Avatar Drop
September 25, 2009 - There has been a lot of buzz as of late about Xbox Live’s Indie service, so I had contacted a member of the XNA Game studio team, Jace Sangco, the maker of the hit Xbox Indie title, Avatar Drop!
There was much to discuss, and Jace’s answers give a decent amount of insight on both the service, and what it was like creating a game for Xbox Live. So without further waiting, here is the interview.
What was your experience like getting Avatar Drop on the Xbox LIVE Indie service?
- I should probably start off with a small disclaimer
I’m going to have a biased opinion. I actually work on the XNA Game Studio team, and I’m very proud of the product we make. I should also clarify that I don’t get any special treatment because of my job. I get treated just like every other Indie developer.
Avatar Drop is an unrelated side project of mine that grew out of a silly demo I made during the XNA team App Week. Up until App Week, I hadn’t gotten a chance to test out the new Avatar features yet, so I thought I’d play around with them. Working with Avatars turned out to be incredibly simple, and in just a week, I was able to implement some ragdoll physics with Avatars. People seemed to like it enough that I decided to start from scratch and make it an Indie game outside of work.
I’m always surprised at how much faster I can develop a game when I’m working with Game Studio and C#. I think the only reason I couldn’t add more features and polish to Avatar Drop is because I couldn’t find any free time to do it! This was a one man project, so working full time and having a social life really cut into development time.
Being a developer for the Indie service, do you find that the chances of success are slimmed due to the high amount of garbage content on the indie pages–and the general lack of traffic who go through those pages as opposed to other areas of XBL?
- I think now that Xbox has a user ratings system, “Garbage content” no longer plagues the Indie games channel. User ratings let players tell everyone exactly what they think of a game. Because of this, the trash gets pushed to the bottom, and the good games like Miner Dig Deep, Biology battle, Avatar Golf, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, etc… remain in the top 20 for weeks.
Are there plans for an expanded version of Avatar Drop? If so, what would you add to the experience that you left out for the current edition?
- I’m hesitant to ride the “sequel train”, but if a lot of people want to see a more polished sequel then it’s possible I will make it. I’d like to try out game mechanics that aren’t just falling and maybe add more interactive things than just bumpers; which are some of the things I cut to ship the game. Maybe as a joke I’ll call it “Avatar Drop Refresh”
Would you seek other methods of distribution rather than through the Indie service? Perhaps a full arcade release?
- I’d be all for it if Arcade is interested. I have a lot of fun ideas for what I could do with a full Arcade release of an Avatar Drop sequel. It would also be nice to have access to achievements and leaderboards especially. Writing a P2P score sharing system is non-trivial and hard to test.
Are you working on any other titles that we should keep an eye out for?
- I have a lot of ideas that I’ve been caring around for years, but I’m not sure exactly what I will do next. Rest assured though, that as long as people are willing to play the games I make, I won’t ever stop making them.
We would like to thank Jace for taking the time to do this interview. Make sure you check out Avatar Drop for the Xbox 360 now, and we’ll keep you posted on whether or not “Avatar Drop Refresh” ever becomes a reality! (We’ll keep our fingers crossed in the meantime).
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