That can be said for every kind of product in existence.
Last edited by a moderator:
- Status
That can be said for every kind of product in existence.
Rantanplan
Newcomer
I dislike the term "Indy Dev". What does that mean?
It is only a business-decision with no relevance to the generated product.
You have to categorize these to talk about them
1. A goup of developers having the potential for an AAA-Product (see Planetside 2)
2. A group of enthusiast with programming-experience but no to little game-programming experience
3. A single person with an idea for a new game without any programming experience
Product generation
You, as a platform holder, cannot support all these categories with a one and only policy, so you generate a wide variaty of assistance-tools:
- Give category 3 a Development-kit, c++ , a set of libraries and a "new Project" consisting of a single Main-Method: No chance for him. So you give him a tool like Spark to make his first steps and motivate him by giving quick, enjoyable results.
- For category 2 Spark is too small. They now how to program but need assistence with game-specific tasks. So give them something like Unity.
- For category 1 no assistence (but perherps initial platform-holder-introduction) is needed. The can stand their own.
Only a very small group of Indies really need or can use a fully expanded devkit. During the Build-Conference MS said you can start your own product, just use your Windows with a Visual-Studio. In my opinion this is the only valid way. During development-time you will test your generated code, assets etc on your development-machine or a VM (not the dev-kit).
It is only a business-decision with no relevance to the generated product.
You have to categorize these to talk about them
1. A goup of developers having the potential for an AAA-Product (see Planetside 2)
2. A group of enthusiast with programming-experience but no to little game-programming experience
3. A single person with an idea for a new game without any programming experience
Product generation
You, as a platform holder, cannot support all these categories with a one and only policy, so you generate a wide variaty of assistance-tools:
- Give category 3 a Development-kit, c++ , a set of libraries and a "new Project" consisting of a single Main-Method: No chance for him. So you give him a tool like Spark to make his first steps and motivate him by giving quick, enjoyable results.
- For category 2 Spark is too small. They now how to program but need assistence with game-specific tasks. So give them something like Unity.
- For category 1 no assistence (but perherps initial platform-holder-introduction) is needed. The can stand their own.
Only a very small group of Indies really need or can use a fully expanded devkit. During the Build-Conference MS said you can start your own product, just use your Windows with a Visual-Studio. In my opinion this is the only valid way. During development-time you will test your generated code, assets etc on your development-machine or a VM (not the dev-kit).
An Indie dev is a person or persons that is making a game without the assistance of a publisher or industry financing.
There is honestly no reason to cater to a person that doesn't have any programming experience. Those people just have to learn on their own. They can get access to the SDK, whether that's $100 a year or free, and learn to use it on their own. You don't see Apple and Google offering special development kits for people that don't know how to program at all.
Studios that pay for the full-on dev kit pay a lot more money to get a lot more support and probably much better software tools. If you can compile your code right away and run it on a store-bought Xbox One, then there's really no reason to bother running the code in a VM on your PC. The SDK will most likely allow you to pick your Xbox as a target and push the new code to the Xbox when it's finished compiling.
There is honestly no reason to cater to a person that doesn't have any programming experience. Those people just have to learn on their own. They can get access to the SDK, whether that's $100 a year or free, and learn to use it on their own. You don't see Apple and Google offering special development kits for people that don't know how to program at all.
Studios that pay for the full-on dev kit pay a lot more money to get a lot more support and probably much better software tools. If you can compile your code right away and run it on a store-bought Xbox One, then there's really no reason to bother running the code in a VM on your PC. The SDK will most likely allow you to pick your Xbox as a target and push the new code to the Xbox when it's finished compiling.
Rantanplan
Newcomer
Your post adresses 2 different topics:
1. The indy-scene, as it is currently talked about, includes ALL the categories I posted above.
Just look at other forums, there are the "Professional Indies"-poeople and the "I want to make Zombiefart 2.0. What are the costs of a Dev-Kit"-people. And all are adressed as Indies. And both do not want to end in a "indie-Ghetto". Ok I can understand that.
At the moment there are tools and (soon) policies for my categories 2 and 3 (last post). The top-dogs are not currently adressed.
But everyone says "Indies are not supported". That is in this context false!
2. The debug-console
The console is not available till november. So MS said: start with your project on windows. Create yout first prototype there, create assets etc. and later a conversion to our platform ist easy.
I am a programmer, but I have absolutely no knowledge in game-development or the processes needed to build a game. During my programming I use my local machine (or a VM) to create and test my routines, later I promote them to a test-environment and again later to production.
Perherps you can help me:
In the last generation (PS3 360) was it so that EVERY person involved in the gamecreation had his own dedicated dev-kit-hardware?
1. The indy-scene, as it is currently talked about, includes ALL the categories I posted above.
Just look at other forums, there are the "Professional Indies"-poeople and the "I want to make Zombiefart 2.0. What are the costs of a Dev-Kit"-people. And all are adressed as Indies. And both do not want to end in a "indie-Ghetto". Ok I can understand that.
At the moment there are tools and (soon) policies for my categories 2 and 3 (last post). The top-dogs are not currently adressed.
But everyone says "Indies are not supported". That is in this context false!
2. The debug-console
The console is not available till november. So MS said: start with your project on windows. Create yout first prototype there, create assets etc. and later a conversion to our platform ist easy.
I am a programmer, but I have absolutely no knowledge in game-development or the processes needed to build a game. During my programming I use my local machine (or a VM) to create and test my routines, later I promote them to a test-environment and again later to production.
Perherps you can help me:
In the last generation (PS3 360) was it so that EVERY person involved in the gamecreation had his own dedicated dev-kit-hardware?
Did some digging on the self-publishing news. Check these page results of all the articles they got after Matt Booty led people to believe that Microsoft would require all developers to have a publisher...
"Xbox One indie publisher" Google Search Results before June 15, 2013
NBC News was one such site that reported on it, but they received the following response from Microsoft...
Microsoft had a lot negative publicity about no self-publishing & that's all they could say?
Again, I don't buy that self-publishing was planned & they just chose not to say anything until Gamescom. Why choose to take on that much negative publicity?
Tommy McClain
"Xbox One indie publisher" Google Search Results before June 15, 2013
NBC News was one such site that reported on it, but they received the following response from Microsoft...
Microsoft had a lot negative publicity about no self-publishing & that's all they could say?
Again, I don't buy that self-publishing was planned & they just chose not to say anything until Gamescom. Why choose to take on that much negative publicity?
Tommy McClain
For one thing, Matt Booty did no such thing. He said they were going to court developers in ways that they currently did. One of the ways they currently do is self publishing on XBLIG. The reporters and news outlets specifically misinterpreted the statements in order to get a better headline.
The plan they just revealed has been the plan of record since at least February 2012. Unlike the DRM thing, this is not a case of MS reversing course.
I'd say your group 3 is basically irrelevant and 1, 2 are the same, if they're indy developers. Some indies make bigger scale than others, and some are more talented than others, but it's essentially the same thing, whether they secure a million dollars from kickstarter or not. Any developer making a "AAA" type game that has financial backing from a publisher isn't an indie. The only difference is whether you have the money to pay for the commercial devkit and commercial SDK/tools. The small guys with no money will use Visual Studio Express + a free (most likely) SDK. The people with money will use the commercial Visual Studio and a commercial devkit with support etc.
As for developing on Windows 8 using a VM/simulator, I think I misunderstood what you were trying to say. I agree here. The small guys that can't pay for a commercial devkit and commercial tools will probably developer on a Windows machine with a VM until the the functionality for running signed code appears on the retail Xbox Ones.
I'll take your word for it, but it's hard to swallow considering their official comments even after all the "lies" that were reported. Whoever is responsible at MS for squashing FUD needs to be fired.
Tommy McClain
I imagine the difference is in how games are labelled. Seems all games will be shown in the same view, but you can probably filter by Arcade, Indie etc. If you want to be in the Arcade category, you can't self-publish. I think that's where the conflict comes from. Jonathan Blow doesn't want his game in the "Indie" section. He wants it in the Arcade section for better exposure, but to be there you can't self-publish. Maybe this gen the distinction between the two will not be as pronounced, but I'd expect all games in the Arcade category to still be publisher backed.
Unless MS is being misrepresented again there shouldn't be any Arcade or Indie catergory/labels again in the store. That should be helpful for those that hated the segregation, but I think most devs hated the peer review, lack of achievements & lack of Kinect support probably more. Sounds like those issue will be resolved too.
Tommy McClain
I think they do need some way to filter the games though so I could look at only the indie games made by one person in their spare time for fun, or the indie games made by larger teams of people with some financial backing. Sometimes I like to see what one person can do so I kinda liked being able to focus on that on the Xbox 360 indie area. Yeah you get games like "GET TO THA CHOPPA!!1" and "No Luca No" in there but there were some cool games in there as well. I dunno, I found it interesting to see what people would conjure up on their own, I used to check the XBLive Indie area regularly if not more so than the XBLive Arcade area.
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
I guess I'm the only one who actually liked the distinction and thought it immediately gave you a certain level of quality assurance when buying these smaller, digitally downloaded games.
They either went through a strict review process, met certain requirements, cost more and could provide you with achievements, or they were just essentially shareware games that you had to purchase before playing.
I kind of assumed there would be one view for the game store, but that you could filter for indie games the way you'd filter by genre, price etc. That could be wrong. Maybe indies really will be indistinguishable.
That could also be the change. Maybe MS was planning to go the indie route the whole time but only recently decided to not segregate indie titles away from the rest of the game store. Who knows.
Yeah I used to access the XBLIG area constantly every day. It was always neat to see what new & different titles would be released. But eventually I couldn't keep up. LOL Having a label I agree is helpful in determining AAA from hobbyist, but in the end does it matter if the game is good? If it is good it will get reviews & in turn get good downloads. Shouldn't that be the only differentiators between games? Personally I could go either way. I just want Indies to have access to the same features as AAA games. I don't want gimped games. I could care less if they are AAA or hobbyist as long as they're good.
BTW Rancid. You didn't have to purchase XBLIG before playing. They had the same trial mode feature as XBLA.
Tommy McClain
They'll need more than a label.
They don't want their marketplace filled with 3rd rate shovelware, dragging down average quality, damaging platform perception.
MS could implement a multi-tiered quality system, with 1st tier being MS quality approved titles (together with traditional publishers), a second tier based on best user-recommendations not in the 1st tier, and then a garbage tier with everything else.
Nobody, I mean nobody, is interested in having the world+dog self publishing into the XB marketplace.
Cheer
Indie developers are interested
That's kind of why I think the Live Arcade moniker, and a tag for direct download version of retail disc games will stick around. Those imply some level of quality, and being able to filter for them out of a unified list will help you wade through the crap. There definitely will be some crap in there. I don't know how iOS Appstore and Windows Phone handle it.
As I said in another thread, there is really no such thing as self publishing on a console. The business model of consoles don't really allow it.
MS and Sony will have to play the role of publisher for indie titles. There is a cost to that function so it should be readily understandable that console manufacturers want to ensure that the indie market on their consoles are viable and profitable.
MS and Sony will have to play the role of publisher for indie titles. There is a cost to that function so it should be readily understandable that console manufacturers want to ensure that the indie market on their consoles are viable and profitable.
That's true, sort of. Whatever the approvals process is, it isn't free. I imagine 99% of the indies will not get much support, if any, from Sony or MS in terms of marketing etc. Maybe the cream of the crop will get some attention, but probably not for free. I'm not sure how that works in the various smartphone stores.
- Status
Similar threads
- Sticky