Why XNA Matters

I remember the first game that really grabbed my attention, and hooked me. It was Tempest, and I was enchanted by it.

I don’t know what had the biggest effect, the frenetic gameplay, the stunning graphics, the sci-fi element to it. It just worked. And it was terribly effective of robbing me (well, my mom, actually), of quarters.

Of course, looking back, Tempest is kind of a sad looking little thing. The gameplay is rather simple, the graphics are laughable, and whatever made me think it was a sci-fi game is now a mystery.

Now we look at a game like Tempest and we think, “hey, that would be a fun little project. I think I’ll do that this weekend. Just for fun, I think I’ll code it in PHP and JavaScript so I can distribute it on the web. Should take a couple of hours, 4-5 at the most. Hey, maybe I’ll spend a couple extra hours and make it multiplayer! When we think like this, we forget that the original developer of a game like Tempest toiled over that thing. While it may be a primitive, simple game by today’s standards, don’t forget that in 1981, Tempest was cutting edge.

Of course, it was a one man project (more or less). That one man, if you’re interested, was David Theurer. Most of us wish it were that time again, when one guy could create something as awesome as Tempest.

But advances in technology, and tons and tons of money, have pushed games from simple lines and flashing pixels to something a shockingly realistic as Crysis or Call of Duty 4. New languages and libraries exist that handle most of the hard work for you. In the old days, you would have had to hand code each and every pixel in your game, in machine language! Now, you can whip up an animated model in the 3D modeller of your choice, drop some nice lighting on it, and attach it to input in a couple of lines of code. DirectX and OpenGL handle the tedium for you. And the result is that the bar has been raised. By easing a lot of what was brutally hard to do in the past, the developers of today are able to push the envelope further, and therefore you, as an indie developer, must follow suit. Sure, PacMan is ridiculously simple to code now. The problem is, no one is interested in PacMan anymore.

I’m kind of a lone wolf. I like to work alone. Where do I fit in the world of game development? You can’t even make a decent mod these days without a team of 15 and 4 years to burn (take a look at Black Mesa: Source to see how long developing a decent Half-Life 2 mod can take). The age of whipping up Tempest in your basement and building an empire around it are long gone. In order to compete, you’ll have to find a couple million dollars, 150 people to help you out, and a lot of time and patience. Years.

But fret not, as some nice things have happened recently that warm the heart of the indie game developer.

Handheld Gaming

Ah yes, handhelds. Here is an arena where you can definitely get something done. Forget developing for the PC or consoles, handheld gaming is where its at. The screens are ultra small, which means two things:

• You don’t need to get crazy with your graphical output, because no one is going to see it anyways
• Hardcore, hectic, super-realistic 3D gaming doesn’t make sense, because no one is going to see it anyways

That’s pretty great, really, because it means we’re back in a realm where you can create simple games suitable for a single developer and get respect. Puzzle games, 2D scrollers, and sprite-based games all have a place on handhelds.

The only problem? Developing for the DS or the PSP isn’t cheap. Oh, and you can’t distribute your game without going through Nintendo or Sony. Oh, and forget cell phones — there isn’t much of a market there, and what market there is has been pretty much swallowed up by one company.

Sorry to be all doom and gloom. There are options in handheld gaming, notably the GP2X, PocketPC and homebrew for PSP or DS. But in terms of business, well, forget it.

PC Gaming

But wait, what about PC gaming? What about Steam?

Yes, PC gaming lives. The thing PC gaming has that no other platform will ever match is ease of distribution. If I write a great game, I can distribute it with the aid of a $10 a month hosting plan and a PayPal account. Not only that, but practically everyone is running Windows, and practically everyone is on the Internet. And on the Internet, everyone is an equal — more or less.

Still, indie distribution isn’t quite that simple. You’re still going to do better by getting distribution through something like Steam, but even then it can be very lucrative. When Rag Doll Kung Fu was released on Steam, I had already pre-ordered it. And so had a lot of other people, as well. Since then, some really stunning indie games have been distributed through Steam: Gish, Darwinia, and AudioSurf immediately come to mind.

The thing about indie distribution for the PC is, you are still going up against the big dogs. You can’t compete with CoD4 at a $50 price point, but you can develop a simpler, niche game at a $10 price point. Nevertheless, when it comes down to it, people are still going to find more value in dropping $50 for a multimillion dollar production whose development spanned years over a $10 budget game that you worked on during your weekends and lunch hours for 6 months. To stand out, you’ll need to compensate for your lack of budget with overwhelming creativity, style and innovation.

But don’t get me wrong. That’s a good thing.

XNA

Which brings us to XNA. With XNA, Microsoft has pretty much wrapped up everything I’ve talked about here in one neat little package. They’ve developed the tools which make developing simple, one-man projects super easy. They’ve figured out how to do PC-simple distribution (or as close as we’re going to get to it) on a console. And they’ve found a market for stylish, simple, even 2D games by promoting the Xbox Live Arcade.

What that means is you could, potentially, write up your modern day version of Tempest in a weekend, and distribute it to millions of people around the world.

This is one of those moments where the runaway ambitions of the game studios is helping to self-correct the industry as a whole. In the last year, we’ve had several astonishingly beautiful FPS games come at us, and yet I can’t remember a single big studio game that really grabbed me. I know its an unpopular opinion, but Gears of War was just not that fun. Crysis was kind of boring. The graphics get better, but the gameplay remains the same.

At the same time, my generation is entering their 30s. I was 7 when I played Tempest for the first time. Now I’m 33. I’ve played games that looked like a movie. I’m astonished by what we can do now. And yet all I really want is that Tempest experience again.

Over the years, only a couple games have really had a lasting impact on me. And these are games that, to this day, I’ll still fire up and play just because they are fun, regardless of what they look like. Some of them are new, and look great, but the main thing, always, will be gameplay.

• Tempest
• Shadowrun (SNES)
• Out of This World (SNES)
• Oddworld (PSOne)
• Deus Ex (PC)
• Splinter Cell (XBOX)
• Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
• ICO (PS2)
• Dead Rising (X360)

I’ve been seeing some really inventive games being made with XNA. The idea of releasing really deep, really fun, and really creative games to millions of people is going to open up both my generation, and the new generation, to those experiences we long for.