Monday, December 6, 2010
By: Matthew Doucette
It's a common issue for only the small percentage of Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers who initiate a marketing campaign for their XBLIG games: 50 tokens is not enough!
Consider our standpoint with Decimation X3, being a part of the Indie Game Winter Uprising as well as our own marketing campaign. That's two marketing efforts where one of them requires more than 50 tokens. Additional usage for tokens include indie game contests, subscriber-increasing Twitter give-aways, as well as our own contests where we hoped to give away our older games for top performers in our current games. So this problem will infect our next game, Score Rush, as well.
Please vote on the issue here, as a developer, reviewer, or gamer:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site226/feedback/details/626618/allow-more-than-50-xblig-tokens-for-xblig-marketing-purposes
(Requires a Microsoft Connect account, which is free.)
A mythical problem with increasing tokens is that the majority of XBLIG developers do not use them, or that an overabundance of unused tokens would hurt the service. I disagree. An overabundance of unpopular XBLIG game tokens cannot impact the service; whereas an insufficient supply of popular XBLIG game tokens can. Most great XBLIG games have reviewers asking for more tokens than the developer has left. The XBLIG service should be geared to serve the best games. When an XBLIG developer takes a (further) risk on time and money to promote his or her game, the 50 token bottleneck should be removed from the equation. It's all XBLIG promotion when it's all said and done. So I ask the XBLIG team, help us help you!
That is all.
About the Author: I am Matthew Doucette of Xona Games, an award-winning indie game studio that I founded with my twin brother. We make intensified arcade-style retro games. Our business, our games, our technology, and we as competitive gamers have won prestigious awards and received worldwide press. Our business has won $190,000 in contests. Our games have ranked from #1 in Canada to #1 in Japan, have become #1 best sellers in multiple countries, have won game contests, and have held 3 of the top 5 rated spots in Japan of all Xbox LIVE indie games. Our game engines have been awarded for technical excellence. And we, the developers, have placed #1 in competitive gaming competitions -- relating to the games we make. Read about our story, our awards, our games, and view our blog.