firecat
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2 hours ago, Forgetful Frank said:
"dont play that "i know games" card"
I never said anything about me knowing games, and I think you've taken something I said a little too personally?
I only said that I as a potential customer, was successfully brought into liking the VN genre and community successfully, by a VN being released on Steam.
Bottom of the line is though, without Steam, I wouldn't have been able to play an actual high quality VN with a budget and gotten into VN's, because they can be pretty difficult to obtain in the west (legally) from a widely-known trusted source. I don't put in payment details in any site I come across.
Your main point in this thread has been advocating Steam isn't anything special, when in fact it really is. Simply looking at the Steam Statistics shows that more than 10 million people have been logged into Steam within the last 48 hours.
If you're going to sit there and tell me and everyone else that Steam isn't important for developers and publishers in putting there games on that platform holding 10 million active potential customers on a daily basis, I can't take you seriously.
You magically pulled out me playing the "I know games" 'card' (when I didn't), but in actuality I believe it's you who is playing the "I'm a game designer/developer" 'card'. I don't think studying game design magically makes you know absolutely everything there is about it. In my time at college, I had a short course module on Game Design that was designed to give you a basic understanding in coding simple games made from flash and even take you into Uni to continue if you wanted to learn more about it, and I still know nothing about game design. One thing's for sure though, knowing game design and knowing your customer-base isn't the same thing.
To me, it's obvious a platform home to 10 million regular active customers is a goldmine for a developer/publisher wanting to sell their games.
yep you ignore my article link, vn are hard to come across yes but you are being native about how this works. if there are only 3 companies that offer vn in english, what would happen if all 3th stop supporting it. thats right you get nothing, relying on a few companies because "actual high quality VN with a budget" is considered risky they even know it, why do you believe sakurai project is doing all these kickstarters. none of them are rich, if they were they could have gotten the vn without user's help, steam did not help bring vn to you, it was us with the money. if we didnt fund them it would mostly sakurai project would just not had made vn. they wouldn't even be in steam if it wasnt for us, so no steam did not help at all, you fail to see that.
steam statistics are fake, 10million people? you means 4 million in the usa, 3 million in the world (time zone) and 3 million are dead or inactive accounts. you know another fake statistics, these:
http://www.darkorbit.co.uk/ - Registered: 92,574,314
http://www.seafight.com/ - REGISTERED:47,307,980
over 100 million players -
lots of players to play (dead forum) - http://mabinogi.nexon.net/
[sarcasm] oh wow these games are way popular than steam platform, it looks like you are wasting time on steam, you could have found a friend or a girlfriend with 100 members. [/sarcasm]
there are many fake game design classes, learning how to code is just the starting line. here is a video on game schools and with over 276 advice on gaming, they should explain this better:
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13 minutes ago, Forgetful Frank said:
Ehh, I don't understand what you mean exactly about thinking like a customer and a developer. Surely thinking as a developer/publisher, you want your game/product to be seen by as much people as possible. I know for a fact, that if none of those games were on Steam in the first place, the chances of me ever finding this community or even playing a VN were VERY slim. I mean, I've been gaming for most of my life, and I'm on my computer playing games most of my personal time, and not once in all these years of gaming, I ever stumbled across a VN that made me want to play more and explore more of its genre. I played Katawa Shoujo once years ago, but only because it was free and I can't really remember how I found it, I think a college friend suggested it, and I only ever played one route and was satisfied to not play anymore. But I wasn't prepared to go out of my way and purchase a VN, 1) because I didn't really know what sites to purchase from and honestly I didn't really trust any or feel comfortable with entering bank information on unfamiliar sites. 2) VN's are pretty pricey in some cases, especially if you're going to order internationally. So I just never bothered because it felt like such a pain. Fast forward to now where VN's are being put on Steam, I saw the Sakura games and they didn't interest me one bit and I didn't care. Then I saw Tokyo School Life, If My Heart Had Wings etc, and they interested me enough to consider them on sale.
Christmas time they're on sale, I purchase without regret, because they were much more convenient to buy from Steam and I trusted Steam more, and now here I am. Willing to buy from MangaGamer and what not.
So surely the difference you're talking about between me as the 'customer' and a developer are irrelevant? Or in fact pretty much the same thing, as putting a game on Steam worked in favour for them since I purchased games from Steam, and then once I realised they were cut, I stopped purchasing on Steam and started buying from the official channels, like I did with Euphoria the other day.
Honestly Steam is a pretty big deal for developers, no doubt about it. It holds a large amount of customers that game developers can reach out to, I'm pretty grateful VN's were released to Steam, and I honestly hope that one day Steam will be more lenient and let all different types of VN's without cut content to be released on the platform, because I'd feel more comfortable and prefer to purchase from Steam than other sites since that's where I've been buying most of my games from for years.
i'm also a gamer, unlike you i study the game design before scammers and steam overpopulate the internet so dont play that "i know games" card. the reason you didnt find vn is because you were not interested in them, its all about the mind, in your lifetime of gaming you are told that there were only action games, puzzle games, shooter ups, rpg, card game, and classic games. i'm not blaming you for not knowing about vn, the job to make vn popular in the west has always been difficult since not many people consider it has a game. now in this new era, we have tools to make vn popular but its starting to get messy which can lead to people misleading a vn game. you cant read their minds, no one can, why they brought a vn is up to them. just like buying a book, you know its a story but why did they pick that story, its there teste in the novel, telling people to read it or force them is against everything we worked.
yet you are comfortable with steams agreements about never owning the game, forcing you to download the application, not getting refunds within certain reasons, a company known to be sued by 2 countries, and the company who is known to never releasing half life 3.
this proves why vn are way different than a standard game, you pick that game because it interest you. if a book you like is interesting you buy it, you dont care if its hardcover or digital (well theres topics but thats for a later time), you want to read it. what you saw its just a small store of vn, elsewhere in japan there is a huge store with physical copies (some digital i think) and its basicly the same has a book store. you cant say a company is helping vn in the west because thats not at all what we should be focusing on.
steam doesn't offer anything special for developers, the deals you got are something the developers are willing to do. they been peer pressured into thinking steam is better, greenlight is worth it, news coverage, payouts, fans joining, everything. you see how crazy it sounds even from me, its the same like taking a drug pill, it will boost your muscle, better eyesight, relaxation, smarter, faster, youth. do you see the similarities, they are both peer pressure. the reality is that steam is a website, the developer got an audience that wants to play the game but cant because peer pressure.
a real life story and how it ruin them:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/StevenHonders/20151228/262752/The_consequences_of_failure
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1 minute ago, Dergonu said:
Well think about it, what mangagamer did was release their game on steam, a platform that already has a LOT of players. Mangagamer themselves only have so many costumers. By releasing their games on steam, they have a huge mass of people who can now buy it, compared to the slightly lacking following they themselves have.
I of course get your point, but think that in this particular case steam is a pretty nifty little tool for VN makers to have in order to get more sales.
Wether that actually pleases people like me, mangagamer and uncut eroge fans, is a completely different issue.
yet, not every title they have on the website (i'm looking at about 95% sex visual novels) have been place into steam. so no sales dont matter for them, if games like Forbidden Love with My Wife’s Sister, Shera, My Witch ; Harem Party get concerned because of one platform rule you are seeing a decrease in sales. thats no better than watching a porn video that also censors stuff, the reason to buy the sex vn will be gone.
also dont forget that not everyone likes visual novels, just like people who do not like to be naked all the time. its a mind game, if people buy the vn then its their reason not some report card that says people buy 10,000 because its selling high. thats where steam (name event here) comes into effect, yes they buy it but did they play it? a visual novel thats not played is ruining the reason why we want to make visual novels popular in the west.
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9 hours ago, kingdomcome said:
i am so excite.
I think you will get a LOT more exposure using Steam compared to using, uhh what? All I can think of is humblebundle.
says the guy who brought from humblebundle and made a thread about it
3 hours ago, sanahtlig said:Steam has popularized VNs with hits like Sakura Spirit. I'll let you decide whether that's good or bad.
Platform matters. Exposure matters. Reaching an audience that will actually pay for content... matters.
steam didnt do that, Sakura project was the one who talk to visual novel developers and ask the visual novel community for money. i dont know why they decided to go with steam but since visual novels are not first person shooter, you are seeing a gaming industry questing the treatment of vn in steam community. also platforum doesn't matter, if it got popular in playstation portal that most people haven't buy then why shouldent the same thing happen with VVVVVV, Epic Battle Fantasy, Tank Universal, etc. all of them got popular without steam, heck even halo got popular for xbox and people where worry about buying it.
3 hours ago, Funyarinpa said:Steam has practically monopolized game distribution on PC. It's special in the sense that it greatly deviates from the norm- It does have its big flaws, but trying to brush Steam off is utterly idiotic. Not even .1% of Steam's userbase would know of itch.io and similar storefronts, not releasing a PC game on Steam (except VNs) is pretty much an invitation for it to bomb (unless you're Minecraft).
Steam isn't "just another website", it is THE website for digital PC gaming. It's to PC gaming what Google is to search engines.
nope google just looks at keywords, if you look up cats you'll get "cat" with "cats" this is called SEO the very same thing youtubers learn to build an audience. another factor to consider is that 80% of newbie developers publish their game -> only on steam <- which means google keywords only found that game in that site. do a experiment, look up at my game "The Unknowns Saga", "the unknowns" and "firecat" you will find that google's SEO works for anything.
1 hour ago, Forgetful Frank said:I have to add to this and say, if it wasn't for Steam, I wouldn't of discovered VN's like If My Heart Had Wings, The Fruit of Grisaia, and other VN's that are currently on my wish-list that I haven't purchased yet. If it wasn't for these games being on Steam, I wouldn't have searched for how to restore IMHHW and found Fuwanovel's awesome community. I definitely wouldn't be into VN's as much as I am now if those games weren't on Steam, because I wouldn't have found them.
I use Steam for pretty much like 99% of my PC gaming, I definitely don't agree with everything about Steam, but I like that it's convenient to me personally and I can have all my games and account information in one place, instead of on several different places, which is why I buy all my PC games on Steam. And millions of other people are exactly the game, which is why Steam is such a powerful platform to have games on, because that's where mostly every PC gamer is like it or not.
thats thinking as a customer not a developer, yes you found it, yes you found us but steam didnt do that for you. if anything you could have done the same search and still found us and a very good game.
1 hour ago, Dergonu said:Yes good point actually. In fact, a lot of people play their first VNs on steam.
Although it might not always be the best advertising for what VNs there are out there, (sakura games, I´m looking at you...), but we do have a lot of big titles there now, Clannad, G-Senjo no maou, Grisaia no Kajitsu, Nekopara (Its big in the moe world!!!
), If my heart had wings, Eden*, Planetarian, Princess Evangile and more.
Steam is kind of special because its so well known. Like Decay has stated, when someone like Mangagamer releases a game on their site vs a release on steam, the "censored" version on steam still usually sells more, simply because it hits a much bigger, already existing user count/ fanbase.
nope steam didnt do that, mangagamer directed users to steam. the only thing steam did was censored the game which most users like myself did not like to buy (its not a good idea to buy a censored game when there is a uncensored game, why even do that). the company's direct users to steam, it was all them, steam had nothing to do with it, visual novels where not part of steam for like 90% of their time has a platform for PC games.
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@everyone
this is not a customer viewpoint, think about game development. steam does have people but you can force them to download/buy your game, its no better than having a page on itch.io or gamejolt. also since steam requires greenlight you are losing time, your game could be playable for many people (its a sin to not release a good game because of some crazy vote rule). steam takes you way too serious for asking you to have a real bank account when you could use paypal on other sites.
just like i say, you cant force people to keep 24/7 news coverage on your game (well pay them but thats losing income and there are rules). if your game is just another game in steam then you just another game developer with many other game developers.
lastly, steam will do nothing for you. everything i can do is what steam already offers:
upload a game? already can do that on itch.io, gamejolt, indiegamestore, google play
steamspy? already can do that on itch.io, gamejolt, google play but in a way more private way.
sell? already can do that with itch.io, google play, indiegamestore
discounts at your own free will? already can do that in itch.io, google play, indiegamestore
audience? developers are the ones that worked hard to build an audience, any website can do this. just because a platform is popular, doesnt mean games will be popular. (example: every vn in steam is never placed on the front page.)
upload mobile games? only itch.io, indiegamestore, google play/itune store, amazon, and (secret website that i have no idea or forgot but it does exist here).
also steam allows bad games and here are 10 examples:
Sakra Santa (admit its bad and we all know it) : http://store.steampowered.com/app/421700/
HuniePop (repeat your sin): http://store.steampowered.com/app/339800/
the 1 dollar 1 hour for bad steam games:
its fun they say, its on steam they say, my greatest evidence on steam bad games: http://store.steampowered.com/app/353560/
a curator on many bad games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/7048177-Worst-games-of-all-time/?appid=329950
this, i dont know: http://store.steampowered.com/app/27020/
its a AAA game it should work, nope: Batman Arkham Knight -> http://store.steampowered.com/app/208650/
remember this scam game on steam: Journey of the Light -> http://store.steampowered.com/app/371440/
it looked like a good game but...: http://store.steampowered.com/app/392050/
this link to many bad indie games: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218344472
last and not least: http://store.steampowered.com/app/226700/
they all had a chance but fail, remember being popular means risking your credibility has a human being.
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So i'm seeing many newbie developers (yes that one guy who brag about getting past Steam greenlight), thinking steam is special, join steam, steam is everything, etc. The truth is, Steam is not special in any way shape or form.
Why? it's just another website to upload games. you do not get special treatment for uploading a game on steam, you just proven that you got a game build and had it uploaded to a website.
"Well i get downloads, more than any site", false you (the developer) worked hard to build an audience. Steam did not buy, offer, direct, users to your game. Everything you did for your game was done by you, the only thing you asking your fans in return is forcing them to download the steam app.
"i got news coverage from steam", again false. they choice to pick the games they want to cover, there are hundreds of games released each month. just having small coverage means you got something for people to play, steam doesn't force or buy reporters, every news media just wants a good game.
"i become popular in steam", false. it's your hard work that made it. your fans only know about the game, you has a developer only are recognized by a fans who want to know who you are as a human. unless you did something horrible (like fnaf, that youtuber, that guy who scam people on steam, etc) or something cool (like undertale, bloodborne/soul series, etc) that was all you.
"Steam is cool", ya if you like to spend days on end filing paperwork, releasing personal data to valve, bad support, forcing users to use steam app, doing extra work for achievements that gamejolt/xbox does for free, losing downloads because it's considered old game, and losing income by the day.
"i did get greenlight and upload it to steam", again it's just another website. greenlight cost $100 so you just lost $100 for a game that might not come out for the next 2 months or a year. that means if you dont get your game uploaded, you lose interest in news media, you lose income, you lose some of your fans attention, you lose credibility for not being smart and had it uploaded to another site like gamejolt or itch.io, your friends will never forget the mistake you did, and lastly you feel bad for no reason, peer pressure has taken over your life.
so remember, steam is not special, i dont want another thread posted saying "i got greenlight after 3 months", we all know why it took that long to upload. steam its just another website with people who want to play games, developers are directing users to steam. its your choice to fall into these childless day dream of becoming a star. life doesn't work that way and either does steam.- Zalor and Abyssal Monkey
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these two:
} nya
rainbow squire box
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1 hour ago, Rose said:
This Nun is fundamentally different from the Nun you're talking about. For starters, this one here is an alien - likely a robot-type of alien.
but that ruins the history part of the game, people won't recognize the difference between the characters because they are too different. it's like making godzilla into barney, the difference is ruin everything about people ideal look on the original character.
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well at first it was o.k with him having a belt and some future stuff (heavy armor and belts were never part of egypt cultural, the sun will kill the man in any heavy armor). now that he has some kind of facility, it just defeats the whole learning aspect of egypt. Nun is known to never have any temples or place to worship, having a location just for kills the character.
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just wait for phantasy star online 2, i'll come
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if all else fails look up the characters on google and find any information from fan page or official websites. if all else fails then that VN is very new/undiscovered
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1 hour ago, Abyssal Monkey said:
FTFY
ghost people count too
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3 hours ago, atorq said:
About 7.4 billion people.
+ international people = 100+ trillion.
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14 hours ago, STBill said:
The tree was admired by all and had value to the farmer but it choose to throw everything away for nothing. The lesson for me is to be careful not to lose sight of who you're and ruin your life chasing silly dreams, no matter how appealing a silver tongued person may make them sound.
If anyone wants to ask my friend Winter any questions about his story or read more of his stuff you can visit his Deviantart page here Winter-of-Hearts
no the problem is that it favors a character more than anyone, the butterfly appears once and it never got a chance to be anything. the tree seem more willing to follow a plot than expressing itself for what it hopes to be. the farmer seems clueless that it has a special tree, which is very wrong in many fable stories.
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fable stories are about learning, the length does not matter so long as there's something to learn. the story only offers death and lost friendship has an ending, which is not what fable story is about.
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1 hour ago, solidbatman said:
At least Okami was funny. You're just extremely annoying. People don't have to support this if they don't want to. But people here are willing to take the risk in the hopes that it pays off and a product gets delivered. That is how investment works. People supporting this are the investors. They have faith the project will get done.
i never ask for this, blame rooke, its more annoying when people dont read the entire thread.
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lets try more dark...
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33 minutes ago, Norah_Crisis said:
@firecat I have to say, that you are harshly generalizing
if you want to realise an project of this scale (be it game or movie) you need to have an company under which the creator team works
while I do admit Sekai pushing it a bit with myself, you can´t compare that to every other company based on that
Rayark is an relatively small studio and needed this Kickstarter to let this movie become a reality
they already had funds set aside, but were in need for the rest to make it happen
if you want to further discuss this I would like to ask you to create a new thread
I will gladly join you there to have an fair discussion
Now then in addition to the funding, the ZERO_DAY campaign was marked as an favourite project from Kickstarter
Also for those more interested in the staff who will shape this movie - here is something to indulge (I´m sure you´ll be surprised!):
we do not have any information on the movie funding (other than the kickstarter), Mentat Studios have already started on another anime called under the dog:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/774031583/under-the-dog/description
this questions the way Mentat Studios have been doing, two projects under one year thats way more than american budget can spent. It also has no track records on building any movies or anything related in japan search engine. Well we can called the "Sakra Project movies" since they are heading to the same direction, i wouldn't be surprised if they never got to the big screen. people do tend to forget long projects, its not even popular outside the country so there is a very good chance we will all forget about it.
the matter of fact is that there is no way to know what might happen, they even said it on their kickstarter. its like saying "We can do it" then 8 years later the country hated its president (its obama you fools).
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9 hours ago, Rooke said:
Re: the idea that Larian and Obsidian only used Kickstarter once - So Rayark uses kickstarter all the time, do they? If not, then why are you introducing this point in this topic? It's irrelevant.
But let's quickly address the issue of using kickstarter 'all the time.' Harebrained Studios have kickstartered 4 of their last 5 games: Shadowrun, Hong Kong, their board game, and their most recent kickstarter, Battletech. Battletech just received 2.8 million dollars last month after asking for $250,000. Also, Harebrained Studios are beloved to the fanbase.
Kickstarter isn't about a way to 'finish games', it's a way to raise money to produce a game. Obsidian, Larian, Black Isle weren't looking to rebuild their brand but were looking for a way to fund their game. Of those 3 studios, only Larian had begun the process of buiding their game before they headed to kickstarter.
o.k you made that Larian and Obsidian statement with no research, you only have yourself to blame. game development takes time, there is never such a thing has a set time. movies as far i know takes 2 million or more in the course of 3 years in animation, they are asking 400k, they are below the animation setup require to build the movie. its not in 3D so they cant use "disney magic" to help them, i'm very confent that they will only get 10 minutes worth of film.
this blog supports how anime is made: https://washiblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/anime-production-detailed-guide-to-how-anime-is-made-and-the-talent-behind-it/
how long a movie takes? its the same with game development, you can never guess the right budget for it and you can never guess the right time for release.
As i keep saying, you can't keep using kickstarter for everything even if your fans willing to drop money. its not how business should work, it makes people question the way its used (Sakura Project) and major business will never take you seriously because they too dont believe that you can handle money. the problem with them using kickstarter is them losing credit for gaining profit and handling money, these are very important in the business industry.
i won't spend my money on a company that can't gain profit or know where the money is being handle. its bad business and many are not going to take the risk.
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2 hours ago, Rooke said:
It's also what Obsidian studios, Larian studios, and Black Isle studios did to turn a previously dead genre into a golden age of RPG gaming.
So I fully reject your assertion that companies using kickstarter is automatically a 'bad thing.'
Obsidian studios: that was just one kickstarter not 5 or 10
Larian studios: again its only one kickstarter
Black Isle: not proving anything, infact they were sued so yes that was bad that they had to redo stuff.
i never said its a bad thing, using kickstarter is "a way to build a finish game" not "build a game". the major difference is that they (Obsidian studios, Larian studios, and Black Isle studios) are working on rebuilding their brand not asking for funding all the time.
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2 hours ago, Norah_Crisis said:
No. Please don't say something without an argument. Rayark is an independent company and used the Kickstarter to make something possible which wouldn't be possible without it.
thats what Sekai Project did, its what MiKandi Japan is now doing, and its what kickstarter creators Yancey Strickler, Perry Chen, and Charles Adler hate.
QuoteToday we're introducing a number of changes to reinforce that Kickstarter isn’t a store
We started Kickstarter as a new way for creators and audiences to work together to make things.
also companies like Sekai Project, MiKandi Japan and Rayark are already making money, they are too lazy to earn it themselves. they are no longer consider indie companies, under this definition:
QuoteBusiness cycle
Boom and bust. The long-run pattern of economic growth and recession.
AKA: they are doing it wrong, we will be glad to see you fall into recession.
Quoteits not real?
late 1960s Arthur Okun, an economic adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, proclaimed that the business cycle was "obsolete". A year later, the American economy was in recession. Again, in the late 1990s, some economists claimed that technological innovation and globalisation meant that the business cycle was a thing of the past. Alas, they were soon proved wrong.
now a new era called crowdfunding is making companies rely on consumers than the sales they have earn. this will make another business cycle but only in crowdfunding companies, they will all lose profit and they will stop gaining new clients.
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companys using kickstarter?! has the internet gone too far!?!
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14 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:
The latter of those isn't even an uncommon occurrence. For a recent, high-profile example, look at the Wheel of Time series. The example is pretty much tailor-made to disprove your claim: the novels Brandon Sanderson wrote are way better than their immediate predecessors, written by the original author Robert Jordan.
Zeno also already gave another good example of this earlier in the thread - the new Star Wars movie, with new writing, directing, etc., is probably literally universally considered better than any entry in the prequel series (episodes 1-3), written by original creator and bad screenwriter George Lucas.
wrong, according to many sources:
QuoteThe author died in 2007 while working on what was planned to be the twelfth and final volume in the series. He prepared extensive notes so another author could complete the book according to his wishes.
so it was still the author but left notes to help finish it, we talking about making a completely new story and the same characters.
Steam is not special, its just another website
in General Discussion
Posted
why didnt you read the example one page 1, oh well here are your 9 examples:
itch.io -the same but moblie games, browser games, ad-free expernace, and yes it has a client (you got ownd steam)
Amazon - you can also add browser and mobile games.
IndieGameStand - you can also add mobile games
Your website - you can add anything on your website even console download (yes people can and had done that).
Microsoft and itune store - yes microsoft copy apple, so basicly windows or mac download and you can download mobile games for that company.
gog.com - pc download and yes it has a client.
Desura - pc download and it has a client
overkill time ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
gamergate.com - pc download with moblie support.
gamestreamer.com - pc download
shockwave.com - pc download
bigfishgames.com - pc and moblie games
finish him ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
indiedb.com - helps get the word out!
why u no read, i never blame steam. people in the vn community help make it possible to create the vn and placed it on steam. there is no evidence that greenlight played a role in helping create many titles that sakurai project uploaded. following the news from the companies through steam doesn't count, thats not what the topic is about.