Krotus and I swung by Digipen this morning to help judge Penny Arcade's PAX 10 entries. We spent the morning with around 50 industry folks checking out the latest indie games that had been submitted... and I have to say I'm continually astounded by the talent of folks out there. I'm not sure how public many of these titles are, but I'll say that I'll definitely be picking a few of them up when they ship (on whatever platform). One I'll highlight is Schizoid, from Torpex Games (and only because I know it's public). I'm a big fan of co-op gaming, and I have to say that these guys have really nailed an entirely new way of playing cooperatively together. The concept is simple - maneuver your ship into like-colored creatures to destroy them - but the interaction between you, another player, and those creatures really draws you in. (And if you really want a brain-bending time, try controlling the two ships yourself, one per thumbstick!)

Definitely swing by the PAX 10 booth if you make it out to PAX this year - I think you'll be impressed!

Sure most of you have seen, but some of the big news for Microsoft at GDC this year was around allowing XNA Game Studio games to be shared via the community on Xbox Live. You can find the official release here, and should also make a point of reading through Letskilldave's posts as well.

A few folks have asked me how this is different/better/worse/etc than Nintendo's Wiiware announcement. Well, simply put, in my opinion Creators Club is infinitely more open and accessible:

• The Creators Club "portfolio" is not managed, meaning Microsoft doesn't approve game concepts. The community filters for inappropriate content, but that's it.
• There is no additional charge for a "dev kit" - it's your PC, with the ability to develop for the Xbox 360 and Zune platforms as well. Interesting tidbit I heard at GDC - apparently you really have to be a developer at an existing studio to have a chance of getting a Wiiware dev kit. I've even heard that you're automatically unable to get a Wiiware dev kit if you ask for it to be shipped to a home address... seems to cut out a bunch of the indies! :(
• You can develop on multiple platforms: PC, Xbox 360, and Zune

I've also had a few folks asking how these XNA games might compare to "professional" Live Arcade games. Simply put, XNA Game Studio games can be quite performant. No, you're not going to create Gears of War in C#, but you can do almost any of the existing LIVE Arcade games out there. You can download the XNA Launcher for free until the 24th and see some of these games for yourself. Check them out if you're curious - but remember, get the launcher now if you want to see them!

Just wanted to let you know I'm at the Seattle Casual Games Conference all this week... and sadly, without net connectivity! <sigh> So I'm unlikely to be writing much up as the iPhone keyboard just isn't up to a long blog post.

In all seriousness, the conference should be quite interesting. We've had some great feedback from the Microsoft presentations Monday (especially around XNA and Arcade Games), and I'm looking forward to hearing the presentations today.

Sorry - just couldn't resist the title... and it's all the funnier because there's really nothing to beware here. Just that inflammatory yellow journalistic streak taking a cheap shot.

Anyway, just saw over on N'Gai's blog his announce of Nintendo's Wiiware initiative - basically bringing original arcade games to their downloadable platform, versus the old-school classic content they've had previously. Many of us in the industry have known about this for well over a year, but interestingly, it hasn't leaked. Guess there's still a bit of professional courtesy out there.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what arcade developers can do with the Wiimote. I've said before that I don't think the Wii will have long legs. Even today, I struggle to find games I want to play. I honestly haven't turned the box on in months, and am currently just waiting on the next Mario.

That said, this arcade initiative is very interesting and could be just what the Wii needs to survive. Imagine (as I think is unfortunately likely) that third party support falls off the map by next year (meaning third parties just haven't been able to duplicate the Nintendo magic). Toss in a price cut or two, and the Wii could well become a $100 online-connected, arcade box... one that would fit well in every dorm room in the world. Obviously there will be price cuts from the other guys as well, but Nintendo is well-positioned to be the lowest cost console out there. If the games start flowing, I could easily imagine the Wii becoming a significant player in the arcade space - coincidentally, a space where higher-end graphics don't matter as much. Not a bad place to be.

So I'm curious - how do most of you get your casual games to play? Do you play primarily on the PC and use sites such as RealArcade, MSN Games, or Yahoo games? Or are you a "new generation" casual console player, and prefer getting your casual games from Live Arcade, PS3's online Store, etc? What is it about the experience of getting games that you like or dislike?

A related question is what sorts of games do you want to see that you don't currently? Are there game genres we're (as in the industry) missing that would draw in your wives, girlfriends, or non-gaming friends? Oldschool classics that would resonate with newer gamers? Companion games to large-scale MMOs that allow people to play some element of the game while on the road?

This is just something I've been mulling over for a while. Everyone "knows" casual games are huge and will be a significant driving factor of the game industry going forward. What I'm wondering is if we the industry have blinders on and are missing obvious opportunities to bring interesting technologies or concepts that could help broaden the overall market significantly (to everyone's benefit.)

Disclaimer: You should assume that any ideas discussed publicly here are just that - public. Microsoft (or anyone) might use them in product ideas. If you have some ideas that you want to keep private because you think you might do something with them yourself one day, you should not post them here.

That said, if you're ok with the above, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Apologies for the lack of posts recently - it's been a rather busy time at work as I caught up from my Peru trip, and I've been traveling all over the place for a variety of work reasons. I'm actually returning from San Francisco even as we speak, and writing thanks to a recent beta of Microsoft's Live Writer offline blogging tool. Although not the subject of this post, I did want to mention it as it's a fantastic tool. Check it out if you do any blogging. It appears to work with most sites, and it's definitely made my blogging "job" a whole lot easier!

Anyway, while I was in San Francisco I was able to meet up with Mark Deloura (ex Sony developer relations manager, now with Ubisoft) and Jane Pinckard (she of Gamegirladvance.com) for a couple of drinks. Was great catching up with them of course, but during the course of the conversation we started talking about an interesting area that's not currently being covered by casual games - namely, asynchronous games.

So what are async games? Simply put, imagine a game where you don't have to have a person (or a group of people) playing with you at the same time - you basically take turns. Checkers or Chess is one simple example, and the old play-by-mail wargames are another (albeit with significantly greater delay between turns). Today you see a few games that fall into this mold. Civilization has had a play-by-email mode for a few versions now, and there are X-Com-like clones like Laser Squad Nemesis that also enable it. Although I don't know for sure, I suspect some of the upcoming Live Arcade board games such as Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan will have turn-based play which lend themselves to asynchronous play should the game designers desire, and I'm sure there are plenty of others as well. What's interesting is that we don't see is a lot of these asynchronous games in the casual space yet... and I suspect we'll start seeing more in the future.

Why? Simply put, we're moving into a world of connected gaming devices. Microsoft has announced the Live Anywhere initiative, where we're looking to take the Xbox Live service and enable it on multiple devices such as consoles, the PC, and mobile devices such as phones. Sony has announced connectivity between their (sadly doomed, at least for v1) PSP and the PS3, and Nintendo has enabled wireless connectivity between the Nintendo DS and hinted at wireless connectivity between the DS and the Wii. These platforms are now technically enabling wireless connections between devices and people; what's missing are the games that allow people to play on these platforms at the times and places that best suit them.

Think about it - today when we sit down to play a game we pretty much do exactly that: sit. We have to choose a time and place and tether ourself to the experience on a single device, even if that experience is being played on a portable gaming device. What's missing is the ability to start a game and continue it in some meaningful way. Why can't I start up an Advance Wars game with three other friends, and set the rules such that we each agree to do two moves a day (with automatic moves applied if you don't check in)? Why can't I then continue that game on the bus with my handheld phone? Why can't I review the overall tactical map when I'm at work on my PC?

There's no technical reason blocking this. The platforms I described above allow you to connect and communicate, so that's reasonably easy (although it's obviously my hope that we make Live Anywhere the absolute easiest way to enable this). There is a cost inhibitor, however, in that there's design time needed to take a game and make it best-suited to work on a platform's capabilities. And depending on the platform(s) you're developing for, you may well have to budget 2-3x the development cost of the game to create the different versions (ie, one for console, one for handheld, one for phone, etc.) As a quick aside, it's worth noting that XNA Studio is one attempt to solve this issue, as it comes with the XNA Framework that enables developers to basically "write once, publish many."

My guess is that as these connected platforms take off and gamers demand to be able to stay connected with their friends wherever and whenever they play, we'll see a greater investment into asynchronous games. Just off the top of our heads, Mark, Jane, and I came up with a bunch of great old games we'd love to see redone in this manner. Imagine a new version of The Incredible Machine, but with full 3D and physics, and turn-based gameplay where each player has a bucket of items they can place to either help or hinder the current objective. Or an Advance Wars meets Risk sort of game, with many people battling it out over a world map over the period of a week, with a tactical overview map you can always check in on. Toss in a basic map editor so you can create next week's battlefield while waiting at the doctor's office and you really start seeing the potential.

It may take a while, but I sincerely believe the concept of asynchronous gaming will become just as embedded into the gaming consciousness as a desired feature as co-op has become. It'll be interesting to see which casual games start the trend.

That leads to an interesting question... what casual games would you like to see developed that have asynchronous-friendly designs? Could be old classics that you miss that just need an updated twist, or entirely new game ideas. Maybe it's a classic boardgame that's just begging to be released as a casual game. Would love to hear them, and who knows, it's quite possible some of the casual game developers out there or people exploring XNA Game Studio can take the idea and run with it.

That said, it is very important to state that this is a public blog and I have no control over who might read and use your idea. If you want to share an idea in the hope that someone might comment on it or help make it better, feel free. But if you think you might want to develop it yourself, you should not publish it here as there's nothing keeping anyone from taking it and running with it. Just don't want anyone to get bitten accidentally.

Look forward to the discussion!

Was pretty excited to see this post on Evil Avatar pointing to Jeff Minter's blog discussing the topic. For those of you who don't know, Jeff created Tempest for the Atari Jaguar - probably the sole reason to own the system (and the reason I still have mine packed away in the basement). The Jaguar's version was well known for psychedelic effects and a great techno soundtrack - from the looks of things, the Xbox Live arcade version appears to be (at least visually) in the same vein.

Random trivia: Jeff's work on the Jaguar version of Tempest led us to him when we were looking for developers to help build the music visualizers in the Xbox 360. He did an awesome job of those, and I'm super-excited to see how "Tempest 360" (my made-up name) ends up!

Couple of pictures from his blog are below - don't worry about the blurriness, Jeff's psycheldelic games are always fast-moving and impossible to photograph. Just imagine taking a shot of Geometry Wars past 1,000,000 points and you'll understand what I mean.

Was really excited to see the reaction to yesterday's announcement at Leipzig about some classic boardgames coming to Live Arcade. To quote a Gamespot article:

The announced games include the civilization-building Settlers of Catan, the tile-based city-building game Carcassonne, and the Arabian-themed stock-market game Alhambra set to be available through the Xbox.

I personally believe having these sorts of old-school "thinking man's" boardgames can only help bring more people online. I personally miss a lot of the older game genres that made you work for your gameplay. I'm not talking arbitrary frustration-causing modes, battles, or boss fights. I'm talking about a game that makes you think things through and use your mind: adventure games, war games, turn-based strategy games, that sort of thing. These particular games are about as old-school and classic as you can get in the board game market, and it's my hope folks will give them a spin.

I also noticed there weren't many images of the games out on the web. I asked around, and found a couple I can share with you. These may also be available elsewhere on the web - not making any promises of originality.

[Edit: thanks to Brian for the suggestion to link to boardgamegeek.com for each of these games. You can find more information on each game from the links below!]

Alhambra:

Carcassonne:

Settlers of Catan (Two Images):

Just saw on gamesindustry.biz that PopCap is going to be distributing many of their casual titles through Valve's Steam ESD (or Electronic Software Distribution) network. Pretty interesting move for both partners. PopCap finds another channel to distribute their games that doesn't require a visit to their website (a bit more push, little less pull). And Valve jumps into the casual gaming revenue pool (pun intended) feet first.

What really struck me is that Valve is continuing to expand the portfolio of titles available via Steam. It's interesting to wonder whether we'll see competition between other ESD providers for content in the future, or whether content providers will look to today's retail model and simply look to distribute over all available channels (today's analog being retail stores, of course). My guess is we'll see a bit of both, with some exclusives in the early days and eventually leveling out with wider game distribution on all the major networks. Fun times!

It's been interesting watching the growth of casual games, and the pointing to that growth (and extensions such as Yahoo Games, Live Arcade, and others) as being the potential savior of a gaming industry struggling with rising costs of development and a deficit of creativity. While I'm a big fan of casual gaming, I don't think the cost of creating these games is going to stay low for long. There's already intense competition in the space, and just as we saw 10-15 years ago, the smaller players are beginning to be bought up by the bigger. Pogo was bought long ago by EA, and according to this Next Generation post, MTV just bought Atom for $200 M. To quote the article:

"The deal puts the popular casual gaming site Shockwave.com under the MTV umbrella, along with AddictingGames.com. Two film and video outlets are also included in the deal, in the form of AtomFilms.com and AddictingClips.com."

You can imagine other larger publishers are going to be looking to acquire similar studios. I can see companies such as BigFish, Popcap, and maybe even Real Networks (for Real Arcade) being snatched up in the coming year or two. The good news is that the funding and quality of games will be going up; the bad news is that as game budgets go up, it'll be more difficult for smaller guys to use casual gaming as a way to enter the industry and we may not see as many original concepts.

I do think there are ways to help address that (more on that later), but no matter how you spin it, the halcyon days of casual game development as a "new and infinite" frontier seem to be at an end. Doesn't mean we won't see great games and continue to enjoy them, but it's going to be tougher to be an independent and compete.