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Gaming industry 2.0

Fred Oliveira on December 14, 2006

I’ve been reading and thinking about the gaming industry these days. EA Game’s CEO said in an interview (lost the link, I’m sorry!) that current game development costs make it impossible for new companies to get to market. And I wonder whether the gaming industry needs its “2.0″.

Now before you curse me for “attempted use of buzzword”, think about it. Web 2.0 exists because platforms were created that allow for bootstrapping companies and quickly creating web-based services and applications. If the gaming industry had such a movement, anyone could get in and put their ideas into games.

Assassins Creed

XNA - half-assed solution

Coincidentally, a couple of days ago Microsoft launched XNA and the XNA Game Studio Express, which is, and I quote “a new game development solution targeted primarily at students, hobbyists, and independent game developers”.

It allows anyone to create their own games for PC and the 360. But you still have to pay the subscription price ($99/yr or $49/ 4 months), and even then other people won’t be able to play your games without an XNA subscription for themselves.

Gears of War

So Microsoft gives you the cake, but not the knife to cut it. Which is a shame because the potential of anyone creating their own games and generating revenue from them is mind boggling.

User generated games, mashups

We won’t see a “games youtube” listing games created by the community soon, because the only platform you can actually “download and play” on is the PC, and people are moving towards consoles (no wonder, with stuff like the Wii out there).

Now, the ball is in the hands of gaming console makers. Indie developers can’t afford the development systems, or want to pay for services that don’t allow anyone to experience their creations. We need better platforms for game creation, and we need them now.

Most people (like myself), don’t entertain the thought of creating games - despite having ideas - because the necessary monetary investment is hard to come by. Allowing this kind of people to create games (easily and cheaply) is an untapped money source that could benefit console makers, indie developers and everyone who plays games.

Screenshots above from Assassins Creed (coming 2007 from Ubisoft) and Gears of War (from Epic Games, already released)


Comments on this post

Jakob S

Requiring an XNA subscription to be able to play the XNA games reeks of missed opportunity.

I am almost willing to bet that they (MS) would be able to make more money by charging only the developers, making the games available on the Zune store (XBox marketplace?) and grab a percentage of each sale there.

The ability to develop games that could be played on both the XBox, the Zune, Windows, and the web is extremely tempting, and I’d definitely consider an XNA subscription if I knew my friends and whoever didn’t have to pay a subscription as well to play my games.

Duane Brown

I was talking to the a few guys at Microsoft about this XNA. The good games that get developed through XNA will go onto the Marketplace for a price like any XBLA game. This is going to happen down the road, we are only at step one right now. Live Anywhere, which is what Jakod mentions and you do have a great oportunity. We’ll see how it all turns out though.

James C

Duane is right, there’s no way that Microsoft would have developed the XNA Studio if the only revenue was going to be from XNA subscriptions.

At this point the path to distribution is unclear, but at this point there aren’t any serious games made. Once the games are created, they will be certified and put on the Marketplace, just like any other XBLA game.

Jakob, they’re never going to allow for someone to just make a game and then share it with their friends freely. You have to keep in mind that Microsoft need to protect themselves from illegal activity. While you may have no ill intentions, there are many people out there who would use XNA to distribute cheap knock-off games, or otherwise infringe on copy-writes. The subscription serves as a barricade between those who want to develop games, and the majority of gamers who won’t pay $100/yr for something like that. Microsoft also want to make a profit here, so there’s going to need to be money exchanged, which also means that Microsoft will need to endorse each and every game distributed from the XNA suite. They can’t just open up the floodgates and let everyone in.

XNA is a very interesting development from Microsoft, and it’s one that has huge potential. Not only do they already have an established distribution method, they have proven that the XBLA can create hit games (Geometry Wars, Uno, etc.). I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the larger games companies moving a small team over to focus on making XNA/XBLA games, as well.

Jakob S

James: While I would appreciate an extremely low barrier of entry, I’m fine with the subscription fee for developers. The subscription fee for players is what I’m objecting to.

It just seems kinda odd that I cannot develop a XNA game and have my friends and family play it without requiring them to get an XNA subscription themselves.

I doubt I’ll ever see any part of the subscription fees my friends and family has to pay to play my game. I wonder how much money will be flowing into my pockets for those of my games that Microsoft put onto the XBLA?

Licensing, price, and distribution should be choices made by the developer, not the tool vendor. With Microsofts other offerings, the XNA has a lot of potential. Here’s hoping MS figure out how to unleash that potential. We’ll have to wait and see, I guess.

Weekly Linkage XL [12-15-06] at Experience Planner by Scott Weisbrod

[...] Gaming Industry 2.0 [Webreakstuff] [...]

Jeff Clavier

UGG (User Generated Gaming) is currently taking place at the content level, where gamers are creating artefacts, characters and new levels. When a set of APIs is available, like in World Of Warcraft, it is also possible to create in-game extensions (like new elements of UI) and off-game interfaces.
The phenoma still relies on the availability of very high level abstractions, and it is not clear to me when we’ll see games engines being developed by users. But we were saying that about operating systems not that long ago, weren’t we :-).
The PC still seems the first platform where this will happen, as developing on consoles or phones in an extensible way is a different ballgame.
Just starting to dabble into the whole gaming thing as well.

Ryan Nichols

Your forgetting about casual flash games. The amount of casual games and the volume at which they’re played is staggering. It’s a very alive community and is the breeding ground for many up and coming game developers and small game studios. It’s arguable whether Flash is considered cheap or cheap enough, but it is easily accessible. While it may not be a cheap solution to AAA titles, it is a simple way to start, get noticed, and get hired to make the big titles.

CyanCode » Blog Archive » Code Links (12.17.2006)

[...] XNA: GrammerJack: How to Write XNA Game Studio Express Games with F# - Part 1 (XNA F#) Farseer Physics Engine — 2D Physics For XNA (XNA x360 ) Good Read - Webreakstuff » Gaming industry 2.0 (XNA) AJAX/ASP.NET AJAX: ScottGu’s Blog : Gotcha: Don’t use < xhtmlConformance mode=”Legacy”/ > with ASP.NET AJAX (ASP.NET Ajax visualstudio2005) Beauty in Design - Free Series! - MooTools for the Rest of Us (mootools web2.0 webdev tutorial video ) Jack Slocum’s Blog » Creating a reusable Ajax driven dialog - a working example (Ajax code javascript ) General .Net (C#/ASP.NET): .NET slave - Get the HTTP status code from a URL (.net-2.0 asp.net) BCLTeam’s WebLog : Introducing Pipes [Justin Van Patten] (VS2007 orcas pipes) Misc: PietschSoft.VE - ASP.NET Virtual Earth Map Control (asp.net VirtualEarth) Public Sector Developer Weblog : Can you add Virtual Earth to your ASP.NET 2.0 applications without writing JavaScript? (code atlas VirtualEarth asp.net) Bullet Madness - free bullets project at Stylegala (image icons webdev webdesign) Greg’s Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: USZip Web Service by WebServiceX.Net (webservices code) [...]

Eric B

You can distribute your PC XNA games as much as you want. The restrictions and subscription requirements only comes into play when you’re publishing them on the Xbox 360 via XBL.

Jeren testiblogi » Blog Archive » links for 2006-12-30

[...] Webreakstuff » Gaming industry 2.0 Webreakstuff writes on how gaming industry needs needs to be democratized (tags: 2.0 games) [...]

Jakob S

Eric, thanks for clearing that up. That makes a lot more sense and makes XNA great news. Time to download the framework etc, I guess.

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