Topic: ex-XNA managers worried about lack of game quality

[Flames_of_chaos]

Source

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.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Yeah, you'll never know if someone includes a bug that causes Rick-Rolling.

[Nick DiMola]

Yeah, you'll never know if someone includes a bug that causes Rick-Rolling.

Bug is so harsh, more like a feature.