I just about popped a vein when I read this piece on gamesindustry.biz today. Greg Canessa (Xbox Live Arcade GM) described Xbox Live Arcade as “The Sundance Film Festival of Games”.
This comparison really irks me. Come on! XBLA – not a festival! Not run by a nonprofit! Not designed to give games exposure to publishers so that the games can see wider distribution!
The Independent Games Festival (IGF) has held the “Sundance Film Festival of Games” crown since 1998. It gets bigger and better every year. So come on, let’s give credit where credit is due here. Support the IGF!
(And if successful IGF games wind up available for download on X360 or PS3, I’ll be happy to know the developer is able to pay the rent!)
I love that Xbox Live Arcade is doing well, don’t get me wrong. It was a great idea. It gives another channel for interesting, cheaper, smaller games to get to players, which can only be good for players, developers AND publishers. But I fully expect within a year that most of the titles which show up for digital download will be through the big publishers, not the little indy devs. It’s just like we’ve stepped back in time a bit as far as the size of the games – the companies involved will remain the same. Everyone wants to take advantage of another way to make a buck. And who can blame them?
Live Arcade is the Sundance Film Festival?
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One response to “Live Arcade is the Sundance Film Festival?”
I’m probably talking out of school here a bit, but keeping a portion of the portfolio dedicated to indies is a topic of constant discussion.
So yeah, you’ve got retro stuff like SmashTV; and you’ve got casual hits like Zuma.
However, there’s Wik (IGF winner, IIRC), and Marble Blast (Garage Games – also an IGF ’05 game, I beleive) and others that will come out of the indie community.
Oh and yeah, that comment of Greg’s was pretty lame. I’m going to give him crap about it 🙂