XBLA – Fire Place Exclusive Interview…

We’re big supporters of the community here at X360 and we’re always curious to find out a little more about the lesser known games and apps of XBLA, so it should come as no surprise that we found the Fire Place simulator a fantastic and quirky addition.

We interviewed designer Neil Jones a while back to talk fire and controversy and for your enjoyment here’s the full transcript…

1). Where did your inspiration come from for Fireplace and were you worried that it may receive a negative reaction?
It’s something we always wanted to have on our Xbox’s and figured we might as well get our feet wet and try create it in XNA. We expected it to do pretty well because it was Christmas and people might see it as a bit of a novelty. We honestly didn’t expect the feedback we received both positive and negative.

2). Some Community Games developers have taken significant financial risks in order to put their projects together. Have you taken similar steps?
We have taken very small financial risks by investing in music, sound effects, textures and other art assets but this has always been done with great reluctance as we try and do as much as we can between us.

The biggest risk for us currently is how we invest our time, we have about 10 fleshed out game/application concepts. We are not doing this full time so careful consideration needs to be done upfront on how we want to spend our evenings and weekends.

3). Are you surprised to see many Community Game developers so far in the red on their projects?
I am not really surprised. There are a lot of great games coming through now, but there is still a definite lack of self promotion and to be blunt a huge lack of polish on many titles. I think people make the mistake of assuming that if you copy  a game that does well on Xbox arcade that it will do well in the community area. I think it’s a different landscape and titles really need to stand out and be different. Novelty seems to do very well.

4). Despite the actual development of a community game, how easy or difficult is the process of getting a title from the drawing board and on to Xbox Live?
Its a great process and is fairly straight forward, I am not sure how they could actually make it any easier. The hardest challenge is getting it through the review stage before it goes live. If you fail the review process you have to wait 7 days before you re submit a title.

5). Some of the feedback you received for Fireplace was not only negative but also quite venomous, were you surprised at the reaction from the community?
Definitly surprised. It was one of the first screensaver/application products released on Xbox so people either loved the idea or hated it. We couldn’t help but laugh at some of the comments that were a put out there “the logs look like 2 smouldering turds” and “the developers should stick a cold carrot up there ar**” . People seemed to take great delight in slating it and us. Unfairly, Microsoft also bore the brunt of some of the criticism… People immediately assumed that it was a MS product and they should have given it away for free like they did with the snowglobe which was released around the same time.

6). Do you think the criticisms were fair?
Some of it was fair especially around the pricing,unfortunately we couldn’t drop the price and react to the feedback as this feature was not yet available to the community. If it had been cheaper I think there would have been much less of a kick back. The ability to drop Community Game prices has now been implemented and we have since dropped the price.

7). As a portal for game developers, professional and amateur, how successful do you think the community games are on XBLA?
Like anything it’s taking time to get there, as an amateur platform I think it’s fantastic what Microsoft have offered. As a professional platform it’s still pretty risky as there are so many games being released and you may not get enough exposure on the newly released list to make it onto the top 20.

8). What advice would you give to budding XBLA developers or gamers wanting to get a game on Live?
Hit the web, get on the forums and try and learn as much as you can. The fantastic thing about the community games space is the community.
Lots of people are prepared to take the time to help you out. Try something simple to start with and build on from there.

9). Tell us about your next project, MyFishtank, and why you think it’ll work within the community games space?
We released myFishtank in May and it has rocketed up the community games best selling list to number one, finally knocking RC airsim off the top spot. myFishtank stands out cause of its polish and content, we have thrown everything into this aquarium sim. Over 18 marine fish, tons of backgrounds and rock features. You can position plants, add a UV light, bubbles, play music as well as unlock rewards to add to your tank ( sharks, lionfish, seahorses, starfishes). A feature that gives community games in general more exposure is the ability to send tanks and fish (you can design your own fish) to friends, a lot of our sales were from people encouraging their friends to buy the game to get the unlockable rewards.

10). Do you see community games in a similar vein to the iPhone applications and if so, would you ever think about releasing one of your games through that?
A lot of comparisons have been made between the App store and Xbox indie games, they are partly in the same vein as each other in terms of the community flooding the platform with all sorts of titles both good and bad. We definitely would consider doing iphone development if we had a large community following behind us and we knew our title would stand out from all the noise, we would also definitely consider creating titles for Zune.

11). Fireplace, despite the criticism, has sold really well. Why do you think this is?
I think it was something very different and had mass appeal. Most of the criticism came from hardcore gamers who felt that a product like that had no place on Xbox cause it’s not a game.

12). If you had the funds, would ever think about developing a Live Arcade title or even a fully-fledged game?
Definitely. What’s great about the XNA community space it’s a great testbed to streamline your development process without the financial risk.