Power to the Gamers? Valve Announces Steam Greenlight

Greenlight aims to help developers get feedback from potential customers and start creating an active community around their game.




We're a few months away from a very important vote -- one that will directly impact happiness in the Free World, and how much money will remain in our pockets. I'm talking about Steam Greenlight, Valve's soon-to-be launched community system that will allow us, the gamers, to vote on which indie games we would like to see appear in Steam's digital shelves.
Steam Greenlight is a new system that enlists the community's help in picking some of the next games to be released on Steam. Developers post information, screenshots, and videos for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution. Steam Greenlight also helps developers get feedback from potential customers and start creating an active community around their game as early in the development process as they like.
This whole thing kind of reminds me of Kickstarter, except without actually having to cough up money. Especially in the bit about posting game concepts and early builds: "We encourage you to post information about your game as early in the development process as you are comfortable with," as stated on the official Steam Greenlight page. "Greenlight will let you define whether you are posting your game as a concept/early build or as a playable game that is nearing completion."

If developers start posting concepts before they actually start real work on a game, and await a positive reaction from the community (and a guarantee of placement on Steam) before pouring years of their lives into bringing those ideas to life, Steam could become a determining factor what games get made and what games get scrapped. Sure, no actual money gets kicked their way per say, but getting a game on Steam (in front of 30 million PC gamers) is pretty much as good as money. What are your thoughts of Steam Greenlight? You think this is great for the indie game community, or a terrible blight on developer creativity? Let us know in the comments below.

http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/122/1225363p1.html?utm_campaign=twposts&utm_source=twitter