Interesting approach but it does feel just like an ad for getting people to know the game.
He’s got other games out there, so there is some credibility already, gets people out of the novelty and no need to give cuts to anyone else. Smart move!
The part I find interesting, apart from the general selfhosting angle, is that you can do a lot more custom stuff if you control the infrastructure, even things as basic as putting some live stats about the in-game world on the game’s landing page, vs. a Steam landing page which has this very boilerplate, uncustomizable format. Makes the whole thing feel more personal/community-oriented somehow, even to me as someone who doesn’t even play the game but has just visited the website (MMOs feel like too much of a time commitment to me). Reminds me of some BBS door games and ’90s CGI webgames.
But yeah the discoverability/PR problem is really hard if you don’t already have a name and mailing list to draw on.
Interesting approach but it does feel just like an ad for getting people to know the game. He’s got other games out there, so there is some credibility already, gets people out of the novelty and no need to give cuts to anyone else. Smart move!
The part I find interesting, apart from the general selfhosting angle, is that you can do a lot more custom stuff if you control the infrastructure, even things as basic as putting some live stats about the in-game world on the game’s landing page, vs. a Steam landing page which has this very boilerplate, uncustomizable format. Makes the whole thing feel more personal/community-oriented somehow, even to me as someone who doesn’t even play the game but has just visited the website (MMOs feel like too much of a time commitment to me). Reminds me of some BBS door games and ’90s CGI webgames.
But yeah the discoverability/PR problem is really hard if you don’t already have a name and mailing list to draw on.
Something of a false dichotomy, no? Nothing about publishing on steam precludes building your own web site, etc.