(this is a copy paste from mastodon. sorry not sorry)
absolutely baffled that after putting up with steam's utter bullshit for a decade, the way youtube's algorithm works feels downright meritocratic
like, i know what the metrics for a successful video are and i can work towards refining them in my videos, and YT doesn't expect me to have built a preexisting fanbase before launch (whereas that's literally the only way to succeed on steam) and in fact from what i can tell YT doesn't seem to care much at all about what views i bring from outside the platform
like on youtube what i need for success:
- an interesting enough thumbnail and title so that > 6% of impressions click
- a good enough video so that those who click watch > 20% of the video
if i hit those metrics, it'll find people to show my video to until they fall below those points
on steam what you need is to bring your own independent success from outside steam to inside steam (but be careful cause steam keys don't count for shit! :D so a kickstarter can kill your launch)
literally no other way to achieve success than to have 20,000 or more people interested in the thing before the thing even exists. and steam will help you not at fucking all doing this
oh sure you can get insanely lucky and have some huge streamer pick up your virtually unknown game but that's still bringing external pre-existing success (in this case the streamer's audience) into steam
i've known for many, many years that the way steam operates and how it sets its metrics for success are absolute dogshit, but doing work on a platform that's not dogshit, or at least a lot less dogshit, really drives home how fucking miserable trying to succeed in games and on steam is
like, i'm seriously considering doing a hard pivot into gamedev/coding educational youtuber right now. i'm not remotely joking about this. i feel like if i bust my ass working at video creation for 5-10 years i could actually make a viable career which is not at all how i've ever felt in games. and given succeeding in games gets harder every fucking year things aren't exactly improving either
idk man, its hard to experience both sides of this and not just go "fine, fuck you, i'll go where i'm wanted." what does it say about the state of game development in general and steam in particular that someone who has been described multiple times as "a successful indie game developer" (lmao, that bar must be set real low) is looking at YT and thinking "damn that seems like a way more financially stable and viable career path 🤔"
EDIT: and none of this is even getting into the fact that making a game is bloody hard. if you spend 4 years of multiple peoples time on a game and it fails to land, bankruptcy is a very real possibility. we've put everything we have, financially, into kitsune tails. if it fails, we'll be devastated
but if you're making 20+ videos a year and one doesn't land, well, that's not the end of the world is it? especially if most of your income is coming from something like patreon and not ad revenue, you'd probably hardly even notice the occasionally whiff
