“Microsoft Aren’t Promoting Community Games” Say Community Game Developers
Daniel Jones and Daniel Steger probably aren’t names you know, but you almost certainly know their field of gaming expertise. Jones is the head of Binary Tweed, developers of the incredibly awesome and excellent Clover whereas Steger developed the much less fun Tank Strike. The pair of them agree that Microsoft’s promotion of the Community Games channel is “woeful” and can’t compare or compete with the iPhone App Store. According to Steger the problem is not the high levels of turd on the service, but the fact that no-one knows about Cgames:
Even popular services like iPhone have a lot of people making games that just don’t make money. Their service just suffers from different problems of games being lost in the crowd, rather than not having a crowd
Steger went on to say that Cgames have to compete with retail and XBLA games and this is where I start to disagree. I said when I passed judgement on Tank Strike that I would buy Worms instead because Worms is the better game. However I don’t think there’s anything on XBLA that can compare to Clover and the same applies to some of my other favourite Cgames such as Little Racers, unRevolutionary, Light’s End, Easy Golf and the sainted Trino. The problem with the content on Cgames is not competition against XBLA games, it’s a shortage of original ideas.
Promotion certainly has something to do with it though. Community Games is never mentioned on Spotlight or Inside Xbox and doesn’t appear anywhere on the NXE until you actually go to its tab in the Game Marketplace. Posting a simple look over the week’s releases like I do here would give a huge boost to the service as people suddenly realise a huge reservoir of cheap impulse games exists on their system. Even better would be to make Community Game boxart appear on your friends list when you’re playing one thus enabling word of mouth selling, right now Cgames just appear as COMMUNITY GAME with the game title underneath which really isn’t good enough.
Finally though I would say allow Community Games to have achievements, how about the more the game costs the more gamerpoints it’s allowed to have? 50G for a game costing 200 points all the way to a full Arcade 200G at the 800 price point with the achievements judged for fairness by the peer review system that’s going to enforce the avatar restrictions.
Community Games has an incredible amount of potential, there are amazing games on the service, XNA Game Studio is an excellent piece of software and there is potential for a Cgame to lead into a full time job. All it really needs is the audience, and while user ratings will no doubt help sort the bacon from the turds Microsoft still don’t seem to have realised that many people just don’t know the service is there. While that’s a problem I’m trying my best to help with Microsoft need to do something about it themselves rather than just rely on the community like they seem to be doing right now.
Via: Eurogamer
News Tags: iGames, Microsoft, Xbox Live, XNA
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Sorry but I feel the need to bring this up. I’m the creator of Tank Strike and there is a bit of misinformation that came with that Eurogamer article that I’ve been trying to clear up with people…
I think that the purchase rate is smaller than expected on XBLCG, but that’s not necessarily the problem, nor is the onus on Microsoft to “fix” games that don’t sell. It’s up to the developer to look after their own success, and determine whether XBLCG is viable for them or not. My strategy on Tank Strike was to be closer to Scorched Earth than Worms, and work as a “simple purchase” at a low price point. It didn’t work out, and that’s my responsibility. My example with the iPhone was to demonstrate that even if a platform has a LOT of users, 90% of the stuff there still falls flat on its face. At least with XBLCG there is a smaller group of competition to stand out from.
I stand by my statement on the competition between XBLA and retail games though. I think games that do something DIFFERENT stand out more and if they have the polish they stand more of a chance of success, but they are still in competition. XBLCG is the ONLY place on the XBox where you can get the vibrators and fish tanks. By not being games they don’t compete with other games. unRevolutionary like it or not does compete with Geometry Wars, Little Racers competes with the plethora of racing games, Easy Golf competes with Tiger Woods, and I compete with Worms. The price points may be different but the comparisons are still being made. Light’s End is going to be compared with other story-heavy games, or games with better graphics. People are familiar with “games on XBox” and certain levels of quality are expected on new games. This is more of a justification as to why the top sellers on the service are applications and not games. Applications stand out because they lack a proper point of comparison, grabbing people’s attention through their differences from the game market. We haven’t seen a stand-out title like Braid on XBLCG as far as I’m concerned, and those are the titles that go above and beyond their competition by having both unique gameplay and polished presentation. I’ve seen nice ideas that weren’t implemented to their full potential, and a lot of “same old same old” games, that may have good presentation but don’t bring enough new to their genre to warrant people’s attention.
I don’t mind that you didn’t like Tank Strike. Perhaps my future endeavors will be more unique and catch your interest. I got a good conversion rate of people who who liked my game enough to buy it after the trial, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I also had a lot of people overlook the game entirely after seeing screenshots because they were satiated by Worms already. I will note for the record that there is a visible indicator for wind strength as well as a power setting when firing, so I don’t know how you missed those on your play through. Perhaps you’re more familiar with how “newer” titles like Worms and Gunbound did the genre, rather than how the old classics like Scorched Earth handled things.
@Stegersaurus: After seeing so many, to be frank, crap Cgames, it’s a relief to see somebody such as yourself seeming to not only understand the market, but to actually be taking responsibility.
I think alot of what you say comes back to the idea that things have to be remarkable to do well. And “remarkable” simply means “people will have a remark”. Especially with the Cgames where there is such a high level of content, standing out, for better or worse, does seem to give a game the advantage. Something perhaps not necessarily in the interest of furthering games, but it does lead to some interesting titles. Also, it’s nice to see somebody actively following up on reported stories.
These are very interesting times for gaming.
Shouldn’t it be “isn’t” ?
@Doctor Vance Moriatti: that’s one of those US/UK things, it depends who is talking, where the company is, and the direction of the wind.
I’ve had a 360 for almost a year, and I only JUST remembered that community games existed and actively sought them out. I’ve been pretty impressed with a few of the offerings so far, after sifting through the half-dozen “massage” games. Microsoft could easily have one of their little add panels occasionally say “hey, this community game won a contest and it’s only 200pts. Try it out!”
It could also stop telling me I’m not authorized to play community games the first time I try to load one up. I’d like to be able to assure my Xbox permanently that I don’t have kids.