Mersey Remakes

It’s the glass half full/half empty argument in full effect. Let’s rip.

So, by now dear readers, you’re probably already aware that big changes are afoot with the XBox Indie Games service. To paraphrase Bob Dylan poorly, the prices are a changing. Down. The much griped at 800 points tag? It’s bitten the dust, it is no more. Your ceiling for prices now? 400 points. Below that, 240 or 80 points. Or a pittance in real money terms. 80 points is what? Around 75 pence in UK money if my far too tired to be truly bothered researching brain is correct.

Now, I’m a purchaser of games. This is, to all intents and purposes good for me. Kinda. The less money I have to spend on games, the more I can buy. In theory, obviously. It’s naturally not a given that I may not actually spend more on games but instead I might actually spend less on the same amount of stuff. Either way, on the absolute technical level of how much I spend – I win. Woohoo.

Thing is, I’m also a developer. I need to eat, right? Now, last time I checked if I’m going to feed myself it’s going to take a fair few 75 pences to make the effort worthwhile. This is where things start getting a bit messy isn’t it?

I believe at this point, it’s appropriate to bring up the app store. Whilst there’s no doubt that the vast majority of people submitting apps/games to it aren’t going to find themselves swimming in a sea of money any time soon, there’s also no doubt that people are buying games/apps from there in vast amounts. They might not be your game, but they’re doing it all the same and heck, who knows, maybe in a game or two it might be your game. And you win. Woohoo.

There’s two fundamental differences between the app store and the Indie Games service that’s worthy of note, mind. The first is convenience. The app store is a handy little thing that you’ve got insanely easy access to and it’s not hidden away anywhere. It’s trumpeted loud and clear for all to see – it’s easy to nip onto, easy to search and easy for developers to say “hey, here’s my game – it’s on the app store”. Give folks 30 seconds or so and et voila, it’s in their hands.

The second is money. If I’m making a purchase from the app store, I’m browsing real values and paying with electronic cash. Ok, yeah, perhaps it’s one point still as we’re still talking convenience here but bear with me. If I want to make a purchase from the app store, if I know I’ve got 59p on my credit card I can purchase it in the blink of an eye. How much have I spent? 59p. Easy.

Xbox Indies doesn’t work like that. If I want to purchase a 75p game, I can’t just spend that 75p. There goes my impulse purchase. The reliance is on a) me having a spare amount of points hanging around (facilitated no doubt by the decidedly odd numbers – 80 points, 240 points – they’ve got to be designed to “give change”, no?) to make that purchase or I’ve got to buy some points. Starting at £4.25 UK squids. For a 75p purchase. The former is hopeful, the latter is a bit of a big ask.

Xbox Points almost make sense when you’re working in solid and large denominations. For microtransactions on this scale? They’re far, far from ideal because they take the impulse out of impulse purchase. You can’t just buy stuff on a whim.

Now, I don’t have hard and fast figures here, but I’d be willing to bet my last two teabags that lots of app store purchases are made because they’re cheap, they’re easy and they can be done on a whim. Problems, problems, problems. Or is it?

Well, honestly, I don’t know. I don’t have the answers because heck, we’re a couple of hours into the relaunch and all we know so far is these changes are going ahead.

As someone who buys games, I’m naturally happy with prices dropping. As someone developing games, well, it’s not quite so cut and dry as I said above. It might well be the case that yes, we’re going to see more and more people punting over their virtual pennies and pounds to make development worthwhile and so, in our little utopia we can all give away our games for bottom dollar or buy games for bottom dollar. I can’t shake the feeling that as good a move this is for the consumer pricewise, there’s needless and unnecessary barriers in the way of them actually making a purchase that need to be addressed.

“But what about me?”, I hear some developers cry. Well, Jeff Vogel touched upon this issue not long ago in a much circulated article. What is your time worth? Jeff advocates charging more for your work however you’re price capped here. The absolute maximum amount you can charge for your game is under £4. Does that mean that XBLIG isn’t a viable platform for the niche you’d sincerely hope it’d be able to attract? Again, I don’t know – but it’s abundantly clear that you’re going to need to get those sales numbers up drastically if you’re investing a great deal of money in a game… but heck, is this really any different to how it was prior?

It’s a toughie. The low cost could drive people away from developing for XBLIG, but of course – the argument (quite rightly) there is that perhaps you’re best fitted to chasing an XBLA contract if that’s your remit (but what of the “you can graduate to XBLA” claims that the service was sold on?), it could also see people flock to it further as somewhere to try out ideas, get stuff out the door and be rewarded by lots of 75 pences to pay for their food. Or it could stay the same.

I’m still of the belief that the biggest single mistake Microsoft have made with XBLIG is to not allow developers to punt out their work for free if they so choose. The PC gaming and indie scene absolutely thrives on free titles bolstering, supplementing and in some cases surpassing those chargeware ones. They’re somewhat of a creative necessity y’know? It allows people to experiment with stuff, and by people I’m referring to both developers and consumers with a lot less of a risk overhead. From that, good things come.

75p may be as near as dammit to free as MS are seemingly willing to go but with the current set up having visibility problems on the dash (what doesn’t though? Well, except the adverts, obviously) and with a minimum spend before you can buy one – it’s a barrier indeed.

What happens from here? As I say readers, I don’t have the answers. Despite all the questions and potential problems I’ve listed above, I’m still sort of seeing this as a step in the right direction. I like paying less for stuff after all and this seems in an admittedly slightly bizarre way a reinforcement of how people should perceive XBLIG. Not to see it as somewhere to bung up megabudget games but somewhere you can have a play in and potentially reach an audience you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

For all it’s flawed implementation, XBLIG is still an unprecedented and unique and bloody brilliant service. It’s early days, and we shouldn’t forget that when judging the service as a whole. I think there’s a long way to go before it gets to what it should be, but yeah, right now I think it’s heading in the right direction.

How about you?