How Open is “Open”?
Posted: January 17, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »So the “Steam Dev Days” conference is a thing that is happening, and a lot of people are excitedly mentioning to me “Hey, Gabe said greenlight will be vanishing eventually!”
I’m not feeling it though, maybe I was a little optimistic back when Gabe Newell said the same thing in February last year, but there hasn’t been anything said about it since. so I’m going to assume Valve are sticking to the same tune of “Greenlight isn’t perfect, but it’s getting better!”
And it’s true that a lot more games are making it through the system than did when I first began to criticise it. But better is not good, and the system remains deeply flawed and harmful for developers.
But the optimism of many developers that somehow, behind the scenes, Valve are working tirelessly to do the right thing is an thing that won’t go away. “Well they are good guys, and they said they would do it… it’ll happen in ‘valve time’!”
Let’s say I believe that (I don’t), just what exactly is it that are we getting excited about again? The prospect of steam being more ‘open‘ to developers, right?
…how open though?
An opening door is going to stop opening at some point, just how wide will the gap be?
The optimism takes hold of so many developers; “open enough for me!” – open enough that you can get your game on there, but it will keep out all those other games that aren’t as “good”. We’re all competing for shelf-space after all! a more crowded store means less sales for those that ‘deserve’ to be there, right? If there is a flood of games, the quality of the storefront will drop and it’s bad for everyone!
Except that’s not the case, because get this; How open a store is, and how much bullshit is on the store front are entirely different things.
Sure, if a distributor has a limited selection of content to offer then it’s going to have both the time and space to feature every game on it’s store – people are going to get used to the idea that access to the store is the same thing as access to all the store’s visitors.
But that only applies to a store that curates at the back door – the content it lets into the store is hand-picked and that means there is a human limit of how much can get in. A limit that gives the store time to feature a game before the next game comes in.
Steam opened the back door a little with greenlight (around a hundred games each month are getting greenlit), the games are coming in at a rate that makes it unreasonable to feature everything. Even if it was possible to feature it all, the window to highlight every game is very slim – regular steam users won’t see the majority of the games getting featured.
Access to sell on a store is not the same thing as being entitled to the store giving you exposure. Don’t expect it, don’t hope for it, it’s just not possible for any store that is even remotely ‘open’ because there are many more games than yours.
But that doesn’t mean that quality games won’t get exposure, that the store can’t curate, that users will be forced to wade through the proverbial “flood of crap”. A store can swing the back doors wide open and let every game in, and still not show a single game to it’s customers without choosing to do so first.
Rather than curate and gate-keep at the same time, simply let everyone in and pull the content you want to feature from what does come in. All those “connections”, “publisher relationships” and “trusted developers” that get features? They will still get you your game featured if you have those privileges.
What developers need right now is access, not exposure. Because exposure we have a chance at doing ourselves. But access? – that’s a rigged game and not in developers’ favour.
If we want exposure it’s not easy, but there are hundreds of channels open to us, all of them desperately looking for new games to share and talk about.
If we want store access so we actually have a place to sell our games then we are *much* more limited, though our options are getting better all the time (have you seen itch.io yet? this is a store that LOVES developers – I’ll write about it separately some time) but let’s be honest; there are a lot of gamers who are just going to refuse to buy your game if it’s not going to appear in their Steam library.
So, we’re back to the question, if steam is opening up, how open is it going to be? Just how accessible will it be for developers?
It could be entirely open, and I think it should be, but is that the way Steam is likely to go?
Hell no.
Valve avoids being open at every opportunity. Wven at the Steam Dev Days event, half of the tweets about the conference I saw were “Am I allowed to talk about what’s happening here?”
When Valve first planned greenlight they did it behind closed doors. And I expect them to continue operating that way too. It works for them when it comes to games development, so why not the store too? It’s not like developers and stores should be working together or anything…
My expectation of how open steam will be? “Open enough” – but it will be open enough for Valve, and not for developers like you or me… Of course there’s no way to know for sure what (if any) changes will come because Valve isn’t saying, they don’t have to. All Gabe Newell has to do is once a year say “we’ll be phasing out greenlight” and developers let their optimism fill in all the gaps.
(I would like to point out, that Steam is pretty much the dinosaur in the room at this point, I’ve reached out to talk to Valve about some of this several times before and never heard back, whereas everyone else is all ears, so mad props to itch.io, indiegamestand, humble, gameolith and even sony for realising that developers and digital distributors should be working this out together and not in isolation.
I would also like to point out that comments are going to stay disabled on this post because any criticism of steam results in more bile than I care to deal with right now.)
The Transsexual Character
Posted: January 10, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Note/TW: I talk about experiences of gender-dysphoria here, it’s probably gonna be a bummer if you can relate.
So among the many projects I’m bouncing between right now, is a game featuring just one character and that character is “me”. Well, she’s a “me” that I have invented to express a certain aspect of my life. I am framing her specifically to express this thing, and I’ve realised that what I’ve cut away from her personality to avoid distracting from “the point” says a lot about me.
Most notably, this character is not Transsexual.
I have been working on this project for months and it was only a couple of days ago I thought “Hey, why isn’t she transsexual anyway?”
My own automatic responses were immediate, numerous, and made me feel ill.
- “Nobody is going to identify with a transsexual character, especially not empathise.”
- “It’s not a thing *about* transsexuality, so don’t include it.”
- “Well you can’t make a transsexual girl look pretty, that’s for sure!”
- “A game with a transsexual character? Sophie don’t be stupid; that can’t make money and you’re broke.”
- “You know ‘Gamers’ will be complete fucks to a trans character. You really want that character to be your avatar?”
Yep, this stray thought is what finally makes me notice I’ve got a whole bunch of internalised cissexism! (rather than explain why each notion is problematic, you can re-read the list and imagine it’s about any other marginalised group if you don’t already see it).
I tried to reason it away quickly; I don’t want to have internalised this bullshit, surely I’ve at least written transsexual characters before now… right?
Nope. I’ve written hundreds of characters and not a single one is transsexual. Sure there have been a couple of heavily implied “was born the wrong sex but OH HEY MAGIC and now I’m cisgendered”. Such a thing is a trans fantasy (or at least one of mine), but it’s certainly not any expression of a character who is transsexual.
~
When I was expressing some of this on twitter, a few people said something along the lines of;
“What does it matter if the character is transsexual? Isn’t that something in the character’s past/backstory, why would it be relevant to the story you’re telling?”
I was floored for a little while, it’s clearly coming from a not-awful place; “Once someone announces they are <gender> then for the non-trans person the job is done; mission success! Sophie is a girl so let’s not treat her in a way that holds her back!”
… which is nice, but it’s not *my* experience. I struggle with my transsexuality every day, it’s a huge part of who I am, it informs almost everything about me.
~
What does it matter if this character is transsexual though?
Well, the character I’m writing, like me, is terrified of leaving her own house. She has panic attacks at the mere prospect of answering the front door. A ringing phone can, in less than a second, take her from comfort and fill her with fear just because she hasn’t prepared herself for the human contact.
That is stuff I experience, that is something I’m trying to express in the creation of this character and it’s what this game is about.
But the truth is I can’t unpick my transsexuality from my fear of people/the outside world. They are both aspects of who I am, and they are both things that I have had to live with for a long time. The relationship between them is hard to pin down, but there IS a relationship.
The two aspects of my personality exist separately but they overlap and influence one-another like… well, like any other aspects of a person’s personality! Sure I avoided pretty much everything social even before I knew “transsexual” was what I am. – I was afraid of walking through streets alone at night, I avoided family and friends whenever I could, and pushed back on everyone who didn’t somehow manage to stick with me long enough for me to grow accustomed to them.
And the problems I have with my transsexuality exist separately also; I have avoided many a bath/shower because “I just do not want to see my body today”. I used to become very accustomed to memorising where each and every mirror in my life was, so I could avoid accidentally spotting the reflection that looked nothing like me – this monster that grew over me during puberty, blotting out who I really am.
The two definitely exist seperately, but they also work together to be a problem for me also. There have been times when I’ve run out of food in the house, I decided that despite my fear of going out – I’ll do it anyway. I can cross the road to the shops, it’ll suck but I’ll get over it – then I discover my shaver has run out of charge, it’s not going to work again until after the shops shut. My options become either go hungry, or go outside with a little facial hair.
I choose to go hungry (if you could call it a choice, essentially I’ve been strong-armed by aspects of who I am that I wish weren’t a part of me).
And this happens in a hundred other ways too. It is *exceptionally* harder for me to leave the house since moving back home because there are people here who knew me before I ‘transitioned’. I’ve seen the looks old school-friends give me and one-another when I’m near. The fear of *that* social experience far outweighs the fear that maybe some stranger in a checkout queue might talk to me about something insignificant. As a result, I haven’t left the house for months.
What does it matter if the character is transsexual? – I don’t know how much it matters in this instance (or any other, really), but I know it does matter.
Being transsexual isn’t something that is a person’s backstory – it’s something they live with every day. It will always be that way, even if society becomes some magical sci-fi utopia where transsexual people can make their bodies the way they feel they should have been (without doctors telling them terrifying things like “with this procedure, there’s like a 40% chance you’ll be in pain the rest of your life, we don’t know why it happens”) – no ‘transition’ can erase everything we have been through, the conditioning, the way we have been raised, our personal struggles against all the mental obstacles that other people put in our way, and our struggles still tripping over these obstacles years after we figure out just who the hell we really are.
Like many other things, transsexuality isn’t some distant past event or lifestyle choice – it’s part of who a person is. How people deal with this aspect of themselves, and how they respond to how other people deal with it also… it’s gonna effect most everything a person is and does.
~
But I still don’t know if I can make this character transsexual, even if I can get past the other gross internalised cissexism, there’s an even more unpleasant reason I don’t want to make her transsexual;
Being transsexual sucks.
I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and every night when I close my eyes I dream up magical worlds and stories where “oh it turns out you’re not really trans, you’re a cis girl! everything up until now was a mistake.” – I hate being transsexual, I hate the very core of it and I hate all the baggage that comes along with it just as much. It really sucks to be distressed and disgusted by your own body in this way. It’s not something you can make right, not completely, not ever.
What I’m thinking right now is, I’m not ready for the transsexual character. I need them but I certainly can’t write them, not yet. They need to be a cartoon, something ill-concieved but acceptale and non-threatening. I need “The strong trans-woman” trope, I need a token “trans friend” for the protagonists, the shitty action movie with a trans-man hero killing hundreds of faceless henchmen with a machine-gun.
I can’t write these things, but I’m thinking they might be a necessary cultural intermidiary between something being a harmful joke character-trait (what we have now), and being an aspect of some well-written and relatable characters.
And, I think this thinking is utter bullshit. The reason I think we need shitty transsexual characters before we can have real ones, is because it turns out I’m kind of a self-hating trans-bigot and I’m terrified of making this character who is supposed to represent me into someone who *really* represents me.
I don’t know what I’ll do about it to be honest, but I can tell you my transsexuality is not some part of my past, it’s fucking me up every day.
Video/Stream policy for my games
Posted: December 16, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Yes, you can put up videos of any parts of my games on any website you please, for any reason you please.
Yes, you can also monetise them.
Caveats:
- No hate speech, at all (in videos/streams of my games or others)
- Don’t plagiarise me (don’t claim my work as your own)
- When it comes to music rights, I’m always gonna side with my musicians (details below)
~
more detail on music:
When I license music I usually do it just for inclusion in the game, I do not have permission to say you can include it in your videos. The people I work with make money through sales of OSTs and tend to need that money. So if they think you’re making things hard for them, I will side with the musician.
That said, I highly doubt any of them will ever flag your videos, but I’ll never say never on this one just in case.
Specifically for each game using musicians other than myself, here are the artists and policies (if I know them):
Swift*Stitch / Linear Gear Solid / Rose&Time Remastered:
Rose&Time (original versions) / PhonePhantom / Super Tapfighter:
- Kevin MacLeod
- His licences are here. I understand it is free and fine so long as you give credit (If you show my game’s title screens, the credit is already there)
There Shall Be Lancing:
DANGEROUS DUELS:
Any other game and you have full permissions to do what you please as far as recorded video goes.
Re: Twitter
Posted: November 17, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »A couple of people noticed that my twitter account isn’t there anymore, what has happened is I’ve deactivated it for the time-being because I need some space from the indie game community, and I think it could probably do without me for a while too.
I’ve got 30 days from deactivating to log back in if I don’t want my twitter account deleted. Right now I’m not sure if I want that or not, so we’ll see.
Anyway I’ll keep working on my things for now, but in private.
Rose and Time, back on OUYA!
Posted: October 22, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized 3 Comments »So a while back I pulled Rose and Time from the OUYA store, not because I had problems with the console, but with the OUYA company at the time. long story short; those problems don’t exist any more, and I’m happy to have the game back on the OUYA marketplace.
The longer version of the story is this; when I first pulled the game and wrote some very harsh things, there was the impression of a lack of humility from the company; hard to reach, only mentioning the good, and glossing over problems. I didn’t want to support such a company.
Something I said then was ” you’ve lost me. There’s a tiny chance you could get me back, but honestly I don’t think you have it in you at this point.” – I was totally wrong.
At the time a lot of developers besides myself were upset at how the free the games fund was going and said so. Then, within a week of chatting with developers (including myself) about how the fund could be improved and what the best outcome for all concerned would be; The free the games fund was changed, none of the scam games received a single cent of the fund, the company admitted it’s mistakes, and was asking for yet more feedback to further improve things.
Listening to developers, responding quickly, showing humility, and of course showing passion. All the reasons I pulled the game for, were non-existent after just that week. I didn’t put the game back on immediately – I’m pretty suspicious so I wanted to keep an eye on things for a while longer – “If this keeps up for a while I’ll put it back for sure” I thought.
Well, I’ve seen OUYA listening to developers, I’ve seen the humility multiple times, I’ve even chatted to Julie a couple of times in email and on skype so I am confident at this point that I can no longer justify keeping the game off the console.
Will the company screw up again? probably. Will they do something that pisses me off? almost certainly! But I believe when it happens the company will be receptive to criticism and will not be afraid to say “my bad” if they realise they took a wrong step.
…
So, now I’m going to talk about something else; I am not walking out of this without regrets myself. I do not regret pulling my game from the store (I feel that was the right thing for me to do at the time and I’d probably do it again). What I regret is making a blog post about it; it was honest and true and what was written was me. However, because of that what I did became a “story”, one that fit into a narrative that many gamers and journalists like to buy into; “OUYA is shit”.
I don’t like that narrative at all, it’s simply not true and despite doing what I felt was right at the time, I gave ammunition to this narrative and I damaged the reputation of a console I dearly love. I even say how much I love the console in the post, but that was irrelevant, I had provided some drama that could be framed just right and people framed it as they pleased.
Somehow I suspect the news that the game is back on the store, that all my worst worries about the company have been addressed, that I continue to love the console and will continue to target it for every game that suits it… will be ignored. It won’t be covered by even a small fraction of the blogs and news sites that covered the game’s pulling. I think that is telling, but sadly it tells very few.
