Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Bad Jokes Trump Average Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 25, 2014

rocksimMaybe I’m taking things way too seriously here, but this kinda saddens me:

Rock Simulator 2014 on Greenlight

Not only do empty promises get more attention than real, delivered games… but joke projects may trump serious development efforts. In theory, the $100 Greenlight fee was supposed to weed these out, which I’m sure it did. But not completely.

Of course, here I am talking about it instead of ignoring it, as I usually try to do. So I guess I’m not immune, either. They just proved their point.

I suppose it’s entirely possible that they could make a cool game out of this concept… I’ve played the totally awesome Rock of Ages, which involved some decently fun gameplay on top of some excellent and weird theming. But based upon what’s written on the Greenlight page, this ain’t that.

Ah, well. I feel bad for the game developer who gets passed up because of this thing, for sure. When people’s livelihoods are at stake… this isn’t quite as amusing. But on the flip side, this is frickin’ games. We should have fun with it. I just wish they’d picked a better venue. Or maybe they are pointing out the pointlessness of the current Greenlight system, in which case… another point well taken.

Can you tell I have mixed emotions here?

This is just the way life and the market works, as much as we wish it were otherwise. Gimmicks get the attention. Always.
One more time:


Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



  • McTeddy said,

    As one of those mediocre developers who no one knows exists, I agree. I work my butt off day and night trying to do something worthwhile and then I see “Goat Simulator” take the world by storm.

    But realistically, it’s just jealousy speaking. I believe in the free market and I would NEVER want to punish someone else so that I’d get “my share”.

    People like jokes and are willing to throw money at them. It’s frustrating, but it’s a fact of life. If it wasn’t these joke games stealing everyone’s attention it’d be some other fad.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    Yeah, my usual rule of thumb is that practical jokes are only funny if they don’t hurt or humiliate anybody (which is why I dislike April 1).

    But yeah, Goat Simulator was one of those head-scratching things, but again… it’s different, and it’s gimmicky like crazy, but often that’s what wins. I guess that’s part of my disappointment with this joke – it just sounds like a less-inspired “me, too!” riff on Goat Simulator.

    But people have been flocking to novelty since rocks really were a primary source of entertainment, so I don’t see that changing much.

  • Infinitron said,

    “This is a concept or project early in development”

    Don’t think this is stealing anybody’s votes.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    So maybe I misunderstood – when your queue is populated, are games from the concept queue not included?

  • Dave Toulouse said,

    I’m pretty sure the concept section is separated from anything Greenlight as I first created a concept page by mistake for Human Extinction Simulator (oh look, the word simulator again!) and it was nowhere to be found until I realize what I did.

    In fact I don’t think you need to pay for the concept section so they most likely didn’t pay $100 for that.

  • Darius said,

    I remember seeing a comic with a door-to-door salesman who sells a box, which could have anything you imagine in it, but you aren’t allowed to open the box. So you get to live in perpetual excitement of having what you imagine is in the box.

    I’ve thought I should set up a Steam early access project, with some very very basic tech demo, and a promise that it will be everything to everyone, and that it will never be released, so that you can always look forward with excitement towards the game you always wanted to play.

    But I worry about what such a thing would do to my reputation as a game developer. Not that I have much of one anyway, but I don’t want to jinx future projects.

  • Darius said,

    I neglected to add that things like Rock Simulator 2014 always make me wonder how much I could make with such a scheme.

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