N+ Devs Get a D- in Logic 101
March 27th, 2008 Adam "TheBooya" Boyes
I was reading the recent blog post from the N+ developers Metanet regarding how on XBLA ‘Now there’s like a hundred games, and they’re all $&*%.’ and it got me a bit pissed. No, not because they hate Rocketmen (others do too), but more because I think they’re wrong - not about their opinion, but more about their solution.
From independent music to independent movies to independent games, the same theme runs through them all – Only a very small percentage of them are any good. Most of them (to use the Metanet dev team’s phrase) “are utter $&*%.” The Metanet guys even mentioned in their interview that when you go to GameHippo, only one out of every thousand games is good. So their solution to the ‘problem’ of XBLA is to open up and allow thousands of $&*%%y games to be put on XBLA without any oversight from anyone? Huh? How does that solve anything?
I think that’s the last thing we need – for every Tom, Dick and Doofus to be able to put half-cooked games out into the market and mustard gas-out the good stuff. There ARE great games on XBLA - You just have to do a little research before buying them – kind of like the research you do before you do ANY purchase. They can rely on Metanet’s shotgun review system, check out Gamerankings or Metacritic, or they can fire them up FOR FREE and make up their own mind. Far better than anything you can do in retail stores…
The beauty of XBox Live Arcade is that I can handy-dandily set my box to auto-download all of the games, try each for about 3-5 minutes, and then press the ‘DELETE’ button and continue on your happy little way. Or, I can cherry pick games that look interesting, and use even LESS of my time just checking those out.
“Yeah, but I tried some demos and they were all garbage!”. Then keep trying them. It’s the freedom of the service – tastes may vary, but there are many games out there for everyone. I love that I have the ability to try to demo, and then buy it if I like it. Or if my wife likes it (hence my Boogie Bunnies purchase). Everyone has that choice, and even the games that are rated poorly still sell okay, because there is a market out there for it.
To say that XBLA is ‘more like retail’ then it was originally planned to be is quite misguided. There’s indefinite shelf space (or else I’m sure Space Giraffe would have been taken down), and that’s the beauty of digital distribution.
I think the fundamental issue is not that most of the games are “utter $&*%,” but that the good games are hard to find. In the retail world, you rely on word of mouth, advertising, and reviews to find out about good games.
How are independent games any different?
Go to Armor Games. Or Addicting Games. Or Newgrounds. Or Kongregate. Or Gamesgames. Or any other random compilation game site.
What’s the first thing they all sort for?
Popularity.
And what is popularity based on? It’s based on 2 things – Reviews and word of mouth.
All of these sites have a ranking system that allows the good stuff to bubble to the top. Yes, people have preferences that may sway them from the good stuff, but where the review system fails, hopefully word of mouth can bridge that gap.
I think that’s the key to why some people are frustrated with XBLA – there is good content up there, but the Yellow Pages system (1942: Joint Strike – sorting FTW, Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 – sorting FTL!) doesn’t lend itself to a proper sorting mechanic that we are used to from Amazon or Youtube (although Youtube’s system is incredibly griefer friendly).
Instead of complaining that XBLA has hundreds of games that are ‘utter $&*%’ and advocating a no-limit release of a billion craptastic games, I think we need to work on lobbying a better system for sorting games. After all, Sony already has sorting for ‘Most Popular’ on PSN…
I saw a great quote from NeoGaf that I want to end with:
“The thing about XBLA is: one man’s crap is another man’s treasure.” - Mr Killemgood
Note from Kramer: this post redacted for less instances of words that you wouldn’t say in front of your mom.
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Rocketmen just happens to be my latest treasure. I didn’t care for N+ haha
Thanks for including my NeoGAF quote on your lovely N+ discussion.
My comment was made because I know (as a Church Youth Pastor) a few of the kids involved, like some pretty strange XBLA game(s). We didn’t have any other games they liked (retail games)….And they found themselves playing…..And enjoying…….Street Trace: NYC. The bane of all Arcade discussions. So every game can be enjoyed if you like “that sort of thing”. Personally, I love Arkadian Warriors, and other Quasi-RPGs, and want to get Rocketmen: AoE for the same reasons.
Even though MetaNet can complain however, and to whomever they want, money talks and bullcrap walks. N+ has sold very, very well and is on the verge of taking the #2 spot away for top-selling 2008 games (away from Metal Slug 3)…So MetaNet’s argument is completely invalid: N+ went up against the slew of bad games and has won, pretty handily (#1 title for 4 weeks straight), proving them wrong.
But as you said, Microsoft can, and needs to do more. I certainly advocate that they advertise more, and build a better UI that takes popularity, sales, and genres into consideration, allowing for easier navigation to find top titles…As it seems that games with simple names (like Pinball FX) tend to do well against odder-named games. Which, to me, means that people aren’t looking at the games themselves, but the names as a gague of what it could be.
Mr Killemgood:
Just curious, where do you get your XBLA sales stats?
You and Randy are both quite addicted to that game.
If you liked Rocketmen, then you will dig this Canadian backwater news interview with the dev team - CHECK IT! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4kvWccv1Is
Adam you meant this one, right? Maybe people really aren’t reading below the top story
http://blog.capcom.com/archives/1067
haha Yea, Randy and I have been trying to max out some sweet characters. My current character is my fav.
And yea, I saw that vid lower in the blog, as Seth linked haha
“Instead of complaining that XBLA has hundreds of games that are ‘utter $&*%’ and advocating a no-limit release of a billion craptastic games, I think we need to work on lobbying a better system for sorting games. After all, Sony already has sorting for ‘Most Popular’ on PSN…”
It’s not an either/or situation. What XBLA needs is more games AND a good ranking system. Right now there is a trickle of games, many of them aren’t any good and other games, possible ‘better’ games are not getting on the service because “that niche is full now” or whatever. All of your examples of good sites with sorting mechanisms have TONNES of games, way more than XBLA.
In other words if you are going to long-tail it, you want to pack the tail with as many rolls of the dice as possible, Then you want a great system for sorting and raking and a great way for people to share and recommend games to each other (and have ‘amazon recommends’ style links to other demos after you’ve played one of them.
I’m pretty sure they’re already doing this. It’s called XNA.
For the moment, XNA is really nothing more than a larger scale, more organized, less expensive (for the creator) Yaroze program. It’s great but it doesn’t fix the problem of a user rating for commercial downloadable content. I suspect it’ll happen soon but it can’t get here soon enough (Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo needs more love!).
Adam B wins the Potty Mouth Award for most usage of a single one of the Seven Words You Can Never Write On An ESRB-rated Website.
Maybe I should clarify. I meant that XNA is “allowing every Tom, Dick and Doofus” to put their stuff out on XBL. Have you played those games? They’re like flash games.
Based on this post and thread, I downloaded the N+ demo this weekend. I did not convert to the full version of the game