Game Dev

Steam keeps changing!

Steam has just made 3 updates. First they announced new rules for Store page Descriptions, mainly to do with links.

No links pointing to other games, so the thing that publishers like PlayWay normally do where on every game they promote another game is no longer possible.

No links to other websites, so you can no longer have a link to a Discord or Website, this one kind of sucks, they recommend you use the official link list on the right side but no one clicks on those.

No images that mimic Steam buttons, so no gifs showing "Add to Wishlist" button being clicked.

They are going to start enforcing these rules in September, so go through your Steam pages to make sure you're not breaking any rules, I need to go do that right now.

Secondly is something they announced last week, how demos can now have their own store pages (I covered that in the last Game Dev Report) and one potential issue that I mentioned was how Demos would crowd out finished games in the New and Trending page, so now they have made a separate tab just for Demos and Free games.

And the third change is on the Reviews, they are now prioritizing informative and helpful reviews over funny or unhelpful reviews.

By the way if you want to learn more about how to make a great store page then watch my video with Chris Zukowski who is a Steam marketing expert. In that video he analyzed a bunch of pages to see what they do right/wrong. And if you want a ton of condensed knowledge check out his Wishlist and Visibility Masterclass.

Game Dev

The POWER of Polish!

You might have heard me say many times how polish is what separates good games from GREAT games, and this developer posted a video on exactly how much of a difference it makes.

The main thing is naturally post processing effects, but also adding more lights (both point lights and directional lights) and adding tons of decals. Decals are especially one of the most awesome tools at your disposal to polish your games, If you take a bland floor texture and just add some decals of dirt or blood or papers, then it suddenly looks so much better. I have a lecture on Decals in my Ultimate Unity Overview course.

This is also an excellent example of how you can make something look really good even while using common Low Poly assets. Some people are afraid that if they use Synty assets their game will look like many other games, but this shows how you can make the exact same assets look really different.

Game Dev

Tango and Hi Fi Rush revived

Some good news about the games industry, the studio behind Hi-Fi Rush, one of the most beloved recent games, has just been brought back from the dead!

Microsoft shut down Tango Gameworks when they closed a bunch of studios, and the people that loved Hi-Fi Rush were upset that such a unique critically acclaimed game was not enough to keep the studio alive. Now Krafton (publisher behind PUBG and Subnautica) has acquired both the studio and the IP.

However they appear to have only acquired the rights to Hi-Fi Rush, so if you are waiting for a new The Evil Within then you have to keep waiting until Microsoft wants to do something with it.

Tech

Unity for NOT-Game Dev?

People know Unity mainly as a game engine, but in reality it is really just a C# Rendering engine. Meaning you can write code in C# and easily render things on screen, so you're not limited to just making games, you can make pretty much any program you want. This excellent post on Reddit has lots of people sharing all the non-Game things they are building in Unity.

There are people making physics simulations for Construction, making virtual reality training for Medicine, virtual training for Robots, AR apps for museums, making a phone app to control an Arduino or Raspberry Pi and so on.

Always remember how if you know Unity and C# you have the knowledge to build a massive amount of interesting things, not just games.