Roguelike Radio podcast

[Darren Grey]

Back to the thread topic... new episode ahoy!

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2014/10/episode-93-868-hack.html

And we have another one recorded already to release next week. Expect some more regularity in future! And if you have any requests for things to cover then please let me know.

[Azathotep]

Had to take a break from games because of work. Now I have 9 months of roguelike radio to work through.

Oh and pixelated mushroom t-shirts? I've clearly missed something. No matter how hard I read the last dozen posts I can't figure out wtf anyone is talking about. doubt I can add any insight either so I'll leave it at that.

[mcouk]

I really enjoy listening to the podcast Darren, but would it be possible to boost the volume...a lot! Perhaps a little compression to normalize the levels too.

[Darren Grey]

This episode should have better levelling:

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2014/10/episode-94-procjam.html

It's about the upcoming Procedural Generation Jam, with lots of great chatter about the role of PGC.

[Krice]

I don't know why people want to get their roguelike game to Steam. If it's money, then why the heck they are even developing roguelikes? You get more money quicker if you make some other type of game which are easier to create.

[Rickton]

I don't know why people want to get their roguelike game to Steam. If it's money, then why the heck they are even developing roguelikes? You get more money quicker if you make some other type of game which are easier to create.

I don't know why people want to get their game to Steam. If it's money, why the heck are they even developing games? You get money quicker if you have some other type of job that's easier to do.

[Krice]

You get money quicker if you have some other type of job that's easier to do.

I guess people wish they hit the jackpot like Notch did with Minecraft, which certainly wins about all other ways to get loads of money fast. Who knows, it may happen. Not with a roguelike, though. It's unlikely that roguelike will become a game that sells big amounts.

[Darren Grey]

I don't know why people want to get their roguelike game to Steam. If it's money, then why the heck they are even developing roguelikes? You get more money quicker if you make some other type of game which are easier to create.

It's not about the money, it's about exposure. Many people will never find your game if it's not on Steam. This may change in future, but it's the current state of PC gaming. If we want the current generation of gamers to play roguelikes then we need to make them easy to find.

Most roguelikes are never going to earn serious money, and certainly never enough to remunerate the time put into them.

[mushroom patch]

"Roguelikes," as they represented on steam, are not harder to produce than other games. They're considerably easier because you dodge most of the art and graphics programming that goes into making almost any other game that people are willing to pay for.

The answer to the question is that it's relatively easy to put together something whose primary gimmick is "procedural content," market it as a "roguelike," and make enough money to support a bachelor lifestyle. It's all about insight into what people are willing to pay for. The insight is: People are willing to pay a nominal fee for "roguelikes."

[Krice]

Many people will never find your game if it's not on Steam.

But roguelikes (real ones) are such a specific type of games that everyone knows where to find them. I could argue that if the game is on Steam I can't find it, because I don't use Steam. And never will. Unless trying to sell a game for casual players. Let's hope my desperation will never go that far.

[Darren Grey]

I think the roguelikes that have been on Steam prove that wrong. There are plenty of non-casual players on there who would struggle to find roguelikes otherwise.

[TheCreator]

I think the roguelikes that have been on Steam prove that wrong. There are plenty of non-casual players on there who would struggle to find roguelikes otherwise.

If one is unable to find anything that is not present on Steam, then the word 'causal' is among most polite things to say about that person.

[Darren Grey]

Hmm, should we find some causal rougelikes? ;-)

I'm not sure why you think good roguelikes are in any way easy to find. Games like HyperRogue are little known even to veterans of the community. If you're young and not exposed to many games how do you have any hope of finding it?

Steam is full of hardcore games. Plenty of fans of games like X-Com or the 4X genre would love roguelikes if they were exposed to them.

[TheCreator]

I'm not sure why you think good roguelikes are in any way easy to find. Games like HyperRogue are little known even to veterans of the community. If you're young and not exposed to many games how do you have any hope of finding it?

If you are looking for roguelikes, you type "roguelike" in Google and get the Roguebasin page, where you can find any RL that has been ever heard of. There's even a recent update on HyperRogue. And you can learn ridiculous things, such as that Diablo is also a roguelike. How Steam is better than that? Okay, it does not have the 7DRL junk flood .

[akeley]

I don`t think underexposure is a major problem in discovering quality roguelikes, not in 2015. Over last few years that word has become quite trendy, especially among the indie scene and I`m pretty sure any gamers -old or young, no matter - considering themselves anything above "totally casual" have encountered this term and at least some games associated with it.

Those exposed who got the bug will definitely have no problem following up - all roads links eventually lead to this site`s ultimate database, and a day or two of lurking on forums here or on bay12 will give you enough clues as to which games stand out, yielding enough material  to keep you occupied for months (in case you`re unwilling to just try some at random, which I personally think is much more fun)   

In my opinion bigger obstacle in getting more people to play is poor communication and lots of misconceptions regarding the genre. I first played Rogue very long time ago - thought it`s a funny little game, entertaining for a bit but ultimately a gimped RPG, and had nowhere to learn the truth about it back then. And so  I avoided the genre for the next two decades...I simply didn`t know that all  I always wanted the most from videogames -depth, originality, attitude, complexity, emergent gameplay and so on is just few links away.

These days coverage and information is zillion times better and more accessible of course, but I still don`t think enough is done on more popular level to explain how the standard definition (turn based, permadeath etc) -which is kind of boring and perhaps off-putting - relates to aforementioned values.

In case of Steam itself the problem might be also the fact that the tag "roguelike" lumps everything together - and so somebody who tried, say, 3089, might have trouble understanding why on Earth should he play Caves Of Qud too.