Wednesday, July 7, 2010

3 star hell

Acupwnture got mixed reviews. I admit I knew there would be trouble with the difficulty, even after I tweaked and retweaked it. I totally fell into the "well I don't think it's too hard, so what if I made it" fatal trap of game development. I think the game makes for a somewhat complicated 8 minute trial but a good experience once you get past that, and even a great one for Puzzle Fighter fans. On top of that, no one really wants to buy falling block games anymore. So all in all what we have is as relatively high rating for an indie game, a good conversion rate and terrible sales.

I don't like the way Microsoft handles the indie games, plain and simple. The top rated list is a list of 20 games and always has been. At one point there was 200 games on the market and the top 10% got on there. Now there are 1100 and growing rapidly and only the top 1.8% get on there with the bar being set at 4.25 stars. So does that mean in three years, games with ratings of 4.5 or higher, despite how old they are will still dominate the list, making it almost impossible for new games to get on there? Shouldn't the top rated list be converted to the "All time great" list and have a seperate top rated list with say a 3 month turnaround. Give some of the great 3.25 -3.75 star titles a chance to shine, because many of them are worth playing but never get a chance to sell any copies beyond the first 3-4 days.