Indie studio Brain In A Jar tells us of their Steam Greenlight experience with Indianapolis 500: Evolution.
TPCG: Tell us a little about Indianapolis 500 Evolution.
BIAJ: Indianapolis 500: Evolution was originally made as an Xbox 360 game back in 2008. Unfortunately it didn’t really see the light of day back then as the publisher ran into some troubles and the US version saw only a limited release. The European version, which had passed Microsoft submission, didn’t see the light of day at all. We were pretty disappointed but had to accept that the game was gone. Then, in late 2011 Indianapolis Motor Speedway Licensing contacted us as they had reacquired the rights to the games. We suggested an updated PC version, they thought it was a good idea, an agreement was signed and Brain in a Jar started updating the game ready for PC on Steam.
TPCG: What is the importance of Steam as digital platform to Indianapolis 500 Evolution?
BIAJ: Steam is very important to us. It provides an incredible backbone of support for matchmaking, leaderboards, community and management of the game itself once it goes live. Without Steam it probably would not have been possible for us to consider the transition.
TPCG: Brain in a Jar has been a multiformat indie for over a decade now, could Greenlight be considered a somewhat inconvenient hurdle for an experienced developer like you?
BIAJ: Greenlight has sparked some pretty mixed emotions for us. On the one hand it provides the opportunity to try to build an audience for the game from the great community of Steam players, but on the other it’s an open ended process, with currently no real way knowing how many visitors to the page are converting into Yes voters. As one of the early games to post to Greenlight the first weeks were very confusing, the information available on the public page and our own submission page changed regularly. Now that it has settled down and the joke and copycat submissions have been pretty much eradicated it has the potential to be a great way of self publishing games. For us though the toughest hurdle now is generating traffic to our Greenlight page and those all important Yes votes so we can get the game out there, and take everyone on at the world famous Indianapolis 500!
TPCG: If Indianapolis 500 Evolution does get Greenlit, would that pave the way for more Greenlight submissions from Brain in a Jar?
BIAJ: Without a doubt if the game gets Greenlit and we manage to build a good audience for it we will submit more games to Greenlight in the future. We already have some ideas and designs we are working on that we think would work really well on Steam.
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