“Counter-Intuitive”: Mommy’s Best Games, Faux Robo and Chris Unarmed Devs on Microsoft’s Indie Game Snub

With the latest Xbox dashboard update Microsoft made a subtle, but decisive change to the Xbox Live Indie Game section, relegating the games to the “Speciality Shops” section (see above). This caused much concern on various developer forums, with fears that Indie Games weren’t being properly represented on the Xbox, especially as they were no longer in the “Games & Demos” category.

This change has irritated many developers, including Mommy’s Best Games‘ Nathan Fouts. Speaking to Nukezilla, Fouts called the changes “counter-intuitive” and said that it will only make Indie Games harder to find. ”At the least, from what I’m reading on comments around the web, it sounds like some gamers who already know about Indie Games and are actively seeking it are having trouble finding it, he said. ”Past that, it simply seems counter-intuitive for someone looking for games to be able to find Indie Games when it’s in the Specialty Shop.”

Fouts also complained about the way in which Microsoft attempted to obfuscate the situation in their statement to Eurogamer. Microsoft remarked that 290 million people used avatar clothes, but Fouts called the move a “street hustler’s cup game.” ”Watch this hand as I dazzle you with 290 million users,” Fouts, imitating Microsoft, said. “Oh, my other hand? Well, that’s the hand with the number of users that visit the Games and Demos section.”

Mirroring his view was Jason Tagmire, Creative Director at indie dev Faux Robo. Speaking to Nukezilla he said “it was hard to find the Indie Games before. Now that they’re in Speciality Shops, users have to really be searching around to find them.” ”It’s already pretty hard to get a digital download into the hands (or systems) of the players,” said Tagmire. “It’s hard to get someone to go from reading a review online to turning on their Xbox, going through the menu system, finding the Indie Games section, browsing through the alphabetical lists, and then downloading the game,” he said.

Tagmire even said that he’d “prefer to wait, talk to some developers with new games being released, and see how everything is working out before” releasing any new titles currently in early stages of development on the platform. Fouts said he could “definitely see developers shifting from Xbox XNA to Apple or even back to the PC after all these issues.”

Fouts’ and Tagmire’s views aren’t universal. Chris Hughes, the developer behind Chris Unarmed, wasn’t sure that it would actually hurt the platform. ”Certainly, a lot of people have taken offense that the platform is not in the Games section any more, but I don’t think gamers stumble into the Indie section by accident,” he said. He, like Fouts, noted that the new section had been improved since the last version, with the “New Releases” list now including 50 titles instead of 20.

Hughes continued: “Will it deter developers from trying to make a career out of XBLIG? Probably. Is trying to do that a very risky proposition in the first place? Absolutely. The reality is that there is only one console that is accessible for anyone to publish their games, and that is Xbox,” he said.

Fouts shared Hughes’ sentiment and said: “I really love the XBL Indie Games channel as I love console games and the fact that you never know just quite what you’ll get on XBLIG. I hope it can recover and thrive, and hopefully Microsoft will continue to support and help it grow.”