Microsoft's former XNA community manager, David Weller, has expressed dismay over the lack of quality control for user-generated content in Microsoft's forthcoming Community Games service.
Commenting on his blog, Weller fretted over the possibility that good games could be lost in a deluge of low quality titles. He said Microsoft isn't doing enough to filter the submissions and worried that consumers will be frustrated by paying for poor games.
"Being an ex-XNA member, I can still say, without a shadow of doubt, that Microsoft is offering a groundbreaking game channel, and that some people stand a chance to make great money from the system," he explained.
"But the danger for consumers lies in Microsoft's deliberate steps to avoid discussions regarding game quality, even during peer review. I firmly believe that avoiding commentary/ratings on game quality will result in frustrated consumers, who will have no way to discern the quality of a game among (ultimately) thousands."
"What we are doing in XNA is giving the community a powerful set of distribution tools to allow them to do just that. Already from the beta we are seeing the positive effects of forming this partnership with the community; a lot of submitted games do get rejected at first, due to either bugs or rating descriptors being inaccurate."
So in other words Microsoft is cheapening out on Q&A and are only concerned about some bugs. One would think Microsoft would be more strict since XNA is a community full of newbie or novice game designers/developers.
Title: Re: ex-XNA managers worried about lack of game quality
Post by: NinGurl69 *huggles on July 25, 2008, 01:52:44 PM
Yeah, you'll never know if someone includes a bug that causes Rick-Rolling.
Title: Re: ex-XNA managers worried about lack of game quality
Post by: Nick DiMola on July 25, 2008, 02:03:07 PM
