Kind of didn't answer though... will games become unplayable?
Xbox LIVE Indie Games - MAY 2012 (MAYbe tell your friends to play these games?)
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Kind of didn't answer though... will games become unplayable?
Now I'm no master network coder but this page suggests that you have a universal socket-like class available that you can write any data into. That would invalidate the claim that you can't do server-client architectures on XNA. That whole "I shoot him, he sees me shooting the wall" example points at extremely naive netcode. Server-client architectures don't appear out of thin air, you gotta code them but I don't see anything preventing you from using the XNA-designated host (or even a custom-designated host) as the final authority on the game state. Any non-host would only write input data into the packet stream, the host would take that, apply it to its gamestate and send gamestate updates to the clients via their packet streams.
FunInfusedGames
Member
I'm sure you could find a way to do a client / server like model but you can't really run a true server because of the walled garden that is Xbox Live.
For Quake for instance, you could have a server that did nothing other than run Quake, which people could attach to and play on.
For XBLIG, the best you could do would be to allow some Xbox that signed in to act as a server for other gamers to connect to. You literally can't have just a server.
IMO this is one of the bigger limitations of XBLIG. It's why we can't do true online high scores which sucks for arcade style games like many of those that I have made.
Yes but that's the dedicated server/listen server split while the article talks about the netcode. P2P netcode has its place but action games in which the player entities are like 90% of the game state isn't it.
However even if you use P2P inappropriately that should cause lag, not desyncs since P2P code should make sure to maintain a synchronized game state between all peers. I once stuck an action game on top of a P2P system (Air Raid mod for the Spring RTS engine), the result was lag but no desyncs and there was no cheating possibility either as modifying your local game state would only cause a desync, not propagate those changes to other people's game states.
However even if you use P2P inappropriately that should cause lag, not desyncs since P2P code should make sure to maintain a synchronized game state between all peers. I once stuck an action game on top of a P2P system (Air Raid mod for the Spring RTS engine), the result was lag but no desyncs and there was no cheating possibility either as modifying your local game state would only cause a desync, not propagate those changes to other people's game states.
DaveVoyles
Member
KDR, do you know of any XBLIGs that take advantage of everything you are speaking of?
It is basically making a bunch of money with minimal resources being put on it, so I think they would be crazy to ever shut it down. I can't say anything about several years from now though.
I can totally imagine XBLIG games still being released 2 or 3 years from now, but they will probably get more and more niche and limited because as I said most people will probably forget about it (both consumers and devs...).
Impossible to tell without looking under the hood or inducing error states somehow (high lag or packet loss). I don't play many console games online anyway so I haven't seen many XBLIG online modes in action (IIRC the only ones I played were Abaddon Retribution and ZP2kX).
I wrote an update about The Groov Cosmos and some of the tech I'm making for it...
http://www.funkmasonry.com/home/2012/5/18/funky-friday-ep-iv.html
http://www.funkmasonry.com/home/2012/5/18/funky-friday-ep-iv.html
HadesGigas
Member
Microsoft ditches the 90 day cooldown on price changes:
the_dannobot
Member
I always thought that was how they all worked until James' article. He should've said you can't do "client-dedicated server", because you can totally do client-server network topology. There is even an example project right there on the apphub that explains how to use the host as a server:
http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/network_cs
It's how I did the network code on Opposites and Pajamorama, with good results. I've even had games between Austin Minnesota and UK without noticable drop in performance.
However, the rest of the article is totally spot on: Writing a network-enabled XBLIG game is a huge headache and a waste of time.
Also LOL at being able to change the price of games every 7 days. This means new devs who mistakenly charge more than 80 pts can change it quicker, idunno why anyone would actually want to RAISE the price of their game.
toythatkills
Member
ALL THREE OF THEM.
The best thing about this, to me, is that it'll allow Indie devs to acutally run sales for holidays, special events, 1 year anniversairies, hitting sales targets, etc, etc. Or even a "FIRST WEEK INTRODUCTARY PRICE!" event, to spur some quick impulse buys.
I've liked the idea of early-adopters getting a bit of a reward for their good show of faith on digital games. The digital equivalent of pre-order bonuses. Very similiar to how Steam does game-premiere sales.
Now if only MS would let indie game people insert their games into DOTW themes, too. Like let the "Take Arms" guys toss their games into a COD sales week, or something of the sort...
HadesGigas
Member
In theory you'd be able to release a $3-5 game and have a "limited time sale" that is only a week instead of three months. So more like what you can do anywhere else, but still somewhat limiting.
And If there's any developers of 240msp+ games out there, I'd suggest you sign up for that "Because We May" sale that 2dboy is organizing. I'm sure Steam will be getting most of the attention from it, but it should be decent publicity (and the only Xbox Indie game in it right now is Blocks That Matter).
Yeah, that was the first thing that came to mind. Been able to do "sales" on a frequent basis to experiment with pricing and word of mouth.
Wait that sale started already? I see Blocks that Matter and the site says that it will be discounted from 240 Microsoft Points ($3) but doesn't say to what price; yet their link to the marketplace shows the game at 80 Microsoft Points ($1).
the_dannobot
Member
Yeah, what I meant was it's been pretty conclusively shown that any price point other than 80 points is the kiss of death for sales on XBLIG.
toythatkills
Member
Price isn't really the issue. It's been pretty conclusively shown that 240pts is the best price point because at least four of the top five games in the service's history sold for that much.
Of course, they were all Minecraft clones, so what was really conclusively shown is that if you give people what they want, they'll buy it regardless of price. It just so happens that nobody really much wants anything on XBLIG except ripped off versions of a popular game.
Which is lucky, because it bodes well for my forthcoming RPG, Diablow III.
IT'S NOT A RIP OFF OF DIABLO III. SHUT UP. I HATE THE CREATORS OF DIABLO FOR SOME REASON. IT'S COMPLETELY MY OWN IDEA.
DaveVoyles
Member
Yup, link to the story where MS states you can change the pricing every 7 days. That's good news.
HadesGigas
Member
I think they dropped the price on BtM early because of how everything is "should be live within the next 48 hours" when publishing/altering things on Xbox Live Indie Games.
Or wait, no they actually put it on sale earlier in the month for it's 1 year anniversary.
DaveVoyles
Member
Indie Gamer Chick: wrote a piece on XBLIG pricing the new pricing.
toythatkills
Member
Just after.
DaveVoyles
Member
Yup, she just got in touch with me and let me know that. I'm going to edit my original post.
Nice either way, just bought it. Had it on hold and kinda forgot about it. But the price was too good to just pass on.
Now to have some weird ass residual points...again. 220 Microsoft Points, so will buy 2 more 80-points games and have 60 points for nothing.
EDIT:
Well, got Katana Land and Plugemons.
I don't think that's true at all...any open marketplace works with supply and demand. There is high demand for some games that sell at 240. Sometimes the demand needs to be generated by whacking people over the head and letting them know the games exist:
Solar 2 and Flight Adventure 2 sold very well when they actually had some dash advertising (400 pts and 240 pts respectively).
My personal theory is that giving devs the freedom to set their games to a Free pricepoint would literally bring people out of the woodworks like dozens of monsters crawling out of a sewer in Diablo. The only reason some iOS games get word of mouth at all is because they are set to Free and then the iOS thread in GAF (and similar ones on many other forums in the world) goes crazy with mini-viral marketing event and doesn't cost the dev anything more than flipping a switch on and off (and some lost sales, but the idea is that the word of mouth is what matters).
the_dannobot
Member
ok... Yes, if the hand of Microsoft reaches down from the clouds and pulls your game out of the muck, then 240/400 are perfectly valid price points. Also if your game starts with "mine" or ends with "craft" then they are ok too.
Those are edge cases though, everyone else I've talked to has done better at 80pts. There is the "share your sales" thread on the apphub, gamers wont even download the trial for a 240 point game. It's like 70+ pages of "In hindsight, maybe 240 points was too much."
The only thing that the success of the best-selling 240 MSP games proves is that there is a huge demand for Minecraft-alikes. To say that the best sellers, the biggest revenue generating games on XBLIG are 240 MSP is to simply say that games that drew on a pre-existing fanbase for a particular game are the best sellers. It doesn't make much of a case at all about the 240 MSP.
The fact that the "real" Minecraft came out (on XBLA) and completely blasted away all of the XBLIG craft-alikes in a week pretty much shows that despite the million something revenue of the XBLIG games, the platform is still small potatoes. This particular game style just happens to be really popular.
That said, 240 MSP in the long run was better for CSTW. Once we dropped to 80 MSP on its 1 year anniversary, we got a good amount of coverage and at the same time, a dash ad. Revenue was way, way up compared to the previous weeks at 240 MSP.... For a while. After about 2 or 3 weeks, the revenue income from the period set at 240 MSP is actually higher than it is now at 80. Perhaps the coverage and dash ad was the main revenue driver during that initial period.
What that tells me is that a year after its release, the only people looking to buy CSTW are the ones looking for it, and they are willing to pay 240 MSP. Being at 80 MSP isn't going to grab a whole lot of "impulse buyers" like a first week launch at this point. But we're absolutely not going to raise the price or anything, it's 80 MSP to stay.
As a side note, CSTW sold fewer copies than BODVII but generated far more revenue, which is what we anticipated. It's arguable whether or not an 80 MSP launch of CSTW would have done even more so.
The fact that the "real" Minecraft came out (on XBLA) and completely blasted away all of the XBLIG craft-alikes in a week pretty much shows that despite the million something revenue of the XBLIG games, the platform is still small potatoes. This particular game style just happens to be really popular.
That said, 240 MSP in the long run was better for CSTW. Once we dropped to 80 MSP on its 1 year anniversary, we got a good amount of coverage and at the same time, a dash ad. Revenue was way, way up compared to the previous weeks at 240 MSP.... For a while. After about 2 or 3 weeks, the revenue income from the period set at 240 MSP is actually higher than it is now at 80. Perhaps the coverage and dash ad was the main revenue driver during that initial period.
What that tells me is that a year after its release, the only people looking to buy CSTW are the ones looking for it, and they are willing to pay 240 MSP. Being at 80 MSP isn't going to grab a whole lot of "impulse buyers" like a first week launch at this point. But we're absolutely not going to raise the price or anything, it's 80 MSP to stay.
As a side note, CSTW sold fewer copies than BODVII but generated far more revenue, which is what we anticipated. It's arguable whether or not an 80 MSP launch of CSTW would have done even more so.
I think the "ecchi" games like Avalis Dungeon or whatever have also done well at 240, as did Avatar Farm or whatever from Milkstone. The developer of Brand tweeted that they think 240 was a better price for them, maybe it's the same for Escape Goat who knows.
I don't know what it was but in the first year of XBLIG apparently a lot of games did well at 400 and 240 but then after that the marketplace got flooded, gamers got interested in other things and sales kind of tanked from 99% of the games. I am not trying to say 80 pt is not a good price for most games, I'm just trying to say you can't say say with a blanket statement that ALL games have to be 80 pts.
If I had a game that was Dead Pixels level of success I would probably raise the price to 240 and then drop it to 80 once every 5 or 6 months
I don't know what it was but in the first year of XBLIG apparently a lot of games did well at 400 and 240 but then after that the marketplace got flooded, gamers got interested in other things and sales kind of tanked from 99% of the games. I am not trying to say 80 pt is not a good price for most games, I'm just trying to say you can't say say with a blanket statement that ALL games have to be 80 pts.
If I had a game that was Dead Pixels level of success I would probably raise the price to 240 and then drop it to 80 once every 5 or 6 months
Darn...was going through my Download History and seeing Tobe's Vertical Adventure on there even when it can't be downloaded just sucks; such a lovely game. Made me look around to see the actual reasoning, if it was Microsoft related or something...
So looked around, and the reasoning was ...just weird.
The game was removed, by the same creator because of the Steam release; as the Steam version had more content, he didn't wanted people to assume that it was the same game.
Maybe another indie-dev can answer but, in the case updating the game would've been too costly; wouldn't updating the cover or something to imply that is not the same as the Steam version would've been a better move, so that us that paid day one and then had to re-download the game because of the updates made would still be able to play it..or something?
So looked around, and the reasoning was ...just weird.
As for why we had to pull the game from XBLIG when the steam version came out, it was mainly because I didn't want players to buy it, thinking it was gonna be the same as the Steam version they saw on reviews. So now with the Steam version, this is the final version of the game, and where Tobe's Vertical Adventure will stay. I don't see any reason to remove it in the future. Hope that answers your question
The game was removed, by the same creator because of the Steam release; as the Steam version had more content, he didn't wanted people to assume that it was the same game.
Maybe another indie-dev can answer but, in the case updating the game would've been too costly; wouldn't updating the cover or something to imply that is not the same as the Steam version would've been a better move, so that us that paid day one and then had to re-download the game because of the updates made would still be able to play it..or something?
Pretty sure that was one of the XNA 3.1 games that would have required a ton of re-writing to port to XNA 4.0, so essentially the problem is he used old ver of XNA to develop it and it's not necessarily simple to upgrade...
I think even Magicka must use XNA 3.1? I could have sworn I saw that when it was installing
I think even Magicka must use XNA 3.1? I could have sworn I saw that when it was installing
toythatkills
Member
Can you really not download it from your history either? That's awful, normally they allow for that with other stuff.
I'm disappointed that Artoon never came back to XBLIG too. I'd love for more people to play that.
DaveVoyles
Member
I'm fairly certain that it had to do with the 4.0 upgrade as well. It's an older game, so it definitely wasn't done in 4.0.
If you had a game pre-4.0 and went to patch it now, you would have to convert the entire project to 4.0, which is a bit of an undertaking depending on a number of factors, so often developers simply abandoned the game. Keep in mind though, this is imply the case for XBLIG, and not other platforms.
If you had a game pre-4.0 and went to patch it now, you would have to convert the entire project to 4.0, which is a bit of an undertaking depending on a number of factors, so often developers simply abandoned the game. Keep in mind though, this is imply the case for XBLIG, and not other platforms.
toythatkills
Member
Leave Home reduced to 80pts, if anyone still doesn't have it. Essential.
DaveVoyles
Member
Wow, this game looks awesome, and I'm a huge fan of shmups. How did I miss this one??
Bomber Bob
Banned
euro steam have no discount 
FunInfusedGames
Member
Yep, you can't updating anything pre 4.0 without updating the entire game to 4.0. You couldn't even change the box art to display anything else.
They could have added something to the Steam box art, like TVA+ or 1.5 or something like that.
It does seem odd you can't find a way to download games you've already bought though. I thought that was something you could always do. You have to look in your history or something like that though because you obviously won't see them on the Marketplace.
They could have added something to the Steam box art, like TVA+ or 1.5 or something like that.
It does seem odd you can't find a way to download games you've already bought though. I thought that was something you could always do. You have to look in your history or something like that though because you obviously won't see them on the Marketplace.
I'm getting on a (extremely unimpressive 2 week-long) roll with my weekly updates on The Groov Cosmos. This week: music and dialog.
http://www.funkmasonry.com/home/2012/5/25/funky-friday-ep-v.html
http://www.funkmasonry.com/home/2012/5/25/funky-friday-ep-v.html
Darn, that sucks for devs then during the change.
Agree that in that case, the Steam version should've said that it was a different game/had new stuff; more than just removing the game completely.
But yeah, this is what I get when I try to add it to the queue on marketplace.xbox.com.
...
...on the Xbox 360 per se just an error message with Status Code: 800700E8.
And I got the game 2 times: one on release with an older account and again with this recent account; can't download on either account.
Seems the game was competently removed from the servers. Though I don't know if it's a exclusive problem to Indie games (since I can download Arcade stuff that has been delisted like TMNT Re-Shelled); or that in this particular case the game was removed by decision of the developer or something.
Are there any other Indie games that has been removed? In that case can the games be re-downloaded?
FunInfusedGames
Member
There are other Indie games that have been removed for sure. But unless you bought them, you definitely can't download them again. The ones I can think of are ones that shouldn't have gotten through Peer Review in the first place and were removed, never to return.
There was an LOL Cats game that came out just after one of my releases, Abduction Action! I think. I was kinda annoyed that it was seemingly outselling an actual game (it was just funny pictures of cats). But it got pulled because they didn't have license to use any of the cat images.
There was an LOL Cats game that came out just after one of my releases, Abduction Action! I think. I was kinda annoyed that it was seemingly outselling an actual game (it was just funny pictures of cats). But it got pulled because they didn't have license to use any of the cat images.
The Silver Dollar Games Breast Cancer game is gone too, and I can't figure out how to re-download that as well. I did buy it, too.
toythatkills
Member
Artoon is gone, and Penguin Slip-Slide.
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Check out this trailer for Mambow which just came out. For some stupid reason, it's only out in France and the US, as if the 400pt price tag wasn't enough to kill it alone. It does look good, though, I imagine it'd sell pretty well for 400pts on XBLA if it's as playable as it looks.
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Check out this trailer for Mambow which just came out. For some stupid reason, it's only out in France and the US, as if the 400pt price tag wasn't enough to kill it alone. It does look good, though, I imagine it'd sell pretty well for 400pts on XBLA if it's as playable as it looks.
toythatkills
Member
Holy crap, it's impossible to exit the trial of Memory Freak. You select "quit" and it goes to the buy screen. You press back and it goes to the buy screen. How the fuck has this got through peer review? It's just a total mess of stolen sound effects as well. Insane.
Just wanted to come in here to say that I checked out Evil Quest and it's awesome. It's Crystalis meets The Secret of Mana but it reminds me more of the former than the latter in terms of the mechanics. Magic is just overpowered in this game; I've been beefing up my magic power then Vitality more than the other stats. I'm surprised that it has me hooked; a lot of the Indie games that I've played haven't been able to hold my attention past half an hour.
I just don't like that the humor seems a little bit forced, even though I love the subtle references that it makes to other popular games such as the
as well as the plot.
So yeah, Evil Quest is great and it has a lot of value at only 80MSP. I would highly recommend it to RPG enthusiasts (such as myself) and fans of Crystallis and to anyone who has an odd amount of points to spend on a good Indie game.
I just don't like that the humor seems a little bit forced, even though I love the subtle references that it makes to other popular games such as the
old man dying after taking the spell, a reference to the original Legend of Zelda/ LOZ: ALTTP
So yeah, Evil Quest is great and it has a lot of value at only 80MSP. I would highly recommend it to RPG enthusiasts (such as myself) and fans of Crystallis and to anyone who has an odd amount of points to spend on a good Indie game.
DaveVoyles
Member
I played it for one of my games for the week, but I'm not sure of how I exited the game. It may have been my last game for the week, so I probably just turned off the console.
But yes, something with that issue shouldn't pass PR.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Artoon was one of the launch titles, wasn't it?
the_dannobot
Member
It's specifically mentioned that reviewers can't fail a game for that reason. You can always hit the xbox button on the controller and Y for "return to dashboard".
It's on the "not so evil checklist"
http://create.msdn.com/en-US/resources/help/peer_review_not_so_evil_checklist
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