Make It Big In Games

I don’t really have the time to comment on some of the rants about the Microsoft XNA Game Studio PC and XBox360 games tools initiative, but it cuts so close to home for GarageGames that I have to. Certain perspectives are so skewed and wrong that the only conclusion that I can come to is that they are either trying to get a little more famous for having another rant or they are truly threatened by opening up game development to indies, hobbyists, casual developers, or anybody that would like to experience creating a game for a console.

In spite of the rants, the combination of a managed code development environment that is free on the PC and $100 per year to access the XB360 is revolutionary. Add in the low cost of Torque X, a full C# game engine, and anybody that mows lawns or gets an allowance will be able buy one and make games for a next generation console. Having a unified development platform on managed code will allow many more people to learn game development methodologies. It is a nice step toward making game development easier. Personally, I am not threatened by having many more people making games. I welcome it and look forward to seeing the kind of vibrant and creative community we see from Flash developers.

People want to make games for consoles. It is a unified hardware platform, it is cheap, and their friends have one. Hobbyists will do it just for fun, educators will use it to teach game making, and even experienced developers will flock to this system just for prototyping. Any time in past history, prototyping your game on a console was “unobtanium”. Even if you could get approved, the cost of a development kit was out of range, so only large publishers could get access.

Imagine this scenario. An Indie developer, “Trying Really Hard“, spends two years of their life energy, using all of their spare time making a game, call it “My First Indie Game“, for lack of a better name. They sign it up for on-line distribution, and it quickly goes to the top of the charts. Not being a game that is appropriate for the casual portals, a hit game on the appropriate channels may sell 200 units a month (OK, I’m being generous). Some quick math. $20 retail – credit card fees – download fees = $19 (again, being generous). 50% of $19 is $9.50 * 200 units = $1,900 per month is the cut that TRH gets.

Even though TRH knew it was going to be hard to make a living as an Indie game maker and knew they would have to build a portfolio of products to make a living, this is tough. Hmmm. What to do? They can decide to wait for promises of raising venture capital for portals to build bigger markets, but that might not be in their best interests. Maybe exploring other markets would be appropriate.

So, they decide they would like to leverage their intellectual property and attempt to bring FIRST to the console market. Here is where it gets good, and is the part many people don’t seem to understand. TRH spends no money and downloads XNA Game Studio Express for the PC. Next they decide to spend a small amount for Torque X (GG have not decided how much yet, but it will be inexpensive) to save time rolling their own engine. Now, without even buying the $99 per year Creator Club subscription, TRH is creating a nice demo of their game that accesses shaders, game controller, etc. Development is going extremely quickly because of the managed code environment. Once the game is done, it is good enough they decide to pay up $99 for the Creator’s Club and actually demo the game on an XB360.

The next step is to either present the game directly to Microsoft or to one of the many, many publishers that are actively seeking content for the XBLA download channel (all of these publishers are easily accessible, and even Microsoft is incredibly accessible when it comes to XBLA for the XB360). Because the publisher gets to play the game directly on the XB360, there is little left to the imagination. All of the development risk for the title is gone. The publisher can easily do the ROI calculations, and it makes negotiations for TRH much easier, allowing them to keep ownership of the FIRST intellectual property as well as get a higher royalty rate and advance. At that point, they upgrade their Game Studio Express IDE to the professional version or negotiate with the publisher to loan them a full XB360 development kit or use some of their advances to actually buy their own development tools. In a few short months, they have made more money than they will EVER make on PC download channels. In addition, getting FIRST published on XBLA raised the profile of TRH and gets them offers to make games for the Wii, PS3 downloadable channel, DS, and other newly emerging platforms. How can that be bad???

GarageGames was founded seven years ago on the premise that tools and technology as well as distribution needed to be democratized for Indies to be able to be successful. We have done a great job on the tools side of the equation, but building up huge sales directly to the player has been harder, and we realize it will take a long time. With that in mind, we have advocated for Indies everywhere. We have worked hard to open new channels of distribution, to explore any and all channels and opportunities that we can find. Sometimes these things have seemed a little silly, Phantom anyone?, sometimes they are middle of the road (coin op), sometimes they are absolute hits. Helping pioneer channels such as XBLA on the original XBox or be first in line to get good products and technologies on XBLA for XB360, is good… no make that great, for Indies!

To wrap this up, I would ask people to really do their homework before coming to a conclusion on Microsoft’s XNA intitiative. Look at people that have a track record of shipping a lot of games and starting successful companies instead of ranting voices in the wilderness that make no sense.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker ::: Make It Big In Games ::: GarageGames

A mere 16 days ago I was waxing poetic about the opportunities for Indie game developers in the XBox360 Live Arcade download space. Community response to that article has been huge to say the least, with coverage from A-list blogs such as Major Nelson, and XBox Circle. For a while my traffic to MBG was about 25% of what GarageGames normally gets, which is huge for a new blog. While I do believe that this is still a huge opportunity for Indies, I don’t think many people read my statement about how hard this will be. To reiterate:

On the flip side, the competition for this channel will go up in a hurry. All of the major game publishers are starting up games for XBLA. A year from now, there will be well over 100 games vying for player’s attention.

Well, that was a prophetic statement, and the success of the channel is catching the eye of everybody, from the major publishers, to the major developers, to ex-publisher employees, to experienced Indies, to wanna-be Indies. They are all self-funding. All they want are development kits, and pre-approved slots. In other words, hundreds of titles will be vying for limited “shelf space.” Even though this is a download environment, there are only so many titles that can fit into the system the way the UI is designed in the XBLA “store”. Even if there was unlimited shelf space, there are a finite number of downloadable demos that a gamer can digest.

If everybody jumps in the pool at once, all of the water will splash out! But, since it looks like the stampede has begun, what can you do to get in on the gold rush?

First of all, be realistic. If you have never created a game, or have only created a small Flash game, or maybe a cell phone game, you are going to be out of your league. Sorry to say this, but you just won’t have the chops yet. This is the pros, guys. As an example, I’m watching the Winter Olympics as I write this blog. If you just started skating last year, you do not stand a chance of getting on center stage ice any time soon. You might be talented, naturally gifted, and have an incredible amount of promise, but you will need a HUGE amount of practice, coaching, investment, and sacrifice before you even have the ability to get a chance at the qualifiers. This is no different. Making games is HARD work, and the more you do it, the better you get.

If you do have talent and experience, then you probably don’t need much advice from me, but I’ll give it to you anyway. Depending upon your past track record, you are going to need to need to have something special to even get a development kit and approval slot. There is a huge amount of talent coming at this channel. Everybody wants to get back to “pure” games, and have fun again. They can see a place where the best selling games don’t have huge licenses, and all of the attendant BS that is going on in the box channel right now. Unfortunately, most of this same BS will come to this channel soon.

For instance, I can imagine publishers easily making the choice to use XBLA as a loss leader in order to establish a presence and branding now before the channel becomes over developed. Or I could imagine them using the channel as what my partner Jay Moore would call “self liquidating marketing”, i.e. overspend on a product that could just break even in order to support and market a box channel game. My own speculation is that development budgets for XBLA games are already eclipsing $300,000, and will very quickly climb to over $1,000,000. While this is a huge amount for Indie companies self funding their games, it is coffee money for the big publishers compared to the amount they spend for development and marketing of even a C-level box title.

This is probably a huge let down to many of you reading this article, but I don’t think you should let it bother you. Just make your games. Nobody is holding you back from making and releasing games on the PC and Mac, and there is a proven market there. You need to get better… a lot better. Practice your craft and make fun, innovative games. Don’t keep waiting around for the next big “bling” feature until you make your game. If you can’t make a fun game now, waiting for the uber physics engine or HDR rendering is not going to help you tomorrow (this is fodder for an entire article).

If you are experienced, then you already know that ideas are worthless and demos or nearly completed products are everything. Carrying your million dollar idea around in your head will get you nowhere. The only way you are going to get mind share is to have something to show Microsoft or a third party publisher in order to get your slot and development kits.

Get a game engine. Get a hot PC with a hot video card. Attach XB360 controllers. Make your game. Watch people play it. Make it better. Watch them play more. Make it better again. Don’t let the competition get you down. If it is a fun, innovative game, it will sell. It will rise above the competition, and it will make it to any channel you want. In fact, I can tell you that if you make a great game, there will be bidding wars to sign your game and your company.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker … Make It Big In Games … GarageGames