Needless to say, I’m bummed that we didn’t even warrant a mention, even though we were one of the first in the present push to get out there and do this. I’m cool with that because I know all of the other folks mentioned in the article (XNA, Whirled, LittleBigPlanet, Playcrafter) know who we are. ;-)

If you saw the presentation, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section.

It’s a great example, though, of the kind of results we’ll see as more people with classic art and graphic design backgrounds (with a sprinkling of programming experience) are brought into the gamedev fold. The in-development footage on his sight is hauntingly beautiful, and an inspiration to say the least. Makes me remember those first few hours playing Out of this World, still one of the few games to deliver so much on so little.

Speaking of Out of this World, I’ve always thought it’d be awesome to see that game remade in Flash (it’s largely rotoscoped with a vector-like graphic style, very applicable to Flash development). Hell, if it fit on a 1.44MB floppy and ran on a 286, surely it can run full-speed in Flash on a modern day machine? Those are the kind of side-scrollers people need to be making… there’s a lot of life left in that very simple mechanic! (And the side-scroller view? Well, that aesthetic has worked for “comics” for a hundred years.)

What turns me cold to Manifesto Games is the attitude that surrounds it, the “Fuck the publishers!” writ large in every message, memo, ad, logo and interview. I understand the sentiment, and I appreciate that most of these folks have some sincere experience that justifies their feelings. I just feel as though the image this portrays to those folks beyond our current audiences is one of brash, juvenille angst — in other words, exactly the negative stereotype we regularly defend ourselves against.

Ironically, these are exactly the creators who call for innovations in gameplay that lead to broader appeal. And they largely delivers on the call, at least in a raw indie film kind of way. The problem is that they then go and wrap it in a public image that accomplishes the same goal.

Sugar attracts more than salt… even if the bitterness is not directed toward your audience, the result is the same: when people who don’t live and breath games get a snapshot of this they get that same chill you get when your best “couple” friends have an argument in front of you. Coincidentally, the same feeling I got when I played Facade. ;)

Of course, as Greg points out, it should be considered beta. But one lesson everyone should learn from “Web 2.0″ is that you often only get one shot at a first impression with “the masses,” even if it is your beta. Folks like Google and Flickr have really upped the ante on what quality people expect in a “beta.” (Beta, the new 1.0.)

I hope Greg listens to some of the initial complaints. I agree that the site design and aesthetic aren’t competitive with other online shopping portals, nor is the usability. The registration requirement for downloading a demo is a killer that I’m sure he’ll have to change if we wants any success; these are already “high risk” titles to dedicate any time to — asking the user to jump through one more hoop is easily the nail in the coffin.

And, as I expected, the whole “sticking it to the man” attitude wears thin very quickly. I find it hard enough to swallow all the open source machismo I get from the Linux crowd, et al, and this utterly won’t work for gathering a larger audience for games. It may work for street culture like music, fashion or art, but that’s only because there’s some sincerity behind it (and some deep roots) — this feels shallow and parroted (though I do know that Greg’s hatred of mainstream game development is pretty sincere). As I described it elsehwere, it’s just your classic emo/angst/rebel shit that only serves to attract the least desirable (i.e., pennyless) customer. Do you think folks with $20 burning a hole in their pocket and some spare time are looking to stick it to the man? More likely torrenters and folks like myself satisfied with just a demo…

Like most angst-driven aesthetics, it will wither under its own pretenciousness. It happened to socialism, it happened to the grunge scene, it’s happening/happened to emo, and I’m guessing it’ll happen to Manifesto. But, there was one comment that was absolutely on target: Greg is absolutely putting his money (and time and effort) where his mouth is, and I applaud that.

For example, Greg’s thoughts on the subject. Sure, it was basically what I expected, but that still doesn’t mean I wasn’t disappointed to hear it. I realize that his bread is buttered these days by indie *PC* game developers, but he does seem to miss the f*cking point… as do many of the commentors on that post. Here’s what I had to say (carried over from my comments on his blog):

First, Greg attributed the Net Yaroze to Sega. Of course, it was actually Sony. And it was an incredible pain to work with. And it was basically like having a cheap-ass devkit. And it severely limited the resources you could access on the machine. On, and your game had to run completely in-memory. Details @ Wikipedia.

Second, several folks suggested that the service should be completely opened up, truly a “YouTube of Video Games.” Of course, MS (and the media, hook-line-and-sinker) loves a soundbite like that, but what they’re offering really isn’t YouTube (yet). The obvious caveat is that MS has to keep the quality bar high for “official” titles (as I explained in my previous post on the topic). Folks pointed at Amazon.com as an example of an “open system with filtering,” but they are being disingenous (or naive) if they think the barriers to getting a book listed on Amazon are equivalent to me uploading some random code to a website (or a video to YouTube). Perhaps, with the recent growth of on-demand publishing, perhaps the barrier is a bit lower, but there’s still an incredible amount of relative filtering that happens.

Besides, how do you make money off of that? There’s several, several orders of magnitude more videos out there on YouTube and they still don’t have a clear path for monetizing that. Do you really think it’d be easier on the Xbox with code?

Oh, and I really like the excellent point someone made: “Greg, will Manifesto be publishing any title that comes their way, regardless of quality?”

Of course, Greg’s (and some commentors’) perspectives are very different than that of the consumer MS is targetting. MS is targetting that high school kid who knows some programming and wants to do some stuff on the console in his living room. They’re targetting hobbyists who want to “play” on a console. Of course, these same people already know (and already do) this stuff on PC’s.

Craig Perko echoed this misconception I’ve seen elsewhere (which demonstrates GarageGames’ very effective marketing surrounding this):

I had the same reaction as Greg, especially since the actual software you get to use is literally a port of GarageGame’s existing middleware.

GarageGames is offering the Torque X package on top of MS’s XNA framework. It is a separate purchase, just like if I sold you a C# class library for you to use. Users are welcome to use Managed DirectX and C# to their fullest (and basically have full access to the hardware).

Unbelievably, someone actually raised the “but C# is crap” objection:

XNA Express only works with C#. Whilst it isn’t a bad language it certainly isn’t going to go up against C++/asm for performance. [...] You have to create your game on a PC first, erm, at that point you can either distribute it to lots of ppl on PC, or a few ppl on the 360. This is much less 360 development then PC development with 360 development tacked on. But then WTF you develop games with C# and managed directX when you could just develop with C++ and directX, with only a tiny loss in your potential audience? [...] XNA is a solution looking for a problem IMHO.

Let’s dispense with the whole C# vs. C++ crap. I applaud finished product, not the tools used. I could give a flying fuck if some kid in his bedroom (or the guy in the office next to me) used VisualBasic or assembler to craft his Pong clone (or his WWII FPS or his epic fantasy MMO). We’d all be so lucky as to be able to use a nice high level language like C# to make all of our games. Besides, the performance is as good or better than most programmers can do in C++ anyway. I only wish that the performance difference between C# and C++ was the barrier to indie gamedev nirvana…

I was excited when I heard about this, but that’s because until I read this post by Greg, I didn’t realize that the developers wouldn’t be seeing a cent of the game’s sales. Why couldn’t M$ just split the profits 50/50 with the developer? (Of course any such arrangement is probably confused by the fact that the games will be bought with M$ “credits” or whatever they call them, rather than with any real-world currency.)

Which is utterly, completely false. While you can’t make any money off your games, neither does MS. Folks pay a flat fee to have the opportunity to download and run managed code on their console. That’s the only financial transaction. You can’t charge for your game, MS doesn’t charge for your game. If they like it and want to distribute it on XBLA, then count your blessings, because you just got a spectacular calling card for your next title. Oh, and some steady income (based on the current conversion rates). (BTW, credits have a linear exchange rate with US dollars, so there’s absolutely no confusion there even if they were in play.)

I think that if M$ was mostly staying out of the revenue side, and letting people just use XBLA as a market to sell their games at whatever price they wanted, and M$ was just taking a relatively small cut, then Greg would have an extreme positive positive reaction to this. Instead the pricing is still screwed up, and he has an extreme negative about it. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, he’s very rarely lukewarm about anything. :)

As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, there’s no way that it would be fiscally sensible for MS to open up the Xbox like this. Not yet. There’s not enough high quality software to stand out from the crap. They make money off of software sales. If there’s a huge market for software that they don’t get a piece of, then they’ll have to shift their profit to the hardware, which would mean consoles would become even more expensive than they already are. If they just took a fixed percentage off of each sale (like eBay, for example), there’s a whole bunch of responsibility that lands in their lap in regards to quality and support. Basically, opening up the Xbox as requested at this time would be a huge liability and money sink for MS, and would really gain very little for the indie gamedev crowd.

And finally, to sum up Greg’s (notably biased) opinion on the matter:

Whoop ti fuckin doo.

Be fucking happy for this new opportunity for indies, hobbyists and amateurs! No one is forcing you to make Xbox games, no one is focing you to sign-up for the Creator’s Club. But previously, it wasn’t even an option. Now, there is another door open, another platform to develop for, one that is significantly different in context than the traditional PC. This will only make the indie gamedev community stronger, and will serve to increase the numbers of game developers out there with some decent skills.

Why waste the effort on tearing it down? Why all the hate?