[casual_games] A Response from Microsoft

[Lennard Feddersen]

You certainly speak for me,  I've read several Alex posts over the past 
2 months that provided information that I don't have as an indie.  I was 
a little surprised that the ad. revenue number wasn't a little higher 
but, once again, great information to have.

Lennard Feddersen
CEO, Rusty Axe Games, Inc.
www.RustyAxe.com

Lennard at RustyAxe.com
P. 250-635-7623 F. 1-309-422-2466
P. July & August 518-863-2317
5014 Walsh, Terrace, BC, Canada, V8G-4H2



Alex Amsel wrote:

> I think I speak for all of us when I thank Alex and others for their 

> efforts on the indie/casual community's behalf.

>

> I find the situation bizarre to be honest. Whilst I understand having 

> a parental control system of some kind, it will always be very 

> difficult to do for 3rd party independent content downloaded from the 

> web. The brutal truth is that parental controls are meaningless on the 

> context of web games because anyone, aged 4 to 40, could go on to the 

> same unrated website with adult styled games content.

>

> At retail there is a significantly bigger level of control, partly 

> because there is a certain level of expenditure required before 

> software can hit the shelves, and that means there is a scope for a 

> proper ratings system.

>

> It's not a great solution, but can we install games in both the Games 

> Explorer and outside it? It may be messy, but it's the only thing that 

> would cover consumer expectations yet also protect the title from 

> disappearing.

>

> Also, I'd like people to bare in mind that this doesn't just affect 

> casual games off the big portals, but also endless independent games 

> done commercially or by "back bedroom" developers. Some of these are 

> designed for children, and the profits are low. Parental controls 

> would become a major problem.

>

> The rating system should allow parents to block games of a higher 

> rating than they allow, not block unrated games. I doubt any major 

> publisher would unrate their game just to get around this due to 

> potential PR and legal ramifications.

>

> As for the general download and installation problems, I just see it 

> confusing users and lowering download rates for all types of software, 

> at least for a period of time. It's all very well saying users will 

> get used to it, but I disagree. Actually, users like quick and easy, 

> so if you hand out security or unsigned application warnings many 

> users simply won't take the risk in case they break something.

>

> Alex St. John wrote:

>> First, let me say that it's absolutely great that somebody from MS is 

>> reading this forum and responding.  Please don't feel that anything I 

>> have to say here is leveled at anybody at MS personally, however 

>> we've struggled with Vista issues a long time, and the information in 

>> your response doesn't contain the whole story.  We know nobody in the 

>> MS OS group is really in the casual game business or was in a 

>> position to understand the "unintended" consequences of some choices 

>> that were made, but it appears that we have to live with the 

>> consequences of some of that naivety now.   

>>  

>> It's true that parental controls are "optional" and are "buried" but 

>> once used are also "broken" and if even a small % of consumers adopt 

>> them create a sweeping support issue for small developers who can't 

>> afford MS sized call centers to deal with them.  Had MS not jammed a 

>> highly prominent Games Explorer menu in the top level start button, 

>> it might not be an issue, but now that it's there with prominent 

>> promotion of its parental control feature, we have every reason to 

>> expect that it will be widely used, and expected to index all games 

>> by consumers.  Ergo, there is no "choice" for game developers, 

>> they're forced to support the thing. 

>>  

>> Our developers attempted to support Vista parental controls, but 

>> Microsoft provides no API's for a game or game manager to provide 

>> their own UI access to parental controls or provide alternative UI to 

>> the game explorer, so a game cannot "adopt" the system and interpret 

>> parental controls intelligently.  Thus parental controls are imposed 

>> unilaterally by Vista, even on good citizen games that have played by 

>> the rules and gotten ESRB ratings.  This is not an issue between game 

>> developers and the ESRB, it was never a problem for casual games 

>> until Microsoft arbitrarily mandated them instead of providing a 

>> solution developers could choose to adopt.  The BEST thing Microsoft 

>> could do to make Vista a better gaming environment would be to simply 

>> delete the Game Explorer before shipping Vista, thereby making the 

>> parental control issue irrelevant.

>>  

>> As for LUA problems in Vista, why would Microsoft imply that the 

>> developers are at fault for not adopting a security mode of the 

>> Windows OS that was so widely reviled by consumers that nobody 

>> adopted it in XP?   Furthermore there is simply no way to fix many 

>> problems created by LUA for casual games which is one of the major 

>> reasons consumers never used that mode.  Consumers (especially kids) 

>> consume casual games like music lovers consume songs.  There is no 

>> simple way in Vista to make frequent downloading and installation of 

>> many games from the web, often by kids, friendly or easy.  It's just 

>> busted by security warning after security warning and security 

>> elevation dialogs.  If a kid wants to download and try 5 casual 

>> games, they'll drive their par tents crazy asking them to type in 

>> elevation passwords. 

>>  

>> The net impact on the downloadable game business will be chilling and 

>> there is very little anybody can do to fix it except Microsoft.  

>>  

>>

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>

> -- 

>

> Alex Amsel

> Tuna Technologies Ltd (Sheffield, UK)

> Cross Platform Game Development

> Tel: +44 (0)114 266 2211  Mob: +44(0)7771 524 632

>   

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