Ah, not just my argument this time, ladies and gentlemen. Instead that of the lovely ex-Offworld, all round top journo chap and fine supporter of indie devs worldwide Brandon Boyer over at Boing Boing.
Unlike the not really especially well considered recent IGN editorial declaring the service to be a failure, Brandon’s analysis is one I find incredibly hard to disagree with.
Yes, we can sit back and laugh or gripe over the massage apps or whatever comical/depressing trend hits the service but they’re not really that much of an issue I don’t think.
To pick one part of Brandon’s article that’s relevant to what we at xnPlay do: when the IGN top picks are, for want of a better phrase, without any sort of level of transparency or editorial reasoning (IGN long stopped doing their awfully titled “Communal Shower” round ups) and to my eyes at least, seem quite arbitrary that there’s perhaps something fundamentally wrong with the way the Indie Games service is being treated and presented to the public. But, you can probably already guess that from how many steps it’ll take a member of the public to not only go and navigate to the indie games service on the dash but to actually download a game (comically detailed in the Don’t Be Nervous Talking To Girls trailer).
It’s this and a few more things that Brandon touches on in his piece, not taking the easy targets (“oh, it’s the devs clogging up the service with shit” a la certain journalistic quarters) but instead taking a more considered view. Often, in more recent times, it’s felt increasingly like despite the good and hard work of the XNA team and the developers who are punting out great titles, if anything the service is chuntering along in spite of the lacklustre support of MS:The corporate entity, the same for the successful games (and there are some folks out there who are doing pretty well all told).
From my own personal experience, I’ve been nothing but happy with the way my own game on the service has done. Myself and compadre Andy have had some lovely support from the community, players and from the press. Can’t knock a thing there.
Running xnPlay on the other hand? Well, let’s put it this way. The issues I detailed last year never reached a resolution. I got tired of banging my head against the brick wall of MS, tired of running through their phone support, tired of pissing away most of a day trying to reach some sort of solution that wouldn’t involve me paying £80 just to erm, not get the actual problem fixed and finally lost patience when I got informed that it wasn’t going to go any further unless I took my 360 round to someone else’s house to try it on their net connection instead of my own. Sometimes you just know when you’re onto a loser and this was definitely one of those times. I just ran out of fight.
And the thing is, if it’s a problem for me trying and downloading indie games often then it’s only a matter of time before the problem becomes more serious for the public. As it is, there’s no sign of a resolution or indeed anyone being able to resolve what amounts to a major flaw in the system.
Is the whole “no assistance from MS” a one off unfortunate situation for sites like us? It may well be but it certainly doesn’t come across that the work myself, xAD and the many other sites that cover XBLIG titles (see the sidebar for more) are valued in any way by the powers that be. Which whilst I can understand that to a degree (after all, no-one has a right to expect anything just because they set up a site on the internet), without folks like us and those linked to – given Microsoft’s current record on promotion, well, it’d be a bit of a sorry state without us.
We don’t really ask for anything as a rule, most of us certainly don’t get paid for doing this in any way shape or form unless you count the tokens and y’know, I’m not really asking for anything now with this post, just kinda lamenting that a service with such immense potential isn’t being allowed to reach it and there’s little acknowledgment or support for those of us who help promote the service also.
Anyway, go. Have a read of Brandon’s article and do let us know whether you agree or disagree with any points raised and whether you share our concerns or think we’re mad as hatters.
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If Microsoft did anything for indie games they wouldn’t really be indie games anymore but Microsoft games. So what can MS do? I would suggest opening the channel to more people by easing restrictions on content and access fees. I don’t understand why so many games depicting graphic and realistic images of death and or sex are released to the 360′s retail channel but when it comes to the digital downloads there is a laundry list of things developers can and cannot do?
Who the fuck cares if a game hasn’t been rated by the ESRB? Who the fuck is the ESRB to tell me what I can and cannot play. Musn’t think of censorhip, happy thoughts, happy thoughts.
I suppose being indie or not doesn’t matter, what matters is are the games playable and or unique? After 30+ years of gaming uniqueness is the number one trait I look for in a game.
There’s so much garbage out there it boggles the mind, but we know there are gems hidden under the debris of discarded technologies and overhyped engines. So we continue to look, I’ve been using the channel since launch and I’ve bought maybe five games. I do occasionally write about games I enjoy on my website and I do accept the precious tokens
I predict there will be a million selling game this year, perhaps two.
The ESRB exists in the US because if the industry doesn’t police content the government will step in and do so. Do you not remember the dynamic duo of Senators Lieberman and Kolb? The Mortal Kombat scandal?
Since Indie Games aren’t ESRB rated, MicroSoft has their warning screen about unrated content before the game starts, their account-verification-bit (which keeps you from playing if offline) so they can insta-kill the service if confronted by lawyers, and their demands that nothing scandalous be released on the service. It’s all to cover their own arses.
But the article isn’t about MicroSoft doing anything for the games themselves, rather for the service as a whole. Succinctly, they’ve buried it in their great muddle of a NXE, and they don’t seem to care.
Dude, five games? I’m nearing fifty, and I’ve only regretted a few. Probably a lower percentage of regret than the retail titles I’ve bought!
Err, Kohl, not Kolb. Kolb is a neighbour.
I don’t search for games on the NXE, I click on a link in xblaratings twitter feed and then add the game to my queue. Since I use automatic sign in on the Xbox I Just have to press right twice, then press A to get to the games.
I thought the idea of burying things in the NXE was so everyone would see a few ads before they got to what they want? It just makes fiscal sense. I wouldn’t worry too much about the NXE though, if the machine will be able to recognize a command such as “indie games new” come the holidays I think things will be fine.
Besides opening up the system and telling the lawyers and the government to fuck off, I think MS needs to create a lot more user friendly tools for indie game creation. MS is currently hiring a bunch of internal XNA coders, most of them will probably be working on the companies push into the mobile space, but I imagine the tech will still be applicable to the Xbox.
I also think when the Xbox 720 is released that MS needs to dump the 360′s indie game library and implement a quality control system for the channel’s next iteration. Or perhaps create an ad supported free game zone that is separate from the quality controlled indie marketplace.
Fog: I do have a proven method (aka hack) for fixing the dashboard timeout problem: quit a game, hit the Home button, sign out of XBL and sign back in again. This cancels whatever it is that the Dashboard is doing and gives you the game list in under 30 seconds.
Admittedly, this is a hack, but until/unless the root cause is addressed…
Regarding the article:
1) Microsoft has definitely failed to push XBLIG at all – if I was to guess why, I’d say it’s because they’re concerned it’ll eat into the more lucrative XBLA sales channel. Not particularly convinced of that myself, but there are distinct problems with the level of conceptual overlap between the two services.
(As an aside… a quick look at the average number of ratings per title in the top-20 lists for both XBLA and XBLIG shows XBLA games get roughly 10x more clicks than XBLIG, which I take to be a reasonable indication as to the size of the XBLIG userbase)
2) I’m not sure I believe there’s an issue with the pricing: it reduces the level of overlap between the two services and allows for impulse buys in the App Store mould, as z0mb1es took gleeful advantage of. The developers also have two advantages when it comes to PC versions: no need to pay MS royalties and the ability to incorporate extra features (e.g. online scoreboards, etc).
(Actually… has anyone actually released a PC version of a XBLIG game? I’m aware of several PC games which have been ported to XBLIG, but not vice versa!)
Finally… any chance of adding my newly improved domain name to the sidebar? http://www.xboxindiegames.co.uk/ is just so… shiny!
(blah blah 700 reviews blah blah full-blown search engine blah blah)
Galax-E-Mail has been available on D2D for a while now and Revenge Of The Evil Aliens has just gone free to PC.
At some point, there’ll probably be SYNSO making its way back in some sort of weird recursive manner that’ll likely plummet the universe into a time trap of sorts and we’ll all die horribly because of it.
Thank god for level-headed intelligent people. I think this fight is one we have to fight by ourselves for now. So be it.
As an aside, for the developers/gamers out there with Facebook – there is a pretty decent page for Indie Games worth joining. It’s all about numbers, so invite your gaming friends.
http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Indie-Games/95650263103?ref=ts