Jen:

How does this announcement affect networking in XNA, specifically the requirements for interfacing over Xbox Live?  Does the end-user need a creators club subscription to play the game over Live?  Is a creators club subscription required at all for the end-user?  What about on the PC; is a creators club subscription required for Live anymore?

I think that it's ok for requiring a creators club subscription for developers, considering how it's not that expensive anyway.  The prospect of being able to sell games on the Marketplace is very appealing, too.  But I have always thought that a big barrier to getting XNA games out into the wild was the fact that interfacing the game over Live required a creators club subscription in ADDITION to Gold, no matter what platform.  If this has changed, I am one very happy puppy! :)

Community games on the 360 will not require a CC subscription to download and play, just to develop and "publish". For Windows, nothing changes for now.

preston181:

Is the game "The Dishwasher" going to be a full Live Arcade game? I loved it, and would gladly pay for a full version of it. Also, is there plans in the future for a "rate this game" system on the Xbox Live Community Games part of Xbox Live's dashboard? Like, for example: I play a game like "The Dishwasher" and love it, and want to give it a good rating, so that Microsoft or other gamer recognize it as a good game. Thanks in advance for taking the time to address my questions. It's nice to finally see something become of the XNA system for those of of who play rather than just program.

According to the FAQ:

"games can be rated by the community for playability, “fun factor”, etc."

Michael Spencer:

What sorts of content will be permitted in games published using this service?  Are there requirements for disclosing mature content before it is presented to the user?

This is what the peer review system is for.

Albert and Dax are going into more detail about how this works in their presentation at GDC this afternoon: stay tuned for details.

Jen:

How does this announcement affect networking in XNA, specifically the requirements for interfacing over Xbox Live?  Does the end-user need a creators club subscription to play the game over Live?  Is a creators club subscription required at all for the end-user?  What about on the PC; is a creators club subscription required for Live anymore?

The Creators Club subscription is only for Creators who are making or reviewing games.

After a game has passed the review process and becomes available on marketplace, gamers do not need a subscription to play it. That's the whole point of building this distribution mechanism!

This does not change anything on Windows.

Shawn Hargreaves:

Jen:

How does this announcement affect networking in XNA, specifically the requirements for interfacing over Xbox Live?  Does the end-user need a creators club subscription to play the game over Live?  Is a creators club subscription required at all for the end-user?  What about on the PC; is a creators club subscription required for Live anymore?

The Creators Club subscription is only for Creators who are making or reviewing games.

After a game has passed the review process and becomes available on marketplace, gamers do not need a subscription to play it. That's the whole point of building this distribution mechanism!

This does not change anything on Windows.

Isn't that basically what I said? ;) :D

Shawn Hargreaves:

Michael Spencer:

What sorts of content will be permitted in games published using this service?  Are there requirements for disclosing mature content before it is presented to the user?

This is what the peer review system is for.

Albert and Dax are going into more detail about how this works in their presentation at GDC this afternoon: stay tuned for details.

 * Machaira goes to check out the GDC coverage sites

Machaira:

Shawn Hargreaves:

Jen:

How does this announcement affect networking in XNA, specifically the requirements for interfacing over Xbox Live?  Does the end-user need a creators club subscription to play the game over Live?  Is a creators club subscription required at all for the end-user?  What about on the PC; is a creators club subscription required for Live anymore?

The Creators Club subscription is only for Creators who are making or reviewing games.

After a game has passed the review process and becomes available on marketplace, gamers do not need a subscription to play it. That's the whole point of building this distribution mechanism!

This does not change anything on Windows.

Isn't that basically what I said? ;) :D

Haha, you two may have been saying the same thing but I think (I could be wrong) that Jen was asking something a little different.  If not, I'll ask it anyway, since I'm curious:

Will I be able to create a game that supports network play over XBox Live (say a co-op RPG) that can be played (over the network) by everyone?  Or will it require Gold?  And even more restrictive -- Creator's Club?

I'm expecting the answer will be Gold will be required for network play, as that'd be consistent with existing XBLA titles -- you can download them even if you are Silver, but if you wanted to play over XBL you have to have Gold.

I'm fearful, however, that it'll be a bit more restrictive and require the CC (and Gold), as that is what XNA network play requires now.  I hope not, though.

(All under the understanding that there won't be leaderboards or anything, as those are XBLA rights).

Oh, and just a personal plug: I'd LOVE to have achievements, but have them mandated to be worth 0 gamerpoints.  Any ability to do that?  Though I guess having to have that icon available so that others can see it when comparing games (oh yeah -- will these community games showed up on our played list?) could be problematic.  I'll have in-game achievements, at least. =p

BigWeather:

Will I be able to create a game that supports network play over XBox Live (say a co-op RPG) that can be played (over the network) by everyone?  Or will it require Gold?  And even more restrictive -- Creator's Club?

All you will need is a Gold membership, just like all other LIVE titles.

Oh, and just a personal plug: I'd LOVE to have achievements, but have them mandated to be worth 0 gamerpoints.  Any ability to do that?  Though I guess having to have that icon available so that others can see it when comparing games (oh yeah -- will these community games showed up on our played list?) could be problematic.  I'll have in-game achievements, at least. =p

It's been discussed before and from what was said it won't (99.9%) happen. There can still be issues with having games load up hundreds or thousands of achievements and, even at 0 points, it's still a jab at developers with officially published games. Achievements will not happen to XNA until you get a publishing deal and get ahold of those special bits of the framework reserved for published games.

Nick,

Thank you for the very speedy reply.  Gold membership is great, and expected.

Understood on the achievements too.  XBLA needs to remain a rewarding environment for professionals to target and opening achievements up to the community diminishes that.  In addition the more I think about it the harder it seems to pull off due to the inability to limit the scope.  Sure, you could say "Only 12 achievements per game, each worth 0 points" but the sheer number of games could baloon the achievement total, even at 12 a pop.  Like I said it's not a huge deal and I imagine most people will just have in-game achievements to compensate with spiffy Crackdown / HL2-like interfaces to browse them (which I wish all games had, by the way =)).

Thanks again.

I think Nick's got it. Just for the record, the main game I'm working on will have in-game achievements. :)

couldn't there be a limit like XBLA has 200G limit, couldn't XNA have a smaller 100G, Just wondering, i hope at least 0G achievments are added.. (that way i can laugh at people who say my game sucks and can't even beat it :D), What about XP\Vista : are achievements available? (just a quick question: Can i sell XNA Games (XNA CG)?

Speewave:

couldn't there be a limit like XBLA has 200G limit, couldn't XNA have a smaller 100G, Just wondering, i hope at least 0G achievments are added.. (that way i can laugh at people who say my game sucks and can't even beat it :D), What about XP\Vista : are achievements available? (just a quick question: Can i sell XNA Games (XNA CG)?

Like I said, it's been discussed a lot (with and without Microsoft employees) and the consensus is that achievements will never come to XNA. Certainly none that have any gamerscore. That's just asking for people to make "play my game and get 100gs" games. There will likely never be achievements for public XNA games. It's a major draw to professional developers to make games for Xbox 360 (the only system with a very driven score system like that) and something that Microsoft is not likely to take away from them (the exclusivity of them, that is).

If you read the FAQ about Xbox LIVE Community Games, it says they are working on various options for either free releasing of games as well as profit making. Details have not been released as far as who sets the price and how much Microsoft keeps. That's coming soon I believe.

I live in Australia, I was a member of XNA Creators club for a bit until I found out I needed a Internet connect to used the software on a 360, annoying as at the time I didn't. Anyway in oz you can't release unrated games/movies and there is not R rating we max out at MA15+.

My question is how will this limitation effect Xbox Live Community in my region?

We have YouTube.com.au and other video media sites but there are not games and well games get a bad wrap down here.

FAQ:

Q: So I can make clones of games already on Xbox LIVE Arcade or somewhere else?
A: Not any more than you can make copies of Halo 3.   When you submit a game you agree that you own all the rights to the materials in your game.  If you don’t, then don’t submit the game.

How does MPL (or GPL, etc.) fit into this? If I use code, models, samples, etc. from XNA Creators Club then technically I don't own those rights. I understand the FAQ about Intellectual Property, but I'm just talking about materials, code, etc.

Shawn Hargreaves:

barkers crest:

Will it be possible to upload newer ( Patched ) versions of a game?  Such as in a situation that a critical bug slips through the peer review process and is found by users?

I don't know this one for sure (I work on the framework itself, and there's a whole parallel team building this peer review system) but I suspect we'll have something along those lines. You'd have to go through the peer review again for your updated version, though, to make sure people didn't cheat and just upload something totally different as their "1.1" release!

Having some mechanic to allow for patch releases seems very important.  If you have a game that has built up significant popularity/rating and you need to tweak a minor thing having some way to remove the old version and replace it with the new one (without losing any ratings) would be important.  Obviously, yes it would need to go through the review process, but of all the software out there how many products have neve done a patch release?

The GDC talk here said that if you upgrade your game you will EDIT your submition and upload a new binary (rather than make a new one). Then the game will go through peer review again and if it gets approved the users will get an upgrade message when they run the game just like with XBLA games.

 

Nick Gravelyn:

Like I said, it's been discussed a lot (with and without Microsoft employees) and the consensus is that achievements will never come to XNA. Certainly none that have any gamerscore. That's just asking for people to make "play my game and get 100gs" games. There will likely never be achievements for public XNA games. It's a major draw to professional developers to make games for Xbox 360 (the only system with a very driven score system like that) and something that Microsoft is not likely to take away from them (the exclusivity of them, that is).

If you read the FAQ about Xbox LIVE Community Games, it says they are working on various options for either free releasing of games as well as profit making. Details have not been released as far as who sets the price and how much Microsoft keeps. That's coming soon I believe.

I Guess Achievements is fair now that i kind of thought about it. with adding things like achievments, its like XNA is pretty much like an XBLA\360 SDK out to the public. in game acheivments are ok too, someone mentioned that.

if Microsoft does take money from sold games (if that is true for profit making) i hope that the developers do get at least 75% of profit (i understand that Microsoft is using a lot of Bandwidth and Server space, but we did pay 100 bucks a year!!! :( as well as we made the game and they are a trillion dollar company almost )

Have there been further updates posted?  I believe an earlier Microsoft employee post said more details would be revealed at a talk given at GDC today.

Also, are there any plans to give XNA developers access to:

• headset chat audio input or output (enabling audio output to specific player headsets, or speech recognition from audio input)
• Xbox Live Vision camera, for capturing still images or video and manipulating camera data
• data from audio ripped from user-supplied CD's, for frequency or beat analysis as used by the XBLA title Every Extend Extra Extreme?

I'm looking for an informal sense of how difficult it would be to see these features implemented, if you can provide this.  Obviously no promises can be made here, and you're probably not authorized to speak on behalf of the rest of the XNA project team.

Michael Spencer:

Have there been further updates posted?  I believe an earlier Microsoft employee post said more details would be revealed at a talk given at GDC today.

Also, are there any plans to give XNA developers access to:

• headset chat audio input or output (enabling audio output to specific player headsets, or speech recognition from audio input)
• Xbox Live Vision camera, for capturing still images or video and manipulating camera data
• data from audio ripped from user-supplied CD's, for frequency or beat analysis as used by the XBLA title Every Extend Extra Extreme?

I'm looking for an informal sense of how difficult it would be to see these features implemented, if you can provide this.  Obviously no promises can be made here, and you're probably not authorized to speak on behalf of the rest of the XNA project team.

I don't know for sure because I don't work for Microsoft nor am I at GDC, but those types of features are something that would be rolled into a new version of the XNA Framework. They aren't currently making announcements on features for new versions of XNA Framework; just the Community Games stuff and the Zune stuff. Those types of features are something you'd want to head to connect.microsoft.com and vote on so that they get onto the XNA guys' radar for a future version.

Other than the XBLA community games and the XNA on the zune there have been no other GS 3 features announced at GDC.. you will have to wait and see what the future holds.

The ZMan [MVP/Moderator]:

Other than the XBLA community games and the XNA on the zune there have been no other GS 3 features announced at GDC.. you will have to wait and see what the future holds.

Understood -- sorry for the thread derailment.

Back to the first paragraph of my last post:  since an earlier reply suggested more details would be revealed about community moderation for submitted XNA projects, where might I find those details?  I'm curious what types of content restrictions and controls are planned, and very curious how the system plans to handle reviewer trust metrics in the presence of votes on subjective issues, like "are these gory 2D death sprites appropriate for a rating of T or M?" or "is this game too much like an simulation-y AI experiment and not enough...fun?"  Obviously peoples' tastes will differ, and someone who matches the majority opinion on "is this content too explicit for the author's rating" may not match the majority opinion on "is this game tedious or fun?"

Michael Spencer:

The ZMan [MVP/Moderator]:

Other than the XBLA community games and the XNA on the zune there have been no other GS 3 features announced at GDC.. you will have to wait and see what the future holds.

Understood -- sorry for the thread derailment.

Back to the first paragraph of my last post:  since an earlier reply suggested more details would be revealed about community moderation for submitted XNA projects, where might I find those details?  I'm curious what types of content restrictions and controls are planned, and very curious how the system plans to handle reviewer trust metrics in the presence of votes on subjective issues, like "are these gory 2D death sprites appropriate for a rating of T or M?" or "is this game too much like an simulation-y AI experiment and not enough...fun?"  Obviously peoples' tastes will differ, and someone who matches the majority opinion on "is this content too explicit for the author's rating" may not match the majority opinion on "is this game tedious or fun?"

I'm curious about this too.  I recognize there probably isn't a firm answer, and we're still a ways off from this thing going live, but I'm particularly curious about whether AI experiments / gameplay idea prototypes / etc. will be allowed.  Creations that aren't necessarily games in the traditional sense but explorations.  For example, if someone came up with a slick physics demonstration (does anyone remember the "stair dismount" and "truck dismount" ones that made their rounds years ago) -- would that be allowed provided it met the other restrictions related to appropriateness, stability, and the like?

While we're still waiting for something more official, I was able to find some information on my own on gamasutra (dot) com.

In one of the articles on that site, titled Sponsored Feature: Democratizing Game Distribution: The Next Step, page six shows a partial screenshot that describes some prohibited content.  From the article:

• Collecting personal information
• Nudity
• Strong sexual content
• Child pornography
• Direct threats to a person or groups of people in the physical world
• Direct encouragement/solicitation of illegal behavior in the physical world
• Crimes against humanity and/or intense and distasteful graphic violence
• Unauthorized content use

Even though one of my questions unfortunately wasn't answered directly, an answer was posted in another venue:  no, content like female frontal nudity as found in a published retail game like God of War cannot be included in a published XNA game.  Sorry to use such a polarizing corner case for my question, but I'm glad to see Microsoft has chosen a position on this.

The article also shows partial screenshots of a user rating a game using sliders, assigning a value of 0, 1, 2, or 3 to each of:

• Violence
  • blood
  • injuries
  • hostility
  • cruelty
• Sex
  • sexual overtones
  • partial nudity
• Mature Content
  • substance use
  • offensive language
  • gambling
  • crudity
  • fear/horror

The screenshot also includes a sidebar which suggests detailed descriptions will be given for each type of rating.  Only descriptions for hostility are shown:

0:  No hostility or conflict between characters is shown in this game.

1:  Your character does not experience any hate or anger from another character, nor does the game require your character to confront or express any hate or anger toward another character

2:  Your character expresses mild hostility, or experiences mild hostility or anger from other characters.  It does not lead to violence.

3:  Hostility or anger are key elements of the game, and lead to violence.

Personally I'd love to see the same rating description text for the other ten categories posted somewhere.  That information will inform our questions about how your reviewer trust metric will handle different value judgements between reviewers.

Most importantly, though, on page four the article explicitly states:

The primary purpose of peer review is to ensure a safe experience for consumers who browse Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and then download and play a community game.  Peer review determines whether the game has prohibited content.  If the content is acceptable, peer review then confirms the game creator's classification.  Peer reviewers make no judgments whether the game is fun.  A game's entertainment quality is decided by the game players on the console through an explicit user-rating system and downloads.

So apparently peer reviewers will NOT be empowered to stop a game from being published to the community because it feels too much like a tech demo and less like a game.  If I'm interpreting this correctly, once the game is deemed safe and has been rated appropriately for content safety, the mass of millions of Xbox Live users will be the ones who decide if a game is front page material.

I also read the article on Gamasutra, which was very useful. In the article it mentions that during the beta there will only be one region (the US). Does this mean that beta testers in all regions only use that one region (one world wide region that happens to be called US), or does it mean that the beta test is essentially limited to only those people in the US region?

Hi David,

Will there be any additional services related to XNA for Windows Live Anywhere and Games for Windows?   Seems like the xbox 360 is getting all the attention.   Certainly selling more Live subscriptions(and CC subscriptions) in the Windows space is of interest to Microsoft as well?  Seems to me XNA could be a driver for this revenue.  

What I ultimately want to see is a LIVE Community Games channel that is available to both Windows and the XBOX 360.   Games that are designed to work with both platforms, or just one of them, would be marked appropriately.

Taking this a step further, having both platforms tap into the same LIVE network services, with the ease of the XNA framework, could mean cross-platform multi-player for LIVE community games.   The creativity from the indie community, given the opportunity and ability to unite heterogeneous gamers, could be impressive to say the least.   Talk about building up a large, diverse, vibrant and profitable community around gaming! :)

*Note:  Yes, I do realize hacking multi-player games on Windows is prevalent and a possible vulnerability for managed XNA games, but surely there must be a reasonable security solution.

Thanks,
Dan Maltes