Michael Klucher's Blog

One of the (many) fun aspects of my job on the team is getting to to go to conferences to show off XNA Game Studio and Xbox LIVE Community Games like we recently did at PAX 08. Usually we have a lot of consoles hooked up to Xbox LIVE where we let attendees come up and play any of the community games that happen to be on the console already, or go up to Xbox LIVE and download any of the ones in the catalog. This allows people to get an idea of the wide offering that Xbox LIVE Community Games will bring to the Xbox 360. Another part of having a booth at the show is just being patient, there will be times when nobody is around and it usually relies on me to put up games that will help draw people into the booth and give an idea about the types of games we expect to end up on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. A great game will draw in lots of people, and help pick things up when things are slower. The problem that I noticed is that when games are just sitting there paused, nobody wants to take that step to give the game a try. To get someone to try the game, I usually have to start playing the game myself.

This led me to think about something I’ve noticed missing from Community Games in relation to their retail  counterparts, the all important “Attract Mode”. For those of you who may not be familiar with the term you can get a pretty good definition from Wikipedia, At it’s simplest form it where the game starts to play itself to attract new players into trying out the games. It of course was used extensively in the arcade area of gaming but is still pretty common practice today. The attract mode is cool because it allows people to see your game in action, not sitting still or at a menu screen, whether it be at a friends house, games convention or even a retail kiosk.

It’s not about just making my life easier (I promise!) but it’s always important to think how your game might be featured when it goes up on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Who knows where it might end up getting showcased one day. So don’t forget about all the finishing touches when putting together your game, it’s more likely to get it to show up in more places that way which is always cool to see, like these guys enjoying a game of Little Gamers at PAX 2008: