There's a bit of truth. Can't be ignored.
Steam Support
- Thread starter Vitor.sousa
- Start date
There's a bit of truth. Can't be ignored.
As long as UGC is supported and easy to integrate, I think the masses will be pleased.
Brett C
Frontier
Ehh, that's the rule of a gamble however. [happy]
Take IGN's fileplanet for example, they marked the site as read only, and content still remains active to this day. Where as, on the more "WHERED IT GO!?!?", the RCT2 track exchange imploded over time due to lack support. The RCT3 community got scattered all about the internet when Atari thought it was a good idea to mess with the forums (i understood what they were trying to accomplish, but they ended up killing their core communities). Let alone, when megashare (a common host for RCT3 UGC) went offline, a lot of scrambling went into play to retrieve those files. [sad]
Am just saying, that there's always the chance that 3rd party file hosts could go offline - same applies to companies hosting the content themselves. [happy]
Dont get me wrong, I'm not against the idea. [up]
I just say that, if this was the financial market : If Frontier is a credit company, Steam would be the federal bank. We must be honest, it's not the same scale, not really a bet to 1 against 1, and if Frontier want to launch its own currency, it's fine for me. I admit that is a much more cheaper strategy for Frontier because of the steam commission on sales (but it's just much more dangerous too, not only because of the number of users, but in terms of brand image.)
Anyway, exactly like the money, a "game' content hosting service" work with the trust, and I trust Frontier. And centralization is great, so ... Let's go !
(Oh, and if all this is a real thing, make sure that the game works even without internet connection, or you will have bigggg problems [rolleyes])
Thinking out loud here...
In an ideal long-term support situation, you'd want to make it so that the client can connect to multiple, arbitrary UGC repositories. That way once Frontier discontinue support for UGC (which, after all, takes time and therefore money to curate) there's still a mechanism for players to create and share UGC. Taking git as a model for distributed development, the client would 'pull' updates to a repository, would allow it to be branched (and merged), and would allow the creation of pull requests (those being updates you'd like included in the master/trunk of the repository but that require official review before inclusion).
If structured sensibly, everyone who clones the repository would have a full copy of it, including its history. If the official source suddenly disappears it should be trivial to take one of the copies and convert it into a remote repository for others to sync to. Assuming all objects are uniquely identifiable within the repository, switching from one source to another should be entirely transparent. This would also lead to the potential for interesting side-effects like being able to replace a repository leading to 'skin' changes without major park rework.
Multiple repositories would allow the user the option of only keeping copies of data that they're interested in. It would also allow unofficial content to be created that's unaffiliated with Frontier (e.g. clones of real-world rides) and that Frontier would be unable to include in their own official repositories.
The issues with this are:
- Development of a robust repository system such as this would not be trivial.
- Viewing/visiting other parks might require access to non-curated repositories, which could have iffy content.
I guess my point is that a single source of UGC is a single point-of-failure. Distributed hosting like git works well because that failure is easily recoverable. Using a well-known toolset (like libgit2 [mouth shut]) would allow users to also work with 3rd party tools.
But wouldn't it better marketed through Stream? Which in turn boosts sales to keep the content creation and distribution alive. Surely you'd get more sales with Steam, than without it.
Like Amazon with the their boxes and tablets, they'd sell more if they had Google Play installed, rather then hosting their own stuff themselves.
Like Amazon with the their boxes and tablets, they'd sell more if they had Google Play installed, rather then hosting their own stuff themselves.
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You are right, but :
If PlanetCoaster becomes as popular as RCT (and they are able to do half of what RCT3 generated), we are talking about dozens (even hundreds) of millions of dollars. 30% of this number is not something that you can ignore, because according to rumors, Steam will take about 30% commission on sales. So after ... it's just math.
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I think you'd get more than 30% additional sales if you managed it through Stream. I guess the game could be bigger than RCTW, but RCTW only had 12,000 pre-orders, that is not great by contrast to the last version.
Harbinger
Volunteer Moderator
There's no reason they can't distribute the game on Steam, they distribute Elite: Dangerous there in addition to their own store after all. It doesn't however follow that they need to tie their whole UGC system to the Steam Platform forcing all users onto Steam whether they like it or not.
It's not like Frontier are a new company, they were founded 9 years before Steam was even a twinkle in GabeN's eye, if they can last 21 years on a primarily publisher/developer model where they're earning pennies per unit then think how long they can last on their new fully self-published model where they're the ones making the all the profit from their development efforts.
The future of Frontier has never looked more secure than it does right now.
It's not like Frontier are a new company, they were founded 9 years before Steam was even a twinkle in GabeN's eye, if they can last 21 years on a primarily publisher/developer model where they're earning pennies per unit then think how long they can last on their new fully self-published model where they're the ones making the all the profit from their development efforts.
The future of Frontier has never looked more secure than it does right now.
Not everyone knows or wants to buy the game in the store of Frontier. Steam offers more payment methods, Steam Workshop, great deals, etc.
Steam is best known and most recurrent than the Frontier store. If things went well with Elite on Steam, I see no reason to deny the same thing happening with Planet Coaster.
Harbinger
Volunteer Moderator
Did you even read my first paragraph? I never said they shouldn't sell on Steam. I merely stated that there's no reason to force everyone through Steam by tying their UGC system into it.
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I read it, and I never pointed that you've said this, I simply said that if Elite sold well on Steam, Planet Coaster also can do, and if Elite was a success on Steam, this can propel Frontier to publish their new project on the most successful digital platform of Internet.
Further, as I said, on Steam we have Steam Workshop, is the easiest way to download content, if Planet Coaster has modding support, that this is remains to be seen, Steam would be the ideal site for the game.
They must always look for customer convenience.
Harbinger
Volunteer Moderator
Whether or not Frontier choose to distribute the game on Steam has no bearing whatsoever as to whether or not they choose to use them for modding support. By taking that path they would have to force all their customers to use Steam rather than their customers being given a choice.
I'm not sure why you're unable to make the distinction with this, you're comparing apples with oranges.
I'm not sure why you're unable to make the distinction with this, you're comparing apples with oranges.
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It's not "official" but we know what will happen :
- No "steamwork" integration, but a "homemade content manager"
- The game available pretty much everywhere (frontier website, and steamstore included)
Did they say they were planning on releasing it on steam? Or on there store first then steam later?
They never mentioned Steam at all!