#IDARB

Thanks for joining us again for the weekly round up of the Deals with Gold. Just in time for the holidays, gift someone multiple games thanks to a huge sale …
Read More

Lately it seems like barely a week has gone by without at least one new rumor about the so-called Xbox One and a Half emerging. That trend continued this week …
Read More

On Monday, Microsoft’s Chris Charla issued “an open invitation for other networks to participate” in cross-network play, with Psyonix Inc.’s Rocket League being the first game to support the feature. …
Read More

Other Ocean recently released two new DLC packs for #IDARB on Xbox One. The first celebrates two of Robert Kirkman’s acclaimed comic series The Walking Dead and Invincible and includes …
Read More

When Psyonix, Inc.’s Rocket League lands on Xbox One in February it will be sans cross-platform play, a feature that’s included in the already-released PC and PlayStation 4 versions of …
Read More

Capcom and Digital Eclipse will bring “faithful reproductions” of the first six Mega Man games to the Xbox One this summer, the two companies have announced. Digital Eclipse will develop Mega Man Legacy Collection, and Capcom will publish it on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo 3DS and PC.

In addition to the first six numbered Mega Man titles that originally released between 1987 and 1993, the blue bomber’s collection will feature new Museum and Challenge modes. Challenge Mode will remix gameplay sections from all six games with a scaling difficulty level. Museum Mode will showcase the series’ history through high-res art and original concept pieces.

“Every time a game gets re-released as a quick, easy cash-in, we devalue our heritage a little bit more,” said Digital Eclipse Head of Development Mike Mika. “We think games deserve better than that, and we suspect that the market is going to prove us right.”

Read More

Last month, XBLA Fans was streaming Resident Evil Revelations 2 on our Twitch channel when something unexpected happened: the feed abruptly cut to the pause screen pictured above. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng hadn’t stopped playing and was still attempting to actively broadcast gameplay, so we knew something external was affecting the stream.

That something was Capcom. The game’s developer-slash-publisher, in an effort to minimize gamers’ exposure to certain scenes that are critical to determining what ending players receive, blocks segments of Revelations 2 from being streamed via the Xbox Twitch app. Capcom kicks all Xbox Twitch streams to the pause screen during the final boss fight, cutscenes, credits and after-credits cutscene. Speaking with XBLA Fans, a representative for the company explained that it wants to “give players a pure and un-spoiled experience,” so it “chose to disable the native capture so that video sharing during those segments was limited.”

This got us thinking: how do other ID@Xbox game developers view Twitch streaming? Are they worried about potential gameplay or story segments being ruined for viewers? We asked a few developers if they had official Twitch policies and whether or not they felt streamers were helping their games to find larger audiences. Official stances on Twitch were a bit mixed, but everyone we talked to agreed that streaming could benefit them. One in particular, however, cautioned against giving streaming codes to anyone and everyone and noted that not all games companies need help from streamers.

Of streams and spoilers

There is perhaps no ID@Xbox developer more well-known for story-driven experiences than Telltale Games. Unfortunately, the studio that popularized episodic game releases declined to comment directly on the issue. Telltale, however, did partner with The Nerdist to stream the entirety of the first Tales from the Borderlands episode a week ahead of its release last November. It also got together with voice actors Troy Baker and Laura Bailey to stream the second episode a few days after its release late last month. It remains to be seen whether or not Telltale will be so eager to stream the season’s surely spoiler-filled final episode in full, but its past actions paint a picture of a studio that does not shy away from streaming spoilers.

Read More

In a recently published feature, XBLA Fans explored multiplayer sports/platformer game #IDARB‘s path to release — for free. As part of our reporting for that piece we spoke with ID@Xbox Director Chris Charla about Microsoft’s newfound willingness to give independent Xbox developers as many game codes as they want.

According to some Xbox Live Arcade developers XBLA Fans has interviewed over the years, the console holder wasn’t always so forthcoming with game codes. It wasn’t the only complaint developers had, either. While there was nothing quite like Xbox Live Arcade when the Xbox 360 first launched in November of 2005, the competition quickly caught on and, in some cases, surpassed the OG of indie game stores with arguably more developer-friendly offerings. Droves of high-profile XBLA developers spoke out against the platform and turned their affection toward Steam, mobile and/or the PlayStation Network in XBLA’s twilight years.

Despite a growing public perception that Microsoft was sitting back and letting this happen while the PlayStation Network became the new place for indies to be on consoles, Charla told us that wasn’t case. Redmond was listening for suggestions as to how it might iterate on XBLA and create a new indie environment with more modern solutions.

“When we started ID@Xbox, well, actually way before we started it, we went [on] a huge listening tour and talked (and listened) to more than fifty studios about what we were doing right and wrong in terms of how we were working with independent developers,” recalled Charla. “ID@Xbox really grew directly out of those conversations. I think XBLA was rad, it was revolutionary, but I also think there was a period where the market changed and we needed to change with it. That’s really where ID@Xbox came from.”

Read More

Mike Mika has a problem. Gamers who’ve secured free copies of #IDARB, his multiplayer hybrid basketball/platformer game, likely don’t consider it to be a problem, but for Mika and his team at developer Other Ocean Interactive, it absolutely is. And it’s one that the head of development at Other Ocean can’t help but exacerbate.

“The problem we have, everything is so…we’re just so fixed in our ways,” the design director tells XBLA Fans, “it’s like, ‘Well, this should just be free. It should just be free.’ And we’re probably part of the problem when you hear people complain about free-to-play games, and how that’s been a race to the bottom on being able to make money. I can see how that happens, because while we’re putting this game together it feels like the right thing to do by all the gamers is to give [#IDARB] to them. I’m sure it’s dangerous. We can’t afford to keep giving it to them.”

But he wishes that they could. While acknowledging that giving too much away is “dangerous,” Mika says that his studio is “definitely erring on the side of being as extremely fair as possible.” No one who’s followed #IDARB (It Draws a Red Box) would dispute that that’s exactly what Other Ocean has done with its game. Mika solicited the help of every gamer with an opinion when designing #IDARB. Then he gave his game away for free before it released. Then he again gave it away for free when it released. Now he wants to give some additional #IDARB content away for free — all of its additional content, actually. But he can’t do that; he’s got a family to feed, and a studio to make profitable. So how does Mika do that? Where does he draw the line between what’s free and what’s for sale? He’s not really sure.

Read More

February has started early this year, as next month’s Games with Gold offering is already out on Xbox One. #IDARB began its life as a single red box and a …
Read More