and total trash

[@WritingOnGames]

For sure! Most reviews of that kind often provide nothing of real substance unless you know exactly what those specific people are into and care about that. What you've done is try to provide a consumer-focused review that tries as best as possible to account for multiple different perspectives. So whether someone's into story, or something as granular as how the audio design works on different speakers, you've got them covered. That's a real useful thing. (Essentially what I'm saying is people should watch Karak's stuff)

[@deus_ex_machina_]

Writing on Games I find it interesting how you appreciate the granularity provided in ACG's videos but discount TB's (or at least 'consumer advocates' like TB) insistence on technical discussion in his videos. I can't speak for Sterling, but I don't recall TB ever stating that a game was bad, or its developers lazy, simply because it lacked technically. Maybe I just misrepresented your stance?

[@cynicalbrit]

I don't recall it either. I think I've only really done the "lazy" thing in the context of remasters. I actually mentioned this in the Port Report of Bulletstorm yesterday in fact, that missing easily implemented QoL features in a PC version on your second go around of it is harder to excuse. I try not to make reductive statements about the way studios operate, particularly since I know a great deal about that now after visiting a lot of them and talking to many developers. I actually recall an instance of this reductive attitude that I used to have though. I used to be very much against cosmetic day 1 DLC and preorder bonuses back in 2011 when Portal 2 came out. Later on, after learning that this cosmetic day 1 content was actually created because the artists had absolutely nothing to do in the last couple of months prior to release because all assets were finalized and the game was in testing, QA and polish, I changed my stance on the subject and made sure to inform people of that. So I've definitely been guilty of things like that in the past, bearing in mind "the past" consists of an 8 year career, longer if you count the podcasting I did prior to starting on KZbin. Yeah there's a lot of material there and I did a lot of growing as a person, or at least I'd like to think so, over that time period.

[@MyJourneyConcludes]

Wouldn't mind seeing Karak, Hamish and John discuss this on a podcast. Seems like a topic that warrants a deep discussion with all your unique viewpoints. Just wishful thinking though...

[@cragnog]

the man has a right to engage with the audience and speak his thoughts

[@WritingOnGames]

Like I say, whilst I might be flippant in this video at times, it's not personal. Totalbiscuit's latest video regarding the G2A Gearbox situation is really admirable; going deeper on an issue than a publisher and taking a stand against objectively shady stuff that people might not know about. Importantly, he's basing his claims in reality and providing evidence to suggest that G2A is not what it seems on the surface. In turn, he's actively affecting some small, but positive change in the industry. I have a lot of respect for that. I just feel that in other areas of the industry, the discussion lacks that kind of nuance and depth and thus can't affect that kind of change. Please know that none of this comes from a place of malice or anything. Just analysing how we can perhaps do better.

[@julianorozaa]

Agree or disagree with the video, you must admit that it was at least thought-provoking. This is the kind of content I love on KZbin.

[@cynicalbrit]

Hmm, while I agree with some of this, I feel as if you're to some extent misrepresenting what I do. I won't speak for any of the others you bring up, but I can speak for myself. I don't think you're all that familiar with my work, since you seem to think it's all "ranting about bad games". In reality, we haven't featured a truly bad game on the channel for years now. I actively avoid giving them the time of day. Turns out when you're doing chemo all the time you have less patience for that sort of thing and the limited time you do have is better spent looking at either titles people really want information about or elevating titles they don't know about and should take a look at. That is the essence of curation after all, translated into media on KZbin. I'd also reject the notion that I never put any responsibility onto the consumer or criticize any consumer behavior. We do this all the time. Whether it be on the podcast or as part of regular pre-recorded video content. The point about breaking up Steams monopoly? I've been making it for years. The thing is, I'm pragmatic in my approach. I look for practical solutions rather than idealistic ones. It is idealistic to suggest that we can suddenly motivate a huge number of people to use itch.io on the regular, whereas, knowing that everyone already uses Steam, it is pragmatic to attempt to implement change to the platform that people already use to elevate more interesting titles within that platform. Developers have actively asked me to hold off on videos for their game until they get it on Steam, because they know for a fact if it's currently only available outside of Steam, it won't sell unless it's a massive F2P multiplayer title or Minecraft. All our data drives the same conclusion, if we cover a game that isn't on Steam it's harmful to the developer and less useful to the user. This includes games that will be on Steam, just aren't available for purchase yet. We see much, much lower numbers on videos for interesting indie titles at PAX that nobody can buy for at least another 6 months. It's worth watching the developer of Antichamber talk at GDC about this. He asked us to hold off on our coverage until around launch because he understood that to get consumers to step out of their comfortzone and try something really interesting and unique, you need to make it as smooth a process as possible, which includes making sure the thing is immediately available to buy on the platform they want to buy it on. Antichamber continued to great success, despite it's unorthodox design. One has to pick one's battles. I can continue to preach about not giving Valve a monopoly and being willing to use more than one platform (for gods sake people, you have a desktop PC, you dont even have to manually login to these clients to play your games, just click a shortcut, not difficult) but in reality that's only going to alter consumer behavior at a glacial pace if at all. In the meantime, I have to consider what is most useful for my audience and also for the developers in question when I give my limited attention and spotlight to something. Those opportunities should not be squandered. I'm not really sure where you're getting the idea that I hate funny, out-there games that maybe aren't perfect or that my viewers share the same sentiment. I look at less of them these days simply down to health-related reasons but I've certainly never condemned them and the podcast is a weekly venue for many of those games to be discovered, as I know my cohosts play more of them than I do. I dont think I agree with the idea that Valve simply brought us out for show. Show isn't 7 hours in a meeting room with Adobe Illustrator or the months of pre-visit discussions. I guess I have more faith in them than you do at this point, but back to my earlier point, my focus is pragmatic solutions. I'll leave the idealism to other people. If I do have the influence to affect meaningful change then I need to use that influence in practical ways to do things that will actually help. That includes doing things like internal, searchable tagclouds which for some reason you seemed to think was me lamenting that Valve wasn't confirming to my genre definitions or something? The whole point of that is to be a useful consumer tool to find the things they want and be given an accurate impression of what they are. The tag-cloud itself is internal to the curator and has no influence on anything outside of the curators ecosystem. If people want to keep calling games that aren't like rogue, rogue likes they are welcome to but I know that the people that follow my curator are less prone to doing that and know the difference. They'd rather be told accurately whether a game has certain features and design philosophies or not before they pull the trigger on it. Implying that I didn't seem convinced by Valves ovations is false. I believe they've created a monster and they know it and they're not fully sure of how to rein it in, which is why they're looking for people that think outside their corporate bubble. Apparently even my KZbin comments are too long because KZbin isnt letting me post all of this at once... continued in pt2 below

[@cynicalbrit]

pt2 There seems to be this odd idea amongst those who lean towards the more academic side of criticism that consumer criticism is beneath them. That may very well be true, perhaps there's something more noble about the abstract or the idealistic, criticism free of the shackles of petty concerns like pricetag or performance. Ultimately though, there is both a room and need for both. Through my work I have tried to give my viewers a look at things I think they'll like, things that are interesting, while satisfying their need for information of bigger games that they'd like to know whether or not they should spend that $60 on. It might not be noble enough for some but it is necessary and I'm happy doing that job. I'd like to think that the lengthy discussion pieces we do on particular games with all of their explanation, reasoning and yes, repetition, do give our audience pause and encourage them to think about what they're buying and why something they wouldnt usually look at might actually be worth their time. That if anything is why I dislike your implication that my viewerbase would make irresponsible explorers that would ruin Steam and surpress interesting games. Maybe if my channel was committing large parts of its library to condemning bad/flawed indie games with rhetoric fierier than a thousand suns that might be the case but it doesnt, hasnt for a very long time and really that should be pretty obvious to anyone that watches it even rarely. I agree with you on many things. Games conversation is often reductive. We've tried to change that, but you yourself are being reductive in claiming that technical discussion, information that's rather important to the people who have to pay for their games rather than those who get them for free, all boils down to "this is bad and dev is lazy". The point is not to condemn, it is to inform and encourage developers to take these factors into account in future. This is also pragmatic. It's practical and it works. The big focus on games lacking FoV sliders around 2012 directly lead to more PC versions including them. This is less of an assumption and more of a claim based on the things that these developers have actually told me. People laugh about my "obsession" with FoV sliders. The people who suffer from simulation sickness aren't laughing. The same thing is hopefully happening now with a focus on games' support for colour-blind modes. Practical criticism leads to practical solutions. I'm just not really sure that this big generalized image of all these "pro-consumer" KZbinrs preaching hellfire sermons about lazy devs is actually representative of reality. It doesn't serve any practical purpose to act that way if you want to effect any sincere change. That's the point you were making too right? We're both on the same page, you just seem to believe in this idea of a ranting "pro-consumer" KZbinr that doesnt really exist outside of clearly defined alter-egos and comedy skits. Jim Sterlings character is just that, a character. The hyperbole he spouts from his podium is not really him. AngryJoes costumed rants follow the same lines. One would hope that people could distinguish the difference, though I don't think that some peoples inability to is a reason to stop doing it. We don't remove electrical sockets to protect the people sticking forks in them. Anyway this is running on way too long. Point is I'm a fan of advocating for practical improvements while trying to encourage my audience to think outside the box a little bit and look at things they otherwise wouldn't have. We've got a pretty good track record of that. The larger problem may very well be issues such as Ubisofts insider trading and you may ask, why is this not getting focused on more? Well you answered your own question. We live in a capitalist society. Shouting about how bad something like that is doesn't make a difference to these companies, the bottom line does. How does one affect the bottom line in a practical, realistic way? By making sure consumers know which games are probably worth their money and which are not. By pointing out the "blindingly obvious" flaws so that some viewers might very well hesitate before hitting that preorder button. Turning a day 1 purchaser into a patient, more discerning consumer. That's ultimately what you want right? More responsible consumers? So do I, my approach to doing it and really to all things in my life, is just a more pragmatic one. Maybe my idealism died the day a doctor told me "take this poison that makes you feel like you're dying, to avoid really dying... well maybe, it probably won't work". Perhaps you can understand why at that point, solutions that work became important to me. Perhaps it is better that we have a wide range of different kinds of criticism available. The more viewpoints we have and the more willing viewers are to consider them the better class of consumer you will create. That doesn't mean changing existing channels, it means doing your job. It means your channel and others like it framing things differently and providing a different voice, rather than trying to get everyone else to sound the same as you. I like diversity. One of my favourite kinds of diversity is that of opinion. Keep being successful, keep saying the things you want to say, keep being the voice that you think the industry needs. We'll keep doing that too, maybe between all of us we'll make it better, just not by repeating the same point that everyone else is making. Maybe you'd like to come on our podcast at some point and you can get some of those ideas out there to a bigger audience? Best of luck.

[@WritingOnGames]

TotalBiscuit, The Cynical Brit hey! Seriously, thank you for responding. I'll be sure to respond to all your points properly when I get back home, because there are some really interesting things you bring up that I'd like to give the time to counter. I'll say right now though that I'm absolutely not calling for every critic to be the same or spout the same opinion or whatever (I don't think I ever insinuated that). Quite the opposite. I think by digging deeper into the larger issues at play we actually achieve more diversity of opinion, not less. But like I say, I will be sure to respond properly when I get the chance. Thanks again!

[@cynicalbrit]

Of course! I know I tend to waffle on so don't worry about it :P

[@Superblamblamman]

TotalBiscuit, The Cynical Brit this is honestly one of the most professional and respectful responses to a KZbin vid I've seen. kudos

[@Tiranozauras]

Great video and great response from TB, I applaud this discussion :d

[@WritingOnGames]

Hey! Got about a million messages and comments I've not responded to since vid went up. Apologies if it takes a while to get to them all. Honestly, I've been taking the weekend off and having a really good time (been kinda worried about putting this episode up, haha). Gonna play Persona 5 today before getting back to writing. For now though, thanks to everyone who has watched and said thoughtful things even if you disagree. Was bracing for a lot of hate on this one, but instead it's actually been super constructive. It's really cool to see people graciously respond to or accept some criticism, and I know I've certainly got a lot to take from this from all sides. I'll be sure to detail that in the responses. It's exciting to have this discussion and potentially improve the way we all approach this stuff! Like I say though, I'll get back to as many as I can ASAP. Thanks again for watching, everybody!

[@demi-fiendoftime3825]

Writing on Games As a game design student I couldn't put it better my self we don't know you we don't care about you. We're making the games we want to make money and we will put in the minimum amount of effort to see it done barely get paid for it while the board of directors and share holders make more money than any else! The crap we the gamer comunity complain about is a child wineing about their food tasting funny and complaing at their parents to fix it instead of being an adult and demanding to see the management for not making sure that their product was of good quality. The gamer fanbase needs to as pretentious as it sounds grow up and stop complaining about symptoms that effect individual games and confront the real issues of the industry!

[@Arunnejiro]

I bet it makes you feel good as a person to speak so lowley of the entire gaming community. While death threats, rape threaths, and misguided blame are not good in any respect. At the same time organized protest and community awarness and criticism aren't 'immature'. Calling devs lazy may be missing the point. But at the same time if a game is this or that then it can rightly be criticized for being such. Theres nothing wrong with talking to people about how they shouldn't support paid dlc. Or even recently people like to make fun of the for honor players who organized a protest. There was something they didn't like about their service, they protested 'whined' about it, and the devs responded. What else were they supposed to do? Nothing? They allready bought the game so calling them idiots for buying it is redundant, it doesn't fix or change anything.

[@kaovhmf]

I know it may be a lot to ask but please put your newer videos into the playlists you have. I try to follow like 13 game design channels dayly and normally just assume that if there is no new video on the "writing on games" playlist, there is no new video for me at all. That has made me miss some of your updates already. And thanks for the awesome content! Been loving them so far.

[@DexterNewton32]

I agree on the first point, though it pains me to say it considering Uplay and such are very optimized and sorry excuses for a proper game DRM platform. GoG and such is great. Just wish they had more games. Which is a problem on the developer side of things. Developers need to change to, maybe bring their games on other platforms as well, such as GoG, etc. But then again, that would be bringing games to their own rivals platform. It's different with Valve, they barely make games anymore so they feel less like rivalry. I also agree there is to great a divide when it comes to saying a game is good or bad. But I generally feel like this is also a matter of how you TAKE a review. The good reviewers often point out good and bad points, recommend to certain groups and say things like "if point X doesn't bother you this game might be something for you". I think the balance of bad game to good game is enough, and if a game is "mediocre" it just means that it is somewhere in the middle there but "nothing special" for the particular reviewer. There are many reasons of course. One maybe being that a game does nothing new from it's predecessors, or that it has a lot of content but very little variety. Does not mean it's a bad game, and the reviewers often don't say that. They just point out what they deem to be the bad points and/or the points holding a game back. As for the other points: First of all, I couldn't give a flying fuck if they had insider trading going on. That is their problem and doesn't effect me personally. I don't hold the law over my own desires, it's the other way around. Sure what they did was illegal but what does that have to do with me? It only matters to people being in the business and potential investors, not for people being on the consumer end of things. Sure it can be mentioned and analyzed in an attempt to explore the origin of some of the things going wrong in game development, as I am sure in the end having to pay a fine for stuff like this is gonna affect production of all games that are to be released or produced after that point in time, but what else is there that should interest me as a consumer? I also feel like the main job of people like Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit is to focus on the consumer-centered problems. Sure not every time can you just say that acting consumer-friendly is "good for business" and make it so, it might be the opposite at times, but what do you want us to do? Shut our traps and just focus on "actual shady business practices" that have nothing or very little to do with the development of any particular/specific game aside from maybe the companies overall financial situation? What, are we business/industry journalists now? No. Those people are GAME journalists, they focus on all the things revolving around the GAME itself. And I guess insider trading falls more in the category of business and not game development itself. If I talk about the quality of a car company and their products I am very likely to talk about sale prices or car types, replacement parts, about the production-line (how a car is produced, with which quality and how much time is needed vs how much time is given) and NOT about how the company fares on the stock market or if they have insider trading going on. I also think that the big reviewes on YT are very much aware of the producer VS developer VS consumer state of mind situation. In fact I have seen countless videos of various of those big game reviewers pointing out the difference and mentioning over and over that there is a big problem in this industry which is mostly connected to the mentality of expectations, with producers taking less and less risks with game projects while also pushing their development studios with hefty deadlines, etc. The informed consumer is very much aware. But then again, isn't it exactly THAT what we want from those reviewers? That they FOCUS on the GAME aspect of things. If I watch a review or opinion piece I don't want to know what illegal business they are involved in behind the scenes, I want to know "is this game any good?" "what can be criticized?" "what can be praised?" "does it hold up to my standards?" (which you discern by taking the opinion of your trusted reviewer and contrasting it against your own one and then look where the game stands on that) "do I get my money's worth?" "how am I treated as a consumer? (DLC, DRM, etc)". Those are the questions that stay in the foreground for a consumer.

[@stevefernandez6431]

Writing on Games just watched and I agree but the issue is my opinion for me is i can't find good games fuck having multiple libraries I could have 30 libraries for all i give a damn but I want or relevant games in the fact that it's more up to date on equipment and tech steam is shelling out bad games origin has only ea games and u-play is a complete shit show because "Ubisoft" I can't say mass effect is unreasonable in any means but for what they had to do it was brilliant but still it's kind of ugly to deal with blank stares but you are 100% right if the market doesn't change the industry will just get worse and with total biscuit and others included they can talk there opinions but they are a drop in the bucket nomater how big that influence on the company is

[@CharcharoExplorer]

Finally. About time people understand that sometimes... *the consumer is not right. And that if the consumer is to have the ultimate power, they also must have some responsibility and long term thinking.*

[@LomanLawson]

the market is always right tho. and in fact, the market will work out whatever problems it will come across. and seeing how steam is still successful, the market doesn't see it as an issue yet.

[@CharcharoExplorer]

The market isnt always right... that is just a lie.

[@trevor8293]

I would think that if the market, being the consumer, is right all the time, then they could just ask for any price on any product. Which is also why the suppliers, devs and publishers, work on games that they can put out. The balance between what people will buy and what publishers release makes for a good economy. Consumers also don't always know exactly what they want either, which is when we get problems like this.

[@LomanLawson]

the market is supply and demand. and in the end it is always right because products that are demanded get supplied. the language that is spoken is money. the easier example of that is blockbuster. its out of business and netflix is thriving because the market made it so due to the supply and demand of such products/services. over time, market is always right. perhaps it's not right today but thats only because the money transaction to let the demand side know that supply isn't wanted just started today and it will take a year to reach it's destination to make that change.

[@dirge7459]

The consumer makes and breaks a business at the end of the day, without your consumer, you are virtually worth nothing. Any business in this world exists because someone funds it. Without said funding your business isn't going anywhere.

[@pseudonymity0000]

I think it is good to look at why Steam went down this path in the first place. All you need to do is look at Minecraft. You see, Mojang did originally look into launching the game on steam, but because back then steam required that you had a finished product, they decided to publish it themselves. Because of this Valve lost out on one of the biggest cult game hits. When Minecraft was booming, and other games started to take up this approach, Valve realized that if they wanted to cash in on this model of game development, where you pay for access to the Altha to fund its development, they had to change the way the platform operated. But, out of fear that they would miss out on the next Indi game sensation, it just seemed that they left the door open to let every game in. In a way, you can understand why. Altha games are not really that good to begin with anyway, and the only way to catch that next game hit is to just say, we don't care if your game is shit now because as you rake in the cash you can improve as you earn right?... Well... That was the theory anyway. All that ended up happening was the deterioration of overall game quality on Steam, because as Writing on Games says "Any smuk with an executable" Was just shoveling their crap onto the platform.

[@unwaveringcomplacence6781]

I agree with not putting full blame on the developers, criticism of consumer advocates, and the recognition of the middle market's issues; however, I don't see what this has to do with steam. On one hand you're criticizing the way anything is allowed, but then you have an issue with a barrier to entry that might cause smaller developers to be unable to access Steam. You say that Steam is a monopoly, that the need competition, and that their desire to hold all of the market is bad, but then you show competitors, which means Steam is just the more popular platform -- they are winning. None of the problems you discuss have anything to do with Steam or their (apparent) desire to improve. As for Itch.io, they have a mountain of garbage as well.

[@Burger19985]

god the shitty horror games don't remind me

[@mr.p215]

Agree, there is the MS-Store, Epic Games Store, Origin and many others, but there is a reason why people prefer steam and try to avoid all others like the plague.

[@MrWarners14]

Thank you. Thanks so much for ripping apart the pretentious "pro-consumer" bullshit. You pointed out the cynical and hypocritical attitude of the gaming fandom I fucking hate. It's part of the reason I unsubbed from Jim Sterling and Angry Joe. It's this attitude of villainizing companies but then willingly buying those games and thus supporting the industry they shit on. That and Jim panning a game for having sexual jokes (Yooka Laylee) while having recurring (and arguably worse) sexual jokes on his own show and using a persona to shield himself whenever he shits on a game people like in a condescending way and people don't know if he's joking or not. I think that might also be part of why TGWTG/Channel Awesome had/has a hatedom. Because most of the reviewers on there being unlikable and condescending towards viewers and being toxic in their cynicism while shitting on things people do like. I mean I'm aware there are some decent reviewers sometimes and some of the stuff they do tackle can be really awful but to be honest, I haven't been on the site for a while because it was such a depressing experience when I did go there. I often just go to KZbin so I can comment if they do something childish and stupid (like the Nostalgia Critic but even he can work well every once in a while). Not to mention how people abuse their influential power and get their rabid fans to attack people for rather inexcusable reasons. When someone like Mr. Enter amasses a huge fanbase, makes an Animated Atrocity and then shows the writer's Twitter in the description, don't be surprised if they attack them because you have yourself to blame for the atrocious video and irresponsible attitude you have. That's unacceptable and no, I still haven't forgiven him for that. In short, I really hate this attitude that show up on reviewers' videos. It makes them sound self-important and unlikable and I'd rather just someone who actually cares but doesn't make an ass of themselves.

[@KrazyKain]

I won't argue if you don't like Jim Sterling but your example is a bit flawed. Yooka Laylee is specifically advertised as a kids game or, at least a kid friendly game, so the jokes are a bit jarring. Jim himself... is not for kids.

[@toter80]

It always bugs me when people complain about how bad something is and still buy it. Companies care if you buy the product, not if you like it.

[@onionheadguy7094]

As a fan of both your channel and TB's it might relieve you a bit to know that when I listen to TB's opinion of a game I weigh his gaming priorities with mine, rather than follow lock-step with what his gaming priorities are. I think a good amount of his fans do as well. For example BloodBorne is one of my favorite games and the frame rate doesn't bother me so when i hear TB talk about not playing it and he explains why, there is no a risk of me missing out on a game I would enjoy.

[@cynicalbrit]

As you should. I actively encourage you to do that. I'd suggest everyone read up on Jeff Gerstmanns opinion on the importance of the byline. They built a successful business on the pack of personality-driven criticism, in which those who view it do so with the context of whose lens the game is being viewed through. As much as I try to incorporate different perspectives into my critique, there's only so far you can go with that because you are simply one person. Anyone who claims they can seriously provide a bunch of different, accurate perspectives on a product and completely put their bias aside is foolish themselves. That bias will creep into everything you say. The most important thing to do when doing consumer critique or frankly, any critique is to wear that bias on your sleeve, be fully self-aware of it and make sure the viewer knows it to. That way they can make a judgment relative to yours. This might be a problem if I wasn't constantly saying this very thing to my viewers and discouraging them from viewing me as somebody you should always agree with, but I don't do that, as you're well aware as a viewer.

[@onionheadguy7094]

I will check that out, thanks for the reply!

[@xerpenta]

Honesty is the most important trait of a critic I find. Because, when you listen to a specific person enough, and that person is being honest and consistent, you will develop a sort of connection where you know how their reactions will translate into yours. So after a while you are able to tell not only by the praises, but also by the points of dislike what you will like in a game. Meaning that when you hear an honest and consistent critic, such as TB, disliking a game for a set of reasons, you can safely assume you will like it.

[@OblivionDust2719]

I'm all about GOG these days. sorry Gaben.

[@IAm-zo1bo]

No you aint

[@torchthe62nd63]

Hoooooo this aged badly

[@frankejk]

@@torchthe62nd63 ?

[@HistorysMysterys]

Fuck gog, wtf is that

[@InsaniaTHEGREATONE]

LOL NOPE

[@kalinroar3366]

I try to buy all my games on GOG. I think they do a few thingd better than Steam but for me I never spend much time searching for games on steam. I usually know what I'm getting.

[@HistorysMysterys]

Must be a limited selection

[@Olphas]

I admit, I kinda had a feeling that this would be a video I would skip. So much has been said about all these things and most of the time I can only shake my head in wonder. But instead, this is a video I can really agree with. Especially the second half! As always, this is well written and thoughtful. I'm happy to have my name in the credits (even if my german name gets a bit butchered when you say it. But that's okay ;) ) Happy to support you!

[@cyberrb25]

Being this the Writing on Games channel, he can't have a badly written video to discuss 😉

[@sonicloyalfan]

games development suffer from the age old conflict between people who want to make money doing what they love and those who's only love is to make money.

[@gaynebula6439]

It's interesting watching two years on and seeing how much Jim Sterling has improved on this front. Systemic critique and serious issues now dominate the bulk of his videos, with individual bad games/instances used as examples rather than the entire video's subject matter.

[@Gregorovitch144]

There are a few things in this video that are not correct or misleading: 1. Steam is not a monopoly and they are carefull to avoid becoming one. Steam provides it's distribution services to devs for free. You can sell your game on your own web site or via any other third party retail channel and provide the curomer with a Steam key. Valve will not charge you a cent for it. In fact Valve specifically advise develpers to market their games via mutiple channels in their deveoper documentation. This effect of this can be easily seen in the split between reviews from people who bought the game from Steam and those that didn't. 2. Steam does not want to be judge, jury and executioner on who's games get listed for sale and who's don't, and they are absolutely right to take that position. They would be heavily critisized if they did, again quite rightly. Who the hell are Valve to decide the fate of a game and it's developers? Nobody disagrees that asset flip trash and trading card scams should be eradicated, and that's one of the main things Valve wanted to talk to Bain and Sterling about, but outside of that the only people who should have a say in which games fly and which fall by the wayside are the people who play them, or don't as the case may be. 3. The games market, and the PC games market in particual, is larger than it has ever been and is rising. It is therefore not surprising that many people want to make games. Why shouldn't they? Who, exactly, is in a position to say you, you can make your game and it will be made avaiable on the Steam platform, but you, you are not worthy, your game will not? Writing on Games? TotalBiscuit? Jim Sterling? Valve? Kotaku? PC Gamer? Who exactly? There are some awefull games made, there are a lot of average games made, and there a few excellent games made. Just like music, just like movies, just like TV. Mostly the really good ones get traction. Innovative Indie titles like Banished, Factorio, Stardew Valley, Rimworld have come from nowhere to exceed or are heading for 1m+ sales. How exactly can one be sure that each of those games would have passed the passed the Gatekeeper test and reached the market? Furthermore, and this is the kicker, if you had to make your game first and then submit it it some gatekeeper in the hope it would be accepted, you probably wouldn't make it. Far too much risk. Three years of blood, sweat and tears down the swanny becasue the guy from Valve got out of bed the wrong side that morning and turned you down?? No. Just no. The whole gatekeeper idea is a total bust. Lastly it is worth remembering that Steam is more or less single-handedly responsible for rescuing the PC as a gaming platform and see it grow into the defacto gaming standard. Without it we would all have to play on crappy consoles, which would be even crappier as it happens, and pay through the nose for whatever trash Microsoft and Sony felt like letting us play. And there would be no Civilization V or VI, no Europa Universalis or Stellaris, no Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin and certainly no Banished, Stardew Valley, Factorio or Rimworld. People need to be careful what they wish for sometimes.

[@seanmurphy3430]

The Writing on Games Drinking Game: Every time Hamish says the word "reductive", take a shot.

[@WritingOnGames]

"Reductive" is my new "absurdity".

[@LaRavachole]

4 to 5 years later and this video has only become more relevant, specially the second half of the video talking about how the devs are actually the victims and that it's the higher ups the real problem along with their ACTUAL shady businesses, not the "DLC, Pre-order, cosmetics" bullshit.

[@ReFriedNoodles]

I've always had an issue with Valve wanting to be hands off with their platform. There is no perfect algorithm and having an actual person to help apply occam's razor would do a world of good.

[@melessthanthree]

I feel a lot of the discussion around these marketplaces would definitely be improved if more people who played games knew more about what goes in to producing them. It's a tricky problem though because most of us (especially at big companies) become locked under NDAs, or otherwise only get a platform to talk about development at developer-focused events like GDC. Still, I'm glad you delved more into the systemic problems of production in the industry later on; hopefully that helps some people understand or feel compelled to do more research themselves!

[@Pedrindagurizada]

6:36 what game is that?

[@timemaster31]

Thaannoz I hope someone tells us, it looks like such an amazing game :(

[@massa_todotipodemassa-5tea758]

?

[@timemaster31]

Thaannoz i found it, it's called "night in the woods" :)

[@Pedrindagurizada]

thank you buddy

[@IronyNinja]

How do you have time to make these with Persona 5 out? It's....taken over my life. And I want it to....help me

[@IronyNinja]

IT WAS MY LAST SURPRISE

[@TheBigBossJr2000]

0utta S1TE Dick move

[@TheBigBossJr2000]

0utta S1TE My bad I'm just trying to stay away from spoilers and did not realize it was a Joke.

[@Michael-gu9pw]

I liked the article but I don't agree with it. You've excluded the fact that Steam has major competition and that major competition is the Console market. I agree, Valve has almost completely dominated the PC market, but has also created a platform to make it easier for the people to enjoy the PC Market. Steam has allowed me to play classic games that I thought were abandon-ware. I'm not defending them for their actions against developers if they take a large chunk of the developer's profits but that is the retail business. Mark-ups are everything and its thanks to Steam in my opinion that the PC Market is surviving and doing so well against the Console market. Valve sees itself as the dominating factor in the PC Market, but it still feels competition with the console market. If they don't do well for the consumer, the consumer will just head to the Console market and I see this being the same for developers. I'd like to think Steam is a platform more then anything else and its there to make the PC Gaming market flourish against the console market. That's my opinion anyway.

[@AlemooDoty]

Hey! at 6:40 or so, what game is that?

[@LPIgelRM]

Night in the Woods, I heard good things about it, but didn't get time to play it. Need to do that someday. It's btw on GOG currently 2.20€ cheaper than on Steam. www.gog.com/game/night_in_the_woods

[@modvind]

If I want a game I always go to GOG first. If the game's not there I go to steam. I like the drm-free all control in the user's hands better than essentially 'renting' a game on Steam. When you buy a game on GOG you're getting the equivalent of having the disc but it's just digital, so you can take the game files and put on anothr computer and it'll just play, nothing else has to be installed. And sure, it makes it easy peasy for pirates to distribute but they trust people have any idea of capitalism. And hey, if pirates want to distribute a game, they will...always. GOG wants the control of the game in the consumers' hands rather than in the sellers'

[@modvind]

In half a year I've added more than 30 games to my library of drm-free games. Those being the entire Witcher trilogy along with all the add-ons and stuff that came with the physical copy, just digital, the Fallout franchise(except Fallout4), the Elder Scrolls frachise(except Skyrim), KotOR and KotOR 2, Undertale, Stardew Valley, Medal of Honor Allied Assault, Saints row franchise(except SaintsRow1, duh), Grim Fandango, Crysis and more. There's no reason buying offline games as drm. Go support the rights a consumer should already have and look for your games on GOG first. Only excepton is if it's a really multiplayer-focused game cuz multiplayer-based games already have an expiration date

[@scalabrineplayoff3pt46curr7]

Nicolai for me I go to Gog for rts, Indies and console for AAA 3rd party so I own the disc without internet to play

[@RedMage8BT]

There's no legitimate excuse for Mass Effect Andromeda. Yes "lazy devs" is oversimplification, but I think when people say that, they're including all of the people who rushed it to release in that state, not exclusively the rank-and-file coders and artists (who I'm certain are not lazy for the most part). Ultimately, unless these companies are utterly incompetent (and if you've made it as far as Konami has, you aren't), they know how to make money regardless of how their "core consumer base" feels. Gamers making smarter choices isn't going to do shit when we can't control the masses who are content to spend money on the gaming equivalent of vendor trash. Hence, all we can do is attempt to publicly shame and mock these companies, harming their image in the eyes of the average consumer, to pressure them to change.

[@obviusthemaxim2509]

Great video, what's the game on 7:44?

[@gameanime18]

It's VA-11 HALL-A

[@NegativNein]

Night in the Woods then VA-11 Hall-A

[@tamar7065]

10:30 "What's that? You want a kind-of-bad game to laugh at and have fun with? Well, no, you don't get to do that." I don't think anybody is asking weird, funny or hobbyist-level games to go away. The issue is zero-effort games that do their best to disguise themselves as quality commercial-level projects for as long as possible, usually in an attempt to skim money off the trading card system. That is, what's usually being criticized are _literal scams_, not just small or imperfect games. Weird, bad, diverse, experimental, and unusual games definitely have their place, but most people just don't want that place to be on the world's largest platform, which has a somewhat restrictive and easily exploited refund policy, for real money.

[@Ciaurrix]

Finally, the first KZbin personality speaking some sense. The consumer is not always right, and is in fact, usually wrong. They're not wrong about whether or not they enjoy a specific experience. That much is up to them, sometimes even more than the game itself. I often hear how games as a medium have gotten progressively worse over time, but all this statement is, is a reflection on how jaded and cynical consumers have become. There are bad games, surely, but the environment for developers is a minefield of impossible expectations, time constraints, and customers who are never satisfied. As you said, it is a miracle that anything even gets shipped. KZbin pundits are self serving controversy generators who both feed into and feed off of this cynicism, as they warp and distort expectations and hopes in such a way that no creative mind could ever hope to satisfy. They promote emotional reactions which is why so many have names like "Angry" "Annoyed" or "Cynical" in their title. Emotional reactions disallow reasonable, thought out interpretations of games and the context under which they please or displease audiences. The best games tend to be the ones that are not made as "products" but as experiences designed primarily to be satisfying to the creators FIRST. There is often a false assumption made that games are created to be sold - yet the same people who make this assumption bemoan that so many games are mindless derivatives. They talk of an "industry" churning out "products" when the best games are creative explorations of the medium that focus on quality and experience. I'm a developer, although not some famous or huge one. In my experience, the relationship between publisher, developer, and consumer is awful. Publishers are most often to blame for awful quality and monetizing trends - their understanding of games is strictly as a product that generates revenue. Developers are also to blame, as many are not passionate about games, but possess the same frame of mind. Developer artists, for example, may remark that they "don't even play games" - I hear this frequently said with an air of smug pride. And of course, end users, in all their indiscretion, whining, childish tantrums, are also to blame. They employ, as you said, reductive reasoning to destroy any positive expectations so that they may be obedient, good little customers. It's a good thing I like to make games regardless of this horrible environment.

[@user-dx8nj7qj2g]

I love how everyone that ever calls devs lazy are always not often or mostly always 100% of the time people that have never actually tried or looked at coding themselves they have no idea how complicated it is

[@demi-fiendoftime3825]

As a student who is currently studying game design at a school that has instructors that have worked in the industry he is right in saying it's a miracle anything gets done. My game studio Instructor told us a story about when she was on a debug team for one of the gears of war games and had found that some asshole in the programing department started the definition of every object as I bet you're momma's eye you can't program a better. .., How did they finish the games if they had trolls like that on the team also the industry right now is massively inbred and plenty of devs are actually guilty of not hiring people based on their experience but on having a friend at the company. Her husband didn't get hired by Blizzard until a friend who already worked there of his herd the WOW team needed help in a certain programming field he was an expert at and they had been trying to solve for 8 months he had applied 3 times in the same year and didn't know those applications existed until after they had brought up he needed to fill out an application form only for him to tell them to check their archives full of unread applications, when she was doing debugging work for Microsoft and needed a team for Halo 3 and were understaffed on the debug team she went through the applications that Bungie didn't even know they existed as they were just hiring who their friends told them to -_- It's a miracle any game is in good shape if that's what is going on in the industry! We fans are blaming the devs on being ignorant when they're just lazy and reckless is what I've come to learn. Most teams want to accomplish their goal with as little effort as possible and will be spending half the dev cycle on a game of D&D, CoD, or whatever else that team enjoys playing while 5 to 10 guys take care of the tasks they have nothing to do with -_- Serously I've got a serious wakeup call on how currently messed up our industry is

[@demi-fiendoftime3825]

Also 90% of corporate people don't know and don't care about what it actually takes to make a game they just want a product to sell complete or not :(

[@demi-fiendoftime3825]

Also the industry doesn't hate the consumer they hate cynical reviewers that rile their fans up like attack dogs demanding constant perfection out of every game which is impossible, Every instructor I talk to likes People like the Completionist, Projared, and other Normal Boots reviewers but god forbid you bring up Jim Sterling or Total Biscuit as they see them as people who make their jobs a whole lot harder and less rewarding as 9 times out 10 them and their fans are going to bitch about something instead of just enjoying the game -_- Both sides need to change the Fans need to stop nitpicking and the devs need to stop treating this like a part time hobby.

[@SuperNikio2]

What's the name of the game at 6:30?

[@clydemarshall8095]

I prefer GoG myself. I like owning my games. Not just a license to download and play them.

[@AnonymousAnonymous-xi6zy]

After reading this comment, I created an account with GoG. I'm done with Steam! One thing I've noticed so far is GoG is simple and not convoluted.

[@clydemarshall8095]

GoG does lack many of the community oriented features of Steam, but the GoG Galaxy Client is both optional and a continually improving work in progress. And you're absolutely right about its simplicity. You buy game. You own game. You do whatever you want with game. Plus, GoG is owned by CD Projekt Red. Developers like that have rightly earned the support they get. Unlike Valve, who in my personal opinion, are riding the coattails of their past successes.

[@rademali]

Anyone knows the name of the game at 6:40 ?

[@joaomarcosdevargaswitcel9072]

Does anyone know what game is in 6:07?

[@AnythingButTh1s]

What was that cool looking cyberpunk game he showed around 7:50?

[@yaboinous4446]

can someone tell me which game 6:35 is?

[@MSDarkspyro]

6:45 game?

[@popculture7467]

Night in the Woods

[@timothymclean]

I thought more people would have realized this...Steam is a _de facto_ monopoly, and those are hardly ever good for anyone but the monopoly.

[@FraserSouris]

It's Steam, that's why I think people are ignoring the monopoly thing

[@trevor8293]

I don't think that is the only issue going on here. Steam has a lot of games, and thus many people flock to Steam. Developers also think that games should get on Steam to be noticed, anywhere else and there is a chance that their produced game would become completely neglected by any intended audience. Of course, there is always outliers to argue against, like Blizzard with any of their games, but that is talking about a giant in gaming compared to any variable company that would feel the issue.

[@girandpiggy95]

@Max this

[@blazeshredz6817]

True and the 13 families who rule all wars and monopolies of all kinds from tampons to food in stores, these motherfuckers got to steam and destroyed it

[@thomasbayer1843]

In addition to Max's comment, sometimes a company is really good at what it does. For me, steam is a simple place to buy games and play them with others. It does that fairly quietly and efficiently. Asking them to do this or that extra is fine, and comparing them to GOG.com or whatever is fine, but sometimes companies get a large size of a market because they are doing something very well.

[@tophart8679]

What's the first game shown?

[@robinroos2254]

тops darude sandstorm

[@tophart8679]

That meme died 4 years ago

[@robinroos2254]

тops 2 years ago actually

[@matthewboyer4212]

You also can't change your account name. They screwed up their server infrastructure that badly to the point where I don't trust anything else there. I also hate Valve as a company.

[@pmangano]

The sad thing here is that people who are watching this video are either indie game devs or game design enthusiasts who kind of knew about the problem anyway. The people who should watch this are probably watching angryjoe and are agreeing that valve doesnt care. Well of course it doesnt, if something doesnt hurt your profit margin then by all means dont change it. Doesnt help that valve gathered lots of people who will defend them to death because of things like sales. And dont get me wrong, i`m Brazilian, for this country steam is a blessing, it really is, before steam any comercial game title would cost more than 90 Reais (wich is the local currency and at the time translated to about 50 american dolars), steam then took games and evaded the stupidly abusive taxes that get applied to them here and started offering pretty new PC titles for like 20 reais, 10 reais, that in itself was a revolution. While console games cost 100 to 250 reais simmilar or even the same titles cost 50 on steam. Thats why people love steam. Its cheap. Origin doesnt do that, or at least not as often. problem is, if something is cheaper, who is losing money? In this case, the small dev, big companies can force their way into steam and set the price, indie devs pray to even be featured 10 minutes in any of the store pages. Introducing a paywall to emotionally drained devs that are often already gambling their careers into the game being comercial will probably get things worse.

[@darkymcsoulface7057]

Great Thinking! You brought up a lot of great points that I hadn't heard before. I totally agree that having more than one Library is a good thing. I actually published a game with a friend on itch.io, and I have to say it has been a great experience. After developing a game myself, I look at all these headlines and think to myself: Those poor devs probably don't deserve this.

[@RealRedRabbit]

Thank you. It's hard for some consumers to understand that reviewers, critics and consumer opinion pay a large part in why the game industry is the way it is. It isn't just developers and publishers although they share a portion of the blame as well. You're right; the customer isn't always right. Good video and well stated argument.

[@VARIOUShorses]

I understand that people miss the time where Steam's library was generally seen to be of good quality, but I don't particularly understand the sentiment. The way I see it is that in the case of a retailer more choice is a good thing, even if a disproportionate amount of those choices are poor, provided you make active decisions about what you consume - I'd rather discover a bunch of games from other sources and find that I can buy all of them at the one place than find just a few games at that place of purchase because less are available. As much as I love Jim Sterling's content he as a critic offers the very curation that Steam supposedly needs and his arguments on the subject sometimes fall a little flat for that. Provided that most consumers probably browse more than just Steam I never really thought it was such a big deal, but I never saw Steam as a way of discovering games, so perhaps my perspective is a little limited. For whatever reason though I never really thought it was as big of a deal as people seem to make it out to be.

[@FlipDarkFuture]

It's definitely extremely rare for youtubers like Jim Sterling and Totalbiscuit to ever point out that maybe a developer isn't being lazy. Though in Jim Sterling's case, this is a little more justified when it comes to his steam greenlight critiques. However I agree with you. Channels should be looking at games in a more holistic sense instead of just devolving genuine industry problems to 'the devs are lazy'.

[@FakeFlowers1996]

I have never heard of itch.io, and I am really excited to looking into it now. Thank you so much dude!

[@BrunoB78]

I totally share your view on consumer pundits, one way would be to simply describe them as populists, but that would be ungrateful maybe... fact is, there's a large amount of players who want games' journalism/criticism to be nothing more than top gear - style "infotainment", and who also want games to be nothing more than entertainment, and well it's their right I guess, and it can also be fun and informative and whatnot, one has simply to accept that gamers have various degrees and even qualitatively different kinds of engagement with the medium, and that "colors" their experience with games and how they talk about them

[@nuggie5522]

if you can vote for a game to get on steam it should also be that you can vote to get rid of or keep a game not from library but store page

[@williamscott-jackson9806]

It's rather refreshing having someone add a bit more nuance to the conversation about gaming business practices. It gets pretty frustrating listening to the same tired commentary about games over and over again. We live in a difficult time where games cost more time, money and effort to make; yet people still expect the same year on year drip feed that we got throughout most of the 7th console generation. In the last 12 months, I've made a point of supporting other digital distribution platforms as Steam has been very good at letting me down in terms of the quality of service I have been getting. I'm hoping that if myself and people like me direct our money elsewhere, it will force Valve to step up their game and try to compete again rather than be complacent in their dominance over the PC space.

[@EmotivePixels]

As a Valve fanboy... and a Jim fanboy... this video hurt. I LOVED IT. THANK YOU! Really made me think and question my beliefs and habits.

[@KroltanMG]

Hey, what's the name of the font you use on your logo?

[@sugacilic]

Hi. Wee bit off topic here but the video clips shown around 5 mins in. Are they the cast of clear skies (eve fan film)? I recognise them but not the clip they are in. Is there another thing they are in? Thanks 😁

[@hedgetwentyfour2708]

Mind you that not having all your games in steam is not necessarily the only way that you can launch all your games from a central launcher, there are launching application which launch from all platforms.

[@synthdriver8817]

Does anyone remember the good ol' days when games were made for gamers, by gamers? Yeah, I miss those times too. Back then, there was no worry about profitability, share holders, or business outlooks. It was all about whether the game was fun or not. This reminds me of the time back in 1983 when the game industry had become oversaturated with people trying to make a quick buck from what appeared to be a lucrative business deal. Instead, the gamers became frustrated and sales dropped dramatically. Eventually, the only thing that would revive the dead game craze in America was the innovations of Nintendo. The game industry is simply too oversaturated right now with tons of shitty titles or games that were released too early thanks to greedy share holders. Why do we get so many early released games that are shoveled out way too early? Why do we have annualized franchises that look the same year after year? Why do we have a saturation problem? Why do we have loot boxes, and sleazy business practices existing in games for the sole purpose of extracting every last cent out of the gamers' pockets? Because corporate executives have found where the money is. The only solution I see as of now is to stop giving them money. If we stop supporting these disgusting practices, they'll stop. The problem is, does the general public have the wherewithal to do this?

[@SuperTime2Change]

Steam has so many problems and Valve just doesn't care. They've got more cash than they could ever dream of because of the Steam bandwagon following. I quit buying games on Steam. If I can't find a place to buy it off of Steam, It's a game I pass on.

[@oggy1543]

Even though I don't fully agree with your opinion, I really like this video and is very informative.

[@ThrainnTheRed]

Itch.io is like a Steam curator. The steam curating system is much worse but if they implement the changes that TB talked to the about it can get much better. Like TB said, no one wants to be a Steam curator right now because the service is broken. But if they fix it make it better and maybe put some incentives for people to become curators it can work.

[@ThrainnTheRed]

Also I don't think that consumers should go to another platform to get there games if Steam is the best and easiest option. Because what will Steam do to combat that? They see that we are forcing diversity in the PC market. They're losing sales because we wan't more competition in the market. Will they make Steam better? I don't think they will. Will the consumers come back if Steam gets better or will they stick with the lesser option. If we go back to Steam if they get better then there will be a monopoly again or we stick to our guns and stay with the lesser option, then what incentive does Steam have to get better if we aren't going back anyway. I don't think that consumers can force competition in the market. There needs to another platform that rivals Steam in some way. Artificial competition wont work. I would really like to hear your thoughts on this. If you see this and have the time, please reply.

[@cynicalbrit]

It might interest you to know that Valve also views Itch.io as something of a curator. They don't actively go after games for their platform anymore but they do look at itch.io to keep an eye on upcoming trends and genres/innovations they haven't thought of, to help them better understand genre evolution and niches they aren't familiar with. Itch.io is the in some ways college basketball that the NBA recruits from. It's also the pickup games on the street and the kid playing it all wrong in his back yard. There's a lot of dogshit on Itch.io just as there are titles worth looking at.

[@ThrainnTheRed]

Thanks for the reply. It is interesting to see Steam learning from smaller marketplaces that do take these risks and try out the genres, games and features that Valve didn't think of or didn't think would benefit the platform. If they continue this and find a way to categorize every single genre, game and feature into their store. Well I don't think that they will be rivaled for the foreseeable future if they manage to do that successfully. Now just to clarify, I don't want Steam to succeed because I love Valve or am a massive fanboy of them. Steam is the best platform and Valve seems to be willing to make it better, while having no clear competitor coming close to rival them.

[@MertcanAkardere]

Thank you for always having a different perspective in your videos. Internet is a place where bandwagon'ing is promoted and is self-preserved as bandwagon'ed ideas get popular. So it's refreshing to think about the ideas you arise. I am a programmer and a game dev. in the making. I developed several games (with mechanics but with placeholder graphics) but I am yet to release one. Because the market only certain kinds of games. As you said everyone tries to draw a clear line between what is good and what is bad. Instead of dissecting the game to its components and letting every individual decide whether they like the game for themselves. Everyone enjoy different things and have different dislikes (or deal breakers as John Bain puts it). But most review sites having a single spectrum from bad to good. This means all the big titles tries to appeal to everyone a little bit. And niche ideas perform poorly as they have to focused design mentality. As you said game are really difficult to make. It's a miracle that they even work. Money is not a solution to this, as it takes tremendous knowledge and experience to develop polished games. (For programmers I can say it also takes silly passion because almost any other field has a higher wage than game dev.) Since they are work of such dedication, we should take lessons from each game to further the art of game design. Dark Souls 2 is a good example to a lesson not learned. DS2 improved many ideas to its predecessor like meaningful new game+, oil and wet statuses, hollowing that fits the lore, wider range of viable weapons and changing gear is encouraged with situational rings. But as you explained in your video, DS2 missed the main idea of the series. So it got (justifiable) criticism and (unjustifiably) regarded as a bad game. Therefore Dark Souls 3 scraped all the ideas from Dark Souls 2, so instead of improving the series, DS3 became the simplest game of the series. My point being, instead of giving points or screaming "running animation is so bad", we have to evaluate every different concept in games. Everyone complains about similar games being published but no one gives the deserved praise for originality. If no one mentions original ideas (like FF:XV's quiet humanity or No Man's Sky's procedurally-generated species) then they are not worth working on. I think the expectations and rating systems makes it really difficult to make good games. Because medium sized games are overshadowed by AAA games. The Witness, Abzu, Furi, Superhot are amazing games that are neither AAA nor amateur indies. We should definitely have more such games but it's difficult to ascend from the deep dark sea of indie games. I want to ask, why can't we have a 5-10 hour RPG? Almost all famous RPG games are 50+ hour AAA games. Because if you do anything less it get overshadowed by the AAA game. Some might say that's fair but if this is all it takes to sell more games than what we have is all games trying to imitate the similar AAA games to get better reviews. Firstly this sets a minimum standards for a game, which highly limits possible games and game devs. Secondly it discourages originality. Solution is simple yet difficult. Gamers have to learn to better critique games and spend the effort to find more games than the front page of steam. The current situation is like; people that only listens to pop music judging every other music as a pop song. That's why I don't make videos. I ramble on

[@g1gabyt3]

If a shipped game is a miracle then some companies are clearly better at making those miracles than others. To the general consumer it's irrelevant how hard are those games to make, what matters is the end product. If you're interested in understanding how it works - sure, read the interviews, hear some insights, watch the postmortem videos, that's on you. However, when the time comes, and the product is on the shelves, virtual or real ones, what really matters is how it compares to others in the same price category.

[@hienapple4664]

Do you have any thoughts about the current state of Epic Games Store?

[@Rustergroovie]

Excellent video. You can tell by the responses that you've really hit a nerve with this one. Make no mistake, you're perspective is spot on. I was so jaded for so long because of all these talking heads spend their time earning paychecks for striking down easy targets. You probably just started a larger movement than you realize, now carry it through.

[@dirge7459]

I can also tell that from the other well rounded responses, that they have hit a nerve with those against this guy's opinion, they may have also started their own movement, so I hope that succeeds too, that way we get more than just some shitty circle jerk of "he can't be wrong, he's so right" type people.

[@cocobarbarian1510]

There's a launcher for rainmeter called "Lauhdutin" and its basically this very good looking launcher on your desktop that puts together all your steam, gog, and battle games together. It's free and i totally recommend it for those of you who dont wanna have a messy desktop because of all the games scattered around. I know that the point about people wanting convince was just one small point of the entire video.

[@velkrai]

While all of these things I think are the best solutions some are not feasable at all. I think the reason that Jim and TB talk about games and not the buisness side of it is because its much harder to get someone to care about things that have several degrees of seperation from them. If Jim has been preaching about things that have 0 degrees of seperation and took YEARS to get done/ changed, can you imagine how long it would for those with several like the actual buisness practices of a company that arent directly towards the end-user?

[@punisherxomega7308]

Steam software is so shit lost my Baldurs Gate 3 data because they can't make a simple fucking patcher that actually fucking works! Im done buying shit off Squad

[@milkaaymk]

The thing is, should i really care why a game developer released a bad game? Yes making games is hard but in the end they want my money and i want good games. And i don't give a fuck that it is financially smarter to release a game too early, with microtransactions or cut out content. Its still a shitty thing to do.

[@mr.universe7049]

The thing is, games can't always be good. Developers (hopefully) do their best making games, and if you don't like the game, it's their fault, *but* you have to tolerate that. Some games are just not as good as they're intended to be, and people should just roll with that.

[@bailaohu7819]

I agree...especially when you have examples of excellent games. Even worse if you're in a profession where that bullshit apologist argument can't work. Imagine if a surgeon fucks up your surgery because it's hard...or if 100 people died because an architect fucked up a building. Nobody would give two shits-if you cannot do the job, find another one that you're qualified for. 'Because it's hard' is not a valid reason to accept mediocrity. As a side note...if people give liberals who call for killing all men and say racists things toward white people (and I'm black btw...I just dislike racism in any form) a free pass, if you have any modicum of integrity, you cannot then complain when those same people say 'mean' things to said liberals. That is an unfathomable level of hypocrisy. So I don't really care if people are hurting the fee-fees of Bioware devs because nobody gave any shits when Bioware writers, animators and designers were out there blasting and demonizing gamers-calling us sexist, misogynists (Maggs), creating 'kill all men' videos (that one animator), and demonizing an entire race of people (the infamous Heir).

[@mr.universe7049]

I'd say a surgeon who fucks up a surgery, or an architect that is responsible for 100 deaths, are a bad example for the fact that I was talking about video game developers who make a game worse than it was supposed to be. My point was that not every bad game is supposed to be a cash-grab, but rather a mistake, an accident.

[@ITR]

Some surgeries _do_ fail though, and afaik they don't lose their job unless they've done something really wrong. Though in the instance of ME:A he was pointing out that it may not be the _devs'_ fault, but the _publisher's_ fault

[@andrewhaxton1076]

Hamish isn't saying that we shouldn't criticize a bad game. He's saying that it's important to be careful on who we blame. It's all to easy to blame the developers of the game without knowing what kind of working conditions they are working under (The gaming industry is infamous in how its workers are treated). Yelling at a collection of individuals if the bigger problems lies within the corruption of the company itself isn't going to change anything. Heck, sometimes a games falls apart for such small reasons that its hard to blame anyone

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

12:44 - The same thing happened in 2019 with Disney. The SEC started investigating Disney for major financial crimes, which of course, is bad for their stock prices. But immediately after that news broke, it got replaced with news about Disney and Sony disagreeing and pulling Spider-man from the MCU, so that's all anyone talked about. Then after everyone forgot about the SEC, they magically came to an agreement and brought him back to the MCU. ¬_¬ You didn't mention the biggest problem that Steam causes. By making it easy for developers to push out updates, they remove the pressure that devs used to have in the past to make a game, finish it, test it, and only then, finally release it to the public, and then release the occasional small patch to fix a few bugs or a mildly larger patch to add a bit of bonus content. With Steam, they easily can do this anytime, which has lead to them constantly pushing out premature, incomplete, buggy games, getting money for a non-product, and fixing (or even finishing) it later with constant (sometimes hourly) updates which can grow to be dozens, even hundreds of gigabytes in size (sometimes much bigger than the full game). Frankly, I'm not sure what pressure there is to even bother after they've already gotten the money, especially since people never "vote with their wallets" and buy everything all the time no matter what. 😒 Then there's the fact that "pre-orders" have become much more common thanks to Steam, which leads to stupid people paying for stuff they don't even get based solely on trust, and keep doing it even if their trust was repeatedly broken. ¬_¬ Steam spoils developers and does indeed make them sloppy and lazy coders.

[@tee_toes]

Damn, for a talked-to-death topic you brought up some nice points that I hadn't heard before. Good job my mans.

[@Blorp_]

Are you from Fife/Edinburgh?

[@BigMeowOfAZ]

This is why when I was a kid, instead of loving Sega and hating on Nintendo and TurboGrafx, I decided to grow up and accept that each console had their own great titles to offer, so I bought all three consoles and never regretted it. Same with PSX, Saturn and N64 later on. They all had something great to offer. Bottom line: no reason to put all your eggs in one basket as a consumer. You know what you truly like and dislike, and it's unreasonable to think any single platform can do that for you. We all have different and unique tastes. Now I just play PS3 and PS4 simply because I'm a family man, I don't game as much as I used to, but it gives me just enough to keep me interested. :)

[@Defektd]

no one gets angry at Dice or Respawn, people get mad at EA for pushing shit out early. People have a right to call shitty games and laziness out when they see it. yeah games are hard to make, but that doesn't excuse publishers selling broken shit for full price. good intentions are well and good but I'm not gonna buy something boring, broken, and ugly just because "oh, the Dev's wanted to work on it more." If people didn't call that shit out, the industry would be rampant with actual laziness.

[@eantropix]

0:32 Gaben looks like some sort of next-gen CGI animation

[@charlielatham3139]

what is the game at the start?

[@matsuringo24]

I agree on the whole PR thing and Valve's complacency, but I disagree on the solution. As consumers, it's not our job to fix markets. Demand shapes markets, and if there is no demand for something, it usually isn't made or successful. Now I do think Steam has a genuine monopoly as a PC gaming software distribution platform, but I don't think consumer awareness in supporting alternatives is going to break this up. I think Steam needs to be subjected to anti-monopoly laws just like any other business or service so that competition can arise naturally. I know that statement seems odd since it's calling for intervention in order to foster competition, but the nature of a monopoly is such that competition cannot thrive. Sony has Microsoft, Nvidia has AMD, Netflix has Hulu etc, but nothing really approaches the size of Steam, nor do I think it can at this rate. Even if you carve out your own niche as a platform, your niche can easily be destroyed if Valve ever decides to do what you do and implement it onto Steam. As a side note, I would personally love Valve to get taken down a few notches. I love their games, and the success of their platform has only caused their game development and updates to stagnate to unhealthy levels. Complacency is bad for consumers.

[@vallraffs]

I've had a problem with Steam for years, as someone who prefers having pc-games on discs.

[@ORLY911]

You should make a video covering the "2nd party" mid budget developers that flourished in the late 90's and the 2000's. These companies don't really exist anymore except an outlier or two (Croteam and From Software come to mind). I miss the wide variety of games these kinds of devs would make, it makes a pretty glaring contrast to today where theres only a few big developers making the same game based on trends or small indie devs, nothing in between like you said. Cuz man, I miss those kinds of games. Talk about gems, it's a treasure trove of unique and fun games from the early 2000's. I just got the Otogi games and theyre a blast.

[@weltraumimport]

What music got used in this video?

[@godzillafan5924]

I Have a problem where i press Send a message and the tab won't open.

[@LazyPterodactyl]

Great video man, you delved into some issues that I haven't really seen that many people talk about. I think the whole idea of valve's monopoly is a really interesting situation especially because the majority of people to wan't valve to continue on it's current trajectory. One thing I don't really agree with though is that the onus is on consumers to police game companies. While I think that that is the reality of the world we live in I think ideally the consumer protection agency would be better protecting people from shoddy business practices. However, they've got a lot of more important things to work through before they even get to the video game industry. Personally I think it's incredibly interesting that Valve has a monopoly since it's corporate culture is aggressively anti-capitalist. Valve is one of the largest companies with an anarchist management system in the US. They've also admitted that profit isn't their primary motivator. I think the reason a lot of people accept Valve as the defacto dictator of PC games is they seem to be a benevolent dictator.

[@98raoul]

My gosh, every video you make makes me love you more, I agree on everything, the "pro-kunsumr" sheep-base is annoying as heck and in general completely missing nuance in their analysis (as you stated with mass effect andromeda, they complained with the poor developers working on it when it was clearly the publisher's fault that the game was unfinished). Keep it up, even if youtube is a shithole and you will get hate for this; it's not much at all but you have my support.

[@RaptureMusicOfficial]

Alright, I really dislike Steam gaming, because of the competitive factor. "You have to collect all these achievments or you're just a noob casual gamer" is beyond annoying! I'm a gamer from the 8/16bit era, with 6 levels and linear gameplay, and no perfectionism, no necessity to collect bonus items and show off and brag to your friends. This is obnovious. I only have a couple of steam games, like 8 or so, and no "perfect game", only a handful of achievements unlocked per game... and it makes you feet like [beep] !! How do you see this?

[@who9843]

I preferred the original way of 'curation', where all I needed to do to see what games were available is go to a retail store and see what's on the shelves. If the game wasn't worth publishing or just didn't find a good publisher, it wouldn't come out. Competition was everywhere, whether it's retail vs retail store, or publishers vs other publishers. Even the way games were packaged influenced their visibility and success. As for how we criticize games and such, I totally agree with you. We are spoiled, and we are far too rude and focused on the wrong 'consumer issues'. Great video!

[@timemaster31]

What's that cat game you showed? :)

[@CanyonF]

What are the odds I'd see you here?

[@timemaster31]

Canyon F holy moly xD

[@senadve]

Games ARE hard to make. But I personally hate the big companies behind them rather than the developers themselves, mostly because of their enormous greed.

[@ggezpz_gitgud]

The singlemost thing i hate with steam is that the game recommenders/testers are lazy with reviews. I saw a weeb that recommended some games and all they had to say about it was "nep nep nep nep" its not funny. Theyre supposed to recommend games and tell whats good about it. Its stupid.

[@PukeSkinwalker]

Steam is trash. Like if I want to play a single player game in offline mode, you shouldn't require updates as signficant;y as they do otherwise it is spyware and it is a terrible experience every single time. I shouldn't have to sign in every time I boot up my computer and wait 10 minutes for an update as offline mode won't work. The problem with Steam and other businesses in the gaming industry is that they penalize people for not playing making games a piss poor expereience. How they have not had a congressional hearing and avoided it lets me know that their organization is likely tied to the CIA. Probably why Steam has all of these illicit activities and money laundering. That is where our taxes go. Free Steam from the CIA.

[@jan_harald]

*EVERYONE SHOULD SEND THIS TO VALVE, THEY NEED TO SEE THIS!*

[@scalabrineplayoff3pt46curr7]

jan harald no. Let em make mistakes and suffer

[@gamergodeighty1686]

The most annoying thing is when i select “most popular” and the only thing i can select is “today”. I ALWAYS want to select “all time”.

[@Netist_]

It seems like you made a lot of points in this video that didn't actually address the problem. The problem is that Steam has too many games that are explicit asset flips and similar. This has absolutely nothing to do with AAA games getting criticized. People aren't trying to get those games off Steam, as far as I'm aware. The things you mentioned about the AAA industry are completely, 100% valid, but they don't address the problem of Steam being completely awash with blatant asset flips and trading card cash-ins. Unless I'm missing something, it seems like a complete non sequitor. Seems to me like you didn't actually address the problem at all. I agree that consumers need to be more responsible, and in a perfect world that line of thought would work just fine. But, having more storefronts becoming popular wouldn't fix the problem. Instead you'd just see the same asset flippers and con artists dumping their trash on those platforms as well.

[@StarEclipse506]

Netist You also haven't addressed the problem at all. While it's true Hamish seems to keep referring to some abstract "boogeyman", he's trying to instill awareness in general. We as consumers need to abandon the gamer label and start examining why the market is fucked right now. Most "gamers" are either one-track mind STEM types with zero creativity outside of quantitative exercises or NEETs; combine this with a usual lack of regard for actual reading comprehension & psychological nuance and you have a "create -a-demographic" endless diamond mine for Valve. Don't even get me started on the rise of oxymoronic "communities". A "gamer community" is a herd of corporate sheep! I'll give you this: What Hamish is too afraid to say is the real problem with video games is that they morphed into a nightmarish mockery of what the medium used to stand for. You used to just play for a bit at a time and move on. But no. Now every dev is out to get you playing as much as you can, no matter the personal cost to you-see Skinnerian Mechanics.

[@FF18Cloud]

Netist he did address it. If steam actually had some competition, he says, then steam would actually do something about that trash -.-

[@blazeshredz6817]

When you realize that after purchasing a steam game it really isnt yours because you always have to be logged on steam to play even in singleplayer....i might go back to pirating at least you keep the game

[@baraka490]

The thing that bothers me the most about steam is me trying to log in and then it forgets that I logged in a little bit ago stop playing the game and I reset my PC like turned it off and then click the restart button and then decided all I want to play steam game well the thing is if forgot I logged in earlier and was like yeah now you got to redo your password again when you click remember stop playing the game and I reset my PC like turned it off and then click the restart button and then decided all I want to play steam game well the thing is if forgot I logged in earlier and was like yeah now you got to redo your password again when you clicked remember there are other times where it gets worse where it just won't let me log in or my favorite parts where I'm trying to play a game and it's lagging or I can't see my library because of how crappy their system is my brain is just sits there logout delete your cashe and then be able to see what's there you can't uninstall games you can't download games at that moment because their software or whatever the fuck they're using crashed and keeps crashing like KZbin and it's fucking mic system that does not work or comments you have to click that thing like a hundred times sometimes it doesn't even register what you said it's doing that too as I speak I know it's not my phone itself nor my settings because when I go into Google or anyting else it works fine but when I go into KZbin it sometimes your shows listening and then doesn't fucking work

[@cybek5023]

I have a problem. In steam i want to make screenshoot with f12, but it have another function : makes the screen brighter

[@ChrisDavis_Games]

I'm not sure I agree with all of this, but it's definitely made me think. I'm a fan (and even a Patreon) of Jim Sterling and generally think his pro consumer rants are pretty important to the industry. Talking about itch.io and GOG is great for hard-core gamers, but millions of gamers just play on console. Bringing attention to shitty DLC practices, microtransactions, etc can make a difference. We're already seeing Ubisoft announce big changes to how it does DLC for example. I agree that Steam is a mess and these 'solutions' won't make much difference. They're polishing a turd.

[@Wuthmmmlm]

Great video, I had a similar reaction when all of this came out, and I've been saying that there needs to be more competition in the pc gaming digital distribution market for some time. I also appreciate your nuanced view on the development of games, since I agree that nuance seems to be something that's lacking in the "idea pot" recently when it comes to, not only games, but also the world at large (of course I think that lack of nuance has more to do with human nature than any current events or individuals, but the point remains). I'm getting off topic, so I'll just leave it by saying, great video, as usual; you've yet to make a video that I didn't enjoy and/or found thought provoking in someway, and that's quite the achievement in my eyes.

[@Ocarinist_Drew]

So basically, Steam has no real incentive to improve because it's a monopoly. So taking away it's monopolistic power would give it incentive to improve. Makes sense to me. I can get behind that. Good video man. I respect how calm, clear, and concise you are.

[@scottishrob13]

I had some points I thought were really important to bring up, especially concerning TB...and then the man himself took the wind out of my sails by explaining himself better than I could (obviously haha). So now all I can say is that I love the discussion on this video, and I truly hope that these two thoughtful creators can have lengthy discussion on a podcast sometime. Some sort of meeting of the minds like that has been a dream of mine ever since I stumbled across Writing on Games all those months ago.

[@DragoonCheetah]

What's your opinion on reports that Tencent is looking to move into American markets with it's own digital library platform?

[@austbot]

Regarding the library issue: While purchasing games through different platforms like Itch, Steam, Gog, etc. would help out people finding certain games that they're interested in like you said; Couldn't someone program a 3rd party application that automatically lumps all of your libraries together into one thing so you can still have them all easily accessible? I'm not that familiar with how hard programming is, so I'm not sure if it would be easy or not. But that seems like a simple solution to the problem of people complaining that they don't have one large library.

[@the_kovic]

The good ole' free market will save us. Great video, Hamish.