As speculated, Microsoft today announced at Game Developers Conference that they will open XNA and Xbox Live Arcade to developers.
It is called Xbox Live Community games and was described like this:
- Developer makes and submits an XNA game using their “developer“´profile.
- The game is “peer reviewed” by other developer to be screened for misuse of IP and “objectionable content”.
- Game is made available to the public.
Details were spare on monetization, but the titles shown did say “limited trial” etc., so there seemed to an economic model in place.
Notice the good-guy rhetoric used: Community (obviously), the democratization of development and distribution, peer review (academia). As always, there may be some devil in the details.
The other interesting thing was that the games shown really did have an indie aesthetic – “low-fi” hand drawn graphics, offbeat themes. In other words, it seems that we do have an audience for games with an indie sensibility.
A few years ago I felt that half of the barrier for “indie games” was not distribution but the lack of an audience, and now it does looks like the “Youtube” phenomenon: Low production values, the feeling of something different, but a personal connection to the creator.
Indie has arrived, hasn’t it?
So does this mean no cert process? People can release buggy, terrible games with only their reputation at stake?
If so, very courageous move for MS. Bravo.
In the console wars XNA community games gives Microsoft an immense advantage as they put more clear blue water between themselves and their competitors. This is the sort of advantage that won’t sell a thousand consoles tomorrow, but that over time will create a compelling case for Xbox 360 (or Xbox 3) ownership.
They did present the gatekeeping as being simply the “peer review”, so no certs or anything. We’ll see if there are any other hoops.
Jesper you seem a bit skeptically, but in the very least XNA represents a free devkit that small garage teams can use to build prototypes with. I am sure 99% of all the XNA games that comeout are going to be rubbish, but that top 1% will make everything worth while.
Brook, I am not skeptical as much as I want to see all the actual details. XNA is very promising, I completely agree.
Can anything really be called “indie” if it undergoes a “peer review” process of one of the largest corporations in the world? I think this could be a wonderful thing — demonstrate a market for more creative and engaging content than one rehash after another of sci-fi and WWII shooters.
But, I wonder too if this potentially creates a controlled, de facto caste system in gaming, relegating an “indie” aesthetic to this kind of “community”.
An article on Gamasutra by XNA’s dev. manager puts this down as the peer review’s philosophy:
One of the most exciting aspects of community game distribution is that we do not manage the game portfolio. This means that we want consumers to decide which games to play, not Microsoft or the creator community. The game meets the bar for distribution if it has the appropriate content, runs without any “crashing” bugs, and is classified correctly.
The primary purpose of peer review is to ensure a safe experience for consumers who browse Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and then download and play a community game. Peer review determines whether the game has prohibited content. If the content is acceptable, peer review then confirms the game creator’s classification. Peer reviewers make no judgments whether the game is fun. A game’s entertainment quality is decided by the game players on the console through an explicit user-rating system and downloads.
Note the necessarily vague description of “appropriate content” and “classified correctly”.
Sorry for the extra post. Forgot the URL…
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3545/sponsored_feature_democratizing_.php?page=4