Should Xbox Live's Indie game submissions be not free?

janta · 2009-09-30T15:20:06

Hi guys, I know this is nothing new, but every single day I am still amazed at the absolute crap that ends up on Xbox Live's Indie Games. Every day, there are about 5 to 10 new titles (my finger hurts typing that word), most of which are complete crap without the slightest polishing effort. I can't figure out what people releasing these games are really hoping. - Building up a port folio to get hired? Not quite (more likely to not get hired showcasing that kind of very low quality) - Making money? Who's paying to play Atomic Fart 2? Not even 80 MS Points ($1.25), especially when the web is already overcrowded with flash games you can play for free. - Personal experience? Maybe. The problem here is that people want to get some experience with console development, which is fine and a good thing. So they pay the 100$, and then they're free to push all their "games" to xbox live. I think the problem is here. Once you've paid the one year subscription, nothing prevents you from spamming the network with 4 games a month. There's almost no incentive for people to polish their games, which is a real shame. Another problem is the amount of released titles could prevent the real good ones to stand out. The rating system kind of compensates for this issue, but it is still present. Every day, I download 2 or 3 indie game demos because the concept of the game looks fun, and the game could really be fun. But until now I have always been disappointed (except once with Miner Dig Deep) by the lack of polishing and effort put into the last stages of development. In addition, the recently introduced 80 MS points price tag almost encourages that low quality content. "it's crap but hey, it's cheap" Take rad river run for example. "Wow, that looks cool" was my first reaction seeing the screenshots, so I downloaded the demo. And guess what? It played like crap. Collision response totally lacks realism, the fremrate plummets more often than not and worst worst worst of all, the controls are complete crap. (I could have put up with the other issues, really) The saddest thing is that spending a month polishing out these weaknesses could turn this game into a decent title! So why did the developer not polish it? That's beyond my understanding. I'm not saying that everyone should hire an artist or a sound designer for their game. I'm not complaining about the visual quality, but on everything else that a programmer should be able to fix (>>> controls!!!) Which brings me to my final point. I'd really like that getting the software to develop on xbox 360 were free (it's now $100/year) but that submitting a game were like $100-$500 or something. In other words, that no ones submit a games when they don't expect it could sell even a single copy. That way we'd stop seing 3 new massage games a week, no more atmomic fart games, and even no more software that aren't even games (A calculator? A bank of optic illusions images? seriously?!) etc. etc. What is your opinion? Edit: btw what's the contrary of free? (so I make a better post title) [Edited by - janta on September 29, 2009 1:26:43 PM]