Are you one of those people holding off on supporting playing from any controller? Convinced that no consumer would ever need that? I just got a couple comments on my site I think you should read on this post: http://xboxindies.com/2009/07/the-first-japanese-xbox-live-indie-game.

dwm says...

July 27th, 2009 at 2:40pm PDT

I’m in the UK and both of the Japanese games I tried don’t accept any controller input. The games are unplayable and I have to manually return to the dashboard. On the main menu, I see something similar to “press X to go to marketplace”. Pressing X or any other button does nothing. Is anyone else having this problem? Are these games programmed to accept UK controller input? Am I missing something? Thanks!

and later...

dwm says...

July 28th, 2009 at 6:12am PDT

I have discovered the problem. When two (or more?) controllers are connected, only input from the first controller is detected. This means that the game is unplayable on any controller other than the controller 1 when one or more controllers are connected.

This happens on both of the games. They both have the same developer which makes me now believe that this is a developer issue and not a regional issue. I’ll try other Japanese games in future to confirm this.

In the mean time, I have reported this issue for both of the games on the XNA site.

Hopefully now everyone realizes that yes, people do play with non-index-one controllers and yes, they will think your game is broken. So please, make sure your game supports using any controller to play. :)

So do we get to say "We told you so" now? :)

Maybe developers will realize we're being hard in our reviews for a reason.

So wait, these games passed peer review in this state? How did that happen? Is it because of the new influx of Japanese peer reviewers?

Rainault:

So wait, these games passed peer review in this state? How did that happen? Is it because of the new influx of Japanese peer reviewers?

I have no idea. I'm guessing the Japanese reviewers haven't read our Evil Checklist and such, so they aren't aware of what is considered a failable issue. Hopefully someone will get those documents translated so Japanese reviewers will follow the same guidelines the community has come up with over the last 9 months.

Nick Gravelyn:

Rainault:

So wait, these games passed peer review in this state? How did that happen? Is it because of the new influx of Japanese peer reviewers?

I have no idea. I'm guessing the Japanese reviewers haven't read our Evil Checklist and such, so they aren't aware of what is considered a failable issue. Hopefully someone will get those documents translated so Japanese reviewers will follow the same guidelines the community has come up with over the last 9 months.

It seems like it may be necessary to require that a game get peer reviewed by at least one or two developers from each of the territories it's offered for sale in. Since the games in question are for sale in the UK, it would have been good for at least one UK peer reviewer, who hopefully has read the English evil check list, to review it and flag any issues that Japanese developers are not yet aware of.

This would also help spot culturally sensitive issues in a game during peer review.

It does look like there is a localized Best Practices page for that territory, so I would hope Japanese developers have read it before submitting games. Some of them clearly have, as I believe this thread is discussing how hard it is to properly handle gamer sign-in and controller selection. Hopefully the language barrier isn't stopping non-english-speaking developers from utilizing all the code and examples on the various XNA community sites already out there.

Looks like they'll be making all the same mistakes we did ;)

Kevin Gadd:

It does look like there is a localized Best Practices page for that territory, so I would hope Japanese developers have read it before submitting games. Some of them clearly have, as I believe this thread is discussing how hard it is to properly handle gamer sign-in and controller selection.

Nakfiv is the developer of the two games in question, so at least they know the document exists, but that thread is about the need to be careful about dealing with sign in status when using storage (no mention of controllers).

Rainault:

So wait, these games passed peer review in this state? How did that happen?

Likely because the service is still new there and the peer reviewers are still getting their footing.

Can we report an issue to Microsoft that these should have failed??? After all, they're still indie games and they still make the rest of us Indie Game developers look bad when the games don't work right.

I'll also mention that I don't use Controller one all the time either... I've got two wireless controllers and I just grab whichever is closest at the time. So I appreciate multiple controllers working too.

AFAIK the Best Practises have been trasnlated but the checklists have not - we're working on getting that done.

If a game gets to marketplace bugs can be reported on the 'Report abuse' link on the marketplace page. ENough bugs == game pulled and must be resubmitted. (As the psoter to Nick's page says he has done). This is what we encourage people on forums.xbox.com to do when they find issues but historically they a) whine in the fourms and/oer b) Just not buy the game.

Games only require local revieweers for language. So if a game is marked as English too then it requires English reviewers. Neither of those games have that requirement so Japanese reviewers only qere required.


Yes it seems like the Japanese reviewers are making the same mistakes... we're working with Microsoft and the Japanese MVPs to improve the process.

Looking at the "Report Abuse" link, these are the options we're given...

Code Defects - Crashes Make Content Unplayable

Grossly Misrepresents Content in Content Info

Inappropriate for Xbox LIVE

Advertising (Alcohol, Tobacco, Gambling)

Crimes vs. Humanity/Distasteful Violence

Encourages Illegal Activities

Direct Threats Against Person or Group

Human Excretion

Nazi Content or Symbols

Collecting Personal Information

Racist or Discriminatory Language

Full Nudity

Strong Sexual Content

Child Pornography

Unauthorized Content

None of these really seem to fit controllers not working... so perhaps this is not a valid reason to get a game pulled? Closest would be code defects, but it doesn't crash and cause the game to be unplayable.

Here's the link to the Marketplace for this game (then click Report Abuse) if anyone wants to take a look...
http://catalog.xna.com/en-US/GameDetails.aspx?catalogEntryId=8f112c65-3eeb-48a8-8cc4-2f6a1e7373c5&type=2

It causes the game to be unplayable becuase the controller in your hand doesn't work.. as developers we know the bug so we play 'hunt the controller'. Consumers don't always. THe game appears to have hung. That is a crash to the consumer of a video game.

I use 'crashes make game unplayable' in this case. All Abuses are reviewed by a human and if they find its not enough the game gets reinstated so don't feel bad about posting if you feel strongly about something.

Kris Steele:

Closest would be code defects, but it doesn't crash and cause the game to be unplayable.

Ignore the "crash" part. There's still code defects that make the game unplayable from the player's POV. Use the details box for elaborating on exactly what the problem is.

Perhaps someone should send a heads up to the developer before trying to get the game pulled? They could go and fix it then.

We really could do with someone who speaks English and Japanese... I doubt google translate will get the message across well... I'm starting to think I should learn some Japanese though I hear its a hard one to pick up.

Big Daddio:

Perhaps someone should send a heads up to the developer before trying to get the game pulled? They could go and fix it then.

If the game gets pulled they can also fix it. Pulling it has the benefit of not having more people like this person who thought the game was just broken since he couldn't play the first time he tried to use it. Even if Microsoft doesn't pull it, I feel the developer should while he fixes the issue.

Pulling a game after release is sort of a financial fiasco... let them make the same mistakes we did and just patch it. In my humble opinion.

Harald Maassen:

Pulling a game after release is sort of a financial fiasco

Having a game that appears broken isn't exactly going to move units, either. ;)

Harald Maassen:

let them make the same mistakes we did and just patch it.

For this game I don't really care one way or the other. But we really do need to make sure this is the last time. There's no reason to have them start from scratch when we have quite the list of test cases. Much better for them to learn from our mistakes than to repeat them.

The ZMan:

We really could do with someone who speaks English and Japanese... I doubt google translate will get the message across well... I'm starting to think I should learn some Japanese though I hear its a hard one to pick up.

It can be fun and worthwhile to try and learn to read/understand Japanese, but learning to speak/communicate in it effectively is a real ordeal - years and years and years of practice and you'll still be spotted instantly by native speakers. Some are more receptive to people botching their language than others. :) It's definitely worthwhile to be able to understand what native Japanese speakers are saying, even if your understanding ends up being shaky sometimes.

On a more subjective note it's also a very interesting language to learn - very unlike most of the western languages you might encounter. Quite fun if you're just looking to learn about it in your free time.

You do realize that you'd also have to learn the written version of it for it to be any use on a forum, right? :)

Harald Maassen:

You do realize that you'd also have to learn the written version of it for it to be any use on a forum, right? :)

Unless you recorded what you were going to write using a microphone, uploaded the file somewhere, and then linked to it in the forum.

A Japanese/English community member would be a huge benefit for both sides. He or she would probably be immediately promoted to MVP. (unless one of the mods learns Japanese first)

I've posted this issue to Japanese forum (http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/35823.aspx). Hopefully the creator fixes the issue quickly.

I'm going to post a brief summary of evil / not-so-evil checklist for Japanese peer reviewers, to let them know what to review till we get full translation of the lists.

Stradale - can you also encourage the Japanese creators to use playtest first since this process is new. People can find the bugs without them going through the 7 day wait period.

Stradale - as the current 'go between' can you also explain to them what 'default' means when selecting language. There are several games with Japanese (Default), English - this means that English will appear on English will appear on English xboxes only - every other nationality will see Japanese. My guess is that they don't mean that since English is a more common language than Japanese. English should be the efault langauge if they have transalted the title - if they have not then no worries.

Thank you ZMan. We'll let Japanese community know these points.