Steam’s light has turned green, which means indie games which are not already available on Valve’s market-ruling online PC gaming store can now petition users to vote for them, in the hope that the eye of benign Sauron will turn to their game and grant it a coveted spot on Steam. I could all too easily hold forth about the pros and cons of the Greenlight system, enthuse about the potential democracy it might mean, muse about whether it’s an attempt to prevent Kickstarter stealing Steam’s thunder, wonder why a company so boundlessly rich can’t just employ a huge team of experts to assess every game submitted to them, why the blue blazes they’d include the troll-gift that is a downvote option, and offer hope that it means a bright new age of bold games finding larger audiences.

But I’m just some shmoe. So, far better to talk to the people Greenlight actually affects – the indie developers who are (or are considering) using it as a way to attain profile+profit for their projects. Specifically, developers who’ve worked on games including Gratuitous Tank Battles, Time Gentlemen Please, Waking Mars, Revenge of the Titans, Kairo, Kenshi, Leave Home, Redshirt and InFlux. In part one of this feature, read on for their thoughts on the joys of Greenlight in concept – but the possible problems in practice.(more…)