XNA Community Games Not Economically Viable

I've been chewing on this Digital Spy story for a bit now. Last week, they spoke with Daniel Jones, the managing director at Binary Tweed, an independent game developer that released Clover , a watercolor-styled platforming game that was released as a Community Game on the Xbox 360 via the XNA Creators program. In the story, Jones comes across as disappointed with the sales for Clover. Here's what he had to say:

"It's a shame to say that Clover has not sold as many copies as we'd hoped for. As it stands, through Community Games alone, we definitely won't recoup costs."

If you’ve ever dreamed of making your own video games and sharing them with the world, then the XNA Creators Club and community games are for you. It’s game development for everybody – games created by the community, reviewed by the community, and played by everyone.

I've been chewing on this Digital Spy story for a bit now. Last week, they spoke with Daniel Jones, the managing director at Binary Tweed, an independent game developer that released Clover , a watercolor-styled platforming game that was released as a Community Game on the Xbox 360 via the XNA Creators program. In the story, Jones comes across as disappointed with the sales for Clover. Here's what he had to say:

"It's a shame to say that Clover has not sold as many copies as we'd hoped for. As it stands, through Community Games alone, we definitely won't recoup costs."

If you’ve ever dreamed of making your own video games and sharing them with the world, then the XNA Creators Club and community games are for you. It’s game development for everybody – games created by the community, reviewed by the community, and played by everyone.

Yes, relevant indeed.

One of my boys is currently making an XNA game. 

He's shown me a couple of videos of him playing it and I'm probably gunna help him test it here soon. 

Maybe I should link him to this Article? 

I've bought a whole heap of Community games, albeit only the good ones (around 15 or so) and I do love them dearly.  My only gripe is that they can only be played while online.  I think the major issues are 1) the development time and cost and 2) the actual cut Microsoft syphons from the sale.  I think if people are actually serious about developing games it can be used to springboard them to something bigger but I think the think big or go home mentality should be common sense and they should develop for something more significant then XNA if they dont want to be dissapointed.  The problem is that there is a lot of crap out there, not just XNA games that true talent really does get lost in the mess.

I've only bought one Community Game, and that was because I had a left over 200 points (I bought Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp because I heard it was decent).

What movie is that from?

 With the kind of success people are having on the iphone it's kind of hard for people to not try and translate that into success on other platforms.  XNA seems to be more of giving people a taste of game development rather than actually making them into any measure of a developer.  Granted there are some people that are making some really interesting things on XNA, but until microsoft sees fit to give community games a real chance to shine up next to the arcade games i can't imagine many games really making money.

Didn't Hamst3r earn a shitload of cash by making a Community Game?

The problem with Community games is the very nature of the games themselves.  All that I want to experience from a community game I can get from a short demo.

The first dude to just say "Fuck It" and release his game free is going to be sorted - Because everyone will download it. This will get him noticed, and hopefully hired into a real dev team. That's when he gets his money back. Hoping to make a profit on the cost of the game alone is dumb.

Although to be fair, this is all Microsoft being an idiot. All community games should be free to the public and microsoft should just pay the dudes what make the games, straight up.

Falling Down is an awesome movie

Falling Down (with Michael Douglas)

$20 says they would sell more if they had achievements.

falling down is a great movie

People that thought they were going to be able to make a living just by community games had the wrong idea from the beginning.

" The first dude to just say "Fuck It" and release his game free is going to be sorted - Because everyone will download it. This will get him noticed, and hopefully hired into a real dev team. That's when he gets his money back. Hoping to make a profit on the cost of the game alone is dumb.Although to be fair, this is all Microsoft being an idiot. All community games should be free to the public and microsoft should just pay the dudes what make the games, straight up. "

XNA always seemed like more of a home-developer kind of thing, you won't make real cash unless it's in a box on top of a shelf.

However, I'm sure you could make a few bucks off a good game which isn't priced super high priced.

I love Falling Down.

Read the title expecting Falling Down, and was not disappointed!

One of my favorite movies of all time.

thats why people are going over to the iphone.

People can't actually make much money off XNA, there best bet is getting hired buy a developer.

Why XNA sales are low :

• XNA don't have the guaranteed quality standards most other games have (all others, except a indie PC game or iPhone game you might buy), and users know it
• XNA isn't as visible on Xbox Live as it could be
• XNA is filled with a huge number of absolutely shitty worthless games (multiple massage games, really?)
• XNA games have less features (no achievements for example)
• XNA games often aren't as good as other games people can buy (there are a few stand out good playing ones, but a lot of these don't deserve massive sales)

" Didn't Hamst3r earn a shitload of cash by making a Community Game? "

I think Microsoft makes the XNA section on Xbox Live hard to find on purpose due to the low quality of most games. They don't want to confuse the mainstream crowd by puting theses games out in the open and getting the response "wtf is this crap?". 

I just got the new edition of Falling Down on dvd, such a good movie.

that movie is so rad!

Now I want to know what happenes next on that movie...thanks GB.

I totally agree with others here...
These games need achievement points. Even if they only had 20-50 per game, I would definitely purchase more.
Give us something!  Without achievement points they feel disconnected from what Xbox Live is all about.
If I have 400 points left... I'm more likely to buy a crappy Live game just because of the possibility of adding another 200 points to my gamer score...
Even though I know there are much better community games I could be playing.
I have only purchased about 3 games.... and they were mostly due to word of mouth & through podcasts.
Promoting them better would help too... as others have said...as of now ...it's just kinda' hidden... like it doesn't matter.
I feel bad about not purchasing more community games... but come on Microsoft! Don't give up on it... do something about it!!
It's a very cool feature just hidden away in the back... I don't think renaming it to Indie-Games is going to help much.

That movie fucking rocks, made me truly appreciate Michael Douglas. This and King of California.

I bought Snake360 by Aaron Teplitsky, great stuff and still being updated. I hope he got a fair return despite the low profile of XNA games.

" I think Microsoft makes the XNA section on Xbox Live hard to find on purpose due to the low quality of most games. They don't want to confuse the mainstream crowd by puting theses games out in the open and getting the response "wtf is this crap?".  "

Any reference to Falling Down is pimptastic.

I made a puzzle game and its sold about 300 in 3 weeks      its called PUZZWORDS
Checkhcekcheck it out yooooyoyoooooooo!!!

http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/puzzwords-trailer/320205
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550230

I spent about 4 months on it, and made less than a grand          so not so great but I did learn a good deal
I am looking forward to when my simple 1 month xbox app comes out, how it will do in comparison

" @Sweep said:

" The first dude to just say "Fuck It" and release his game free is going to be sorted - Because everyone will download it. This will get him noticed, and hopefully hired into a real dev team. That's when he gets his money back. Hoping to make a profit on the cost of the game alone is dumb.Although to be fair, this is all Microsoft being an idiot. All community games should be free to the public and microsoft should just pay the dudes what make the games, straight up. "

Dude, that is just not a reasonable thing to do, as a business. Yeah, Microsoft has the resources to do it without blinking an eyelash but... Where are the pros, from their point of view? "

I'd love to play a game where the whole concept is tearing through a city just constantly destroying shit to upgrade your current weapon into a better piece of asskickery. Similar to the one red paperclip....but more fatal.

if youve played any community games youll know that none of them are worth the money they want for them. If they were like 200 points or less, people would buy them. they are basically cheap flash games. I would never pay anything for them. Clover was neat tho, until the trial ran out and I had to  pay 400 points for it. screw that.

Yes and no, the problem with the wole operation is that it seems aimed at the bedroom developer, but it costs rather a lot to put out any substantial content that rivals Microsofts XBLA titles, and the community games are incredibly badly advertised, it almost seems like MS layed down the promise of money (they actually made a big deal about giving developers back their cash and more) in the run up to releasing it, and now just don't care.

Also, even for the bedroom developer, you can pay £50/year for the ability to release games over the Community Games service, and probably never make that 50 back unless your content is high enough quality to spread via word of mouth and get enough purchases (Say 400 points, even if you get the maximum 70% back from each sale from MS, you need to sell 22 copies of the game, which might not sound like a lot, but with so many other products in there, and all of them of incredibly varying quality, the average consumer doesnt even want to look at them)

For your average bedroom developer, Torque is a much better solution for learning and creating bedroom games, it also helps that it's used for a lot of commercially released games as well so the experience is more beneficial than XNA. And it only costs $100 for a lifetime membership, or $200 for the source code to be included. For that you are free to play around with it forever, and so long as you put a garagegames logo on your game, you are free to release your games however and whenever you want, and charge whatever you want for them. Provided you dont make too much money, you wont have to upgrade to a commercial developer license until you make silly monies from your games.

" @End_Boss said:

" @Sweep said:

" The first dude to just say "Fuck It" and release his game free is going to be sorted - Because everyone will download it. This will get him noticed, and hopefully hired into a real dev team. That's when he gets his money back. Hoping to make a profit on the cost of the game alone is dumb.Although to be fair, this is all Microsoft being an idiot. All community games should be free to the public and microsoft should just pay the dudes what make the games, straight up. "

Dude, that is just not a reasonable thing to do, as a business. Yeah, Microsoft has the resources to do it without blinking an eyelash but... Where are the pros, from their point of view? "

Fathers of the gaming community. Why should they only shell out money for only the big publishers and not the little guys? "

"@Snapstacle said:

" @End_Boss said:

" @Sweep said:

" The first dude to just say "Fuck It" and release his game free is going to be sorted - Because everyone will download it. This will get him noticed, and hopefully hired into a real dev team. That's when he gets his money back. Hoping to make a profit on the cost of the game alone is dumb.Although to be fair, this is all Microsoft being an idiot. All community games should be free to the public and microsoft should just pay the dudes what make the games, straight up. "

Dude, that is just not a reasonable thing to do, as a business. Yeah, Microsoft has the resources to do it without blinking an eyelash but... Where are the pros, from their point of view? "

Fathers of the gaming community. Why should they only shell out money for only the big publishers and not the little guys? "

Thats exactly WHY it makes sense. It gets microsoft support amongst guys that like nice indie games, It gets them support in that they are getting free games, they could make it like a gold member only service if they HAD to, but it would gain all parties involved some cred. Devs would get noticed, Microsoft would please some people and if they support the developers there will be more and more community games, and if they were all for free, that would be a big plus for xbox live over the PS3, leading to business revenue that way.Think about it outside of the box rather than simply how many copies sold. Everything has a knock on effect, it would be valuable for this strategy to be the one they take."

" @Tylea002 said:

"@Snapstacle said:

" @End_Boss said:

" @Sweep said:

" The first dude to just say "Fuck It" and release his game free is going to be sorted - Because everyone will download it. This will get him noticed, and hopefully hired into a real dev team. That's when he gets his money back. Hoping to make a profit on the cost of the game alone is dumb.Although to be fair, this is all Microsoft being an idiot. All community games should be free to the public and microsoft should just pay the dudes what make the games, straight up. "

Dude, that is just not a reasonable thing to do, as a business. Yeah, Microsoft has the resources to do it without blinking an eyelash but... Where are the pros, from their point of view? "

Fathers of the gaming community. Why should they only shell out money for only the big publishers and not the little guys? "

Thats exactly WHY it makes sense. It gets microsoft support amongst guys that like nice indie games, It gets them support in that they are getting free games, they could make it like a gold member only service if they HAD to, but it would gain all parties involved some cred. Devs would get noticed, Microsoft would please some people and if they support the developers there will be more and more community games, and if they were all for free, that would be a big plus for xbox live over the PS3, leading to business revenue that way.Think about it outside of the box rather than simply how many copies sold. Everything has a knock on effect, it would be valuable for this strategy to be the one they take."

This conversation should be stuppered before it gets going too far, you cannot release an XNA community game for free, Microsoft will not allow it, must be 200, 400 or 800 MS points, not other denominations, and not free. Simple as that, MS make money out of it too you know, why would they let you release a game for free?Also, tons of people release games for free over the net and it doesnt have the miraculous effect of getting you an insta-job.As for them being free and just 'paying the dues what make them' why the hell would MS do that? that would cost them money.... With the current setup they make 30% of everything, a pretty nice slice if you ask me, why the fuck would they suddenly drop that and start pouring money into it that they will never see returned? That's just stupid.And I don't know what you meant by 'gold member service' but in order to release a game via XNA Community Games, you already have to pay a yearly subscription fee. "

I've seen this film..... he's some kinda guy who goes insane.... or something.

Anyway, i see XNA as being a learning tool or introductory software for potential game developers of the future, the other option would be to spend hundreds of pounds/dollars on 3D software for your pc, you'd need to buy the expensive high quality pc first too.

I LOVE Falling Down, one of the baddest ass movies on the planet.

Is the Communuity Games even avalible in Europe?

"Is the Communuity Games even avalible in Europe?"

Falling Down's excellent.