Let me end this with a story…

 

I’m sure Microsoft and the XNA team heard feedback on the “Xbox LIVE Community Games” name long before we ever voiced our opinion.  That’s not the credit Jason was asking for.  Take a step back and realize how we arrived here, and with such a strong opinion that the name needed to be changed to begin with:

 

I would like to think that we at Xona Games are role model developers, hear me out, in the sense we don’t rush and try to make a quality product (11 months development so far), and we have spent thousands on marketing (XNA Roundup ads and much more).  That alone separates us from most XNA developers.  I like to think we will never be an example of how XBLCG “sucks” unlike so many of our games here.  And, I would like to think, it would probably be a good thing if more XNA developers developed with the care that we do.

 

With our extended efforts we run into problems others do not.  One was marketing our game.  And when you are spending a couple thousand dollars, money we don't have, problems such as a poorly chosen names can hit close to home.  Another developer spending nothing will not care as much.  When we made marketing materials, we ran into major hurdles with the “Xbox LIVE Community Games” name.  We had to drop a feature mention it in the XNA Roundup ad.  We had to spend time and energy explaining what a “community game” was, where “indie game” was self-explanatory.  “Community Games” had already developed a poor reputation (which was pissing us off even though we were never vocal about this), whereas “indie games” was respected.  “This game may be good” (indie game) has a better ring than “this game probably sucks” (community game), however similar they are mathematically speaking.  Marketing is an artform.

 

Anyway, and we took some flak for dropping the “Community Games” mention out of our ad.  There was some misunderstandings there, but it was all settled.  No harm done.  The point is, there was a deeper problem:  The name was bad and had to be changed.  We felt it more than others, because we were marketing that name along side of our own names.  Xona Games... Duality ZF... XBLCG... every "new" thing is a marketing hurdle.  Realize, as I am saying this, that this was our opinion, even if you don’t agree, according to our experiences as a indie developer trying to promote our game.  We all have different points of view.

Our view may be wrong, but we viewed our job as promoting “Duality ZF” not “Xona Games, Duality ZF, and Xbox LIVE Community Games”.  When you are stuck with many hard-to-promote things you start to feel the issues that others don’t see.  Anyone not marketing their game is not going to relate to what I say.  And it’s easy to be misunderstood as selfish (ie., “I don’t want to promote XBLCG”).  We were not saying that.  That’s why Jason started the thread on the name change.  We weren’t saying we don’t want to promote the platform.  We were asking for help in doing so, because, in doing so, we ran into significant problems.  Go spend a couple thousand dollars on marketing, and you get into that mind frame where everything needs to be explained as easily as possible (lowest barrier of entry to customer understanding); And you will also run into the same problems we did.  What is our game?  A 2d shooter?  A shmup?  A shoot’em up?  A spaceship shooter?  A top down shooter?  An overhead view shooter?  A bullet hell shooter?  Understand our mind is at work on details like this.  And the same detailed work transitioned over to the XBLCG name and all the problems within it.

 

Give credit where credit is due?  I think that’s a fair policy.  But figure out what the credit Jason is asking for before jumping down on him.  After all we went through (above story) he started a thread on the issue, properly suggesting a much better name (ask anyone in marketing).  The system is now named to his exact suggestion.  Jason is not saying he deserves 100% credit for a name change, but for credit of being involved, doing all that work outlined above, for asking for a change, for an improvement, and for asking for something that really mattered to us being “role model developers” (ie, ones who good for the system), and therefore it probably mattered to everyone and to the system as a whole.  Stop counting the games we have reviewed and realize this is us giving back to the community.  And he was right, but that’s not the point.  Understand being right is not the point.  Everything I am saying here is valid even if the name was never changed.  Jason would still have been "right" in doing what he did.  But, we were bashed in that thread, our reputation ruined that extra bit more, and it never should have happened.  That’s the point.  That’s the credit we deserve.

 

If you think Jason or I ask for too much, or are selfigh, or arrogant, then you do not understand us.

 

Developers that spend more time and energy (and money) are likely to run into deeper issues not encountered by other developers.  This is especially true on marketing issues as most XNA developers do not market their games.  Jason was merely asking for credit that the thread he started was worthwhile, that he and his voice was worth something.  Like it or not, he played a part in the name change (even if nothing but a notification that devs want this name changed, too) and deserves whatever credit he deserves.  Now, read the thread again and look at the non-constructive posts.  The posts that get in the way.  Who are they from?  An MVP threatened to shut down the thread hoping an XNA team member would give the opportunity to do so.  This is wrong.  Why was there a battle over the existence of a discussion?  Let us talk.  Sometimes it’s those threads, the ones that everyone loves to join in on however absurd they seem, where great ideas come from.  Creativity is not robotic and organized.  What should have happened, you may agree, is the thread should have continued without interruption.  New ideas would foster.  The ones who have run into the problems will try to solve them.  If it goes no where, no big deal.  Clean up the trollers, not the dreamers.  If only 1 out of 100 such threads makes a difference, then all 100 threads were worth while.  Don’t make fun for 99 wrongs, congratulate for the 1 right.  Isn't that how geniuses do it?  The whole point of this community is innovation and new ideas and the lack of restrictions.  There’s a lesson to be learned here.  Amazing things have happened here.  The “never say never” applies to all of us.  If you knew my life you would see I live in a “do what cannot be done” world.  The thread never lived long enough to have a connect issue filed.

 

I hope this clarifies and ends most of the misunderstanding.  I could honestly write for hours on this.

 

How easy it is to be understood!

(Apologies that this post is obviously way off topic... but it serves a huge purpose and I hope you respect it for its deeper meaning in helping us all understand one another and collaborate in this community better.)

I long for the days when we can all just hold hands and make some video games. :)

Zman gave credit. I'll give credit: I said the odds they would rename the system were slim to none and yet here we are. You guys were right that they would be willing to change the name. We're still waiting for the dust to settle on whether it's good (Kotaku thinks so) or bad (as a lot of guys at TIG Source think), but you were right that they would be willing to change it.

Now let's all just move on with our new and improved name and get back to making games rather than arguing over how much of an affect that thread had on the name change because it really doesn't matter whether the entire name change is because of that thread or whether they didn't even know the thread existed. Either way the name has changed. Let's move on from that argument, please.

I can use this to get back on topic:

Nick Gravelyn:

We're still waiting for the dust to settle on whether it's good (Kotaku thinks so) or bad (as a lot of guys at TIG Source think),

Interestingly, the arguments of those at TIG  Source who think that the name change is "bad" are such, that they think that it is bad for them (the "real" indie developers - for  PC of course) since they, of course, are the quality indie developers, and now MS has gone and used their name "indie" for their own crappy "community games" channel, thus devaluating the name "indie" which previously had such positive connotations only, because of them being such genius game developers (paraphrasing their arguments a bit ;-)...

Doesn't that actually mean that, although they hate the name change (because they think it's bad for them), that the negative voices at TIG source actually also think that for us (the XBLIG developers) the name change will be a good thing? :-D

So actually, even though the TIG guys are upset about it, they too sort of agree that the name change is a wise move by MS...

Oh, and for my personal opinion: I like Indie Games much better than Community Games and I also think it was a wise move. Changing a brand in the middle of a race should be avoided as much as possible, but sometimes its still a good thing, especially when you are that early in the race as XBLCG XBLIG still is (don't forget, it's not even available in the majority of countries yet!)...

Doc

To help finalize and finish up this discussion, the name change conversation was well underway within the team before the Indie Games forum thread was started. We did find it interesting that our community were thinking along the same lines as us with the Indie Games name but the forum thread wasn't the catalyst for the name change, it was a good confirmation though.

Spyn Doctor:

Interestingly, the arguments of those at TIG  Source who think that the name change is "bad" are such, that they think that it is bad for them (the "real" indie developers - for  PC of course) since they, of course, are the quality indie developers, and now MS has gone and used their name "indie" for their own crappy "community games" channel, thus devaluating the name "indie" which previously had such positive connotations only, because of them being such genius game developers (paraphrasing their arguments a bit ;-)...

To give them a fair word, even though I don't agree with them, the argument they presented was a "bit" different. It's not that they are geniuses and the word is reserved for them, but moreso that those in "the know" know what indie in general means, but the general public only gets exposure to the term "indie" when they see the new indie superstars like braid or world of goo. Most people don't know about all the bad indie games out there that don't go anywhere. The argument was that by MS using the term for their distribution platform, the general audience is being exposed to EVERYTHING indie. This exposure may sully the term for future use as it may lose its positive connotations with the more general public. That said, games are games, and if you don't like the public's view of the term "indie" because people start understanding what it actually means, just call your game a video game. Video games as a general term don't have a bad connotation!

There's also the argument that "massage app" does not constitute a game, let alone an indie game, which I'm happy to agree with ;).

Yeah, I know I was embroidering a bit (I did add a wink-smiley though! :-)...
But my point was, that the reasons of why some of the commenters don't like the name change (and if you read the comments now, it seems that a majority has no problem with it anyway), actually show that the name change is a good move: They seem to think that "indie" has a positive connotation in the minds of the users. So we can at least hope that this positive association will rub off a bit on our games. (Unless of course the name doesn't matter at all, which has been suggested in this thread already.)

Doc

Hi Matthew Doucette. I'm sorry. Reading your post, I must admit I misunderstood what you had said. Note that my intention was NOT to jump at you nor to judge you. Once again, I understand what you've been through.
Good luck for the future.

Nice post Matthew Doucette, I read another post of yours in another thread along the same lines. I think what you're trying to get at, is that when trying to make your game as appealing as possible, let's say 90% of that is making your game the best it can be and polishing/refining it, and maybe 10% is things out of your control but related to the XNA platform/channel of distribution. For the vast majority of games, maybe only 5-20% of its potential is fulfilled, and so that last 10% is relatively unimportant. But if your game is so well-made that you're near that 90% limit, then that last 10% is going to start popping up frequently as a major obstacle; the fact that it's out of your control, that there's virtually no way to achieve that last 10%, is going to be very frustrating.

The fact that so few games live up to their potential is why Nick always pushes people to make their games better instead of worrying about that 10%, but I think we can all agree that 0% is better than 10%, and doing what we can to remove obstacles from the platform and the channel is still a positive use of energy, even if it's only to provide confirmation for an internal project like Jenkmeister suggested. While it's more time-efficient and wise try to improve the 90% on your side, I don't think people should be actively discouraged from trying to reduce the 10%.

Thank god...I hated the old name. "Community" just wasn't appealing. Indie sounds a lot cooler, and I think it's more representative of the service.