From Earth: A More Subtle Take on Figuring out an Alien Civilization

Normally, in games, alien cultures seem to be designed to be convenient, rather than plausible. Why is it that everybody but Hutts and Wookiees speaks English, regardless of the planet of origin or species. Here on Earth (only one planet) we have only one species using language (that we know of) and we have 6,909 living languages. It seems unlikely that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away hundreds of planets somehow would all agree on one language. That, of course, only scratches the surface of how difficult it would be to deal with an alien culture.

from earthmagnify

From Earth is a noble attempt to make a game out of those sorts of problems. Players take to role of a crash-landed explorer on an alien planet. They can try to decipher the alien language, observe them using their own technology to learn how, or just kill ‘em all with a big stick and then try to escape from your pile of corpses without any help. I think it’s an interesting premise, and I’d love to give it a go, so I just voted “yes” on Steam Greenlight, and you should too.

Steam Greenlight Introduces Concepts Section

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Game designers now have a new place to crowd source their ideas and potentially turn them into the next big indie hit.

The gaming world has changed, friends. It’s now the visionary and his or her Internet savvy followers that have the keys to the game-creating ignition, instead of the monolithic ...
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Steam Greenlight adds non-gaming category for your consideration

Steam Greenlight adds nongaming category for productive apps

Indie game makers have been lobbing titles over Gabe Newell's fence for a short while, but now his company is inviting everyone else to join in as well. Valve has widened Steam Greenlight's crowdsourced approval process to include non-gaming software, with the community voting the most popular and useful apps onto Steam's virtual shelves. We're thinking of submitting a program ourselves, that calculates the time required for three quantities of a decaying substance to fall to half their value, just so we can see everyone's faces when Half-Life Three appears on the list.

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Steam Greenlight adds non-gaming category for your consideration originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Oct 2012 04:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Valve launches Steam Greenlight to pick cream of indie game crop

Valve launches Steam Greenlight to pick cream of indie game crop for its store

Steam has developed a reputation as a haven for indie games like Super Meat Boy, so it's only fitting that store owner Valve has just launched a section to welcome more of those games into its tent. Greenlight lets small developers submit titles and have gamers vote as to whether or not the candidates should get space on Steam's virtual shelf. Pickier players don't have to see every game in contention; they can filter the list down to specific game types and platforms, and collections can narrow the selection to categories hand-picked by fans or publishers. No games have cleared Greenlight just yet, but it won't be long before the logjam becomes a flood -- between this and general apps, Steam is about to get a lot more crowded.

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Valve launches Steam Greenlight to pick cream of indie game crop originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Aug 2012 22:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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