Interview: Community Games - sin(Surfing)

In the Feburary Issue of OXM (on sale this Thursday) we talk to top developers about making community games, and earning money from them on Xbox Live Marketplace. Raphael Mun is an employee of Microsoft who developed the popular game sin(Surfing) in his spare time.

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

It is pretty exciting to see it on the most popular list but considering XNA Community Games is still very new, I would like to wait to celebrate. I definitely hope that this isn't the last time one of my games is on the Most Popular list though!

Advertisement:

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

Well, one of the main perks of being an independent developer is that you can set your own deadlines and invest more time into thinking about what might be interesting and just plain fun. If an idea doesn't come out the way you would like, there is more freedom to fool with the idea and try to make it better. However, with so many other amazing, creative developers out there, I think it is tough to use what limited resources you have to finish a game and finish it quickly. Then if you are lucky, the game might reach the right channels. So I guess in a way, it's almost like crunch time, all the time.

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

Deciding on price was pretty simple, Greg and I chose the lowest pricing point since it is such a small game and available for free on the PC. We are really just hoping to reach as many people as we can!

Do you peer review other people's games on the XNA website? When it comes to the peer review system, are the reviewers more, or less critical than the general public?

This is an interesting question for me. My day job is with Microsoft and it was fortunate for me that they let MS employees work on and post XNA games created on our own time, but as part of that, we cannot peer review other games in the system. I wish I could be giving feedback to the other developers though so that I could help build a much stronger community.

As for the second question, the reviewers seemed to be pretty systematic in their approach and very good at finding bugs when I submitted sin(Surfing) for approval, which I appreciated a lot. I think they are more critical than the public in reviewing games for crashes and bugs. However I can certainly tell you that the general public is as harsh as it gets when judging the quality and fun of a game.

sin(Surfing)

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

Nope, but I am currently working on a couple of other games in XNA that are a bit larger than sin(Surfing)! Hopefully these games will be as fun for everyone.

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?

I haven't seen any numbers yet and so I am not exactly sure about how much money could be made, but it was quite interesting to see a blog post in Russian and one in German about my game. It is definitely a good way to reach gamers world-wide and I find that opportunity there to be more appealing. Money would be nice too though!

sin(Surfing) is currently available in trial and full versions (200MP) from >Xbox Live Marketplace. The new issue of OXM is on sale this Thursday 15 Jan.

Interview: Community Games - Biology Battle
Interview: Community Games - In the Pit
Interview: Community Games - Colosseum

Ben Talbot