Link.

Also definitely looking forward to Parveen’s take on the iPhone SDK.

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.

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).

On a completely unrelated note, I love this quote by Michael Capps of Epic:  “the narrow range of folks who can afford to do high-end, Direct X 10 PC gaming are also the guys who really understand how BitTorrent works” (source: gamesindustry.biz).

Also: Pandemic’s Josh Resnick had a great talk at GDC about the difficulties of starting a game studio. I unfortunately missed it, but heard about it through Nick. Today an article came out that hinted they are looking at the Free-to-Play model. EA has had some success in this department, so it’ll be interesting to see what they’ll do.

• It’s too hard to manage the content
• By definition, it means some games are rated badly, and we want to position ourselves as having no bad games
• It’s not in our schedule
• We want to handle our own PR and portfolio
• It’ll piss off publishers
• We have no way of deleting offensive content (!!!?)

While some of these are real concerns, I don’t see this having stopped Amazon. Or Ebay. Or Facebook. I suppose XNA on the 360 addresses these issues, but I still think all content on the 360 should be rated, commented on, tagged, and searchable. And while I’m on my pipe dream I may as well wish for being able to write plug-ins for the dashboard, and that monetization for those plug-ins should be easy. Yes, these are hard legal issues, but I also think it would rock everyone’s world.

This is why I love the free-to-play model — it completely obliterates this problem, and blows down almost all barriers to entry. But secure online play isn’t the only option out there — in fact, as the article suggests, it still poses issues to singleplayer games.  The other day my internet connection died, and I wanted to play Portal, but because Steam couldn’t connect, I wasn’t able to.

I also like Stardock’s No DRM, update-by-secure-login method, and ad driven freeware is definitely a viable option. I’m particulary intrigued by the indie music model where bands give out music for free to drive consumers to merchandise and live performances, and I’m wondering if there’s a parallel we can draw in our industry.

On Monday, I’ll be making my yearly pilgrimage to GDC; a trip I always feel invigorates me. Without exception, I come back fired up, excited about the change and developments happening all around us in this industry. As in the previous year, I’m participating in the Independant Games Summit, speaking about The State of Indie Games. If you’re going and would like to meet up, feel free to contact me.

Reading about Google Android and the iPhone SDK is encouraging, though. Having a decent web browser (albeit without Flash support) is more encouraging still. Already, creating ad supported mobile web apps is possible, and it’s only a matter of time before downloading third-party mobile applications and games becomes easy and not an exercise in frustration; I for one jailbroke my iPod Touch and I’m amazed at the ease of using the Installer application.

I know most readers of this blog are console and PC game developers, but if any of you have mobile experience, I’d love to pick your brain a bit. You know how to reach me!

“That’s not surprising. In my experience with large institutions, they have the ability to create the structure needed to foster meritocracy. A small company, however, is more ad hoc.”

I had always believed that large organizations were more prone to “waiting you turn” due to the inevitable hierarchy and increased politics. It had never occured to me that the resources would allow you to be better at creating an environment that championed achievement — I took it for granted that they would have to use the resources to try and simulate a smaller studio.

On a side note, I’ve been reading The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan. It’s not light reading, but I would recommend it to anyone looking to gain insight into how the US economy works. It’s certainly prompted me to reconsider how I approach certain aspects of business.