#44446: Add the game to steam
Open Date: 2022-04-23 21:46
Last Update: 2022-05-18 20:52
URL for this Ticket:
https://osdn.net//projects/freeciv/ticket/44446
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Last Changes/Comment on this Ticket:
2022-05-18 20:52 Updated by: Anonymous
Comment:
While I agree releasing on Steam for greater visibility is a nice idea, the one concern is that Freeciv is a game you need a keyboard to really play (at least as far as version 2.6 goes) with its current user interface. Without a major UI overhaul, I think the game would get too many negative reviews since graphics and controls are a major detractor for many games on the platform. Not to mention, I can't ever see myself playing Freeciv on mobile or a standard tablet (especially when the game is crowded with dozens or hundreds of units on the board in larger gamaes).
But if someone could make a mobile edition of the game (with simplified controls), that could be released on steam. Personally, I think making a demo version (allowing small games, ie: up to 10k tiles and up to 5-6 players) and allowing folks to download the full game for either mac or pc would be the better direction since the base game is free to download anyway
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Ticket Status:
Reporter: (Anonymous)
Owner: (None)
Type: Feature Requests
Status: Open
Priority: 5 - Medium
MileStone: (None)
Component: Deliverable
Severity: 5 - Medium
Resolution: None
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Ticket details:
Why I think it will be beneficial:
* it is very popular and it's website has a lot of visitors (Alexa ranks it as the 314 most popular website on the internet).
* Seeing a lot of good reviews can really tip the scales and make me (and probably others) take a chance on trying a game (it's basically social proof), it could lead to more exposure which will mean more developers and more feedback (former developer of naev said it brought new developers).
* Steam is the only game review system that i know of which is able to rank games only based on "recent reviews", so if a game starts badly and keeps getting developed and becomes good the old review don't prevent it from getting a good rating, this is especially good for open source games that can have a very long history of development (being developed for more then a 15 years is common).
* Another nice feature of steam is that you can find reviews for players that played more then a certain number of hours , some games can be half done and a review after three hours of play time might not reflect problems, a review after say 30h indicates you can pour some time into it without the game failing (and you will have to wait for a newer version and maybe play it until the point you reached before because save files are not always compatible with future versions).
* Some FOSS projects on steam have a price (for example the game Mindustry ). Maybe you could use that for funding and paying freelancers to create graphics and sound (iirc this is what shattered pixel dungeon does).
* early feedback can be useful, there is a saying that if you are not embarrassed when releasing the software then you released it too late, steam can mark a game as early access (like supertux does) so there is no danger of disappointing players because the game isn't fully polished.
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Ticket information of Freeciv project
Freeciv Project is hosted on OSDN
Project URL: https://osdn.net/projects/freeciv/
OSDN: https://osdn.net
URL for this Ticket:
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