[IGDA_indies] Fwd: Interview: XBLA, Steam, etc…

[Sheri Rubin]

      Sent to you by Sheri via Google Reader:


    Interview: XBLA, Steam, etc…
    <http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/GameTycoon/%7E3/nXAOaSvIgNc/>

via Game Tycoon <http://www.edery.org> by David J Edery on 9/13/11

Paul Hyman recently interviewed several folks, including myself, for a 
Gamasutra article article on digital distribution that can be found here 
<http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6484/the_changing_indie_landscape_.php>. 
I thought you might be interested in the full transcript of our 
interview. Here it is:

*(1) What are your current thoughts on Xbox Live Arcade and how it has 
evolved as a platform for developers? What about your thoughts on how it 
should evolve? Please be very specific.*

What’s interesting about Xbox LIVE Arcade is that, other than from a 
content perspective, it doesn’t seem to have evolved very much over the 
past several years. What I mean by that is the *games* have changed, but 
the platform itself has changed very little by comparison.

XBLA started out as a place for “bite-sized” and retro games; the kinds 
of titles that would typically have a $250k development budget. Today 
some developers are spending $2m+ on their XBLA games and Microsoft has 
very clearly sent the signal to the market that it is looking for 
“bigger, better” titles. So that’s a pretty big shift.

But then you look at the platform and you have to ask, what has 
Microsoft done to keep pace with and support these bigger, more 
ambitious titles that it’s been asking developers for? It’s not much 
easier for a player to *find* XBLA games on the Xbox than it was when 
the 360 first launched (many would argue that it’s actually harder now.) 
To my knowledge, the platform still doesn’t support some basic 
merchandising techniques, like product bundling for example. LIVE 
Avatars were widely panned by hardcore game developers when they were 
first announced, but at least they were *something* new that developers 
could work with; then Microsoft basically forgot about them for a few 
years. The platform has become progressively more competitive for 
developers, yet its evolution — especially from a retailing perspective 
— has essentially been stalled for years. Not a great recipe for 
success, and one that I know frustrates a lot of very smart and 
passionate folks who work at Microsoft.

*(2) With other platforms such as Steam and iOS having much lower 
barriers to entry, does Xbox Live Arcade have too high a barrier in an 
increasingly competitive market for talented indie developers?*

XBLA’s 1st party group has had a high barrier to entry for years now. 
And back when a slot on the platform was considered a “golden ticket”, 
it didn’t matter. You were practically guaranteed to turn a profit if 
you released a decent game on the platform. If that was still the case — 
if the platform were even *remotely* as reliably profitable for 
developers as it once was — the fact that its 1st party group has a high 
barrier to entry simply wouldn’t matter. For that matter, if the 
platform was still reliably converting at least a small number of indies 
into overnight (and very wealthy) sensations, that might still be enough 
to inspire developers to hurl themselves at the gates. But the problem 
today is that we’re not hearing those boom stories anymore. Maybe 
they’re still happening, and they just aren’t getting talked about. I 
don’t know. But it’s bad for Microsoft. They need those inspirational 
stories to be told loudly and told often. Otherwise, there’s just no 
reason for a developer to put up with the uncertainty and the hassle 
commonly associated with the platform.

*(3) What digital marketplaces are currently the most promising … and 
the least promising … and why? Please be very specific.*

My business partner Danc and I have been saying for years that the most 
promising digital platform is very simply the open Web. There are 
hundreds of web-based gaming portals hungry for good content, ranging 
from relatively small sites to bigger players like Armor Games, 
Kongregate, Chrome Web Store, etc. That market is in many ways the best 
of all worlds; fragmented enough to prevent any given player from 
exerting undo control over developers, and yet unified by common 
technologies and conventions (i.e. Flash, and soon HTML5) that make it 
very easy to work across portals. This isn’t a theory: we’ve gotten 
games like Steambirds, Bunni and Realm of the Mad God in front of huge 
populations of players while spending zero dollars on any sort of 
tranditional marketing or advertising.

Unfortunately, some web-based portals (particularly some of the largest 
ones) seem to be stuck in the stone ages. They haven’t embraced f2p 
monetization systems yet. They still treat developers like unimportant 
distributors of disposable content. Those portals will change or die. 
The market is rapidly passing them by.

I’m also very excited about Steam, not only because its a well-built and 
well-managed platform, but because Valve has consistently exhibited 
developer-friendly tendencies. No surprise, given that in many ways 
Valve is still first and foremost an independent developer themselves! 
What Valve’s competitors may perceive as a quaint or even foolish 
respect for indies is in fact one of Valve’s greatest strengths, and one 
that I hope they maintain for many years to come.

I don’t know which platform I’d call the “least promising.” But for 
whatever its worth, Spry Fox has seven games currently in development; 
five are web-based f2p games, and two are mobile f2p games. No console 
games, and no games of any kind that require an up-front payment. That 
tells you what we think is worth focusing on.

*(4) Since the question we want our story to answer for our developer 
audience is “what platform should you go to and what should you be aware 
of,” please tell me what developers should be looking for in a platform 
… and which platforms have those elements. What are your recommendations?*

Whenever someone asks me a question like this, I tend to react very 
cautiously. The problem is that the game platform landscape tends to 
evolve radically over short periods of time. What you should be “looking 
for” today is not necessarily what you should be “looking for” tomorrow. 
The best advice I can give a developer is not “focus on the platform 
doing X, Y or Z” but instead “don’t become wedded to any single 
platform!” The former can get you in trouble.

That said, there are a small number of things worth keeping in mind 
about platforms. It’s always worth understanding their lifecycle 
patterns (for the sake of brevity, I’ll simply reference my old 
Gamasutra article on the subject.) And its obviously better to be 
focused on a developer-friendly platform. The challenge there is that 
platforms can (and often do) quickly evolve from developer-friendly to 
unfriendly the moment they achieve any sort of superior position in the 
market. Companies with a developer-friendly culture are less likely to 
cross over to the dark side, but it still happens.

Additionally (and obviously, given my previous statements) I’m 
personally focusing on platforms that have embraced f2p games or are on 
the verge of doing so. F2P is poised to become the dominant business 
model in our industry and I have little interest in mucking about with 
platforms that aren’t prepared to support that. Learning how to make 
good F2P games is hard, and I’d rather not waste time putting effort 
into old business models that are rapidly decreasing in relevance.

*(5) In your opinion, to be successful, should developers be creating 
the kind of games they want to create … or develop to suit the 
marketplace they’re targeting?*

There is no correct answer to that question. Different developers have 
different goals. Someone who is primarily interested in games for their 
artistic and expressive qualities may have little interest in profiting 
from their work, and that’s wonderful. The world needs artists who are 
willing to make profit a secondary (or non-existent) motive for 
themselves. That said, if you’re not independently wealthy, not 
supported by grants or academic institutions, and depend on your games 
for your livelihood, then yes, its probably a good idea to pay attention 
to the demands of the marketplace that you are targeting. To be clear, 
that doesn’t mean “copy whatever seems to be working.” That simply puts 
you in the same boat as thousands of other developers and increases the 
likelihood that your games will go unnoticed, unless they happen to have 
a massive marketing budget behind them…

*(6) Has Steam become the platform of choice for developers? What sort 
of lifespan is it going through? And could it soon become too choked to 
compete?*

Steam is an increasingly popular platform, especially for indies who 
want to make polished hardcore games but who are frustrated with the 
constraints and hassles associated with consoles. It has many great 
things going for it. But as long as Steam is a platform that serves 
millions (or even tens of millions) of people, it is likely to be very 
hit-driven. You rarely tend to see a huge number of niche successes 
outside of super-massive open platforms like the Web. This isn’t a knock 
against Steam or Valve by any means: I suspect they’ll manage their 
continuing growth better than many other companies have. And hopefully 
they will continue to invest significant effort into promoting niche 
content and building platform tools that help players find that content 
as easily as possible (something the console manufacturers have utterly 
failed to do, by the way.) If so, there’s a good chance they will remain 
a favorite of independent developers for a long time to come!

*(7) Anything else you’d like to add (especially in the way of advice 
for developers trying to decide which platform to target)?*

I really want to emphasize this one more time: don’t put all your eggs 
in one basket. There is no holy grail of platforms. No perfect portal 
that will meet all your needs for years to come. Life just isn’t that easy.


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-- 
*Sheri Rubin*
Founder and CEO

*Design Direct Deliver*
Website: http://www.designdirectdeliver.com
Email: sheri at designdirectdeliver.com <mailto:sheri at designdirectdeliver.com>
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