Penny Arcade Launches Digital Distribution Site
Hothead and Penny Arcade's RPG Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One will be the first title to release on the platform. No date has been announced for the title's debut, though it will sell for $19.95 and is expected this spring.
According to the company, Greenhouse was "built to supplement other online game delivery platforms," such as Valve's Steam, which provides Penny Arcade comics to its users.
"There are so many great games out there that you don't hear about," explained Penny Arcade business director Robert Khoo. "They're too niche or too risky in terms of game play for the top publishers to be comfortable with distributing. We want the Greenhouse to be an alternative for these developers."
A beta of Greenhouse and its downloading application are currently available at www.playgreenhouse.com.
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Visceral Monkey
replyMeh. Can't steam do all this?
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I wouldn't call it risky, they have a pretty large fan base. And forcing your userbase to use your own distribution system seems like a smart way to get it off the ground.
Of course, it didn't work so well for Triton.-
Well, Triton didn't have a fanbase, and there was another way to get the one major game, PREY (at retail).
I'd be OK with the idea of two digital distribution avenues, Greenhouse for true indie development and Steam for mainstream, AAA games. Steam would be the Giant Record Store to Greenhouse's Indie Record Store with a bunch of games that wouldn't survive on the shelves of a Wal-Mart but, conversely, doesn't have any Britney Spears albums either.
That being said, I think the plans for this were probably put into place before Valve released Steamworks and before AudioSurf proved that an inexpensive indie game still has a place on Steam. I bet they're concerned that either they won't make enough money from a Steam sale or that their game will get lost in the wash of so many games being available on Steam.
Overall though yeah, I'd love to know the real reason why they didn't go with Steam, which given that they're both in Seattle (Valve and PA) it seems odd that they didn't go with the option down the street. -
I'd call it risky, its with a small start up company that is totally unproven, with a game about an online comic (albiet a big fan base for an online comic, but not necessarily for pc sales)
Also, let's look at PA; most of it is referencing other games, movies, stuff that happens in the industry... let's look at the PA game: most likely none of that; this is pretty risky.
So now you add on this other thing that has to sit on my computer and I have to use it, also untested?
Hell, I remember half the net being ablaze because we had to have this POS thing called Steam on our systems to play Half Life 2; luckily it turned out all right, but thats because it was Valve and Half Life 2, I don't see us sitting back and laughing about how stupid we were over the PA game and Greenhouse .-
Well given that they can get 37,000 people to pay $25-$50 each to go to their yearly conference, I think they have enough potential fans to buy this thing to make Greenhouse a success.
And besides even if it fails you know that they'll follow the 3DR precedent and get it hooked up on Steam.-
I can't see this service being a success. Sure, PA has a following, but this game will have an extremely limited reception if they rely solely on this unproven service.
What I think would be ideal is if Steam were to start a subsection of their store to cater to Indy games. A boutique of sorts that highlights smaller, cheaper Indy games and gives them more visibility within the now burgeoning Steam Catalog.
Why reinvent the wheel?-
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Perhaps by giving games/development studios studios that Valve would never consider(and/or is charging way to much for) an avenue for online distribution. Do you really think just about anyone can publish their games through Steam ? Do you think it is cheap to publish using Steam ?
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Well I don't for sure but look here: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=16623745
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Except that their service is just a download service -- it just installs a game exe on your drive, not content delivery middleware.
Also, for many people, Steam is awesome, but Valve definitely takes a cut, and isn't part of digital distribution about being successful without a middleman taking a chunk of your profits, and choosing how to position your game in their retail space? Steam is an amazing service, but as its catalog has grown, it now has many of the same problems that mega online retailers and even brick and mortar stores have in terms of how much space they have dedicated to promoting your title. With Greenhouse, the PA guys get their own front page, with nothing contingent on the whims of some other company's sales team.-
Right, but I think they overestimate the PA audience. At least with Steam you are being marketed to millions of people that have already taken the plunge. Steam is becoming the de facto digital delivery platform.
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It seems to me that the problem isn't a central place to buy and download indie games, but a central place to go get news, reviews and (dare I say) hype about them. A few indie games bubble up to the likes of Shacknews, but I'd like to see a site that's an "IGN for Indies". Does that exist?
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Yeah, I was gonna say, the games they want to sell have historically been available as freeware/shareware and free demos...Will *that* aspect of the indie gameworld end now?
Would Dwarf Fortress be as popular now if they had started selling it when they started (INSTEAD of making it freely available)? I'm not arguing that it's not a saleable product NOW, but was it in the beginning?
What about N, or Fl0w? Would they have been picked up to be published without the free editions already proving popular?
I agree, a "portal to expose/update gamers to the joys of Indie Gaming" would be better than "hey let's monetize historically free software"...I mean, it's good for the people who developed the software IIF they have a user base already, but are they gonna be able to create that user base at "retail"?
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Nope, Steam can't do all this, unless Valve has released clients for OSX and Linux that I haven't heard about.
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The downloader is multiplatform, but how many Indir titles will be multi-platform? I doubt many. Steamworks is free, anyone can use Steam, if they choose, to distribute their game, and we don't need yet another game delivery client.
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Well, Greenhouse was created to deliver the Penny Arcade game, and the Penny Arcade game is multi-platform. They wanted to digital delivery for their game, and because that wasn't possible with any of the other delivery clients (that I know of), they had to make their own.
I don't know. That doesn't seem like such a bizarre concept to me. What they wanted to do is impossible with Steam, so they made it possible with their own solution.
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Steam is currently too slow with adding new content, doesn't take much of a glance at the indie market, and apparently they're not any softer in regards to royalties than hard copy distributors (mainly *because* of these distributors, mind you). Competition breeds a healthy market, and a complimentary competitor is even better.
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No.
Why Greenhouse has a chance: PA's audience is huge, and virtually 100% of that audience interacts with PA through their website. When Valve launched Steam, it was risky because some significant percentage of their fans only interacted with them through retail. PA doesn't have to worry about throngs of fans who read their comic in the newspaper not understanding what Greenhouse is.
Greenhouse vs. Steam: Greenhouse is multi-platform, and it is not tied to a big-name developer. While Valve has heretofore done an excellent job guiding the Steam boat, I wish they would spin Steam off as its own company that was focused on distribution.
It would be fantastic to have an indie games portal. We don't know how Greenhouse will pan out, but if it's more analogous to the way Apple has described their upcoming App Store, then I think it can serve a valuable purpose. That is, serve as a distribution hub for both free and commercial games, and provide a billing mechanism for low-cost titles (I'm thinking of $5 games or even donation-ware where the payment mechanism inspires more confidence than some developer's roll-your-own setup).
Since they seem to be planning on being quite strict with what content is available (i.e. Jerry and Mike's approval), this won't instantly turn the indie gaming world upside down, nor does it seem designed to challenge the Steam blockbuster, but it could serve as a respectable complement to the PA empire.
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