The first part is just a rather hilarious example which I have firsthand knowledge of a developer spending a rather large sum on on promotion only to have it be entirely ineffectual. One could argue they turned to the wrong people to promote their product but at the end of that day isn't it the job of the promoter?
You don't have the steam broadcast things everywhere? How lucky... right now scrolling through the store page I see two neckbeards playing Euro Truck Simulator live (talk about boring), a 'watch the developer play' for The Survivalists (they're being chased by monkeys arguing about whether to fight orcs or explore the volcano) and a Korean playing Scrapnaut (which I've never heard of before this but lucky for me its on the steam streaming thing so I can watch a bit and see if its my kind of thing.) I'd say maybe half have a camera presence and maybe 1/3 are just the game themselves with no microphone business to distract you.
I know in my case I just don't have the energy or desire to go to youtube/twitch find a gameplay video without 30 minutes of a random person talking about random nonsense while screwing with graphics settings... but with these, I'm on the store page already and if its marginally interesting enough I might want to watch a few minutes of gameplay then its right there.
Addendum: I guess its a setting I have that causes these to be on my store page (account>prefrences>broadcasts) alternatively if you want to find a whole page of them Community>Broadcasts... they say live but I'm highly skeptical of that as I've seen the same folks playing a couple different games simultaneously dressed entirely differently talking about different stuff.
1
Tobias 1104~4Y
Interesting; this makes me wonder how much of Steam other people use that I'm not even aware of. Do you use it like a community site - like Reddit - where you scroll through some feed of recent activity or something? I've never seen these broadcasts since I've never seen anything community-related on Steam really; I just view the store pages occasionally! And even that's rare since I don't exactly browse games ever.
Maybe using it as a community is a great way to attract interest to games since people are going to be getting them from that site anyway, though it's odd that no indie devs I've seen talk about it in that way or suggest promoting there. I got the impression that it was nothing more that the place to finally sell the games in the end, after doing the promotion elsewhere.
0
kasheeste2133~4Y
Not particularly... I've discontinued using all social media be it reddit, facebook, twitter, what have you as I've found them to have been an incredibly negative force in my life. I don't need incessant whining or folks shamelessly shilling away. If I'm interested in a person or a project I can always follow directly as with you, alternatively I stumble around and look at whats in front of me.
This whole predicament reminds me of a slogan we used back when I was working in casino management (horrible industry, avoid at all costs) "We don't want people to gamble more, we don't want more people to gamble; but of those that do, we want them to gamble here." People don't go on youtube to watch a video about making beef wellington then stumble across a gameplay video and run off to buy it... it simply doesn't happen. On the contrary, people perusing the steam store are only there for one purpose; finding games to buy.
As for you not knowing of this feature I'm fairly certain it is new-ish, I've only started to notice it perhaps in the past 6 months or so but it makes perfect sense from all perspectives, the (potential)buyer gets to watch actual gameplay, not some store video with a catchy tune showing highlights that may or not reflect what the game is actually about without having to slog over to youtube and find a video that is actually informative not just some personality making a fool of themselves or speedrunner pretending like anyone cares. Easily informed customers make for more sales/less refunds making valve happy and our favorite indie devs rich.
You don't have the steam broadcast things everywhere? How lucky... right now scrolling through the store page I see two neckbeards playing Euro Truck Simulator live (talk about boring), a 'watch the developer play' for The Survivalists (they're being chased by monkeys arguing about whether to fight orcs or explore the volcano) and a Korean playing Scrapnaut (which I've never heard of before this but lucky for me its on the steam streaming thing so I can watch a bit and see if its my kind of thing.) I'd say maybe half have a camera presence and maybe 1/3 are just the game themselves with no microphone business to distract you.
I know in my case I just don't have the energy or desire to go to youtube/twitch find a gameplay video without 30 minutes of a random person talking about random nonsense while screwing with graphics settings... but with these, I'm on the store page already and if its marginally interesting enough I might want to watch a few minutes of gameplay then its right there.
Addendum: I guess its a setting I have that causes these to be on my store page (account>prefrences>broadcasts) alternatively if you want to find a whole page of them Community>Broadcasts... they say live but I'm highly skeptical of that as I've seen the same folks playing a couple different games simultaneously dressed entirely differently talking about different stuff.
Maybe using it as a community is a great way to attract interest to games since people are going to be getting them from that site anyway, though it's odd that no indie devs I've seen talk about it in that way or suggest promoting there. I got the impression that it was nothing more that the place to finally sell the games in the end, after doing the promotion elsewhere.
This whole predicament reminds me of a slogan we used back when I was working in casino management (horrible industry, avoid at all costs) "We don't want people to gamble more, we don't want more people to gamble; but of those that do, we want them to gamble here." People don't go on youtube to watch a video about making beef wellington then stumble across a gameplay video and run off to buy it... it simply doesn't happen. On the contrary, people perusing the steam store are only there for one purpose; finding games to buy.
As for you not knowing of this feature I'm fairly certain it is new-ish, I've only started to notice it perhaps in the past 6 months or so but it makes perfect sense from all perspectives, the (potential)buyer gets to watch actual gameplay, not some store video with a catchy tune showing highlights that may or not reflect what the game is actually about without having to slog over to youtube and find a video that is actually informative not just some personality making a fool of themselves or speedrunner pretending like anyone cares. Easily informed customers make for more sales/less refunds making valve happy and our favorite indie devs rich.