Your Greenlight Voting Logic

What determines if a game on Greenlight deserves your Thumbs Up?

Is it as pragmatic as "I would/not buy this game, therefore I will vote for/against it?"

Maybe you think other people would like this game because you believe it is a shining example of what the genre it attempts to represent or shake-up should be.

Maybe you think it's JUST CRAZY ENOUGH TO WORK?

So how have you been voting lately? My logic's been all over the place and you can infer how I've been voting by the questions I posed. Sometimes I thought "It's a quality game I'll never buy, so I'll vote for it" and at the same time, voted against games for the same reason.

I just rate down anything that has "retro" graphics, talks about how it's a mix of these 17 different games you like or has incredibly generic indie game names or genres. I don't rate up much.

I will be very surprised if greenlight manages to do well.

I try to just be academic about my upvoting. It doesn't matter whether or not I like a certain kind of game when it comes to voting. I simply want to know if good effort was put in it and the gameplay looks solid and seems to back up their claims on what their games are about in their description. That and a subjective view on visual quality (art and/or graphics-wise) which is just as important as good solid gameplay to me. Quite a chunk of Greenlight games look absolutely horrible in one or the other or both so that plays a part on my upvoting to some extent.

I vote up some stuff I'm interested in and a few things that seem to have solid mechanics even if I would personally, probably never play them. I don't upvote things from genres I'm unfamiliar with, or completely uninterested in.

I haven't bothered to downvote anything yet.

I've been going through and flagging all the already existing games that were posted alongside a boatload of Cyrillic text, because...c'mon.

I'm upvoting stuff that looks like its not a work in progress and seems like I or others might enjoy it. I'm not making purchasing decisions yet because they're not for sale on the Steam store yet.

I'm noticing a few games made in RPG maker XP, those are down votes automatically. I usually pay attention to the art of the game and the gameplay, if it looks like something that I would be interested in I up vote it.

Do I want to play this game?

Yes = Vote up.

No = Vote down.

How else is it meant to work?

@GunslingerPanda said:

Do I want to play this game?

Yes = Vote up.

No = Vote down.

How else is it meant to work?

Well, you know, you could take into consideration whether other people would want to play it? A game might not be geared to you specifically, but it could be something others would want on Steam - Example, I really don't care about Project Zomboid, but I know a lot of other people do, so I voted it.

If I want to play it myself, I vote up. If I think other people will want to play it, I vote up.

If I don't think it seems good overall, I don't vote.

If something seems rather fishy, a direct clone of something else, some sort of steaming pile of turd only there to troll, then I vote down.

I think I will vote for cool things on green light.

If I want to play it, I vote up.

If I I think it looks poor or I have some sort of problem with it, I vote down (I rarely vote down.)

If it's not something I'm not personally interested in, I don't try to be like the social activist-y voters above me. I just don't vote either way.

@BeachThunder said:

@GunslingerPanda said:

Do I want to play this game?

Yes = Vote up.

No = Vote down.

How else is it meant to work?

Well, you know, you could take into consideration whether other people would want to play it? A game might not be geared to you specifically, but it could be something others would want on Steam - Example, I really don't care about Project Zomboid, but I know a lot of other people do, so I voted it.

But if other people want it then they can vote it up. If everyone voted up something because someone else might like it and then only a handful of people actually bought it, then the system isn't working.

If I'd buy it: vote up.

If I wouldn't buy it: no vote

If it's offensively bad: vote down

If it's nonsense (CoD: Source, Warcraft 3, etc.): report

I upvote stuff that looks rad. If it's some guy asking that they add Postal 2, I downvote. Otherwise, I move on.

If Machinae Supremacy is involved it's alright with me.  
And there's one game on there where that's actually happening so that got my vote.. 

I vote based on if I think it is promising. If I'm not sure I don't vote, but if I think it's bad then I vote negative.

The only things I've voted on are games that have come out elsewhere that I feel more people should know about, and games that I have been following devlogs on. 
I haven't downvoted anything yet.

I don't vote down, I just vote up things I like. Why should I take a game away from someone who's excited for it?

Anything that looks like this gets downvoted.

As well as shitty looking hidden object games that are probably already on Big Fish, and Postal 2.

Steam's Greenlight program is as terrible messy as Xbox Live's Indie Games Channel. I'm completely ignoring until Valve or their community straightens everything up.

If it looks like a game I want to play/buy then I thumb it up. If it does not I don't click on it.

No more slender man based games, and I vote for something that either looks legitimately good, or just super wacky like the gritty president fighting game.

This is the only thing I've downvoted so farthe animated boob sway icon would be more than bad enough to get me to ignore it but then making them into disgusting zombie boobs pushed me over the edge into downvoting. I'm sure some bright spark thought "hey people love boobs AND people love zombies, lets put both those things in our game, we'll make millions!" alas they combined those two popular things a bit too literally.

My general strategy though is to upvote games I think I or other people would like and to ignore pretty much everything else. I haven't seen anything blatantly shady but if I do I'll report it.

Upvoting's easy- if its something that I think is interesting and might buy, I upvote it.

If its something I'm not interested in- I don't vote, because Valve really needs to clarify exactly how powerful that downvote button is. We don't know what kind of effect it has on the proceedings.

Does it actually hinder a game's chances at getting onto Steam? (I.E: Does it basically subtract an upvote form their tally?)

Does it do little to nothing- just serving as a way to get it off the list of games you can vote on?

If it could be confirmed that it just does the latter- then I'd use it a lot more often. But right now, I reserve it for deliberately bad entries- just in case the downvote button actually damages their odds directly.

If I've played it and liked it, I will upvote it. 
If certain people I know say it's really good, then I'll upvote it. 
 
I don't really browse through it or vote down.

@WarlockEngineerMoreDakka:

So that brings up a pretty good point on why to/not to downvote a submission, especially because of the statement from Valve itself on the faq about GreenLight that incomplete submissions or in-development works are encouraged to be submitted, so there have been more than a few instances where a game is clearly not ready to be sold in any capacity, and many more that are akin to Tribes Ascend in the past, or like Endless Space, where a pre-purchase opened early testing access to the game.

So, I took downvoting to mean giving -1 instead of +1, while ignoring it is a 0.

Anyway, it's just something to consider in light of Valve encouraging incomplete or even downright-unplayable items to be submitted. I would imagine that a developer/team can re-submit the same game, given that they can show it's been significantly updated.

@Serpentenema

The only game I voted for that included SLENDERMAAAN was http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92910126 "The Intruder" because the premise has a lot more gameplay elements than 'collect ten items and also avoid the monster'. The idea is to collect items that actually do things, such as barricade the area, replenish hunger, etc, and try to survive the encounter in a randomly generated area with set pieces the player can become familiar with over time.

@seannao said:

So how have you been voting lately? My logic's been all over the place and you can infer how I've been voting by the questions I posed.

Pretty much the same for me. But I think I'm going to start voting more clinically instead of "hey this seems cool, someone might like this" and actually just boil it down to "would I buy this game yes or no" and if the answer is no, just thumb it down.

The format I try to follow (and one that seems "fair") is...

Favorite: I would maybe be interested in purchasing this product.

Like: I think you're doing a cool job, people should check it out. It might not be for me, but others might want to take a look at it.

Downvote: I have no interest in ever playing this regardless of price point.

But I mean, at the end of the day, I'm not "others" and those are decisions that should be left to them, not me. So really, the fairest might be to just upvote if you have some interest to purchase it and downvote if you don't. Hmm.

Greenlighting games is actually something I sort of do for my job... but I think my logic is different for Steam since it doesn't directly affect me.

I look at two things - concept (does this game look/sound fun?) and execution (do they look like they know what they're doing?).

Too often (just look at Kickstarter) you have something that sounds like it could actually be fun but who knows if the dev can deliver. It's all in the pitch... Okay I guess not so different from work after all -_-

To get onto the service your game should just look like it will run well and isn't a broken piece of garbage. Then they should let people up-vote good games on the service to gain more attention.

@RockmanBionics said:

I vote up some stuff I'm interested in and a few things that seem to have solid mechanics even if I would personally, probably never play them. I don't upvote things from genres I'm unfamiliar with, or completely uninterested in.

This. Although I do down-vote stuff that has misleadingly been advertised, or was just a disappointment to play.

I have some simple rules for my thumbs up. 
 
I know Steam allows it, but I don't up vote Pre Alpha builds. If it looks like crap it probably is. These are indie games, so best foot forward or no vote from me (probably my harshest rule). 
 
I don't up vote clones. Put more effort into your game. 
 
I don't up vote games that seem boring to me (part of that "would I buy it mentality" but even if I wouldn't play I still take into consideration if other people should/would like). 
 
Obviously, but just saying, I don't up vote fake games. People that do are weird! 
 
I wont vote for your game at all if it has no video but has a decent concept, I will down vote your game if it looks pointless. Having an intangible feeling of having no passion put into it: hard to explain, but you can tell if a game is "worth it" after 5 seconds of game play video.  
 
That's my opinion.

@CornBREDX said:

but you can tell if a game is "worth it" after 5 seconds of game play video. That's my opinion.

I feel the same way. I feel I've played enough games, indie titles and "users can make their own game with this tool" stuff over the years that I just "feel" the gameplay looks a bit too rough for me. In some cases, like the president fighting game though, I enjoy the concept more and push that stuff aside.

Also, people, say what you want about Postal 2, but Running With Scissors has so far been one of the few companies on greenlight that actually seem to understand the platform in which they want to release their game. They're quite ambitious: wanting to add steam workshop support, achievements, and other steam community features to their now (in a few month's time) 10 year old game. They also set the bar for community interaction decently high, actually caring about answering community concern and questions (which also shows their ambition for the project itself). I'm upvoting the game for those reasons, not for the gameplay.

Devs who fire-and-forget, post their project and go MIA or even delete harsh-but-fair critique from their games seem less serious about the game and more interested in something else.