XBLA Game Pitch

James Goddard over at CrunchTime games has provided us with something very interesting.  Many independent developers dream of getting a title on XBLA (hobbiests have a better route through the upcoming Xbox Live Community Games).  Unfortunately, the path to that goal is fuzzy at best. 

Game Career Guide is hosting two documents that Goddard has made publically available, the game pitch, and the 60 seconds of gameplay documents, for his newly released game Shred Nebula. 

The pitch document is officially what allowed Microsoft to give the game the green light. The “60 Seconds of Gameplay” essay is a separate document that Microsoft requires of all its published games, whether developed in-house or out. In it, the authors must describe, step-by-step what the player does, sees, hears, and feels during a full 60 seconds of gameplay, which can be taken from any point in the game.

As a professor of game development, Goddard clearly understands and values the passing on of knowledge about game design to future generations, and it’s good for the industry to make the standard practices more transparent.  Hopefully more developers will follow suit in releasing their design documents in the future.

Nostalgia

In the lobby of my Office, there’s an Xbox 360 with a full Rock Band setup, several retail titles, and essentially every Xbox Live Arcade game published thus far available for people to play.  Once in a while, you’ll find someone’s kids out in the lobby playing with it while their parents finish up some work for the day.

Presently there’s two boys playing outside, and of all the games they have available, they’re playing the XBLA version of the 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game.

I burned a lot of hours playing that game as a kid.  I guess some things never change.

Why Jeff Engel is Wrong

In today’s issue of Counting Rupees, Jeff Engel talked about why the sales figures for Braid are a bad sign for the casual game industry.

His arguement is essentially that when you do the math, Braid has sold 55k copies (according to public estimates) at 15 bucks each, which translates into $825,000.  You have to multiply this by 70% to get the developers cut, and then do a bunch of math to account for localization fees, certification, and development costs.

Jeff Engel makes the claim that in order for Braid to achieve its goal of completely financing the next game Blow wants to make, the magic number of sales Braid would have to achieve is something like 100k copies.  Jeff’s concern is that many games don’t sell those kinds of numbers.

My response to this would be that I have absolutely no doubt that Braid will hit and exceed 100k copies, that’s virtually a certainty.  Digitally distributed games certainly don’t have the market penetration that sales at brick and mortar stores do, but by the same token, the costs are significantly less.  XBLA arcade sales should follow a long tail distribution - meaning that after only two weeks of sales, the majority of the income from Braid is yet to be seen.

While it might be true that many games don’t reach 100k in sales, that’s true when you sell your shovelware game at Gamestop too, and at least there you’re not giving a cut to the retailer, another cut to bribe the retailer into showing your title promenantly for three days, another cut for manufacturing and distribution, and an even bigger cut to the publisher.

Adventure Game Revival

One of my favorite gaming genres has always been the point and click adventure game. In North America, it’s been tough to point at a game in the last few years that was on par with the offerings from Sierra On-Line and LucasArts in the 90s - both studios that have since been eviscerated.

Europe, on the other hand, has generally been known as a more casual market, and maybe that’s why most of the scant few adventure games of any quality that have emerged in the last few years have come out of Europe. I’d love to throw some attention at FunCom’s masterpiece - The Longest Journey, but it came out eight years ago, and the sequel Dreamfall wasn’t up to par with the original. While it might be premature, I have a very good feeling about an upcoming title from Daedalic called The Whispered World.

The Whispered World follows the adventures of a young clown named Sadwick and his companion Spot through a melancholy world doomed to crumble and fall. The artwork and music are beautiful, and I suspect good things will come of it, but we’ll have to wait until launch I suppose.

Although, perhaps I have reason to hope yet. One of the critical factors that killed off the Adventure Game genre to begin with was the emergence of 3D graphics, and the games that technology ushered in. We’re now seeing a reversal in fortunes as the gaming market reaches out to those who were once outside their domain. That the industry is trying to gain appeal with the masses is one of two things that have changed in favor of adventure games. I suspect as the casual masses explore the new land they’ve found, interactive adventure stories are going to become interesting again.

Secondly, platforms now exist to market games which have niche appeal for reasonably low cost through digital distribution networks. Services like Gametap, Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, and Nintendo Virtual Console has created a space where these freaks can be shown in the daylight, without offending their muscular, brawny siblings. Creating these spaces is important - not just for adventure games - but for the future of the medium. Without these spaces, the story of game development becomes eventually more like the science of creating an addictive drug - increasingly refining only to what is known to work - and less like the exploration of the human psychology that it should be.

Even More Digital Delivery

Steam, I still love you, but we’re moving into an open relationship.

After replacing the misbehaving video card in my frankenstein-esque laptop (Replaced the keyboard 3 times, case fan twice, hard drive, batteries, and now the graphics card), I decided to celebrate with a purchase from the bargain bin (Evil Genius, which then proceeded to eat my weekend. I’m a sucker for a short fat guy with a monocle). Having firmly planted myself on the side of the people who make the things I love, I absolutely cannot stand going to GameStop/EB Games/The Den of Despair. If I’m forced to due to exclusive packages, etc., I will always buy games new, even if they cost more, so as to support the publisher and developer. Gamestop’s draconian policies around pre-ordering and the fact that their business model of making massive profits on the secondary market at the expense of the people who actually are responsible for the content they sell makes digital delivery all the more appealing. Unfortunately these same retailers have a lot of power to essentially extort publishers by threatening not to stock their games, or to carry less copies when the publishers try to work around them via the digital route. One gets the impression that there’s a lot of cloak and dagger going on between publishers and retailers.

At any rate, I’ve already purchased every game Steam offers I have any interest in with a metacritic rating above 70. This has led me to Warcry. The deal is similar to Steam, only instead of a client, you download the game installer manually (and unless you have a download manager, potentially multiple times, as browsers don’t like massive file downloads via http). The good side of things is that once you install the game and validate your account with the installation, you’re done, the game acts just like the retail copy does, and no further DRM is in place.

In other news, Microsoft has announced that it’s going to add a new digital delivery service to compliment Xbox Live Arcade. The service entitled “Xbox Originals” will allow players to download through Xbox Live games for the classic Xbox including Psychonauts, Crimson Skies, Fable, and the original Halo (Maybe not as good as Nintendo’s back catalog, but I’ll take it). The service will kick off December 4th.

Looks like I’ll be buying my third copy of Psychonauts. Tim Schaefer must be making matresses out of my money.

On WiiWare

Nintendo on Wednesday announced that they have joined Microsoft in offering a solution for independent developers to create content for their system. Full details have yet to emerge, but it would seem that WiiWare is designed to allow developers to produce games which can then be sold through the WiiShop Channel, Similar to the mechanism Microsoft is using to deploy XNA games through XBLA.

Level Up has an exclusive interview with NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime, where some interesting details were disclosed. Firstly, the pricing for a given game is determined exclusively by Nintendo. I’m not sure how this compares to the Microsoft method, as the entire “Getting my game on XBLA” process is somewhat opaque at this point (and I might add, Microsoft would do well to make it more transparent).

Secondly, WiiWare seems to not encompass libraries or tools that make to development process easier (a la XNA), but rather the simplification of the delivery channel. The argument for this is that development kits for the Wii are extremely inexpensive. While this is a valid point (They cost between $2,500 to $10,000), it’s certainly not on par with the concept behind XNA. Additionally, actually becoming an authorized developer so that you can get your hands on the kits is more complex, and as a result it is unlikely to target the homebrew community emerging around the Xbox 360. That would also not appear to be the intent, rather it would seem Nintendo is trying to simplify the process for small (but professional) development shops.

Thirdly the developer must seek its own ESRB Rating. As I don’t have a development company, I don’t even have access to the information regarding getting a game rated. There seems to be similar restrictions to getting a game rated that exist to get your hands on Wii DevKits. I would not be suprised if there was also a fee associated with getting a rating, but again this seems to tune WiiWare towards small independent developers rather than just anyone.

Reggie also states in the interview that Nintendo will not be overseeing the games, suggesting that any game that gets through this process and passes some basic requirements from Nintendo will be made available for purchase on the WiiChannel. Note that this is strictly different than the attitude Microsoft has developed. XBox Live Arcade is a carefully crafted entity into which new games are eligible only with the good graces of the managers who maintain the portfolio. In other words, XBLA will never be filled with 800 solitaire games, because Microsoft gets the final say on whether they’ll sell your game or not. The fact that Nintendo is not doing this is both good and bad. On one hand, it could conceivably encourage games that might not make it to XBLA, however possibilities exist for the marketing of a lot of crap that nobody is interested in buying.

All in all, I’m excited to see Nintendo is getting in on the independent developer market, and digital delivery, but WiiWare isn’t strictly comparable to XBLA, the two seem to be marketed at different audiences.  While many are quick to herald WiiWare as “Nintendo’s XBLA”, WiiWare does not in any way make it easy for “Anyone to create a Wii Game”.  WiiWare simplifies delivery mechanisms, not development mechanisms, so all those hopeful hobbyists will still have to remain weeping in the corner.

Now we just need to see when Sony is going to get on board.

Xbox Live Arcade and XNA

In 2000, Microsoft announced it was going to release a new console gaming system to compete against Nintendo and Sony. At the time, I thought they were out of their minds. Microsoft was at the time, a company I had known only to produce an operating system that, while nearly ubiquitous, was merely okay from a quality standpoint, and an office suite which ran on said platform. I was also perhaps somewhat bitter at them for acquiring Access Software the year before; a move which ended the Tex Murphy series of games, much to my dismay. It was certainly not clear that Microsoft was the type of company who had their hand on the pulse of the game industry. Several years later, I think it’s safe to say that I can retract that position. Microsoft managed to leverage DirectX on their new system, thus making it much easier to develop for the XBox than any other of the systems available at the time. They also leveled the mighty cash war-chest at numerous other high-profile companies (Rare, Bungie), and managed to bring out on the Xbox some of the best received launch titles since Mario. Far from a lucky start, Halo 2 is, years later, still the best selling console game ever (although Gears of War, another Microsoft exclusive, is giving it a run for its money).

Xbox Live

Having earned my respect, after years of delivering a continuously high-quality gaming experience, It is interesting to see what they’re doing now with the 360 and Xbox Live. The Xbox live environment itself has several things that are worth the admission price right off the bat, but Acheivement Points are definitely the drug that sells itself. Microsoft has essentially issued an edict whereby all 360 games and all XLA games have set amounts of points which can be earned by doing things in the game, both on and offline. Some of these tasks are trivialities which are earned easily during normal game play, others are only granted to the most dedicated players. This system has in effect created a standardized system of gamer cred. There have always been those folks who have to get every last bloody note in Banjo-Kazooie, who have to beat every level without losing a life. This has always been relegated I think to the very hardcore, or very obsessed. Even so, there’s never been a facility to show off to your friends how bad ass you are, until this point. Given the popularity of the system, I’m very surprised that Nintendo and Sony have not decided to provide competing point systems, in effect handing Microsoft control of the de facto standard for gamer reputation. What this means is that when a gamer has a choice over which system to buy a game for, all other things being equal, the 360 is the system of choice, as no other system will earn you the publicly accessible respect for completing parts of the game.I think the real draw of Xbox live will not come to a head for another year or so though. There is a slowly growing network of collaborative technologies emerging. This network hasn’t quite coalesced yet, but will firm up by the end of 2007, and I predict by the end of 2008 that some exciting things will be come to fruition.

XNA’s Not an Acronym

The first part of that network is XNA. The Microsoft XNA Framework is a set of tools and runtime environment designed to aid in video game development and deployment. The framework allows independent developers to design both 2D and 3D games from the ground up, and deploy them in both Windows and on the Xbox 360 with minimal code changes. The framework simplifies many aspects of game design, and has a steadily growing community of users. Some issues exist (for example, in order to distribute games you develop for the 360, you presently are required to distribute the entire source code and the user must recompile it), and is seriously lacking documentation for the more advanced functions. Nevertheless, XNA provides a solid beginning to Indie and Homebrew console development on a scale never seen before. Better yet, XNA Game Studio Express and the XNA Framework are free to download, although deploying onto an Xbox 360 requires a Creator’s Club Membership, which has an annual fee of $99 (a modest fee).

Torque X

There are several extremely inexpensive tools which have emerged to integrate with XNA. The suite of choice at the moment is GarageGames‘ Torque X. Torque X is a fully functional Game Engine for both 2D and 3D games. The engine is designed to integrate seamlessly with XNA, as well as several other tools offered by GarageGames, such as the Torque Game Engine (the technology behind such big-name hits as Tribes) and the 2D Game Editor Tools included in the Torque Game Builder. The TGB is extremely inexpensive ($100 for Indies, $400 for Commerical), as is the TGE ($150/$750). GarageGames also offers inexpensive content packages to allow you to get your game up and running without waiting for costly art and sound assets to be created.With these tools in hand, the barriers to entry for game development on the 360 have dropped away substantially, making the 360 the platform of choice for independent games developers. The ultra-high end, cutting edge games still lay in the domain of large developers with massive budgets, but for the first time we have the ability to inject fresh independent creativity into the console environment. The only remaining problem is publishing.

XBox Live Arcade

Enter Xbox Live Arcade. XLA is a feature of the XBox Live system whereby gamers can pay to download titles from the system, in a manner similar to Valve’s Steam. The titles offered tend to be smaller, non-feature length games, or ports of older games. Overall, I’m not particularly impressed with the offerings so far (Although there are some tasty ports, such as Alien Hominid and Worms HD, as well as a couple of new gems such as Wik: Fable of Souls and Settlers of Catan). Microsoft is unwilling to allow just anybody to put their games up on XLA, and rightly so. After all, XLA is a platform for Microsoft to make money as well, and it’s a brand for them: They want that brand to be known for its quality. There are a rigorous set of standards a game needs to meet to be considered for introduction on XLA. But those standards don’t necessarily require you to be a big name studio. Microsoft’s DreamBuildPlay initiative is proof positive of this. They want to encourage people to use these tools, and are in a position to take risks with regard to publishing titles over XLA, because the overhead for them to do this is substantially less than traditional publishing channels. In the next two years, once developers have had a chance to play with the tools, and the XLA ecosystem really gets developed, I think you’ll start to see some really neat titles on XLA that are new, dynamic ideas, and aren’t published anywhere else.If Microsoft plays its cards right, it has the opportunity to turn Live Arcade into a fountainhead of high-quality, fresh, and creative gaming, and at little to no expense to itself. At the same time, they can endear themselves to the independent crowd, a group largely bulldozed over by the Juggernaut in the last two decades, and re-market themselves as a dynamic, edgy organization along the likes of Apple and Google (you know, the way they used to be known in the 90s).

Now if they would just open a Microsoft Games Studio in Toronto…