Snake Man

Ah Snake, That most classical of the classics. Xbox Live Indie games has not been wanting for its lack of snake clones since its inception back in November of 2008.

Snake360 was released 8 days after the service launched. I know this after a few seconds of use of what I think is a very powerful tool for the Xbox Indie Searcher, the Xboxindies.com filter. In the past I used that official game list over at the MS Apphub but its interface was horrid and it did not allow me to filter how I wanted. The funny thing is that xboxindies.com has always been in the vanguard when it comes to sorting and displaying XBLIG.

Coming to the point of this post,

 SNAKE MAN

Snake Man is in my opinion the cream of the cream when it comes to snake clones on the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace, the filter mentioned above lists 14 games that can be found by using the keyword Snake. One of these is a Silver Dollar abomination that has nothing to do with Snake but is listed due its title "Murder on Snake Road" And two are quite similar, Snake 360 mentioned above and Snake 360 lite. I have strong opinions when it comes to my Indie Channel, I feel that lite releases have no place.

So according to the filter, 12 Snake games. I feel that this number is a bit low.  Undoubtedly there are some snake games that do not list the word Snake in either their title or description. This is no cause for alarm, all that is needed of the filter is the addition of user generated tags, something that I hope will be implemented shortly.

Oh yeah, if you haven't already tried Snake Man I suggest you do, it is surprisingly good. It's retro inspired feel and progression style leads the player towards the do a little better next time mentality, which is the hallmark of the classics.

The Once and Future Gamer

Well, it has been quite a bit of time since my last posting. This is not to say that I have not been religiously checking the indie games tab on the marketplace, but that perhaps the games released there are not up to my extremely critical standards.

XBLIG are still my games of choice, despite being banned from the club that produces them, and despite the service's catering to the demographic that enjoys senseless violence, gratuitous sex, and mindless button mashing. Why bother taking the time to try every game that appears you might ask? Because you never know.

You never know if that simple 2D shooter produced by one person in two weeks will keep you entertained for months, or if the endless variations of dating simulators will somehow breed a previously unknown genre of game.

Boxart, screenshots, and horrible reviews might dissuade some gamers but there are many of us out there who are willing to try any game in any genre on the slight possibility that it might offer something new to the gamer who now has thirty plus years of gaming experience.

I wouldn't call myself a modern gamer. Most new titles seem derivative and shallow. The indie channel takes us back to the beginning, when games were programmed by one person or a few people in their spare time, with monetary gains only given as an afterthought.

"Fool" you say, "Money has been at the core of all human progress since the beginning."

Perhaps it has, I suppose I could call myself a postmodern gamer. And throw all conceptions away, beginning anew.

Why is there so much shovelware? Is this a rhetorical question?

It is difficult to make a decent game, and it is rare indeed when a gamemaker creates something decent on their first try. But our indie channel is filled with these first attempts from fledgling gamemakers. We were expecting mountains of shovelware from the beginning.

Previously, these early efforts of the makers would never have seen the light of day, banished to a lone computer or some obscure site on the outskirts of the internet. With the games hidden in this way, the makers might never receive feedback on their creations, which is so crucial to all the makers future efforts.

So how do we allow fledgling makers to showcase their initial creations and generate the crucial feedback, and at the same time maintain a decent gaming standard on the indie channel marketplace?

We could create a separate space on the dashboard for beta versions of indie games. A sort of underground, only visible to those who have signed up to use it. In this space early versions of the makers games could be freely sent to other makers and testers, generating the feedback. And when the game is deemed decent enough, sent to the marketplace. This might sound like the CreatorsClub/AppHub to you but there is one major difference.

The determining factor that takes a game from the underground and sends it to the marketplace is that of quality.

"Ludicrous! No game would ever make it past a quality standard, that is too subjective of a metric."

This quality control could be tested by allowing peer reviewers to psuedo review games based on quality. By adding a poll to a games AppHub page, with a simple yes or no box for quality, we might begin to determine if a quality control makes any sense. And if we should consider actually implementing a quality control standard.

It is virtually guaranteed that a quality control would stop the shovelware moments after the control was implemented. But might we also lose out on those games that at first glance appear to be shovelware, and only shine after being experienced? Well, this is the reason for the creation of the underground space, so that many can use the makers creation and determine if they shine enough for public consumption.

In this way the games could be regulated while still maintaining a facade of independence and equality for the channel, anyone who wished could join the underground space, although space might be limited and granted on a temporary basis. This would require major changes to the Xbox Dashboard which is apparently extremely hard to do ;)

Lets work together!

Hi! Before I took an academic leave from the XNA Creators Club, I had begun work on an experiment which if successful would determine if Psychic Ablities, specifically Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) is transmittable through the wires and beams of light that make up our connected world. 

I have recently decided to take up the project again, and am looking for some help to get it finished and released onto the Xbox Indie Games Channel. My coding skills are not that good but my design aesthetics are out of this world. I am currently calling this piece of software Are You Psychic, but the title and the design are subject to change.

I am looking for someone that can finish coding this software, specifically someone with some experience with online networking using the XNA development kit. You might have to overhaul my entire codebase, which isn't very large and if you are proficient with the XNA toolset, I imagine this project would not take you very long to complete. I cannot offer any compensation at the moment, but if the game is released onto the marketplace for sale, any profits made will be equally split among those involved with the projects creation.

Below is a short video of the project, showcasing Human Vs. Machine Mode, where the user pits his mind against the Central Processing Unit, to determine if there is a connection between man and machine. The project also features a two player local mode, and the two player online component, both of which are still a bit buggy at the moment.

Let me know if you are interested in working on this project with me and your past coding experience if you have any.


Thank you,


-Ben

Gaming the System

A few months ago Microsoft announced that they were going to make it even easier for advertisers to advertise on the XBOX Dashboard by upgrading the dash's Silverlight functionality. I was concerned that we would soon be subjected to flying doritos chips when we booted up our machines. I was only half right, Its not delivery unfortunately.

Something a bit more interesting than ads for edible cardboard are the addition of minigames to our Dashboards. There have been a few so far. At the moment you can throw snowballs at your friends avatars, and a few months ago you could throw footballs at your friends avatars.

There was a dunktank on the dashboard over the summer where you could choose which friend you wanted to dunk. All of these Dashboard minigames are whack-a-mole clones as far as I'm concerned and are barely a glimpse of what is to come. Streaming AAA games through the dashboard is probably a bit far off into the distance though.

Now for comparison, lets take a look at a few of the Avatar enabled games available through the Xbox Indie Games Channel.

This is a picture from Avatar Avenue. A game which lets you watch Avatars walk around.

The next two are from Home Run Challenge The title is a good description. Interestingly it appears that Developers of Xbox indie games have access to the entire library of avatar models. Shown below is a shot of the pitcher as a character from Assassin's Creed.

And here we have some shots from Rate My Avatar. For the low price of 80 points you can watch a parade of avatars across your screen and rate them!! Creating and rating Mii's was one of my favorite activities on the Nintendo Wii. A free feature of the Wii by the way. Of course, Mii's are capable of far more customization than Xbox Avatars. There are a number of sites that instruct you on how to create a Mii look alike. Barack Obama Mii

 

And finally a shot from Avatar Golf .

These indie avatar games are slightly more complex than the Dashboard games we are currently offered by Microsoft, but I don't believe there is any technical reason why they could not be featured there as instantly playable games. In fact I believe they should be. You might be saying, "Why should Microsoft create and give these games away for free when there is revenue to be made?"

Listen up, the indie created Avatar rating game suffers from a lack of a userbase. The developer has said they are coming close to 1000 games sold which is impressive but not nearly enough. I hope they sell thousands more though. This would undoubtedly spur Microsoft into developing a more robust version able to be launched instantly through the dashboard and featuring millions of user created Avatars. I don't have to tell you that this would push sales of Avatar clothing into the stratosphere. I would be surprised if someone hasn't patented a system for the display and rating of user created digital representations of themselves.

Update: lol Avatar Patent!

That's all for now,  I need to do some work on my other project

Dungeon Crawls

According to this thread,  there are three! Rogue like games currently in development for the Xbox indie games channel. Oh happy day!!

I think the one being developed by UberGeekgames is going to be released first,  it is currently in peer review I believe. I am a huge fan of the infinite progressive dungeon crawl.  Here are some screen shots from the developers website.

The developer has included an ASCII skin for this game for those who wish to replicate rogues original conditions i.e. the early 1980's when computer graphics didn't really exist, at least not for most people. I doubt many people besides the developer and a handful of others will even bother with the ASCII version of the game. If you do decide to go the ASCII route please feel free to call yourself hardcore. I however like my sprites pixellated.

The Xbox has been lacking a serious attempt at this genre for what, about 6 years? There was Xeno Arena a few months ago, but that game did not have any character customization. What it did have was a nice graphics engine. If only we could somehow merge Xeno Arena and Dungeon Adventure lol!

Leave it to the indie developers and they will create the games that the people want. UberGeekGames is even trying to implement a global high score board to their game. Something that is not really possible for XNA indie games, except through the use of some creative P2P coding. Even so, what this means is we are getting a competitive dungeon crawl. 

I think what the indie games channel needs is a game with some staying power, and no I'm not talking about that zomb13 shooter. I'm talking about a game that the community plays together and one that is constantly updated due to feedback. Expansion packs are currently out of the question for most games, due to file size restrictions. But for a game like Uber's Rogue, I think a complete graphical overhaul is not out of the question. It appears to be mostly done, except for the interface, which still appears to be text based and scrolls across the screen? I haven't played it yet but I'm eagerly awaiting a chance. Here's a trailer from UberGeekGames. The trailer says the game is available now but it isn't.

-Ben

Rise from your grave!

You might have thought that this site was abandoned, never! There just seemed to be a dearth in the quality of games being released to our beloved xbox community/indy games channel. Never fear! I have been checking the channel daily and downloading every game whose screenshots and description evoke any kind of response in my cortex. Sadly, as you may be aware, I was permabanned from XNA Creators Club back in July. No matter, Game on! I just spent some leftover points on two xna games and I will be reviewing them shortly.

I like games

What XBOX Community Games Can Become

When I first heard about Microsoft’s plans to allow anyone to make games for the 360 I was very excited. I, like many others have dreamed about making video games since my first experience with them. Luckily I also have an interest in computing and when XNA 3.0 was released I had a rudimentary understanding of programming, and through copious use of the tutorials on the community site I was able to create my first game and release it onto the XBOX 360 YAY!! :)

Back in November 2008, I think the gaming community was holding their breath, waiting to see what this community games experiment would bring to the world of gaming. Sure, there are plenty of PC based gaming communities that function in a similar manner to the creators club, but none of them have the potential audience of the 360, or can recreate the playing conditions. Which usually involve relaxing on the sofa with friends and family.

I like the creators club, I really like the connect issue system for feedback. I am sorry if I abused it, but when I get an idea into my head, especially one concerning games and how they affect society, it’s all I can think about. I still believe that allowing for more gamers to take part in the playtesting process, and implementing quality controls on the games will have excellent results. I also have a lot of patience, which might not be completely apparent at the moment.

From my perspective, game development with XNA was fairly easy, there are still a lot of things I need to learn about, and 3D games development is a long way off for sure. But for someone who has never taken the time to understand how computers work and has simply just played the games their entire life it’s doubtful that they will be creating a game with XNA anytime soon.

You might be saying that XNA isn’t really meant to be an application that allows every gamer to make a game and then release it to the rest of the community. Perhaps, but every gamer has an idea for a game. It would be nice if there was an application that allowed them to create it. I don’t know what Microsoft’s plans are for the future of XNA, I hope they are for increasing the ease with which we can create games.

I think there definitely needs to be more community involvement in every aspect of the community games channel. I don’t think a small group of programmers can ever understand the whims of the masses. It seems like every day someone brings up an issue with the structure or processes involved with getting a community game onto the channel, and the issue is continuously disregarded. Usually the response is yes we know, that’s not how we do it. And then the thread is locked to further debate. Only to be restarted again the next day by someone else. It appears that this has been going on since November.

Here I will now outline the two simple suggestions that I have been pushing, perhaps too much in the last two months.

Let everyone with an Xbox live account playtest the games.

First the negatives

Most posts tend to describe piracy run amok, or the idea that since everyone can get our games for free, no one will ever buy them. There are millions of potential users of community games and I really doubt that all of them are going to become super playtesters overnight. Perhaps the detractors of this idea fear the currently small buying audience of community games, and the knowledge that its users are generally tech savvy, and would be more likely to join just to download all the games for free? I am a bit saddened by the state of our audience as well.

This will plunge the forums into such chaos that they might never be able to recover. This isn’t really mentioned as a possibility much, but it certainly is one.

I think that’s it for the negatives, please add some if you think there are any.

Now the positives

This would increase the community games userbase by orders of magnitude with future ramifications that are currently unpredictable. But since we want more people playing our games, the general feeling is that the future would be good.

Giving more people insight into what is involved with making a game, by contributing feedback during a games creation will surely get them more interested in making their own. This is what I thought the whole point of this experiment was.

It is sometimes easy to ignore the criticisms of one person, but when a large group of people all have the same issue with a certain feature of your game, you would be more likely to take that criticism into consideration when working on your game.

I am sure there are a lot more positives, please add some if you think of any.

The second suggestion is to put quality control checks into the peer review process.

First the negatives

I can’t think of any ;)

And the positives

Giving more power to the community regarding what games make it onto the channel will breed responsibility in the creators club members.

With an increase in quality, there will surely be an increase in the number of people who decide to check out the community games channel.

These two ideas, by themselves are fairly simple, but together they can drastically change the community games channel. Change it into something that everyone will enjoy and have fun with.

We understand that this article mentions nothing about implementing these two ideas. Implementation will actually be fairly easy, the problem is getting the XNA team to understand that the negatives posted above are not really negatives at all. Nothing that gets more community members involved in something peaceful and fun can ever be negative.