   Should Xbox Live's Indie game submissions be *not* free?
  Hi guys,I know this is nothing new, but every single day I am still amazed at the absolute crap that ends up on Xbox Live's Indie Games.Every day, there are about 5 to 10 new titles (my finger hurts typing that word), most of which are complete crap without the slightest polishing effort. I can't figure out what people releasing these games are really hoping.- Building up a port folio to get hired? Not quite (more likely to not get hired showcasing that kind of very low quality)- Making money? Who's paying to play Atomic Fart 2? Not even 80 MS Points ($1.25), especially when the web is already overcrowded with flash games you can play for free.- Personal experience? Maybe. The problem here is that people want to get some experience with console development, which is fine and a good thing. So they pay the 100$, and then they're free to push all their "games" to xbox live.I think the problem is here. Once you've paid the one year subscription, nothing prevents you from spamming the network with 4 games a month. There's almost no incentive for people to polish their games, which is a real shame.Another problem is the amount of released titles could prevent the real good ones to stand out. The rating system kind of compensates for this issue, but it is still present. Every day, I download 2 or 3 indie game demos because the concept of the game looks fun, and the game could really be fun. But until now I have always been disappointed (except once with Miner Dig Deep) by the lack of polishing and effort put into the last stages of development.In addition, the recently introduced 80 MS points price tag almost encourages that low quality content. "it's crap but hey, it's cheap"Take rad river run for example. "Wow, that looks cool" was my first reaction seeing the screenshots, so I downloaded the demo. And guess what? It played like crap. Collision response totally lacks realism, the fremrate plummets more often than not and worst worst worst of all, the controls are complete crap. (I could have put up with the other issues, really)The saddest thing is that spending a month polishing out these weaknesses could turn this game into a decent title! So why did the developer not polish it? That's beyond my understanding. I'm not saying that everyone should hire an artist or a sound designer for their game. I'm not complaining about the visual quality, but on everything else that a programmer should be able to fix (>>> controls!!!)Which brings me to my final point. I'd really like that getting the software to develop on xbox 360 were free (it's now $100/year) but that submitting a game were like $100-$500 or something. In other words, that no ones submit a games when they don't expect it could sell even a single copy. That way we'd stop seing 3 new massage games a week, no more atmomic fart games, and even no more software that aren't even games (A calculator? A bank of optic illusions images? seriously?!) etc. etc.What is your opinion?Edit: btw what's the contrary of free? (so I make a better post title)[Edited by - janta on September 29, 2009 1:26:43 PM]
  I guess I haven't tried looking at things on XBLIG yet, but you do mention that users are able to rate content.  Does this include people who only download the demo?  Is there a way to view the best rated or featured games?  If you can answer yes to both these questions then I don't see it being a problem.From what I've seen it's easy to finish the first 90% of a game.  It's the second 90% that is the killer.  I know when working on my own personal projects I eventually get sick of things and just want to 'get it out the door' so I can get working on something else.I think that limiting the number of submissions wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing (say, to one every few months), but it really does come down to users being able to rate content, as well as be able to find good content.   ;  Yes as I said, you can rate content, but that doesn't solve the problem for 2 reasons IMHO:- The "top rated" category only displays a handful of games, and the ones that have been here for a long time obviously get more visibility- For your games to get rated, people have to notice it first, which is pretty difficult when there are 5-10 new games every day, (mostly unfinished/unpolished, which doesn't encourage people to check back regularly) and you have zero advertisement budget.I think this goes agains the philosophy of idie games imho, which does not mean crappy games, bud low budget games (low budget doesn't imply low quality, it implies low budget, i.e. you do everything yourself or with a small team, and what you can do should be at least reasonably well done or polished);  I agree with putting a price on submissions.  Professional studios have to pay for Microsoft's certification and QA process, don't they?  (They maybe don't, it's just what I've heard anyway)Yes.  Some of the XBLIG "games" are absolutely abominable and the quality control is definitely lacking, if not on the same scale as the Apple App Store however.  Talk about a diamond in a sea of turds, the games are mostly awful and I wouldn't hire anyone for my hypothetical games studio based on their work which has appeared on XBLIG because it's just pathetic rubbish that anyone can hack together in about a week.  Broken tech demos, with horrendous gameplay and no game mechanics whatsoever are not games.  That stupid fireplace app should have been pulled; it's not a game and is taking the piss, and I definitely feel the entry and review requirements need to be severely ramped up because, so far, I see XBLIG as not even a joke because a joke, by definition, is funny.One thing I feel must change if it hasn't already: Why should I have to pay just to run my own code on my own 360 without releasing it to anyone else?.  Fuck off.  I've already paid a pretty penny for my 360 and I have Dreamspark Visual Studio so that's some money saved, but have to pay to test my own games?  The fire is over there, feel free to go and die in it.   ;Quote:Original post by jantaEvery day, I download 2 or 3 indie game demosIMHO this is the biggest problem.  Part of the price of being an early adopter is that you have to deal with lots of low quality stuff.  If you'd wait for the rating system to do it's thing then you wouldn't see as much of it.  There's also the 90% of eveything is crap principle.  This is still true even if you raise the bar.  Something might be ok now only in comparison to the truely horrendous stuff, but with a higher bar it would itself be horrendous.Unless the $500 is purely a "serious (and non-poor) peeps only" fee and MS does no quality testing whatsoever I don't see them wanting to do it.  That probably wouldn't even cover one pass of minimal testing on thier end.   ;Quote:Original post by ukdeveloperWhy should I have to pay just to run my own code on my own 360 without releasing it to anyone else?Yeah, that'd be nice but Microsoft probably has costs to cover, and by doing things this way they might be bringing in a bit more cash than if they only charge when the game actually hits XBLIG.  That, and I think it encourages people to put their creations up for others to see/download/buy (again, perhaps helping more to cover the cost of the whole XNA Framework development and changes to Xbox Live to incorporate XBLIG).   ;Quote:Original post by Anon MikeUnless the $500 is purely a "serious (and non-poor) peeps only" fee and MS does no quality testing whatsoever I don't see them wanting to do it.  That probably wouldn't even cover one pass of minimal testing on thier end.The fee I was talking about wasn't meant to cover some testing or quality control on MS's end. The approval process would remain the same (ie MS is not involved). It would simply discourage people from submitting games that have very little chance to sell a single copy (and that's the case for MANY titles currently on XBLI. Try it yourself in case you haven't already), which should be somehow correlated to quality.People who don't bother about the quality of their game and about making money (which I understand, which is fine, which I'm not bitching about, etc.) can still release their game on PC. Today most people release their games to the xbox not because it might sell, just because they can and it costs them nothing more. A PC and internet is perfect for that purpose, I just wish Xbox Live keeps a certain quality standard, even for indie games. (a couple hundred bucks, a xbox and a PC is pretty cheap when compared to the cost of a devit + real titles subscription fees. That's what Indie means. Not poor quality)   ;Quote:Original post by ukdeveloperOne thing I feel must change if it hasn't already: Why should I have to pay just to run my own code on my own 360 without releasing it to anyone else?.  Because they have to pay the coders some how. They give you all the tools for free. Good grief, you're going to whine about a hundred bucks when you're getting tools that let you build games for the 360, PC, and Zune using 95% of the same code?!? Feel free to go run your own code on the Wii or PS3 and let us know how that works out! [rolleyes]Hopefully the new peer review rules will help to keep some of the crap off the service.   ;Quote:Original post by MachairaBecause they have to pay the coders some how. They give you all the tools for free. Good grief, you're going to whine about a hundred bucks when you're getting tools that let you build games for the 360, PC, and Zune using 95% of the same code?!? Feel free to go run your own code on the Wii or PS3 and let us know how that works out! [rolleyes]I was about to post the same thing but you beat me to it. I think what Microsoft is doing is freaking awesome and I don't care about the small fee attached to it. There's no other way for me to mess around on any console unless I feel like modding them, which I don't.   ;Quote:Original post by ukdeveloperOne thing I feel must change if it hasn't already: Why should I have to pay just to run my own code on my own 360 without releasing it to anyone else?.  Fuck off.  I've already paid a pretty penny for my 360 and I have Dreamspark Visual Studio so that's some money saved, but have to pay to test my own games?  The fire is over there, feel free to go and die in it.I haven't been there in awhile, but last time I was, you could get a year trial of the XNA Creators Club from Dreamspark for free.  This allowed you to push to your Xbox to test.  If you wanted to submit a game you needed a full account but I've been using XNA with my Xbox for almost a year and haven't sent them a penny for it (except for XBL).