Train2Game News: Steam Greenlights concepts

Valve has introduced a new area to Greenlight where developers can upload concepts and get feedback from the public.

Concepts are free to post for feedback but won’t be distributed. The idea is to get opinions from the community. Examples of concepts already uploaded are Portal expansion Afterword, Elevator Engineer, Savegame Explorer, first/third-person logic shooter B.R.I.S.k, Vertex Wars and more.

This is a good place to see how a game idea would do out on the market which can be invaluable information. It can stop you working on a part of a game that might not be so popular with the paying public, giving you more time to concentrate on another part that is popular.

In addition Steam now allows software to be submitted to Greenlight. It follows the same rules as games do on Greenlight. That is, there’s a submission fee ($100) and the community votes whether they want to see the app/software released on Steam.

Steam Greenlight has been generally updated to show friends’ favourites and recent news on the home page, plus some other minor extras.

To date, thirty games have been ‘greenlit’ by Steam including the Half-Life mod Black Mesa and Project Zomboid. The only game to have been released from the service so far is McPixel.

Train2Game News: Project Zomboid team to host “How (Not) To Make A Game” developer session at Rezzed

Project Zomboid developer The Indie Stone are the latest addition to the developer sessions at PC and indie gaming show Rezzed, and they’re talk is likely to be very interesting for anyone on a Train2Game course.

The session, titled “How (Not) To Make A Game” will see The Indie Stone team discuss the first year of development of their zombie survivalist title, paying attention to what could be seen as common sense.

The team learned valuable lessons about backing up information when the laptops they were using to develop Project Zomboid were stolen.

Chris Simpson, Marina Siu-Chong, Andy Hodgetts and Will Porter will present the developer session on Friday 6th July at the Brighton expo.

“We’re in the final build-up to our 0.2.0 release, so it seemed a perfect opportunity to chart the ridiculous journey we’ve been on for the past year or so,” said Will Porter. “Our public test builds have gone down a storm, so the time seemed right.”

Tickets for Rezzed are available on the official website, and it’s looking to be an interesting event for Train2Game students to attend, with a variety of developer sessions including those from Introversion SoftwareThe Creative AssemblySplash Damage CEO Paul Wedgwood  and Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford.

Not only that, but everyone who buys a ticket for Rezzed gets a free DOTA 2 beta key.

We’ll be sure to keep you up to date with the latest news as the show approaches.

What are your thoughts on the latest addition to Rezzed?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.