Mare and Raigan recently did a controversial interview on Gamasutra that seemed to have sturred a reaction among the press and gamers. The heart of the controversy is that Xbox LIVE Arcade has, by majority, very low rated games. This in turn hurts the developers who are making gems because:

1) Players are turned off by the mass and not bothering to go through every game there is.

2) Developers’ ideas are turned down because there’s already an (allegedly crap) game of that genre in the pipeline

Fair enough. But really, lots of shitty games isn’t the problem. Metanet’s problem is one of control and visibility.

Control

What I mean by control is that platform holders hold the keys to the channel, and choose games based on some formula that they’re not showing. One of the criteria is a minimum quality bar, to make sure the developer can actually finish the product. Others are presumably based on their portfolio range, whether it will annoy retail distributors, and other means that could be perfectly reasonable but which we know not of.

Visibility

The problem with visibility is that all the games are lumped under one huge long list. If you do not have a recent update, the chance that your game is seen is largely based on the first letter of your game name. So, if there is a huge number of games that you don’t particularly like, you’re not going to see the ones you do. Okay, there is also some categorization of games, but it’s not exactly ideal.

Solving Metanet’s Dilemma

I think it’s clear that every platform will have a fair share of good vs. poor games, and that one persons treasure is another’s dog poop. That is, unless, you run the platform like Steve Jobs. Although even that’s wrong now that the SDK is out.

So saying that a platform holder “shouldn’t release bad games” isn’t the answer (even if we all know some of the games out there are indeed simply bad, in every sense of the word). The problem is that the platform holder is trying to control the releases based on more than simply the fact that they can indeed finish the game without breaking any laws. Indeed, they are basically saying that they know what’s best for their customers.

Instead, if Microsoft opens up their platform, and does not discriminate based on portfolio, an interesting thing happens. All sorts of games come in and you basically have a free market in the ecosystem. This of course creates an even bigger diluge of games, making your game even harder to find. So the obvious next step is to create as many ways to find the games you want as possible. Ratings is one. Tags is another. Recommendations is another. Suddenly, if you made a good game, visibility isn’t a problem any more. This is saying that the customers know what’s best for themselves.

Really, coming from the Web 2.0 side of things, this is all common sense and has been done over and over again. In fact, it’s being done on the hobbyist, community XNA games, so it’s unfortunate that they’re not doing it for professional game developers.

We don’t know the Truth

One thing is for sure — there’s a reason for all this not happening, and the reason is not that the people running Xbox LIVE Arcade are stupid. It may be that their priorities are different than ours (retail will kill us if we threaten them), and it may be that if they implemented these features they’d have a break through product.

But we don’t know what reasons they have, and it may be that in 6 months we’ll realize why they’ve been holding off, or that they’re already implementing it. Well, we know that they’re certainly implementing something for Xbox LIVE — it would be naive to think they’re standing still.

Anyway, looping back to the beginning — good job Raigan, on speaking your mind. And N+ is both dog poop and an amazing game. I prefer to think it’s the latter.

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As many of you know, Klei had a hand in the making of N+ on the Xbox LIVE Arcade. N+, having started life at Klei, used the Eets: Chowdown engine for the starting point of the project, giving Slick a head start on the more mundane portions of XBLA development. In addition, one of our programmers comprised one of the two engineers on the project. To say the least, I’m really proud of what Slick and Metanet have acheived.

Now, I also happen to be a 2D Zelda fan. The 3D adventures of Link were always impressive, but I could never get enough of the beautiful simplicity of the 2D action. Now, put N+ and Zelda together and you have one happy camper.

Enter the Legend of Zelda remade in N+ (via Kotaku).

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Gamespot has a great write-up on how games get pitched — both internally inside a publisher and by independent developers. I’ve now personally done more than a dozen pitches, and I have to say that I’m probably masochistic because I actually like the process; I suppose it’s the thought of going after something for the chance to create a product you’re passionate about. I’d probably loathe it if I was forced to pitch a match-3 game.

My first experience pitching was, technically, a complete failure. After building a PC prototype, I flew to a half dozen publishers to pitch our game as a PS2 / Xbox 360 / PSP / DS game — in reality, we were grasping for whatever we could get. The only reason we had these meetings at all was thanks to our agent I was working with for this product (incidentally, Warren is also the agent for N+ and Everyday Shooter). I believe our failure was justified — we had a polished demo, but an incomplete team and the market was such that a game like Eets was highly risky. From my point of view, however, this first product was a launching pad for the company — and indeed that’s exactly what happened. We continued to self-publish the game for PC online, secure a European retail distribution deal via Warren’s prowess, and we continue to sell the game online to this day.

Since then we’ve successfully pitched and signed three new games (Eets: Chowdown, N+ and an unannounced project), and each time it gives me a great sense of accomplishment in formulating the pitch and preparing the delivery. Going through the process so many times, however, has definitely altered the way I think about a pitch.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m using our decision to want to make a game and to pitch it synonymously, and in general, this is indeed what happens. I believe the vast majority of game development start-ups do one of two things:

1) Create a game and then find a market for it

2) Develop an idea you think could do well in the market, determine how much it’s going to cost to develop, and then try to find funding for it.

The first is obviously flawed, but it’s certainly understandable. Most independents, us included, started by making the game they wanted to make — economics be damned. For the record, I love this style of development — I just wouldn’t recommend anyone to depend their livelihood on it The second happens all the time, but in my experience it’s almost always an uphill battle. The thing is, without starting with the constraints, the idea always balloons to include everyone’s favourite features, each one pulling down the chance of the game actually being financially successful, and thus pulling down the chance of a successful pitch. Also familiar is taking that idea, and applying an aggressive schedule and lowering the costs to meet it. As one colleague once said “You’ll always find a buyer if you keep lowering your price, but at what cost?” This ends in the familiar massive overtime and feature cuts which burns everyone out.

Instead, I believe more and more developers are following the third path:

3) Start with the constraints, and then develop and idea from it.

My decision to create a game now starts with the resources constraints and then expands to how we can make the best possible game out of those constraints. That is, we may start with a pool of game ideas we’d like to explore, but for the most part they are totally undeveloped. Then, for each platform we’re considering, I give a narrow range of budgets and minimum expected ROI, and then ask “what can we build to achieve this result?”

Obviously, underlying to all of this is the notion that we’d be proud of the game, and that we won’t simply go for the cash grab. However, by starting with the constraints, I believe we actually build better games. This is because we’re forced to focus on the strengths of the game, and ignore everything else — creating a purer, better play experience. And guess what? This method has a way, way better chance of success in the pitching channel — and in the market place.

I realize I’m still only grazing the surface here, but if anyone wants me to delve into this in more detail, feel free to contact me or simply comment here.

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When Klei began life in my basement, we had a prototype for our game, Eets, and looked to which platforms we could port it to. Eventually (you can read the full story here), it found a comfortable home on the PC, but we also ended up with a neat controller prototype to work with. Around the same time, we noticed the rise of the Xbox Live Arcade, and pitched it to then-XBLA-games-portfolio-manager Ross Erickson. It was a hit, and in April 2007 we released Eets: Chowdown on the XBLA.

We’ve also worked closely with Slick Entertainment to bring N+ to the fold, and through both of these products, we’ve certainly learnt a few things:

1. Exposure

We know who’s on XBLA. Better than that, we know they’re ready and willing to pay for games. In fact, $10 on a PC is $10 more expensive than what PC users are used to, where on the 360, $10 is an incredibly great deal. Add in the fact that the barrier to entry for XBLA is relatively high (at least compared to the PC), and you’ll find that it’s far easier to get noticed on the 360 than on a PC.

Note: I’m not going to go on and praise XBLA’s conversion rates — they’re very high, but they’re also irrelevant. It’s like comparing the conversion rate of Wal-Mart and bikes to a bike shop (the bike shop will certainly have a higher bike conversion rate, while Wal-Mart certainly sells more bikes).

Microsoft also has a decently large install base, and the Dashboard is built to show off your game whenever anything new pops up. Arcade Wednesdays has been very successful at drawing eyes to the latest products out, and Major Nelson and the like help drive even more people to your games.

At least in our experience, we have done far better volume both in terms of downloads and purchases on the Xbox than on the PC. I also suspect that, for the average game, the Xbox Live Arcade tail is longer and thicker than the casual space.

2. Good risk / reward structure

Compared to traditional console titles, games on XBLA (and any other console download service) are cheaper to make, require far less marketing, and the production cycle is cut to a third. In fact, I could probably write an entire article on AAA titles, and why it’s a tough life to make one as a third party developer.

Compared to casual games in the PC space, you immediately have more guaranteed exposure, as we talked about above. Your royalty rates are also higher (depending on your arrangements), and, not unimportantly, your profile as a studio raises significantly when you are known as an XBLA developer (few) rather than a casual PC games developer (many).

These two factors means that, as a small-medium sized studio, Xbox Live Arcade is a great place to gain some exposure with a good chance of some decent ROI.

3. Great support from Microsoft

I have to say, we were very impressed with the level of support we received from Microsoft during development. All three key points of contact (PM, Test Lead and Release Manager) had lightning fast response times — closing on the final stages of development, I would email our Test Lead at some time past midnight, and received a response 15 minutes later.

Microsoft also understands where the key barriers are to small developers and removes those barriers for you. They either handle it for you (ESRB submissions) or give you direct contact to the teams you need to know to get it done (testing and localization).

4. Easy to develop for

Developing an Arcade game on the 360 is a smooth ride: you have more power than you need, and the platform libraries are mature and easy to use. For the most part (see the note below), you can concentrate on building your game as efficiently as possible. That means both using their internal libraries (such as networking and match-making) and external third party libraries that you may have been prohibited from using because you couldn’t guarantee your target market would have good enough specs on the PC.

I’m also really looking forward to seeing how XNA turns out. I’ve seen Nick do some amazing things with it.

Note: Certification is that necessary evil that certainly no smooth ride at all. After the first time through it, though, it gets much easier.

5. Access to achievements, leaderboards, upsell features, etc

Microsoft puts a fair amount of focus on these features, and with good reason. My suggestion if you’re building an Arcade game is, think about these things early, and make the most of it. They’re great for extending your product shelf life, and obviously your upsell is incredibly important for your bottom-line.

I think many AAA developers could use a couple lessons in upselling, and building an Arcade game might not be a bad idea to do that. Too many of the demos on the Marketplace actually make me want to buy the game less than before I played it because of how badly it was put together.

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Obviously, it’s not all a bed of roses to develop for Xbox Live Arcade. There are certainly things that could be much improved in their systems, but it was definitely a positive experience for us. Next week: I’m on holiday, but I’ll think of something interesting to write about

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For about a year now I’ve considered starting a business blog. I had a few obstacles that I needed answers to before starting: what am I offering that isn’t already out there? Who is my audience?

My answer: There are few companies out there like Klei Entertainment. We developed an indie game that went casual, and totally missed the sweet spot. We’ve developed for the Xbox Live Arcade. We helped jump start another studio, now making N+. We’ve worked with publishers. We’ve self-published. Certainly, someone can benefit from my experience, and I believe in giving back to the community.

So, starting today, every Thursday I will post a new bit of rambling. Some of it will be technical (I’m a programmer by trade, and much of that geekiness lives), much of it will be my own opinions about the wonderful business we’re in, and most of it I hope you’ll angrily disagree with me so we can have an interesting conversation.

What’s the quote of the day? “Make sure your board is sufficiently weird”.

I love that.

I grabbed that line from a book I’m currently reading: Re-imagine by Tom Peters, and I can’t agree with it more. Klei (that’s pronounced “clay”, by the way) is staffed by a serious hodge podge of people. Sure, we have a couple industry veterans, but several key staff are also weird people who have no preconceptions of what the “right way” to develop a game is. This can bring some amazing results when mixed with people from the industry who are fed up with the “right way” to spend millions of dollars to create a game you’re not sure people will enjoy. Most of the people I trust the most for advice are weird people who don’t deal with inconsequential things like video games (but would love to get a Wii if they could find one).

I believe that there’s a huge opportunity to rethink how we develop games. By developing smarter, and destroying old preconceptions, extremely high quality games can be created with amazingly small budgets. For starters:

- Choose games that won’t break your back developing them. If you’re a small developer tight on cash, WHY are you developing a content intense game? Surely there’s another game you can be excited about that doesn’t kill your staff.

- Destroy old processes that aren’t doing anything. If your employees roll their eyes when you ask them to do something in the process, either get them to buy in or figure out why it’s stupid. For example: the only time I’ve ever seen a smoke test break is when someone forgot to fix the smoke test.

- Challenge notions of what is needed to build a game. Lots of time, lots of people, lots of money? As Gordon Bell says “I’ve never seen a project being worked on by 500 engineers that couldn’t be done better by 50″. Try cutting from 50 to 5, and I think you’ll be amazed at the result.

This blog is all about rethinking how game developers look at games. From the design of games, to the code that makes them, to how different teams interact, to how we look at and treat users — lets create new notions, new systems, new processes, and then destroy them again

Okay, now… disagree!

Edit: I changed the title and wording to better reflect my thoughts. Destroy your preconceptions, dammit!

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I’m a tad late in my GDC report, but here’s my run down of my week of fun:

1. Speaking at conferences is always a positive experience. Interestingly, the one conference I spoke at in which I thought nobody would remember is PAX, and yet 3 separate people came up to me and said “I saw you speak at PAX last year, right? You were really informative”
2. Last year, I brought my 11lb laptop to GDC, and vowed never to do it again. In fact, as soon as I got back I bought a laptop half the size, with proportionally less power, and smirked that I would never have to lug the old beast again. Instead, Nick and I put together a new demo that we wanted to show off… on a nice big 17″ laptop screen…
3. I love Miyamoto. I love his games. But his keynote was rather boring.
4. Raigan from Metanet contracted appendicitus just before the conference while in San Francisco, so my first face-to-face meeting with him was in the hospital.
5. My business partner Nick contracted some sort of food poisoning the night before we flew to SF, but luckily recovered by the morning. He had Thai food that night. When we arrived to SF, my brother brought us to a Thai restaurant, and somehow Nick had no trouble with that. Must be his Dutch blood.
6. GoPets had the best swag of the expo.
7. Nick looks scary.
8. Halfway through Wednesday, I rushed back to the hotel, RDP back to my computer in Vancouver, fix a bug, and submit it. I missed the Sony keynote. Not that we didn’t already know what it was about.
9. My favourite talk was probably by Harmonix, makers of Guitar Hero. Which reminds me — there’s finally a ship date for the 360 version!

That’s only what I remembered off the top of my head. GDC was, as always, incredibly useful but very tiring.

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