Hey everyone, North West, North Squard, Vector2Games and Silver Dollar Games  1 are all part of our company “Silver Dollar Games” www.silverdollargames.com.  We’re reviewing and play testing exclusively from Silver Dollar Games  1.  I want to make it clear that we love Indie Games and are not here to game the system.  We just love to make lots of games.  Our company is just two brothers, David Flook and me, Jon Flook.

And now a little bit about us.

Let’s travel back to January 2007. 

David was working full time at a grocery store and I was working at a TV station.  David had some pretty good programming skills back in high school, but never really explored it past that.  When he heard about XNA he started learning it immediately.  After a couple test projects he began working on his first big game, Blazing Birds.  Working every day at the grocery store and every night on Blazing Birds was wearing him down.  He came to me for help.  My job at the TV station was extremely stressful but whatever spare time I had I offered up.

After months of work we submitted Blazing Birds into the first Dream Build Play Contest in 2007.  To our surprise it was the co-winner that year.  We were blessed with a huge opportunity to put Blazing Birds on XBLA.

It’s now November 2007. 

David’s working with Microsoft to put Blazing Birds onto XBLA and we’ve started working on another game for next year’s Dream Build Play, a game we called ‘Blow’.   It felt like working three jobs, but we kept hoping it would pay off.  Dream Build Play 2008 was over, Blow was a finalist, but not a winner.  Even though we didn’t win, we were very excited to be one of the first games on Indie Games.  And we were, on November 21st 2008 Blow was released, under Vector2Games.  For the rest of 2008 we continued to work on Blazing Birds.

It’s now March of 2009.

The sales figures are out for Indie Games.  Blow, priced at 400 points brought in a good $4000.  For most Indie Games that’s fantastic.  Unfortunately we spent $2500 licensing the music and a year of our time working on it.  Financially it just didn’t make sense. We’re still very proud of Blow and it’s one of my favourite games, but I guess the gamers just weren’t into blowing bubbles.  Can’t blame them.

It’s now May 2009.

At last Blazing Birds was ready for XBLA.  It was released on May 20th 2009.  Did I mention Blazing Birds is about robot badminton?  Unfortunately the Xbox users aren’t too hot on that kind of thing.  Badminton is pretty niche after all.  Our sales figures were underwhelming, or maybe we just had our goals set too high.

It’s now July 2009

We were kind of stumped.  After spending the last two and half years at this we were still struggling.  We didn’t give up.  So we tried a different approach.  Maybe instead of spending 3000 hours on a game, we spend 100. More ideas, more chances to diversify, more chances to reach out to the gaming community.  We opened up North West and North Squard and started to release smaller games.  It was fun and got us involved in the XNA community more than we’ve ever been in the past.   This seemed to work for us.  We’re able to try new things and we’d always have one idea that was hot with the Xbox users.

It’s now October 2009.

David and I have quit our day jobs.  Seriously, 18 hour days for almost three years was tiring us out.  We started up the company “Silver Dollar Games”, which is the account Silver Dollar Games 1 that you see here.  We hope to one day have Silver Dollar Games 2, 3 and so on.

There were times when we thought of giving up.  But we kept thinking, each new idea, each new game has the potential to be great.  If one didn’t pan out, then next one will.

So that’s the story of two brothers who wanted to make video games.

Jon Flook and David Flook

Thanks for clarifying this before any confusion arose. I hear what you've said about having a real job and making games, it's rough after a while.

I think that's kinda sad -If I understood you correctly you're saying: we CAN do great games (e.g. Blow was really stunning!), but we'll rather start producing much crap and hope that people will buy our stuff.

Kudos for explaining this to the community, and having the balls to give up the day job. No-one ever achieved great success by coasting along, and you chaps seem to have been doing anything but that.

Hmmm...

You are saying you love XBLIG and dont want to game the systems, but we will have to thrust your word on this.  As I am not sure how MS check the people that are doing the peer review.  If they goes by only checking the gamertag and not the physical MAC address of the Xbox 360 then you could easily review your own game with different gamer tags you just created... (afaik nobody know exactly who fail/pass games unless they leave a comments in the forums and said so).

Also even if you are really not going to be doing this for the review process, you are still from what I understand going to use those several creators account to bypass one of the other rules/limitation that all of us have which is we aren't allowed more than 8 games (even some people find it limiting and ask if it was going to change and we were said NO).  That's mean now you will be able to do so, by bypassing this laws in a kind of tricky way :-(.

I know you explain your reasoning and was honest about it which is good (you decided to be frank with us and told us the truth, before some people find it later on and look you tried to cheat).  Several of us would also like to make a living out of this just like you, but I don't think releasing many low-value games (you just said yourself that you are 2 brother and how much time you spent on Blow an Blazing Bird which look like 2 great games, so you know that 2 make great games it take time to polish them) is the right solution.  And if you have been following discussion/thread here, you should know how many of us complain about this situation of people releasing quick game just to make a few buck and not caring to really make some quality product :-(.  Oh god I am just thinking if people making massage apps decide to do the same just so they can get different flavor of their own massage apps.

I think as you already proven with Blazing Bird & Blow that you have talents to really make great games, maybe you just miss a little marketing talents.  Someone that could help you do some marketing research, promote your games, etc...

This is my opinion of course and you might have a different view about this situation, but for me and my other friends at Québarium we prefer to take our time, but put out something of quality then release in quantity. And I know many of other vocal XBLIG developer here think the same way.

For clarification: We have the limitation of 8 projects per premium account. There isn't a rule that says you can't pay for a second (or third...) account to have more projects.

Thanks for the explanation... that cleared up some things.


Something everyone might think about before they build games with multiple accounts.

Microsoft, the mods and the members of the community keep an eye out for people gaming the system. One category are those who make unrelated accounts and review their own games using those accounts. Microsoft don't tolerate this.

Having multiple accounts isn't forbidden, its the only way around the 8 game limit and sometimes you want to market to different segments. We understand that.

However, unless your accounts are called "Zbuffer Games", "ZBuffer shooter games", "ZBuffer kids games" then if someone notices a connection you are going to set off the alarms which means people waste time looking into it checking for gaming the system. I'm sure most people with multiple accounts are not gaming anything.

So if you have multiple accounts it might be a good idea to at least let Microsoft know (creators@microsoft.com) that way if its noticed they won't waste time.

Most importantly use your multiple accounts wisely, e.g. for network testing your and other peoples games. Never EVER use them for reviewing your own games... well unless you want to end up an iPhone developer.

Before this turns into a long thread about unfairness etc. etc. Microsoft have these rules to protect everyone here. The 99% of people who don't game the system and want to play properly. The 1% who like to break rules deserve everything they get.

intruder:

As I am not sure how MS check the people that are doing the peer review.  If they goes by only checking the gamertag and not the physical MAC address of the Xbox 360 then you could easily review your own game with different gamer tags you just created... (afaik nobody know exactly who fail/pass games unless they leave a comments in the forums and said so).

While us forum members only have the forums to go on, rest assured Microsoft have extensive logs on who reviews what and gaming the system by reviewing your own games is swiftly dealt with. I doubt they will go into any detail on how its tracked in here but its not worth trying to do it.

Cheers for the info, XNA/MVP peeps. Nice to know that the mechanisms are in place to catch out the people cocking it up for everyone else :)

I am all for changing the review system where you leave comments before you pass or fail the game.  The system would then automatically add a post to the games thread, this way we know who passes our game but never says anything.  Honestly I think it is just a good practice, if you review a game and find no fail reason go ahead and leave a comment.  I guess it might be bad in one respect, if you know who is constantly passing games with easy fails there could be some that start a thread war.  I think the community is above that, and everyone seems to respect everyone.  But it would be a nice addition to the review process.

Just so everyone knows... Just because some spends 100 hours on a game versus 3000 hours doesn't mean they are "crapping" out game to make a quick buck. I know the Flook brothers and these guys sit for hours brainstorming fun ideas for games. Even going as far as asking for family and friends input and having them test any games they create to get the feedback they need to make small but fun arcade games. Just because every game the make doesn't look like "Blow" or "Blazing Birds"  doesn't mean care and thought for the games was thrown to the waste side. They do take their time coming up with the concepts for the games before they start programming.

I think once you get 8 games in the marketplace you should pull your less performing stuff to make room for the new. You get 8 slots that can be filled. Not a limit of 8 games ever. I mean come on if you have something selling 3 copies a week, pull it. If you have a game that will not make the $150 per quarter and you are releasing your 9th? I say pull your underperforming junk.

What strikes me about this post is how XBLA didn't pay off. Next time I hear anyone bitching about how we are second class and XBLA is the road paved with gold I am going to poin them to this thread.

BTW what is wrong with a quick buck? When did a quick buck become a bad thing. So you would rather work long and hard for little or no money? I hear McD's is hiring.

Big Daddio:

I think once you get 8 games in the marketplace you should pull your less performing stuff to make room for the new. You get 8 slots that can be filled. Not a limit of 8 games ever. I mean come on if you have something selling 3 copies a week, pull it. If you have a game that will not make the $150 per quarter and you are releasing your 9th? I say pull your underperforming junk.

What strikes me about this post is how XBLA didn't pay off. Next time I hear anyone bitching about how we are second class and XBLA is the road paved with gold I am going to poin them to this thread.

BTW what is wrong with a quick buck? When did a quick buck become a bad thing. So you would rather work long and hard for little or no money? I hear McD's is hiring.

Big Daddio:

You get 8 slots that can be filled. Not a limit of 8 games ever.

Actually, how it works is that once a game has been approved for Marketplace, you can remove it from the Marketplace but not from your account.
The game needs to remain on the system so that people who already purchased the game can re-download it if they need to.

This thread should probably be locked - it's no longer going to be useful, and it's rambling into the realms of religion :)

Games development is a somewhat creative exercise and means different things to different people. Some do it for a business, some for purely artistic reasons, and many in between. No amount of discussion on here is going to bring us all to consensus.

Deej:

This thread should probably be locked - it's no longer going to be useful, and it's rambling into the realms of religion :)

Games development is a somewhat creative exercise and means different things to different people. Some do it for a business, some for purely artistic reasons, and many in between. No amount of discussion on here is going to bring us all to consensus.

Agreed. Thanks to Silver Dollar Games for being so forthcoming but since this thread really can't lead us anywhere but silly arguments, I'm going to call it done right about now.