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Indie RPG Struggles On Xbox, Yet Thrives On Steam
derGoldstein writes "Two weeks ago Robert Boyd started offering his two RPGs Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World on Steam, for $2.99 (for both games combined). It fared far better than it had on the Xbox Live Indie channel: 'In less than a week, our Steam revenue has actually exceeded over a year and a half of XBLIG revenue for us.' Hopefully this will prompt more developers to port 'smaller' games over to Steam, especially since many of them can run on low-spec machines, like netbooks."
The game is mostly crap, but its a brilliant concept so I am glad I paid the 3 bucks for it. A good amount of tounge-in-cheek genre-savvy humor helps round things out. Hopefully this encourages more developers to port games to platforms like this.
Steam seems far friendlier to indie games. I saw these titles on the front page of the Steam store. I expect they are far harder to find on XBox Live.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
On Steam, the games are promoted with giant images and a discount on the front page every time you visit the site.
On XBLA, finding where the Indie games are is a game in itself. Hell, sometimes even finding a non-indie game that just doesn't happen to be promoted well is difficult. They can't be wasting all that space advertising videogames, after all. They need that precious space so they can sell their paying customers repulsive AXE body spray, beef jerky, cell phone plans, and advertise the latest shitty romantic comedy featuring people you've never heard of.
I think it's pretty obvious. There's a lot of PC gamers who grew up with games very much like indie RPGs. Whereas the average console gamer grew up with twitch games. Does it really surprise anyone which platform will be superior for that genre?
Anyone who logs into steam sees the front page sales first thing, and this game was on it IIRC. Also, the update news will show new games for those who stay logged in all the time. Not to mention, steam almost always has some pretty good sales going on (even besides the annual summer sale, which is the best in the business) so its worth checking around for new releases/ specials. I do, anyways, and I suspect a lot of others do as well. Combine this with steams relative ease of use and extreme ease of purchase (seriously: I can have the game downloading in under 30 secs after I decide to buy), and you pretty much have a winner. Not sure how easy it is on Xbox, but it can't be a whole lot easier than steam.
Moreover, PC gamers love cheap indie games like this, much more so IMHO than console games. To be honest, I'm note sure why so many indie developers even target Xbox/PS3. Fear of piracy, maybe? If so, its a BS reason: I'll gladly buy a good 3-5$ (sometimes more) game, and so will many others, even those who will happily pirate more expensive AAA games.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Why is it that everyone who links to this article uses "Xbox" or "Xbox Live" in the title instead of the more specific (and less newsworthy) "Xbox Live Indie Games?"
There's been a slew of articles lately describing how difficult it is to profit from the XBLIG channel. If the games were on the Xbox Live Arcade and got trounced by Steam, that might be worth reporting. As is, saying a game could not find success on the Indie Games channel is borderline obvious.
Well, maybe if those gamers are ~23 or younger. Anyone who gamed on a Genesis or SNES and earlier wouldn't fit into your average console gamer category.
Pakistan better be worried, if India has rocket propelled grenades that run on steam! ... but honestly I'm just reading the headlines.
This makes me wonder - seeing the HUGE level of success achieved here, relative to the XBLIG, and compared to PSN Minis, what do people see as the chances of Steam or a Steam-like platform dedicated solely to indie games coming out soon? This story's starting to pick up some major press for an 'Indie' game, enough that other developers are going to see it. I think Steam's going to become a part of all their plans now - they're interested enough in making money to do it. I think the Indie scene is looking better then ever with this result.
It's simply PC. Although Steam is the most popular distribution channel for the PC, indie games for the PC also sell well through other channels.
It's just a major difference in culture for the gamers.
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Exactly. This game is a parody of NES area games. It's essentially a take on Dragon Quest, which isn't the type of game that PC gamers grew up with. There are very few PC games that I can think of that fit that mold. If we were looking at some parody of a point-and-click adventure ala Gold Rush, Monkey Island, or King's Quest, sure, PC makes sense. But the Zeboyd games are console thru and thru.
The issue is the Indie games are tucked nicely into their own, harder to reach category on XBL. Steam offers full fledged games, and indie games alike on their front page. Hopefully Microsoft updates this at some point.
Whereas the average console gamer grew up with twitch games.
Citation needed. Unless you just pulled that out of your arse.
Has anyone here actually bothered looking at all or is everyone just assuming? xbla provides a list of top rated and most downloaded games, Indie rpgs are all over those lists, including cthulu. And the marketplace has a new games section too, so cthulu got advertising. I'm not really sure what to make of this. Unless people are just so lazy or uninformed that nobody bothers to check out the Indie games on Xbox. Or if steam's level of purchasing is just that high.
I wandered through the thread for a while to confirm someone had the right answer.
If this was a comparison between "proper" XBox arcade games and Steam, then it would mean something. But "Indie Games" is a wasteland (because of no quality control or promotion of quality games), and none of the XBox owners I know have bothered to look there for a long time.
There's a strong, justified assumption that if something is in "Indie Games", it's trash. MS need to give some attention to helping promote and discover good games, or else Indie Games will continue to wither (despite, reasonably good tools and technology).
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
It is no surprise. The good game to crap ratio in XBLIG is terrible just due to the nature of how games are put there, and games have almost no chance of making a real profit there. There's no proper advertising or anything. You just dump your game there and spread advertising through word of mouth yourself. Advertise yourself, and hope you can make some money.
Steam is different. They advertise (a lot) for you, help you pick out a good price, have all sorts of awesome deals you can arrange. It's a wonderful place to make money.
PC gamers also grew up without restrictive Steam DRM or any of that "YourPlatform Live" junk.
Haven't played them yet (and don't know when I will - probably not before September), but I bought them because the developer actually priced them HONESTLY - usually there's a $1 = 1â parity on Steam, but this package was 1.99â. In fact, that's even cheaper than $2.99! Mind asplodes!
So, essentially, the guy got my money because he isn't a greedy, obnoxious jerk who thinks that it's fine to charge European customers 40% extra. That's damn rare, and deserves an applause. And money, too.
I bought the bundle on Steam, because I like to support indie games and 2 games for $2.50 was the right indie price. As it turns out, both are excellent titles in the vein of the old Dragon Warrior series and I look forward to further offerings. Steam offers great promotion whenever they run one of their sales or announce something new, and I'm very glad that they extend this courtesy to indie games selling for under $5 as they do big-name AAA titles.
Personally, I feel that we in its entirety, we no longer need game consoles - they're a relic of a day when affordable computing was generally of singular purpose. Today, consoles are more PC-like than ever, save for restrictive OSes and locked down tech to limit doing things to "The Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo" way. Its pretty much holding games hostage - "If you want to play Metal Gear Solid 4, you have to buy a PS3, abide by its rules, use PSN to go online for multiplay etc...". Every game from the indie set to the biggest corporate AAA kit is developed on PCs..so let them play on PCs as well. Many of us own PCs and it costs less to outfit them for gaming with more power and control available for the money. Peripherals and controllers can easily be sold separately and used on a PC - most already are and Microsoft's full support of the X360 controller under Windows shows this in action (Compare to Sony's refusal to put together a driver package for the Dual Shock 3, so you have to use 3rd party hacked drivers and give up an entire bluetooth dongle. Nobody is buying Dual Shock 3 to play PC games or emulators, for the most part, where people are using Logitech F710 and X360 types). I can't think of a single reason for consoles to still exist, save for greed and to a lesser extent "tradition". It angers me further to see the "consolization" of powerful multiuse hardware into locked down content delivery platforms (ie. iOS etc...)
Especially Indie developers who run on shoestring budgets, casting your lot with Steam, Humble Indie Bundles, Desura and other "friendly" digital distribution services is a good move. You'll have quite a bit more freedom than the console stores and have a better chance of your target audience equipped to play your game and willing to invest, especially with niche titles. There are things that I wish Steam would do better (ie. Linux Client.) but they do provide a great value in advertising, showing your game directly to people that buy other games whenever they log in. Consoles seem intent on extorting as much money as possible for everything and their taint has crossed to the PC world quite some time ago, such aswhen Oblivion's PC version had paid Horse Armor DLC on 360, they couldn't provide it for free on PC. Many console (and consolized-favoring) platform owners talk a good game about "develop for our platform and you'll have access to all these people who do X, Y, and Z and you'll be rich.", but those words are just wind. PC development give you choices and allows you to easily port, use or make any tools you desire and basically create as you wish without limits and with plenty of options.
I am the one-in-a-billion person who plays games on both consoles and PC, so I must have grown up on twitchy RPGs?
These were on special last week; I actually considered buying them (opted for Lume, which was Win and Mac OS, instead) but PS3 and Xbobx360 are all HDMI look great flashbang boom. The graphics on these boys? To call them "old school" is charitable. And as much as I am on the "playability beats graphics" just last week on the Blood Bowl internet leagues I saw people chatting about how a free java version of blood bowl was "laughable because it wasn't even animated." Good graphics are a REALITY of modern gaming. Do I want to see pixellated crud on my 55" 1080p tv? In the immortal words of Er, "damn no." But on a laptop or on a minimized screen off to the side? sure thing. pop it in and I'll relive my phantasy star days!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Most people aren't willing to drop five, or even three, bucks on a game that they've never heard of or never played. Without some sort of input, whether from a review, or friend's recommendation, or a demo, I won't buy a game, even if it does cost less than a trip to McDonald's.
What I would really like to see is an average time-played ratings system in Steam, XBLA, etc. I'd like to be able to log in to the Steam store, search for games at the $5 point, and then look at the ones that people have played for more than ten or twenty minutes (I have several of those, like Altitude, which just didn't catch my interest). Limit it to purchases that have actually been installed and launched, and I bet you could get a pretty good disguised ratings system out of it. Include some sort of algorithm to account for newly-released (maybe one week-old?) games, and I think it would be very useful.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
PC gamers grew up with "enter this word from the manual" DRM, where losing your manual means you lose the privilege of playing.
I'm note sure why so many indie developers even target Xbox/PS3.
For single-player games, I agree with you. For multiplayer games, it's the fact that far more people have a console connected to a TV than have a PC connected to a TV. It's hard to fit you and three mates around a 17" screen.
Apart from the obvious quality/crap ratio problem, there's also the MS points as currency conundrum. Why do some (mostly media) corporations insist on obfuscating prices with native point systems? It doesn' matter that they make odd bucks by uneven surplusses when people buy way way less by having to jump through extra hoops just to make a microtransaction? I buy 1/2/3/5-dollar apps all the time for iOS, and would probably do the same in Steam if I was a PC/Mac gamer, but on Xbox Live, when I have to buy big chunks of MS points at confusing rates and quantities? No thanks. And I'm sure that's a big part of the problem for XBLA/XBLIG. Just let people see the real price and buy with a single click (okay okay, thumbstick depress).
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Plus most of the stuff on the indie games bit is generally pretty shit, it's mostly filled with top down zombie shooters
Don't knock Robotron clones. Doom is what you get when you balance a first-person shooter as if it were Robotron. If you're referring to poorly balanced Robotron clones, on the other hand, that's another thing entirely. I don't yet own an Xbox 360 console, so I can't know firsthand just yet.
There are gems in there but you mostly find out about them elsewhere
How would you recommend that Microsoft discover which are any good and promote them?
Every game from the indie set to the biggest corporate AAA kit is developed on PCs..so let them play on PCs as well.
How big is a typical PC monitor? 17" to 19" diagonal viewable image size. Some laptops are smaller, some desktops are bigger, but take that as a median. How big is a living room TV? Twice that, which means four times the area, enough for you and three mates instead of just you.
have a better chance of your target audience equipped to play your game
Except people aren't equipped to play a multiplayer indie game. Any TV made in the past five years VGA and HDMI inputs on which PCs are perfectly capable of displaying video, but CronoCloud and other Slashdot users tell me that the "home theater PC" install base is so minuscule that an HTPC-targeted game would not be profitable. (I can provide citations if you wish.) So how do indie game developers convince the general public to connect PC to TV?
pc is just better by default
Not if you have friends over. PCs are perfectly capable of split- or otherwise shared-screen multiplayer play (just connect four USB gamepads and an HDTV), but far more games for Xbox 360 than for PC actually support it. It's a lot cheaper to buy three spare gamepads in case friends visit you than to buy three spare gaming PCs to make a LAN party.
PS3 and Xbobx360 are all HDMI look great
HDMI is DVI signaling with PCM sound in a different connector. PCs have supported DVI longer than the Xbox 360 has supported HDMI.
flashbang boom.
Stun grenades have been around since Counter-Strike, which predates the original Xbox.
Good graphics are a REALITY of modern gaming.
Say someone wants to express his vision in a video game but has only a shoestring budget. How would you recommend that this person produce worthy graphics?
XNA is pretty awesome to work with.
I gather based on what I've read that XNA isn't so awesome if you're trying to port your existing game that wasn't originally written in C#. Or what am I missing?
You have to be accepted by Steam in order to have your game on the service.
From Steamworks FAQ: "For new games we look for unique and interesting gameplay and art, and of course it should be fun!" That doesn't give much detail, especially how much of a budget they're expecting to produce "unique and interesting [...] art". Another technical criterion is that it run on a PC, which has its own limitations such as generally smaller monitors than consoles.
I don't know what the system is on the XBox.
Xbox Live Indie Games, as I understand it, starts with legal residence in select countries plus paying $99 per year to join App Hub in order to run your game on a console. Other App Hub members perform "peer review", or evaluation of your game against a technical requirements checklist. Some of the requirements include 1. being written entirely in C# (or another verifiably type-safe language supported by XNA), not C++; and 2. not having any dialogue written in the made-up language of a fictional culture. (Sorry, Tolkien wannabes.) If your game passes peer review, it gets added to Indie Games for as long as you maintain your App Hub membership. Indie Games are not available in countries with a government-imposed requirement of classification of all video games for objectionable material.
I am the one-in-a-billion person who plays games on both consoles and PC, so I must have grown up on twitchy RPGs?
Stuff like Zelda or Mana or other action games incorporating RPG elements, I take it. That or you grew up on first-person shooters and think an RPG is a grenade launcher.
I buy 1/2/3/5-dollar apps all the time for iOS
Not everybody lives in a country that calls its currency a "dollar". I guess is so that a "point" will have roughly the same value in all regions, modulo short-term currency fluctuation and whether it is the custom in a given country to include sales tax in a list price.
He just won two sales after I read the review. Already downloading.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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I think you mean Dragon Warrior, not Dragon Quest. But anyway, I consider myself a PC gamer through and through (haven't owned a console since the SNES), but I was playing console games long before PC games. Probably because I remember pinching pennies and doing extra chores as a kid to save up for an NES which must have cost ~$120 whereas our family's first computer cost at least $2000, was bought years after I had owned that NES (it was a 386), and was initially reserved for my father's "serious work", not games.
So, there's a bit of nostalgia here. I bet I am not the only PC gamer in this situation either. And these games cost me less than half the price of lunch..
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest
10 years ago you could have achieved this on the PC market without steam...
Then your original comment doesn't make much sense. What do you mean by "isn't the type of game that PC gamers grew up with"? It's one of the better known classic PC games!
Well, maybe if those gamers are ~23 or younger. Anyone who gamed on a Genesis or SNES and earlier wouldn't fit into your average console gamer category.
I dunno man, "Dr. J vs. Larry Bird" was kind of like a twitch game.
As far as I know, most countries besides the US don't have access to Xbox Live Indies. I'm sure that most sales come from the US anyway, but not bothering to include the rest of the world due to leaving out quality control is also kinda sad.
I havent seen this mentioned so far but as far as im aware, the indie game thing on xbox360 is US only (or at least very limited to which countries they're available in), Steam sell games world wide, probably not the entire reason, but it'd have a lot more to do with it (and probably all the advertising i saw for the game on the steam main page)
However, there is absolutely nothing stopping a person from connecting any laptop (or desktop) to their television if they have a larger higher quality screen somewhere.
Other than tradition, as other Slashdot users have told me. Please see previous comments (1 2 3 4 5 6 7).
And they do, frequently.
As hawguy wrote: "You're overestimating the technical knowledge of at least 80% of consumers." Others agree (7 8).
Cables like HDMI make it easy to basically turn any HDTV into a monitor.
If your gaming PC and your TV are in separate rooms, you have to pull cable through the walls. It can be difficult to get the landlord's permission to do so, and if the run is longer than 50 feet, you have to buy a pair of expensive HDMI-to-Cat6 adapters.
The great thing about indie games is that they often make do with less processing power, so even those on a mid-range laptop could play the two games listed
But would they work on a low-end laptop? A lot of people have desktops for PC gaming and laptops for workloads more comparable to homework and Facebook, that is word processing and web browsing. So they buy the least expensive laptop with the screen size that they want, and often this means an Intel laptop with an Intel GMA. (To gamers, GMA has long meant Graphics My Ass.)
Many people already want to view "computer" media outside of the computer - look at the WDTV box, BoxeeBox and others
All these are designed specifically for noninteractive media, not games, and they're much cheaper than buying a small-form-factor second PC to set next to the TV.
Most people don't need a "home theater" PC. They simply take one of their other PCs and temporarily assign it "home theater" use.
"Temporarily"? That's a lot of plugging and unplugging to move a minitower PC back and forth between a desk in one room and a television in another room.
but if "living-room multiplayer" games were made for PCs, there would be a lot more people buying or building such PCs
In other words, "if you build it, they will come". CronoCloud and others disagree with your assessment. There isn't a critical mass of companies willing to make "living-room multiplayer" games with high production values for PCs. If only low-production-value indie games support living-room multiplayer games on PCs, players are likely to continue to do as they do now and just skip low-production-value indie games entirely.
The truth is that I want what you say to be true. But video game developers have to sell their products and services in the real world, not the ideal world. A point-by-point rebuttal to CronoCloud and others might help restore my faith in the viability of living-room multiplayer games on PCs.
Except for the MSX ports of the first two games in the series, Dragon Quest has always been on consoles/handhelds.