Weapon of Choice

The new community games section on Xbox Live Marketplace gives independent developers a chance to sell their titles to a huge audience. I spoke to the developer of one of my favourite games, Weapon of Choice's Nathan Fouts about how he made this excellent arcade shooter.

Fouts formed the company Mommy's Best Games, Inc with his wife Amy. He does the programming while his partner is Producer and company cheerleader.

What kind of feeling do you get from being one of the most popular community games?

We're thrilled! I imagine it's probably a similar feeling to being inside a Boston cream doughnut while it's still warm from the fryer. Except for the part where you wouldn't be able to breathe.

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As an independent developer do you have to work to strict deadlines, and if so, what's it like when you reach crunch time?

I was in 'crunch time' for about 8 months of the project which is unusual (at least when I compare it to my professional past with companies such as Insomniac Games and Running With Scissors.) This was self-imposed because I felt it was crucial for Weapon of Choice to be a part of the Community Games launch, and, more importantly, my family's future is riding on this project.
The good news with working at home was that the long hours were broken up by enjoyable breaks with my wife and our son. While I worked harder on this project that I ever have before, it is has probably been the most enjoyable development experience yet.

What factors did you take into account when deciding on the price of the game?

Price is tricky, but even trickier when it comes to a new platform like Community Games. For Weapon of Choice, we carefully considered similar Xbox Live Arcade and retail games, the general quality and length of our game, the price of tea in China, and the Microsoft-imposed limitations of Community Games, such as no Achievements and no official Leaderboards.
I priced Weapon of Choice at 400 points and while I feel the game is worth its weight in gold, I felt that potentially getting more Weapon of Choice fans at the lower price point is most important for the success of the company.

Do you peer review other people's games on the XNA website?

I certainly peer review other Community Games and try to provide as much constructive feedback as I can. No developer wants to make their game available to millions of users, and have their virtual fly open. Peer review relies on developers critically assessing one another's games; it's kind of a "Leave No Man Behind" process.

When it comes to the peer review system, are the reviewers more, or less critical than the general public?

Although there are thousands of Community Games developers, (yes, there are thousands), that can help playtest or review Community Game submissions, they are only a small fraction of the millions of potential players. Reviewers are extra critical of every submission in order to find the problems before the paying consumer finds them.

Following the success of your community game, have you been approached to create a title for Xbox Live Arcade?

We have not been approached for a Live Arcade contract and are very happy with Community Games.
As Community Games gain more exposure and notoriety, I believe this new channel will be a very viable marketplace for games. It's really exciting to have the ability to create new, wild games which publishers can't promptly focus-test into vanilla.

For the benefit of first-time developers using XNA, is there much money to be made from community games or do you do it for the enjoyment factor?

While Weapon of Choice is known to be a popular Community Game, we don't have any concrete sales numbers currently. We're looking forward to hearing those soon.
I will say XNA is a powerful and fairly easy to use platform which any game developer, profit-driven or otherwise, should consider using. If they have an idea for a game, even if it's a prototype, they should certainly give XNA a spin to try out their vision. If the idea works for them, they could roll that into a Community Game on their Xbox 360!

This interview is part of a bigger feature to appear in the Feburary Issue of OXM (on sale 15 Jan). If you want to find out all the details on how to make your own game, plus advice from all the top Community developers, you won't want to miss it.

Ben Talbot