Will it be possible to update a game once it's been released? I imagine that many of us will find bugs in our games, or think of some great new feature to add post-release.

There is no way defined yet. As much as they do want bug fixes, the team was very specific about not wanting people to release a crap game and promise they'll add features to it over time. The idea is that you finish a game, test your game, release the game. If there are bugs found, we'll have to see what can be done. But if you want to add new features, roll up a new version and call it 2.0.

I totally agree with that logic (create, test, release) as I'm a SDET by trade. Isn't it a little unfair to people who've purchased v1, when v2 is released? Perhaps something to think about if this model is adopted would be a discount system, where owners of v1 are given a discount of n points when purchasing v2.

 

Just something to think about.  Thanks for the quick reply!

UnSined:

I totally agree with that logic (create, test, release) as I'm a SDET by trade. Isn't it a little unfair to people who've purchased v1, when v2 is released? Perhaps something to think about if this model is adopted would be a discount system, where owners of v1 are given a discount of n points when purchasing v2.

Were you given a discount on Madden 2009 because you bought Madden 2008? Or any other series for that matter? I can't recall a single game where the developer/publisher gave a discount for having purchased the previous version.

I think he's still in the mindset of "updates". Updates (in terms of programs usually, not games) are cheaper than "full" versions.

If there was someway of your newly released game using (and most likely needing) a previously released game, then I could see the justification of a discount. But MS isn't setting this up for Community Games (atleast yet), which is basically what downloadable content is (in the realm of games).

 

I too am really wanting to see the allowance of downloadable content for community games, but we'll just have to wait I suppose...

 

There is a difference between DLC and updates. DLC, referring to things purchased off the marketplace, do not allow code changes. They are strictly, as they say, content. Updates are those mandatory downloads you'll get every once in a while. And while neither are currently set up for XBLCG, the inclusion of one does not guarantee the inclusion of the other. I could see them offering a DLC mechanism at some point as it doesn't affect your game's code and stands to be more profit for Microsoft, but I still highly doubt you'll see a generic update system.

I would hope if your game has a major bug in it and you've got the fix you may (key word: may) be able to work with the team to get that pushed out, but a general update system is just opening the system up to be gamed with people releasing unfinished games and promises of future updates. That is what needs to be avoided at all cost or else the entire platform suffers for it.

You can always say "peer review it", but as we've seen from the peer review so far there are things that get through, games that aren't played all the way through, and other such instances where it's just not practical. On top of that, it becomes incredibly hard to test these patches and things unless the developer has an extensive write up of what was fixed as well as what was in the original game so that reviewers can validate whether new features were added. It's far too hard to manage that system and keep people fully honest.

Of course I would love a general update system so I can bug fix my games. But I'd much rather lose that functionality in order to preserve the integrity of the whole system by preventing the dishonest people from gaming it.

Oh, wow, I thought I read in the FAQ (or around the boards) that we'd be allowed small updates, or resubmissions of our content (resubmissions meaning people who had already purchased the game could thus download it again - but the developer would have to notify the costumers, as it wouldn't do it automatically). Was this just talk/rumors that had been going around on the forums?

 

Either way, I'd still prefer "downloadable content" over "updates" - if I had to choose.

I too would prefer DLC. I think a lot of developers would. I would guess it will come at some point, but they likely want to see how XBLCG does before spending the time and resources developing the system and figuring out all the intricacies of such a system.

As for the small updates, I'm not sure. I remember at Gamefest they said they had no system in place for updates for XBLCG. So I'm not sure exactly how it stands at this point in time or how it will be in the final XBLCG release.

I'll break this down:

• DLC - We'd love to get this in too! Unfortunately it's non-trivial to implement on our end and there are are a whole bunch of unknowns (how do we peer review DLC?). This won't be available for Fall
• Allowing a Creator to update a game -  Thins is currently on the docket and should be allowable
• Informing a user of an update - Think of this like today's popup when you're told "This game has an update". Unfortunately this is non-trivial as well and won't be in for Fall

So users will only know about updates if you guys tell them to redownload them

Ohhhhh, this will be nice. I guess the average person not experiencing the issue which was fixed wouldnt need to download the update, for those experiencing a problem may go and look for an update and then like you say, the developer tells who he can how he can that updates available.

This is a really nice feature to learn about now. Even though i agree mostly with the issues surrounding it, developer taking less care etc etc there are going to be issues and bugs in games the developer just cannot forsee, and offering a way to update their/our games is great :)

 

To inform users, you can use a network session (quiet, in the background), where you ask all the peers for their versions. Once you get a peer that has a newer version, you can present that information to the user. Even if your game is single-user, that would probably work well enough.

 

Surely it would make sense for whatever update process they use to hook into the standard xbox "this title has an update press OK to get it" service.... well thats what I'm hoping for.

The ZMan:

Surely it would make sense for whatever update process they use to hook into the standard xbox "this title has an update press OK to get it" service.... well thats what I'm hoping for.

It would make sense but unfortunately we cannot use the same processin the short term.The current update mechanism requires all content to be certified and to go through the same signing process as AAA games. This is non-trivial and doesn't scale to the needs of community games

One of the benefits of releasing games via digital distribution is the ability to have closer connections to your customers, allowing you to accurately improve your game based on customer feedback, and getting those improvements into their hands much more quickly (say every two months or so) than if you had to wait until you had developed a completely new game (and missing out on sales from new customers). Counter Strike became a success because of this feedback/improvement system (as do many online sites and apps).

Also, adding new content such as maps and features over time helps the game's longevity in the marketplace - it keeps the game in the public spotlight, increasing the chances of finding new customers as more value is added to the game over time. People who are on the fence about buying my game might finally decide to buy it when they see that it now contains more value to them. It'd be of great benefit to me if I could add maps and other features, free of charge, much like 'Team Fortress 2' and 'Burnout Paradise' do now.

Keeping a game alive for as long as possible by adding value, and improving the game based on feedback, is very important to an independent developer, such as myself, and greatly increases my ability to leverage my existing game to make as much money from it as I can, while I still can.

Now I'm not at all suggesting that developers release and sell a poor product, or a game still in beta, in order to gather feedback to then improve it, but instead I'm suggesting developers be allowed to add more value to an already completed game. Could significant updates be made to a game, then have it go through peer review again as though it's a completely new product, but then instead of releasing it as a new game, it could replace an existing one?

So for example, I make "Game A", fully tested and ready for release, it goes through peer review, passes and is placed in the Community Games Marketplace; then, based on feedback and our own new ideas, we make "Game A v2", submit it to peer review as though it's a new game, it passes, but then "Game A v2" replaces "Game A" in the Marketplace? New customers who purchase "Game A" are now actually going to get "Game A v2" and old customers could be contacted (via the developer's web site perhaps, or some other mechanism such as an automatic update) and made aware that they can re-download "Game A" to get the new content, free of charge. Is something like this possible?

Its probably technically possibly though since we dont actually know the update mecahnics, nor the agreements you will sign with Microsoft its hard to know for sure.

One thing they were very clear about at GameFest was that its not their intention for the update process to be for basic bug testing type releases, for adding additional levels and for releasing v2's. The idea of updates is to fix the hopefully few bugs which make it past the review process and your own testing. Now they may have changed their mids since then but it would seem that your scenario is within those things they didn't want.

The idea is that you write your game, you test it and then you release it. Then just like other games if its successful a year later you release a new version as a whole new game.

Its something we will have to wait and see I suppose - maybe Microsoft will allow the community to define this sort of behaviour and see if it works. They are in it for the profit too so if something could make them more money I'm sure they can be convinced.

The ZMan:

The idea is that you write your game, you test it and then you release it. Then just like other games if its successful a year later you release a new version as a whole new game.

Yep, I understand what you're saying - I was just trying to put the idea out there. Independent developers, such as myself, have to leverage everything we can to increase our customer base and sales (and creating that larger customer base is great to have for my future games). Just releasing a whole new game a year later leaves a lot of money on the table - there's many new sales that can still be made using the game I've already got out there in the marketplace, and a whole lot of customers that may finally be swayed to buy that game if I can add more value to it - which is a lot, lot cheaper and timelier than developing a whole new game.

I believe developers are prevented from flooding the peer review system with lots of games because there's a limit on how many games you can submit every year: what if updates to your game were counted towards your yearly submission limit? That way, as a developer, I have a choice, do I update my game and use up my submission count, or develop and release a whole new game?

Thoughts?

I'd argue that providing free updates to consumers doesn't do a lot to increase the customer base or increase sales but that's a discussion I don't really want to get into :)

You will be able to submit an update, the same as you can in the beta but as has been mentioned there is no way to inform the user so each time there is an update they'll have to redownload the game manually. From a consumer perspective the less they have to do this the better

You also have to consider the impact of updates on Peer Review. It's likely that a game which has been updated often will get a lower priority by Peer Reviewers than new games. We've already seen this in the Beta where games have been updated multiple times and the later iterations took a long time to get through to Peer Review

Pheel:

You will be able to submit an update, the same as you can in the beta but as has been mentioned there is no way to inform the user so each time there is an update they'll have to redownload the game manually. From a consumer perspective the less they have to do this the better

So, just to clarify, the type of content update I've suggested above is actually going to be possible with Community Games? I can submit an updated version of my game, say two months later, with new levels and characters, etc, and that game will just replace the older version already on the marketplace as updates currently do?

And yeah, informing the customer will be tricky - I'll have to look for a few ways to do this. As for customers having to re-download the game manually, I'm hoping the fact that the update contains a significant amount of new content will make the download worth the hassle, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this.

You also have to consider the impact of updates on Peer Review. It's likely that a game which has been updated often will get a lower priority by Peer Reviewers than new games. We've already seen this in the Beta where games have been updated multiple times and the later iterations took a long time to get through to Peer Review

I'm suggesting roughly only two to three updates over the course of about eight months or so, not a quick succession of updates every few days or weeks - many developers could probably release completely new games by that schedule :)

How does that sound?

jwatte:

To inform users, you can use a network session (quiet, in the background), where you ask all the peers for their versions. Once you get a peer that has a newer version, you can present that information to the user. Even if your game is single-user, that would probably work well enough.

 

A clever hack.  But, I expect that updates will get a new guid which will prevent networking between versions of the same app.  Can anyone confirm?

There are a number of ways an update system could be implimented fairly quickly and painlessly (atleast for the end-user) and done in a way that mimics the XDK one.
A real advantage that Managed applications have over Native is that Versioning is a built-in feature of the Assembly MetaData.
As it is an XML file this makes it extremely easy to expand new fields, but still you have a Major, Minor and Build fields for each application.

Something that still confuses me is why the Build Field isn't automatically updated even with this being a feature common to ALL Managed applications; but I'm guessing it's just one of those weird over-sights.

Still that said, if you were to alter it so that the developers couldn't change the Build number and let XNA itself automatically update this each time you re-built.
Then you could do a simple check comparison against the current Major, Minor and Build to see if the current version available is newer than the one on the system.
If it is, then you could disable Xbox Live online gameplay and have a guide pop-up saying "there is an update available for this game"

Obviously the real downside for a quick and dirty solution like this would be that the entire game would have to re-download rather than just the changes, but it would work until a better solution with a Table-of-Contents check could be done.

Another really simple solution would be to just check the files dates. If the file has a newer creation data, then blam! it needs an update.
I mean there are a number of ways this could be done, it's more a case of finding the best solution for the end-users and developers.
Also while I agree with the whole 48 hours from Submission to Community Games area of Xbox Live, I think something we are going to start seeing are a number of title that just flat out require updates due to not being properly tested for bugs and issues... simply because these things get through on AAA titles, and they put their titles through lots of beta testing as well as pass (I think the list is up to 50) TCRs.

Something Community Games don't really have available is large numbers of beta testers, or Requirements for them to pass. So there might be a few show stopping bugs/issues that only appear later on. So yeah I think what is probably more important than an update system is some system in-place to help get our games beta tested to make sure they're working as they were intended to; and bugs are down to an acceptable level. There does need to be some form of reward if only Karma or something on the forums if they help test out peoples games.. just something to make people want to have others test their games outside of peer-review, and something for people to want to help make sure that the quality is what the developer hoped it would be.

:) just my thoughts on this

Beyond bug fixes, I personally can't really see a huge need for DLC in community games.

Community games (and even Arcade games) are almost disposable from an end user perspective. They are not going to hold the user's attention forever. I may not be typical, but if I play an Arcade game for more than a week it's rare. Sure, there may be a few exceptional games that people will play for longer, but it would be interesting to know the stats relating to how long people hold interest in an Arcade title. If anyone released DLC for an arcade game I played six months ago right this second I would never know, and likely not care if I did.

If you have a stable engine and so much content to be  made available, make your game a series of games. My guess is you have a better chance of getting the average user to pay for and download "Your Awesome Game - Episode 3" than you do of keeping them around in your constantly updated title.

wmfwlr:

Beyond bug fixes, I personally can't really see a huge need for DLC in community games.

Community games (and even Arcade games) are almost disposable from an end user perspective. They are not going to hold the user's attention forever. I may not be typical, but if I play an Arcade game for more than a week it's rare. Sure, there may be a few exceptional games that people will play for longer, but it would be interesting to know the stats relating to how long people hold interest in an Arcade title. If anyone released DLC for an arcade game I played six months ago right this second I would never know, and likely not care if I did.

If you have a stable engine and so much content to be  made available, make your game a series of games. My guess is you have a better chance of getting the average user to pay for and download "Your Awesome Game - Episode 3" than you do of keeping them around in your constantly updated title.

Depending on the type of content, doing "Your Awesome Game - Episode 3" wouldn't make sense. I have one game I'm working on that's a multiplayer racing/combat game where there's a bunch of levels to pick from to play on. I plan on releasing more levels in the future. I'm certainly not going to force people to rebuy the game for that.

I would love to see DLC and micro-transactions. I don't want to have to charge as much for levels as I do for the game.

I don't disagree that there may be scenarios where games might like to have DLC, and maybe yours is one of them, but I would argue that there are no cases where it is absolutely needed.

This isn't a knock at you or your game, but honestly, if you release a track a month what percentage of your population is going to be still playing your game after a month? After two? People buy full games and don't play them for a month. While you lose the interoperability for multiplayer, you would likely see more interest if you released game 1 with five tracks, waited 6 months and released game 2 with five more tracks.

There are so many features that could be worked on. I would argue that DLC comes way after improving the compact framework performance, and I'd hate to see it included and underused or misused.

Depends on the game doesn't it? I look forward to the Rock Band DLC and I'm still playing it when I have time. Granted, RB isn't an XBLA game, but the principle is still the same. There's still people out there playing games that are 10 years old or older. I still play Marble Blast Ultra every once in a while. How old is that game?

UnSined:

Will it be possible to update a game once it's been released? I imagine that many of us will find bugs in our games, or think of some great new feature to add post-release.

By recent posts, only re-submiting the game and passing peer-review again.