The ZMan:

Yes it went through the same peer review as everyone else. They even spent a week in playtest and several new bugs were found as a result... though NONE of them were things on any of the checklists! Of course that still won't convince some people who think they write perfect code and will keep repeating 7 day cycles through peer review.

Though in all fairness, it was a lot easier for them to get responses than any other game up there. Not surprising due to its publicity, just saying they didn't have to wait 2 weeks in peer review for their pass, which makes me jealous ;)

I reckon Kodu is going to fail horribly.

Why? Because such a complicated and in-depth 'game' isn't the reason people come to Community Games, they come for smaller, simpler things. People don't come to Community Games for stuff like Kodu at all. And hopefully its horrendous fail will alert Microsoft to the inadequacies of the service.

The only way I see it working is if they get people who don't frequent Community Games to come and get the game. That is, with some serious advertising like on the dashboard or on the big gaming sites. But on its own merits in the current Community Games user base, it'll fail.

...

Well, that's awfully pessimistic of me, but I prefer to think of it as a 'realist' view :)

After playing it a bit, I think its going to do OK, but its not the next Mario Bros. or anything like that.

It reminds me of those old ASCII robot fighting games where you program your robot in a mock robot language, and then put your robot up against other user-programmed robots in a simulated arena. The idea is pretty cool, but these games all had two major flaws:
1. They only appeal to programmers
2. The optimal robot algorithm is too quickly determined and then the game isn't fun any longer.

I think #2 can be overcome, but that always brings us back to #1. Perhaps the "programming wheel" idea could be used to make programming robots more appealing to non-programmers.

As for Kodu, Its very polished, and I know I couldn't have created it, but I don't personally find it very interesting.

I also noticed that the download size was about 167MB, which it pretty big for a community app. Still though - not like those game demos we see clocking in over 1GB!

Captain Comic:

I also noticed that the download size was about 167MB, which it pretty big for a community app. Still though - not like those game demos we see clocking in over 1GB!

Whoa... I thought we faced a 150MB limit?  I'll be rather disappointed if they were allowed to ignore any of the rules...

SRH:

Whoa... I thought we faced a 150MB limit?

150MB is on the ccgame which compresses content. So if you have a ccgame that is around 130-150MB you're likely going to end up with a download size larger than 150MB.

Stegersaurus Games:

Though in all fairness, it was a lot easier for them to get responses than any other game up there. Not surprising due to its publicity, just saying they didn't have to wait 2 weeks in peer review for their pass, which makes me jealous ;)

EXACTLY - its what we've been saying all along... most XBLIG are terrible at marketing and publicity... if people have heard of your game and anticipate it then people want to play it in playtest, peer review and hopefully in production. I bet Duality ZF gets through review pretty quick too becuase they have hyped the game well and people are waiting for it.

Kodu is pretty nice, it reminds me of chipwits ;) (ok i am older) I was very pleased with how responsive to our input the Kodu team was, they even made content changes based on our input. Will it beat out the massagers? Who cares. I am just hoping it brings more people to the channel who then find other things they'd like to try.

I thought I was going to like it a lot more than I actually did. Of course my sessions were limited to 8 minutes, so it was hard to take it all in, but I liked the intro level (move me to the castle) more than any of "games" examples.

I would have liked to see Kodu be much more puzzle based; like a lemmings or a "blow", but where you have to program Kodu to accomplish designated tasks. Frankly, when I first fired Kodu up, this is where I thought it was going and that raised my expectations. I was really disappointed once I started trying some of the other examples.

In my opinion, the problem with the Kodu approach is that it's too generic. It was fun to make my own Lode Runner levels, make my own pinball games in Pinball Construction Set, and draw maps / write code for Quake. In these cases, the end result was always a "state of the art" game that I personalized to make it my own. I could share these with other Lode Runner, PCS, and Quake fans.

I think Kodu is missing a base "fun" element that it can call its own. Its possible love Lode Runner, Quake, Halo, etc. before creating any content, and that will make you want to play new content based on new maps or scripting languages. I think its harder to be a Kodu fan for the sake of Kodu, which means there will be less of a demand for Kodu content. The end result of custom Kodu content is not really something I want to play, so I think the fun has to be in the programming itself.

I'm sure I'm being unfair, and this is just my reaction after three 8 minute sessions. But I want to send my programmed Kodu's into battle or send them off to accomplish a goal (even if it's just "go to the tower"). I want to test my Kodu programming abilities against set tasks that are placed in front of me. I simply don't see the appeal of trying to create my own "game". I guess I need a more structured framework to motivate me.

I'm sure I'm being unfair, and this is just my reaction after three 8 minute sessions. ... I simply don't see the appeal of trying to create my own "game".

I don't think you're being unfair at all. The vast majority of gamers don't play games to create their own content - they want to play professionally developed content created by others. As much as I enjoyed making new levels for Lode Runner back in the 80s, it wouldn't have been nearly enough to keep me occupied as a standalone "game." Games such as Kodu, Little Big Planet, etc., have a pretty narrow range of appeal with respect to user-generated content.

Kodu will be pretty popular in the near future I imagine, but I don't see it having the staying power that, say, RC Air Sim has had.

I don't think you're being unfair either.

I downloaded Kodu and told my nieces "you know how I told you that you're too young for making Xbox games (with XNA)... Well now, you can make your own game with Kodu...!"

After a few minutes with it, I realized how I didn't like the interface at all... and my nieces were more interested in playing the XNA Racing Starter Kit that I had downloaded to my laptop, and deployed to my console.

A few minutes later, we went off to the movies to watch Transformers 2... so I don't think that I'll be showing them Kodu again...

personally, I think it's just lame.

Now, I'll show it to my nephews over the weekend, and see what they think of it... maybe my older nephew will like it? But then again, maybe not.. he had a lot of fun creating his own levels for the Platformer game I was making with the XNA Platformer Starter Kit.

I find designing worlds with Kodu very relaxing. maybe not as relaxing as a massage, but still pretty good.

darthuvuis:

I find designing worlds with Kodu very relaxing. maybe not as relaxing as a massage, but still pretty good.

may i ask how old you are? 16? 26? 36?

my niece is about 9 years old, and showed no interest... and i am 32 (and I love XNA), but couldn't warm up to Kodu in my first attempt.

as i mentioned before, I am going to show it to my older nephew (who is 10), so I hope he will like it as much as you do.

i'm sure it will appeal to a lot of younger people who have been dying to make games! :)

I'm 22 and work professionally as a game developer with XNA GS and I still found Kodu to be fun. :)

It takes a little bit to get used to and certainly won't appeal to everyone. I highly doubt this is going to be a blockbuster hit. After all most people want to play games; not make them. But for a certain set of people who like building things, this is by far the easiest way to "program" the 360 and get results running right away with some nice graphics. If nothing else, hopefully it gets people interested in fully committing to game development to the point of picking up C# and XNA GS.

I'm 31 and have been having a lot of fun playing with it, but it's been way more fun watching my 9 and 5 year olds play with it. My 4 year old wants a crack at it still but his brothers have been hogging it :)  They've all been having a lot of fun and I've never showed any of them how to do anything with it. They first started playing with it while I was at work actually so they had no training other than the game itself.

It was pretty cool coming home and seeing the games they had made.

I think I may be in the early stages of KODU addiction....... Is there a self-help group I can attend?

MajorSc:

my niece is about 9 years old, and showed no interest...

Don't try to make a game with her at first ....... show her how to design a world and place trees, castles and stuff and see how you go from there!

Show her all the materials you can put on the ground and that kind of stuff.... my nieces love the SIMS games and I think they will love KODU.

Incredible - but this is instafail. The game crashes for me when I click "share". Maybe down to do localization but nevertheless. Not good.

Raccoon456:

Incredible - but this is instafail. The game crashes for me when I click "share". Maybe down to do localization but nevertheless. Not good.

What's the repro? What's this got to do with localization?

It's reproducible every time. But here how it started:

Downloaded selected "Share" - crash.
Downloaded a Tutorial level, modified, saved, selected "Share" crash.

Localization? I said "May be down to". I get a stack trace dialog instead of usual Code 4. It said something about "Unexpected character at..". I have a non English set up. But we failed games here in the past which crashed when launched under French/Russian or other localisation set.

I'm pleased to see that Kodu has indeed outclassed the massage apps... at least for now.  Though spots two and three are both massage apps... and there is another one in the most popular as well.

Though I am working on a major serious project right now, I'm considering throwing together a quick massage app to try as both an experiment and as a way to hopefully help end this madness.  I would make it a point of honor not to spend more than three hours on the thing total.

LOL Massage ;)
Cover art would be an ascii controller composed of lol.  The "buy now" option on the trial would give a message along the lines of "Seriously, all this thing does is rumble your controller.  If you buy it I will lose all respect for you.  I spent less than three hours on this thing.  Go check out something else on the service!"
It would make Swords and Monsters look like the most amazing game of all time.

If it sells I won't know whether to laugh or cry...

Raccoon456:

I have a non English set up. But we failed games here in the past which crashed when launched under French/Russian or other localisation set.

Non-English meaning what? It'll help narrow it down

@Pheel

Just a wild guess....
Set xbox' language  (not locale!) to non-English language, like French or Russian.
The game will crash when trying to render number like "1,234,567" because thousands separator is different in other locales and may not be present in font resulting in exception being thrown.

Technical details are explained in "evil check list" thread here http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/19525.aspx
Testcase 9b and Caveat 4.

Hope this helps.

DecapodStudios:

@Pheel

Just a wild guess....
Set xbox' language  (not locale!) to non-English language, like French or Russian.
The game will crash when trying to render number like "1,234,567" because thousands separator is different in other locales and may not be present in font resulting in exception being thrown.

Technical details are explained in "evil check list" thread here http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/19525.aspx
Testcase 9b and Caveat 4.

Hope this helps.

Maybe it works in French and Russian, but not German?  I think Pheel was looking for the specific language the program was failing on to narrow down testing.

Looks like Kodu beat out the massage apps after all...

1     Kodu Game Lab
2     RC-AirSim
3     myFishtank
4     A Perfect Massage
5     A Morons Challenge
6     Illusions 360
7     DrumKit
8     Rumble Massage
9     Shiatsu Massage
10    Aquarium HD

It did it in less than a week no less. Unfortunately, we still have very few normal games in the top 10, 3 of which are massage apps. I digress.

Tommy McClain

My question now:

Who will be the first to slay the Kodu dragon?