The game is ready and still he decided to wait – he allowed us to bring the reasons for his decision to indienerds and it´s a very interesting read for those curious to learn a bit of the struggles of an indie dev on the Xbox. To read Nathan´s insightful article on the broken top downloads list hit the MORE button.

Great news — Explosionade is finished and ready for you to play! The bad news — I’m not going to release it till the Xbox Marketplace is less broken. Sorry, but I want the best launch possible, and when the Top Downloads list isn’t up to date, it’s a crappy time to release a game to Xbox Live Indie Games. (Gamers, jump to the end for when it will release; Developers–read on)

What’s Top Downloads?

On the Xbox 360′s Dashboard, there are many digital marketplaces from which you can download games. If you go to the Indie Games section you’ll see several game lists including New Arrivals and Top Downloads. New Arrivals shows the most recent 20 Xbox Live Indie Games uploaded to the service. As the name implies, Top Downloads shows the 20 games that are currently downloaded most. Think of Top Downloads as “Most Popular”.

The Top Downloads list is powered by the sales and trial data compiled by Microsoft from the day prior. So for instance, if today is October 3rd, typically sales data would be available for October 2nd some time in the afternoon. Top Downloads always should reflect gamers choices the day before. That way, if a new game enters the New Arrivals list, then by the next day, if it has lots of gamers checking it out, it will also be in the Top Downloads list.

There are currently over 1,300 games available on the XBL Indie Games channel. Several games are released each day. Often times a game will only spend a few days in the New Arrivals list. If it hasn’t garnered enough attention, it will slip off that visual list, and buried in the “Browse All” list where only the most determined gamers will seek it out.

Why Aren’t You Releasing Explosionade Yet?

If we released Explosionade today, but the Top Downloads list is not updating properly we will miss a huge chance for more sales.We love making games as a full time business. If we have a bad launch for Explosionade, it will greatly hurt our potential to carry on.
Basically the way the NewArrivals/Top Downloads system works is more adventurous gamers sift through all the releases that enter the New Arrivals list. Some of these games get downloaded by more gamers than others. If a game gets downloaded enough, it will show up in the Top Downloads list. From having data from Weapon of Choice, Shoot 1UP, and from talking to other XBLIG developers it’s apparent having a game in the Top Downloads list can get you many more trials than slipping off all easy-to-find lists.

When Top Downloads is stuck, it’s true some games are high in the list and get more downloads then. But eventually gamers will recognize the list is stuck (when sometimes data doesn’t update for over a week) and gamers begin to ignore the channel more as it’s obvious something’s broken. Even though some games initially benefit from the list being stuck, eventually all games suffer from lower traffic.
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How Do You Know the Top Downloads List Is Broken?

One way is to simply check the Top Downloads list itself on the Xbox each day and see if the Top 20 are identical. That’s pretty tedious to do, so if you are an XBLIG developer with a released game, you can simply check your sales data for any of your games and see if it reports data from the day prior. For instance, it’s 11pm EST on October 3rd, but sales data for both Weapon of Choice and Shoot 1UP is only up to date till October 1st. The sales data drives the Top Downloads list. If sales data is late, the list is not updating. If you don’t have any games released you can follow Mommy’s Best Games on twitter or others, or check the XNA forums.
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Also, I publicly share sales data for Shoot 1UP from which I hope other developers can glean some marketing strategies and understand the XBLIG marketplace better. I also try to mark every time sales data is late in the Shoot 1UP spreadsheet (over to the right of the date).

To the right, you can see days data was late, or partial, which translates to a broken Top Downloads list.

What late data means in concrete terms is any games released on October 2nd are getting less potential representation. The following games were released on the 2nd:
Sniper Defense

Superspace 2

Excruciating Guitar Voyage

Any interest gamers showed for these game is lost until the list updates again.
If we had released Explosionade yesterday, it would be missing potential time in the Top Downloads list and potential sales.
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So When Are You Releasing Explosionade?

Sales data has been spotty since September 28th, which means the Top Downloads list has been spotty in terms of reflecting gamers interests. In months past, the Top Downloads list has stayed stuck for days, sometimes over a week.
I really want to release Explosionade, as I publicly announced we could release by October 4th (Monday). It was ready in time for review earlier this weekend, but I’ve been waiting till Top Downloads is functioning properly.

Explosionade in all it's alien-stomping glory.

I’m hoping the list will start updating again properly by Monday evening. If it is, I’ll put Explosionade into review, and if the game passes review, it will probably be available Thursday morning, October 7th.

Above all, I really love the freedom the Xbox Live Indie Games channel affords developers to make console games. It’s a fantastic marketplace that has really come into it’s own with stand out titles like I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, Miner Dig Deep, Breath of Death VII, Protect Me Knight, SoulCaster, Inferno, Decimation X, and many more. I love developing games for the XBLIG when the system works and I want the service to continue. But if Top Downloads keeps getting stuck it’s going to eventually impact developers and gamers and the channel will suffer.

UPDATE:

The story was covered here on eurogamer.net. Here and around the web, some questions were presented I thought I’d explain with the original article.

“Why don’t you just release it after the dashboard is working?”
Currently to submit a game to XBLIG it has to enter peer review. This system has worked very well as over 1,300 games have been submitted with a very low percentage of crashes. But to pass through the review it takes several days. At any given point the dashboard could break–even right when it’s out of your hands and shows up freshly on the list. There’s no developer control here, it’s all up to Microsoft to fix the the broken dashboard.

.“Who’s to say you’ll be in the top list?”
I’m not saying Explosionade will automatically be in the Top Downloads, it’s more that the possibility of getting into that list is basically removed completely for our game and anyone else releasing a game when the dashboard is broken. The system breaks down for new releases’ potential when Top Downloads is stuck.

“But it only happens every month or two, what’s the big deal?”
Any breaking is too often. A digital distribution system lives dies by it’s useability and the reflection of current traffic. Look at any good website or marketplace from CNN to YouTube to Gamespot. There is always a section of ‘most popular’ which needs real-time data to survive and where most people go first. If this most popular section is broken, sites and markets lose traffic. As I mentioned earlier, once the game is released the developer has not control over it. If the list is broken, they will lose traffic and possible sales.

Source (used with permission):
http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2010/10/top-downloads-is-broken-delaying.html

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One developer that for sure is not the kind going for a fast buck is James Silva from Ska Studios – and with hit titles like I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1 or The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai under his belt his games certainly stick out through brillance. The fast buck is just the result … and he has earned it. Lately he wrote a nice article about the honor behind creating real indie games – or the lack thereof with so many titles that recently hit the Xbox Live Indie Games channel.

Read his very interesting rant right after the “MORE” button (or you might miss his cute (or something) drawing!).

There Is No Honor Here

Lately I’ve gotten a bit obsessed with the concept of honor in indie game development.  Perhaps the term “honor” seems a bit antiquated what with seppuku being out of fashion and honor killings being outright worst-thing-ever-and-not-in-a-funny-way, but I think honor–or the lack thereof–is precisely the concept that irks the heck out of hardworking indie game developers who are, you know, doing things the hard way.

There’s this spectrum in my head.  I tried to draw a nice looking graph, but as it turns out I’m no good with graphs, so I compensated by making it cute or something:

Dictionary.com did not agree with me, but I feel like a perfect antonym for opportunism is idealism.  Which is a perfect fit for this: idealistic game making is all about following some artistic vision of yours to completion.  And it’s painfully cliché to say this, but idealistic game making is about staying true to yourself, which is honorable, while compromising your dreams for quick cash is not.

The guy on the left is Archibald Wintersfield.  He sells children to sweatshops, acts as middleman for blood diamond sales, and just put Avatar Zombie Massage Online 2 into peer review.  He’s an opportunist.

The guy on the right is Kip Skyler.  He’s inventor who hopes that technology will solve everything, ever, and makes up for his small stature with ingenuity, even though his inventions typically lack mass appeal.  He’s an idealist.

Idealistic game development is when you say to yourself “jeez, I’d love to play a game like this.”  And then you make it.  Opportunistic game development is making games solely to make the most amount of money possible.  A more common phrase for opportunist game development is “cash grab.”

Since Xbox Live Indie Games has launched, there have been a few waves of cash grabs.  Before the first massage game launched, XBLIG (then XBLCG) seemed very innocent and promising!  It was a fresh platform with plenty of promise; developers were pouring their blood, sweat and tears into their awesome artistic visions.  Unfortunately, the first game to attract a lot of attention for financial success was a massage game.

So the opportunism commenced.  When Avatars support launched, the platform got hit by a rash of embarrassingly bad me-too Avatar games.  Word got out that zombie game sold well (cough) so now the embarrassingly bad me-too Avatar games actually got to look pretty good next to the obscenely more embarrassingly bad zombie games that were hitting the service, while a smattering of uninteresting games with stock photos of hot girls (it’s like headsethotties on your Xbox360!) and uninteresting apps turned up.

No open[ish] platform is safe.  The iPhone app store is always inundated with this stuff; the latest trend I’ve been seeing are those locate-a-phone-number “prank” apps.  Facebook is so strangled with Mafia Pirate Who Cares Wars apps created by a developer that epitomizes opportunism that I may be tempted to forcibly confiscate the throat of the next person who invites me to grow radishes with them.

Why do so many idealistic games fail?

Idealistic games have far more complex visions than opportunistic games.  Usually the visions are too complex, so fledgling developers give up or turn to the dark side of dishonorable game development.  In XBLIG playtest it’s very common to see ambitious, idealistic games where some aspect of the execution is just not there.

Another common trap of idealistic game development is for developers to lose track of the gamer experience.  The more deeply you get mired in obsessing over in clean, scalable program organization (which is a good thing) or optimizing performance (also a good thing) the farther you get from focusing on the big-picture gamer experience.  Bugs aside, what’s under the hood doesn’t matter a bit next to what the gamer gets to play.

Why do so many opportunistic games succeed?

Opportunistic games are opportunistic because they are easy to make.  The whole concept of the cash grab is that a relatively untalented person with relatively little effort can grab all of the cash.  There is no honor there!

A little fact I haven’t put much emphasis on (partly because I mostly don’t know if this is always true or have any data other than a bit of chatter to support this) is that the me-too cash grabs stop working once the market gets saturated, which, in a world of dishonorable devs, is pretty rapid.  So, if you make yet another opportunistic abomination hoping for a piece of the cash grab (like these guys) you’ll more likely than not find yourself in a state of abject dishonor (the vernacular is “sold out”) with nothing to show for it.

What if I’m a shameless opportunist at heart?  I stay true to myself while making opportunistic games!

Then you probably have no soul and are just a bag of meat and neurons (I have a theory about this, teleportation, and the end of the world).  Convince me you’re normal all you want, but I know you’re just going to turn into the bad guy from Event Horizon.

Z0MB1ES is a Crimsonland ripoff, and Dishwasher rips off SOMETHING I’m sure, aren’t you a dishonorable opportunist as well?

That can be argued, but those games were hard to make, I made them from one of those crazy idealistic visions I’ve been ranting so often about, and if they were truly shameless, opportunistic ripoffs, gamers would eschew them in favor of the originals.

How do I make sure my idealistic, creative, and honorable game doesn’t fail?

The most common pitfall that I see ambitious, idealistic games fall into is scope trumping execution.  It’s fairly easy (trust me, I’ve had my fair share of personal experiences with this) for a developer to get married to the epic vision that’s impossible to fully realize, where a scaled down (tightened!) game concept would let that dev put way more effort into fine tuning and perfecting the gameplay.  Tighten up the vision and spend some time on perfecting the overall experience; if the result causes gamers to get excited about your vision, the satisfaction you’ll receive will be just… yeah.  Amazazing.

There’s honor out there.  It’s not easily achieved, but if you stick to the path, the rewards are awesome.

</pretentiousgururant>

James Silva from Ska Studios

Twitter: @skastudios

original source (used with permission):

http://www.ska-studios.com/2010/09/17/there-is-no-honor-here/

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When I roam the internet forums in my mission to give Xbox Live Indie Games (and indienerds.com) a bit more visibility, I often get asked why developers don´t just bring their titles as XBLA games. It´s a complex matter and there are a lot of aspects one has to cover in an answer. That´s why I think it´s best to have an XBLIG developer answer it.

Deejay from Binary Tweed is the head behind the very polished “Clover: A Curious Tale” adventure game available on the XBLIG channel for 5$ (400 MSP). A game that with nice graphics and a full voice-over would certainly still look good on the XBLA channel. He wrote an article about why developers walk the indie road instead of bringing their games to Xbox Live Arcade.

So hear comes what Deejay has to offer on the topic – right after the MORE button.

There’s a pervasive preconception that XBLA is the ‘place to be’ for downloadable games of an indie nature. I think this has a lot to do with the aspirations of indie developers, and isn’t necessarily a point of view based in observable fact.

Let’s compare the two services.

Setup Costs
To release a game on XBLA you’d need a development kit, which aren’t terribly cheap – last I heard they were many thousands of pounds. To develop an XBLIG title you need an Xbox 360, a PC, a live subscription, an XNA Creator’s Club subscription, and some bits of hardware for testing (memory cards and the like), totalling a few hundred quid.

Testing
XBLA games need to pass Technical Certification Requirements, of which there are around 130, all of which are explicitly stated. If you can justify a good enough reason to break one, you may get away with it. XBLIG titles need to pass peer review that, whilst sometimes whimsical and overrun with pedants, has a core set of around 20 tests.

To illustrate how much overhead XBLA certification may add to a project, consider the number of DBP winners who have yet to see their game on XBLA, or have had their games released but took a great deal longer in doing so.

Publishing
XBLIG allows any developer with an XNA CC account and the skill to get a game through peer review to release a title. Some would argue this is the service’s biggest weakness from a consumer’s perspective, as it means there’s an unending torrent of dross and ‘Hello World’ style games. XBLA games are published by publishers (duh!) with an established relationship with Microsoft. They get a certain number of slots to release things in the ever-more-crowded calendar, so need to be reasonably picky about what they release. Particularly outstanding games may be published by Microsoft directly.

The value of publishers can’t really be understated. Much like record labels in the music industry they work as quality filters, finding things that are likely to be well received and promoting them. Hence anything that a publisher (or indeed record label) promotes is likely to be received with less contempt by the press than a complete unknown.

Royalties
With a publisher in the loop, revenues will be split between three parties. If an advance was paid, this will need to be recouped before royalties reach the developer. Without a publisher in the XBLIG model, revenue is split between Microsoft and developer in a respective 30/70 split.

Penetration
XBLA games are available to buy in 26 countries; XBLIG in 10. There aren’t any hard figures on the matter, but small-scale research by the likes of myself and general common sense shows that there are a huge swathe of Xbox LIVE users who don’t touch the XBLIG service. Visibility of the service itself and finding games within it remain problems.

Press
XBLA games get a lot of mainstream gaming media attention, and due to the fact all XBLA games are published they are likely to get a better reception from the press at initial outset. XBLIG titles are often featured in brief ‘ace/arse’-type articles separating wheat from chaff. The XBLIG ecosystem does benefit from a dedicated and enthusiastic fanzine-esque community.

Sales
Here we are with the real kicker. Official sales data for XBLA are not released, and XBLIG sales data are provided at the will of the developer, and can’t be externally verified. Hence we should take all figures and comparisons with a pinch of salt.

Digging through VGChartz’ sparse data isn’t going to yield anything that enables me to make any confident and accurate statements, so I’m not going to get bogged down in the numbers. Suffice to say that the biggest sellers on XBLA have generated a lot of revenue – 7 (probably 8 figures by now) for games like Castle Crashers. The poor-performers have sold as badly as the best-sellers have done well, with some titles I’m aware of selling less than 5,000 copies over a lifetime, despite advertisting campaigns, 7-figure development budgets and positive reviews. These titles are typically 800MSP or more though.

XBLIG’s best candidate for top seller has sold about 200,000 copies at a price point of 80MSP with Avatar Drop coming in a probable second with 120,000 copies. Considering the budget for each, I expect these have made an utterly fantastic return on investment. One only has to read the Share Your Sales Data thread on the XNA CC forums though to see the overwhelming majority of cases where games are selling tens or hundreds of copies, if that.

The poor ability of XBLIG to make a return isn’t limited to amateur or low-skilled developers with a sub-standard product. I know of one developer in particular who has released a series of acclaimed and popular XBLIG titles, but is bearly breaking even due to a combination of their business decisions, the cost of creating a competitive title, and the low retail value of the average XBLIG game.

Pricing
XBLA titles retail at 800, 1200, 1600 and 2000MSP, but how often do we see an 800 point title these days?

XBLIG titles can sell at 80, 240 or 400MSP if they’re 50Mb or less; 240 or 400MSP otherwise.

It’s telling that experienced marketers are driving up the price of XBLA titles making the 800MSP price point a rarity, whilst those in the most crowded marketplace are racing to the lowest possible retail value.

The cheapest XBLIG title would have to sell ten times more copies in order to generate the same amount of revenue as the cheapest XBLA title. So whilst XBLA games still have the ability to tank, a low (relative to the platform) number of sales still brings in lot more cash.

Technical Constraints
If Microsoft like you enough, there’s pretty much no limit on file size these days for XBLA. Well, I tell a lie – apparently the infrastructure doesn’t like downloadables over 2Gb, but no doubt as soon as Bungie/Activision need to do something bigger than this, the constraint will be worked around. XBLA games can include up to 200 GamerScore points’ worth of achievements, as well as leaderboards and downloadable add-ons.

XBLIG downloads are capped at 150Mb (with fairly good reason, given the volume of titles, and the number of intermediate steps that binaries have to take through Microsoft’s servers). No achievements (again with good reason), no leaderboards, no DLC and also no auto-updating.

I’d argue that it’s not a clear-cut case of which service is the best choice if you’re fortunate enough to be in a position to choose between the two. Once again I’ll refrain from naming names, but there’s more than one XBLA developer looking at testing the XBLIG market.

A bit about Deejay:

Managing Director of Binary Tweed Ltd; multi-award-winning, gold-medallist, black belt shorinji kan jiu-jitsu instructor; moustache wearer.

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Windows Phone 7 has been making big waves in the developer community over the past few months. If you haven’t heard of it yet, don’t worry: Microsoft has been working overtime to make WP7 a phenomenal experience when it launches this holiday season and so far that’s meant focusing their attention on helping developers make some outstanding games and apps for the platform. But with all the major mobile providers and many of the best phone manufacturers already lined up – WP7 promises to be an experience you won’t want to miss.

So what exactly is it?

Windows Phone 7 is centered around several hubs that integrate your digital life with your daily life. While you’ll certainly enjoy the Office hub, the Music + Videos hub, the Pictures hub, and the People hub (for all your social networking), you will absolutely love the Xbox LIVE-integrated gaming hub!

keep on reading after the more button…

Now you can play games, earn achievements, and climb your way up the leaderboards of some of your favorite Xbox 360 games no matter where you are. Of course the gaming hub isn’t just Xbox LIVE: many of your favorite Indie titles are already well on their way to appearing on the Windows Phone 7 platform thanks to the power of the XNA framework that underlies both platforms. Thanks to the ease and simplicity of the XNA development tools, you can expect many wonderful games to be on the marketplace when WP7 launches in a few months with many more coming steadily in the months following its release as developers learn how to harness the power of the amazing hardware specs that all Windows Phones are required to meet. From the powerful 1GHz+ processor to an 800×480, capacitive four-point multi-touch screen, to DirectX 9 hardware acceleration through the GPU, not to mention the (at a minimum) 5 megapixel camera, built-in accelerometer, and cellular and wi-fi connectivity, amongst other things (like a built-in FM radio), even the most basic of models will contain some serious hardware.

Microsoft has been involved in the pocket computer and smart phone industry for over a decade, starting with the Pocket PC platform in April of 2000. To date their mobile products have seen wide use in the enterprise market but consumer devices have been a different story. Enter Windows Phone 7, a complete redesign from the ground up.

With its clean and vibrant Metro interface providing a beautiful, modern-looking interface, the Phone is a pleasure just to look at. But it goes well beyond a pleasant surface.

You’ll hear a lot more about Windows Phone 7 as the holiday season approaches. Personally, I’m already liking what I see.

Links

• http://www.machackpc.com/headline/xbox-live-gaming-titles-for-windows-phone-7-unveiled-hands-on-videos/
• http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/16/xbox-live-launch-titles-for-windows-phone-7-finally-revealed-we/
• http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wp7dev

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Michael B. McLaughlin retired from a career as a lawyer in 2009 in order to pursue his lifelong passion for programming. He is currently building a small studio dedicated to building Xbox LIVE Indie Games and Windows Phone 7 games and apps. He blogs primarily on programming-related topics at geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl and tweets regularly @mikebmcl.

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