Lemme knock out the obvious: Better UI and stronger community / community tools. I think these are a given.
OK. With you, there.
That being said, I do think EGS is going the correct route
…and, you lost me.
I work in UI, outside the game industry. It’s plain to me very, very few publishers care about developing good UI or community tools. Epic is no exception. Perhaps that wasn’t what you meant, but if it’s a venue they intentionally ignore, it fits the OP picture perfectly.
I also think there are other features on which Steam has failed to compete, and an inventive competitor could investigate. Things like better game integration, better curation, promises against censorship to publishers of adult content, or creative uses of AI to improve player experiences, are all options. But I think that between the attempts of Google, Amazon, and Epic, it’s seemed that simply throwing money at the game industry without knowledge of what’s valuable to gamers, has not worked well.
Those points are valid, but do you really think having better UI/UX is going to win them over customers when compared to Steam? Like, Steam is such a behemoth. Hypothetical, but if I was still a kid, and my brother had his whole library on Steam, where do you think I’d end up buying most my games? I think good UI/UX is only half the battle in this kind of competition.
You’re right, in that you do need a “hook” - but that needs to be on top of nailing the absolute basics. UI is definitely one of the more basic elements.
The key here is, good UI is not something that needs millions of dollars of investment - it’s generally sort of the opposite. It needs fewer managers over-designing things and finding the best ways to “marketing push” all the high-value product items.
To webpage developers, this motherfucking website is the best site in the world. It loads instantly, and barely requires any coding experience to make. Launchers are not websites (unless you want to bundle 800 MB of Chromium, as many sadly do) but some of the same principles of basicness apply.
OK. With you, there.
…and, you lost me.
I work in UI, outside the game industry. It’s plain to me very, very few publishers care about developing good UI or community tools. Epic is no exception. Perhaps that wasn’t what you meant, but if it’s a venue they intentionally ignore, it fits the OP picture perfectly.
I also think there are other features on which Steam has failed to compete, and an inventive competitor could investigate. Things like better game integration, better curation, promises against censorship to publishers of adult content, or creative uses of AI to improve player experiences, are all options. But I think that between the attempts of Google, Amazon, and Epic, it’s seemed that simply throwing money at the game industry without knowledge of what’s valuable to gamers, has not worked well.
Those points are valid, but do you really think having better UI/UX is going to win them over customers when compared to Steam? Like, Steam is such a behemoth. Hypothetical, but if I was still a kid, and my brother had his whole library on Steam, where do you think I’d end up buying most my games? I think good UI/UX is only half the battle in this kind of competition.
You’re right, in that you do need a “hook” - but that needs to be on top of nailing the absolute basics. UI is definitely one of the more basic elements. The key here is, good UI is not something that needs millions of dollars of investment - it’s generally sort of the opposite. It needs fewer managers over-designing things and finding the best ways to “marketing push” all the high-value product items.
To webpage developers, this motherfucking website is the best site in the world. It loads instantly, and barely requires any coding experience to make. Launchers are not websites (unless you want to bundle 800 MB of Chromium, as many sadly do) but some of the same principles of basicness apply.