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Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
Microsoft Announces XNA Game Studio 2.0
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duckyofalarcon
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
I have a game I'm developing for PC that I started in XNA and am considering putting it on this service in the future but am not sure if I want to devote energy and resources to a service nobody will buy from. If I get enough interest I will probably just try to port it over to the Live Arcade. gamepro.com/labs/developer/ruuucreation/ if anyone is interested in checking it out.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@duckyofalarcon: I don't believe it's that simple. Microsoft looks to have XBLA focus on professionally developed games and perhaps XBLCG standouts.

The better XBLCG titles sell well. Still, as with any product, you have to promote it. That's what too few developers seem to understand. You don't just dump a game on the system and make money.

If you're doing a PC game in XNA, it should be easily ported to 360 anyway. Might as well hit two markets with your work. Seems like an interesting enough idea you have there, but if you're making a music based title, don't overlook the quality of music. I find with these Simon-type video games, music and presentation are everything.
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GohanGVO
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
Is this a concession that scores of 360 owners did NOT band together to become "garage developers" as they originally believed would happen ("democratization of game development", etc.)?

Is the name change also a way to make room from the upcoming Kodu project (the one showed at CES)?
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Matt Yaeger
06/11/09

@GohanGVO: Over 300 games on the service now, so @Orionsaint: Well some of them are really good. I'd rather play a good game than just play a game because it has achievements.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@GohanGVO: There are quite a few people banding together to make games on the XNA forums, and having over 300 games released in about eight months from launch -- admittedly many of dubious quality -- shows that a great number of people are more than willing to give XNA game development a hand. God, I sound like a PR person. :p

The big news about this is user ratings. This will make the quality titles rise to the top and not get diluted by the crap. I suspect the name change is because "indie games" carries a much more relevant meaning than "community games," and it likely also doubles as a way to ditch the poor reputation the latter label carried. (I'd imagine to connote a similar affect as "under new management" would.)
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GohanGVO
06/11/09

@Matt Yaeger: @Kobun: 300 games? Wow. That is a lot. Is there a lot of intermingling of devs, or are they generally separate groups per game? How many are done by as few as one person?

And, really, I wonder how many of them - as mentioned - are actually games rather than app store-esque wastes of code ...
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RyuuzakiBjorn
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
This is going to be so annoying, when all the Casual Gamers and/or Chavy Gamers (They're so low, they're in a league of their own) start calling it: Xbox Live Indian Games.

You just know it will happen, and I wonder to myself. Maybe they're just stupid, or not educated enough to be able to tell Indie doesn't spell Indian. But then again, Who Cares?
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Creampope
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
how 'bout showin' europe some love soon? grrrrrr
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Kobun
06/11/09

@Creampope: Europe doesn't have it already? Clover's Binary Tweed is based in the UK, and Japan will be getting XBLCG this summer.
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NoBullet
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
Cant wait for Massage Game #342432
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Kouzmanoff
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
Maybe they should also change the word "game" to something more fitting the usual list of screen calibrators, controller massagers and CRAP PILES.

"Xbox LIVE Indie software abortions." Much better.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@Kouzmanoff: There are three massage applications, three fishtanks, one screen calibrator, and one fire place screen saver. There are currently 314 XBLCGs out there. It's unfortunate that ignorant people out there quickly associate a handful of software apps with all of the available content, but I suppose given that those titles have been the only things getting real media coverage, such people can't be faulted. If you'd spend a moment checking out the popular and highly rated XBLCG fare, you'd see just how ridiculous such a mindset is. Then again, you're likely just trolling. :/
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(Zombie) The Forgetful Brain
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
Has anyone actually bought any of these?

I think it's great that there's support for independent/upstart developers, but I'm afraid the general fact is that the quality of these is not the sort of quality you're going to likely want to pay for (unless you're really about supporting young developers).

If it's something that's worth buying, it's probably going to hit normal XBLA - like Braid, or the Dead Samurai.

Still, I'm sure there's a percentage of people that buy these - as with anything released on the internet, so that's good for the developers. And I suppose it's a good opportunity for them, just to get their work out there.

But... back to my original point... has anyone actually bought one of these 'indies'?
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Kobun
06/11/09

@The Forgetful Brain: I've bought a couple dozen XBLCGs. There is excellent stuff out there. Check out xblcg.info for some suggestions. Go buy Miner: Dig Deep. It's only 200 points, but you'll easily kill hours upon hours playing that game alone.

You also seem to not understand that Dead Samurai itself is simply a "promoted" XBLCG title. The potential for quality software is there, and of the 314 titles available, I'd say a good 50 or so of them are worth playing and buying. It may seem like a dismal average, but it's not that bad, particularly given XNA is still not even out a year. No one dumps on quality indie PC games such as Cave Story despite the glut of terrible indie games and ROM hacks on it; why would XBLCG be any different?

@Spankface: I took a TAY opportunity to try to promote Dock'em, a terrific and wholly original puzzle game involving docking boats. Despite being on the first page and thus widely visible, I got just one person responding to say he wouldn't be interested in it given he works as an air traffic controller. :/ Dock'em is such a terrific game and yet another bargain at just 200 points.
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Spankface
06/11/09

@Kobun: Cool I'll check out Dock'em tonight also, I like puzzle games a lot.

I'll also take a look at xblcg.info. Thanks for the heads up.
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(Zombie) The Forgetful Brain
06/11/09

@Kobun: That was kind of my point - in cases where they are stand-out, they come to the regular XBLA (though Braid was obviously never XNA).

I'll check out some of you suggestions though.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@The Forgetful Brain: There are many standouts which haven't found their way to XBLA. As of now, only two games have been "promoted" -- The Dishwasher and Blazing Birds. All of the titles on the Dream Play Build finalists tab are excellent, professional looking releases which can stand next to any XBLA game, and IGN now highlights some of the better XBLCG stuff as well on its tab. Even some simple and easily dismissible games like sin(Surfing) can be a joy to play.

Youtube has a ton of impressive stuff on display showing XNA's potential. The racing game starter kit is quite impressive itself:

Other clips on the site show much promise for Japanese XNA development as well. It's easily what excites me most about XBLCG given that the most reknown indie titles originate out of Japan.

There's no denying there remains a lot of garbage on the CG channel, but given that EVERY game has a trial available, there's no real reason to complain given there is zero chance of getting burned by a purchase.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@Spankface: I will warn you Dock'em's trial does itself a disservice by limiting play to 17 boats. Though the standard XBLCG trial period is 8 minutes, I'm sure the developer sought to add that limitation since the game could be fully enjoyed within a trial period for most. Unfortunately, the game starts off slow as with most puzzle games, so the challenge and fun of juggling multiple boats is lost on the demo. If you like what you see, the low purchase price makes it a small risk, and I can assure you things get trickier and trickier the longer the game goes on.

@The Forgetful Brain: No problem at all. I know it can be a pain and time consuming to filter out the crap from the more worthwhile stuff. The channel desperately needs a way to rate the games inside NXE as most people will take one look at some of the horrid cover art on some of the games and not even bother with such amateur looking stuff.
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Matt Yaeger
06/11/09

@The Forgetful Brain: There are some really good games on the service. Weapon of Choice is awesome, and is made by Nathan Fouts who is also making Grapple Buggy for the service, which was previewed on Kotaku a few days ago. My wife loves Word Soup. The Dead Samurai dev has two other games up on the service and both are fun. I have about 12 Community Games and they've all been worth it.

The name change isn't that big of a deal compared to being able to finally rate these games on Live. Once that patch hits it will be much easier for people to sort through the crap and see some of the really well done titles.
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Netnavi
06/11/09

a fading melody is a good one. Some of the dumber games are hilarious but only worth playing the demo.
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TakizawaAkira
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
ALSO WHAT ABOUT FREE GAMES PEOPLE LIKE

FREE FLASH GAMES WHY NOT FREE GAME

I PAY 60 BUCKS A YEAR
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BubbleF**kingBuddy
06/11/09

@TakizawaAkira: Since when did Live cost so much?
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BubbleF**kingBuddy
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
So the name change is useless, outside of trying to appeal to pretentious people who go "durr fuck the mainstream" every day before listening to the Cave Story OST on their Zunes every day.

It's about time Microsoft did something to appeal to "hardcore gamers" like them.
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Robotic-Richard-Simmons
06/11/09

@BubbleF**kingBuddy: Unrelated to your post, but I quickly read your name and though it said ButtF**kingBuddy.

I'm hetero... I swear!
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BubbleF**kingBuddy
06/11/09

@Robotic-Richard-Simmons: How about a game of pretend?
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GohanGVO
06/11/09

@BubbleF**kingBuddy:

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TakizawaAkira
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
being a indie developer

im making a game were you help Mexicans get into Tokyo.

and a rape simulator raplay
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Kobun
06/11/09

@TakizawaAkira: There's been a Mexican (and other immigrant) border crossing game on XBLCG for quite a while now.
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Vecha: One more Month
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
I guess Indie rings well with people than "community"...especially all those so called "indie" bands.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@Vecha: "Community Games" has a kind of "Special Kids" vibe about it. It's a minor change which will hopefully improve public perception.
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Commander Shepard
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
How about adding achievements?

Just saying.
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enewtabie
06/11/09

@Commander Shepard: I was just going to type this out. Besides the fact that XLNA has always been buried on the NXE,they need something to bring it to the forefront if they are actually serious. Sales would definitely improve due to the achievement whores out there.

Maybe even have Major Nelson recognize a few standouts each week on the blog or send some preview downloads out to the magazines/sites.
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ExistentialEgg
06/11/09

@enewtabie: I remember reading that they didn't want the community games to have achievements because some developers may exploit that and make absurdly easy games and in essence be selling Gamer Points. I think it's because the games are community approved and don't go through the official approval process.
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enewtabie
06/11/09

@ExistentialEgg:
I've listened to Kathleen(I might have her name wrong)XLNA community mgr talk quite a few times about the XLNA and it does sound interesting(I've downloaded a few. But, they haven't made it a integral part of the 360 experience. It feels like it was just thrown together to gather some recognition instead of making it recognizable as Arcade.

I understand the Peer review process, but I don't think it's living up to what it could be as a whole.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@ExistentialEgg: That has nothing to do with it. Achievements are denied due to some infrastructure conflict with the way XBLCG is set up in XNE. It's similar to why XBLCG titles never show up in your recently played history. As it is, it's possible for XNA games to have individual achievements which will pop-up just as the official ones do, but they are no counted toward your Gamerscore or displayed on the dashboard in any way.
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onomeister
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
Too little too late... I don't think just a name change will now increase the piss poor sales of their indie games that they've had over the last few years...
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KaneRobot
06/11/09

@onomeister: Maybe not, but this change definitely doesn't hurt.
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Erwos
06/11/09

@onomeister: Last few years? The community games program has only been around for less than a year.

The problem, though, isn't so much the name as the difficulty in finding decent stuff. The "anything goes" paradigm may have been a real mistake.
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Commander Shepard
06/11/09

@KaneRobot:

User ratings should help weed out shit like "Remote Massage" and "Angry Barry".

The truly creative hopefully should be rewarded by the community developing games.
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metalnut
06/11/09

@Erwos: It could have something to do with the fact that all the sensible indies are targetting the iPhone now.

MS made a dumb decision in forcing people to use XNA. All developers other code is in C/C++, not letting them use it and forcing them to write code in a different language specifically for your platform? Not smart.

Indies can get far more bang for their buck targetting Steam and iPhone, with which they can use largely the same codebase. Targetting XNA already required a rewrite, and those that have have made almost no money.

They can call it whatever they like, it still doesn't make business sense for any serious indies.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@Commander Shepard: Did you even play Angry Barry? It's a solid Bad Dudes clone.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@metalnut: XNA uses C++. It's not a separate language, just a base to run C++ games and applications.
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metalnut
06/11/09

@Kobun: C# is the 'expected' language. Sure, you can use C++, but a bastardised managed version (C++/CLI) that can only run against the XNA runtime. You can't just use existing libraries written in C++.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@metalnut: @tomsamson: @CaffeinatedGuy: Yep, brainfart. Sorry about that. :p After gaining some interest in XNA development, I saw many people and guides stating the best way to go about it is to learn C++, which is I've been doing, after which the transition to C# in XNA should be a snap more or less. Still, my point remains that XNA is not a separate language by rather a shell for C# programming which handles memory management and the like to speed up game programming.
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vellocet
06/11/09

@Kobun: Okay, I think this needs some clarification. C# is a programming language very similar to C++. It's actually quite good (I was very impressed coming from a C++ background). XNA is a set of libraries that you can use in C# to handle your graphics, sound, input, etc and interface with the Xbox 360. There are people also using libraries that they have written in C++ with C# (this is allowed). The point is that the XNA libraries are quite good and a good way for a lot of people to start.
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Kobun
06/11/09

@vellocet: Thank you for your clarification. :^) I'm hardly the most equipped to talk about the language, but I knew enough to know what was said was wrong and make a correction.
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Kill-Face
06/11/09

@Commander Shepard: Angry barry is awesome, it might essentially be a flash game, but it is pretty wicked. Remote massage is clearly stupid... everyone should play miner dig deep 100% the best indie game so far.
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Netnavi
06/11/09

@Kill-Face: angry barry is hillarious, though a little racist.

You can pick up a bus!!!
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okenny :) ...building bridges (to hide under)
06/11/09

@vellocet: to add... because XNA are managed (CLR) .NET Code, you can used managed C++, C#, Delphi, etc... to write your code though why anyone would opt to not use C# is beyond me. Doing the other languages require some creative compiling scripts.
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Dr Durdon
06/11/09

In reply to Xbox Live Community Games Renamed
Indie eh? So they're trying to give them the marketing correlation with an Indie film, which usually tends to be under produced but highly original, gritty at times and worth the money? I think I might bite. Oh and a guest appearance by Eric Stoltz always helps.
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Bernoulli
06/11/09

@Dr Durdon: You're probably just making a joke but "indie" games are getting big right now. They're being discussed alot and it definitely evokes the idea that these are the cutting edge.
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Dr Durdon
06/11/09

@Bernoulli: Nah I was sorta being serious about their quality and me biting. I'd totally be down if they can get some stuff out that's great quality and original. I mean, that's the only place we're going to see it consistently. EA did a nice job last year pumping out some original games, oddly enough.

I just hope they figure out a way to transfer purchased games between systems/next gen/etc.
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