Indie Games: Chris Satchell Interview

What does Microsoft's XNA chief architect see in the next five years of gaming?

For about four years now, Microsoft has touted with tireless vigor the proponents of XNA, its pipeline of software development tools. At last February's Game Developers Conference, Microsoft announced a new component to the software, encouraging independent developers to use Microsoft's new community tools to create and submit games on Xbox Live, giving the tools new purpose and focus.

We spoke with Chris Satchell, general manager and chief software architect of XNA at Microsoft, about XNA and his team's new community tools. The discussion ranged from the growing value of game universities to reasons why the indie scene is growing to what the game industry will look like in five years--oh, and the infinite greatness of the Commodore 64.

GameTap: Microsoft has had a major part in embracing independent games since the Xbox 360 launched in November 2005. Microsoft has published small developers' games, it's created XNA, and now there are these new tools. What were Microsoft's goals from the get-go?

Chris Satchell: From us, there is the recognition that there is a lot of creativity out there, and so many people with great ideas, and the barriers for getting those ideas through to consumers were just too high. Either the tools weren't good enough or the tools were too expensive or the tools made it too hard. There is too much knowledge required to make games, so the first thing we [wanted], and this is really starting with the XNA Game Studio, was to make things a lot easier. How could we put a lot of the plumbing into the toolset so that it was really easy to build a great game? That's an area I feel that we have been extremely successful at. We get emails all the time. The teams love it. When they hear people say, "Hey, I tried all the other packages and I just couldn't get anything to work, but last week I just made my first XNA game, and now I'm going to make my next one," that's cool.

What I wanted was that once people got into gaming, and they started to get used to the tools, they could take their knowledge to take the game across all our platforms without having to re-learn. In fact, if they wanted to go professional, they could do that without having to re-learn, and to make that as smooth and as frictionless as possible. I have a paranoia, which is there are all these people with amazing ideas, ideas for new games and new genres, and the trouble is, by the time they have spent enough time in the industry, we have sort of beaten all those ideas out of them. Yeah, there are great creative designers out there, but if these people just had an easier way, and they could build a game and get it out to everyone--wow. We’d have new talent and new ideas in the industry. How do we go empower hobbyists, enthusiasts, students, academics, and even end-gamers into the creative process? That's really where the whole effort started from.

GameTap: Tell us a little about the differences between the XNA packages.

Chris Satchell: XNA is a broad set of technologies. XNA Game Studio is great technology for hobbyists, enthusiasts, and students. For independent studios, it's one of the fastest returns on their investments because it's so much easier to build the game. But remember, I have a huge group that's focused on making the best professional tools in the industry with our Xbox XDK and Windows Direct X XDK.

GameTap: How much do the packages cost?

Chris Satchell: If you wanted to just get XNA Studios and you wanted to use it just on Windows, it would be free. If you wanted to then go into Xbox 360, it would be $99 a year. And for that, you would get an extra set of tools to help you build games on Xbox 360. Actually, if you decided to buy them individually, it would cost you more than $99. But we package them all up and say, "Hey look, we'll give you this, we'll give you premium content to get you going." Plus, now we're talking about distributing the games on XBLA. The other thing you get with that subscription is that it gets you into the community that sees all the games and does the peer review on them, so although it covers the tools, it really buys you a whole lot more.

GameTap: Do you feel like there is a strong resurgence in indie game development right now, or is it just that the press has finally started to notice?

Chris Satchell: It looks like it's a little bit of both. What's happened is that we kind of lost some of the independent movement, and certainly from the console side of things, it wasn't there. But it's still healthy on Windows, and I think what happened is it really started to pick up and now there is an outlet for them on consoles. For us, it's Xbox Live Arcade. Later this year it will be community distribution.We've got these outlets that are really gathering interest, so I think the movement itself is really gaining momentum, but I also think there has been more press attention. You put the two together and you realize there is a vibrant community here. That community was going along by itself, but now it's getting more publicity as well. And I think people are looking for new concepts. There is still love for what the professional community is doing, but people are saying, "I love the fact that there are these people over there that did something that surprised me." That's why we are in it. I want to connect people who can surprise gamers with those gamers.

GameTap: What surprised you most at this year's GDC?

Chris Satchell: One of the things that surprised me was just how mainstream independent developers have become. I don't know if that is a contradiction in terms, but [there is a lot] of passion in the industry for independent developers. The people I know who are the top flight development studios--they're interested in independent development. And like you said, just how much notice everyone has taken of it. But I don’t think it's just the press. I think the industry as a whole is starting to look and saying, "My god, there is great talent out here that we just haven't been paying enough attention to." The interest in general was impressive.

The last time I saw excitement like this was when I was back in England. It was about the Commodore 64 and the ST and the Amiga and the whole homebrew-bedroom-programming scene. We just felt like we could do something. And it felt like other people were going to change the world with cool games. And this time feels like that a little bit. That's cool for me, because I love nostalgia. I was like, "Yeah! Bedroom programming is back!"

GameTap: The Commodore 64 lives!

Chris Satchell: What? It never died! [Laughs]

Like many indie games, JelloCar plays against conventions. Your car is ultimately flexible, and you must push, squeeze, and intelligently force it through various obstacles.

Christ Satchell sees growth in the industry through the indie scene, better software tools, and the Commodore 64. That's right, we said it.

GameTap: If I'm an independent developer interested in putting a game on Xbox Live Arcade, what are my options to publish? Can I use XNA to publish a game? And what are the costs and publishing rights associated with publishing on XBLA?

Chris Satchell: Xbox Live Arcade is not really part of the XNA program, except for that they use our technology to build games. That's the business side. On the XBLA side, there are the normal ways you would think about publishing. You can be first party or you can be third party, like with Midway, Vivendi, or EA. Or you can be a second party, a combination of both where we might help with funding, but you're the publisher. There is that kind of route in.

Then there is the other side, which is the new thing we're bringing and nobody else is doing, which is the idea of community publishing, where there are no formal approvals. The only approval is your peers in the community saying, "Hey, you have described your game accurately, so we know what's in it." Once enough of them agree, you're through and published. That's what I call a very low friction way to publish. You don't need any agreements. You don't need to really do anything other than use XNA Game Studio and go to a website and submit your game. We're going to launch that by the end of the year. The beta for this is happening in May. So now there are two very different ways to get games into this ecosystem. There is the more online traditional sense, which is Xbox Live Arcade, or you could go through community distribution.

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GameTap: How will these community games appear on the dashboard? Will they be separated into their own unique section or thrown in with Mr. Driller and Joust?

Chris Satchell: We're still looking at what the actual interface looks like between Xbox Live and this community driven content, but we will make sure that people know which area they are in and what type of game they are picking up.

GameTap: When you look at independent game development in the next five years, what do you see?

Chris Satchell: Do you mean on Xbox or on the whole?

GameTap: I'm talking on the whole. Do you feel like the public is ready to eat up all this independent game content? Do they really want it? Or is it too small, though, and different for the mass public that's still chomping on the likes of Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, and Grand Theft Auto IV?

Chris Satchell: Do I believe that we're going to get a lot more content? I absolutely do. Over the life of Xbox 360, we will double the number of games that are available. So, you're going to have the professional games, both on Xbox Live Arcade and the AAA box product at retail. You'll also see an equal number of community games, and I don't just mean games that load up quickly and are kind of crummy. I mean playable community games. So when I say we're doubling content, we're the only people who can do that.

Do I think people want to play these games? I absolutely do. The key is giving people great ways to find that distribution, whether it's virally, through recommends, by sending people links to try out new games, or searching for the content they want. You have to provide those tools because otherwise you just get buried in this mass of content.

The other issue is those policy things. How do you prevent IP infringement? How do you prevent grossly inappropriate content? How do you get an accurate way of giving people an idea of what the content is? If you don't do those things, you're heading for significant trouble. If you do all that, and obviously we've been working on this for a long time, and they are not trivial, then you can enable that content, and you'll have a great ecosystem.

I think people will still want blockbuster material, just like with the movies. They want smaller, cool, independent games, on XBLA, which we liken to HBO or premium cable, and then they want public access television--cool fun stuff to keep themselves amused. This is what I see happening in the next few years: You'll get people to transition along. They'll start with a simple community game that a lot of people will latch on to, and somebody is going to say, "Wow, that's a great idea." And then that team or person will transition to a bigger independent game, and then they'll transition into a big AAA game. You'll see that people will start to make that journey and really come into the industry and make an impact. And this will be talent we may have missed if we didn't have this way to bring the community in.

GameTap: You can certainly feel good when people start using these community tools, but at what point do you say that you have a real success on our hands? How do you measure success?

Chris Satchell: There are all sorts of ways. Some of them are hard and some easy. Let me take this at the broadest sense. When do I think empowering the community will have a meaningful financial impact on our industry? Definitely within the next five years, probably within the next three years--and maybe even earlier than that. There is new talent coming into the industry to fuel the big AAA part of the industry. There are new ideas coming in that excite the whole industry that can bring in new consumers. The morale success side? I think we're already there. I think what you're seeing is a recognition of the seriousness of this industry. The impact and viability of the games industry is truly being recognized as a very valid medium, and schools are starting to pick up and realize, "Hey, we can teach people about a career in this industry."

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