Braid Party!
By M&R | April 29, 2008
Sorry for the lack of posts, we’ve been laying low for a while, working on Robotology.
It hasn’t been all work though — just last week we had a Braid party where some friends came over to have their minds thoroughly blown.
In other news, N+ reached 100k sales on XBLA! That’s just incredible.
We’ve made three level packs (one of which is free), but sadly they can’t be released until we do a Title Update to fix a few things — that should hopefully be happening in early summer.
That’s about all that’s been going on around here.. back to work!
Topics: misc, news | 8 Comments »
Positivity Part 1: Royalties
By M&R | March 24, 2008
Rather than continue to be negative — which apparently only works if you’re a fast-talking British bloke — let’s instead look at what was great about XBLA. Part 1: high royalties.
Why does a high royalty rate matter so much? All it really means is a bit more money for us greedy developers, right?
To quote Alaska senator Ted Stevens, circa two years ago: NO!
Allowing developers to keep the lion’s share of royalties was one of the most striking aspects which set XBLA worlds apart from retail. It was a quantitative difference which enabled a qualitative change in how developers approached making commercial games. It meant that a game didn’t have to sell incredibly well to break even — it could be behind the curve in terms of sales, and still be successful!
Allowing developers the opportunity to be successful with less-than-average sales was one of the most revolutionary aspects of XBLA — perhaps the most revolutionary aspect — certainly the one that created the most opportunity for indie/small developers. Unfortunately not everyone may have realized this, and thus failed to take advantage of such a unique and unprecedented state of affairs.
The main problem we have with retail-level royalties is that they lead directly to retail-level quality — to use a sports analogy, if everyone is always swinging for the fences, they’re going to strike out a lot more often than if they were just trying to get on base. When you need higher-than-average sales to break even, there is more pressure to appeal to absolutely everyone, seeking the lowest-common-denominator, taking no chances, and inevitably pleasing no one. At least, this is one theory for why so many games lack personality/soul/”flava”.
Maybe it’s naive to believe that games will ever overcome Sturgeon’s Law. Maybe it’s unrealistic to think that a giant corporation would be interested in spearheading a paradigm shift in commercial gaming. Maybe it’s stupid to think that professional game developers would ever choose to make something they wanted to make, over something they thought would sell well. Maybe it’s hopelessly optimistic to think that all the people making terrific, weird-ass freeware games on their own time could actually hope to do so on a full-time basis. Maybe it’s borderline communist to think that some day the IP-stealing, price-driving-upping middle-man publishers would be cut out of the equation.
*shrug* Welcome to Metanet Software! Hopefully we aren’t the only ones daring to dream about these crazy possibilities.
Topics: news, rants | 35 Comments »
In Defense of the Apparant Shitstorm
By M&R | March 22, 2008
Well, apparently our Gamasutra interview is controversial. Probably we should do what all the professionals have advised us to do, and just stop reading comments — it is the internet after all. But let’s instead take one last stab at dialogue.
First of all, everyone we’ve worked with at Microsoft have been terrific — smart, helpful, bright, and passionate. Obviously we haven’t met everyone working there, but those who were involved in N+ were great to work with. We’re sorry if our criticism of the service hurts them, because we know they’re doing their best. The “most games suck” problem really seems to be a pervasive institutional issue rather than the fault of this or that person.. more on that later.
Secondly: the interview was done before N+ came out.. hence we’re not complaining about our sales. We are surprised and thrilled by our sales — we’re just happy that people are trying N+, and that some of them are enjoying it.
Third: the interview happened about an hour after we found out that the royalty rates for XBLA have been “adjusted” to the point where our whole business plan moving forward was totally shafted.. hence the bitterness.
So: what the hell were we thinking?
We didn’t intend to provoke outrage, we simply spoke candidly. Actually saying what you think rather than being fake in an interview situation is apparently just not done, but don’t shoot the messenger — it’s not our fault that the vast majority of XBLA games suck! Literally every single person we’ve ever spoken with is in agreement on this, and yet it’s apparently shocking for gamers in general to hear (assuming that’s who reads joystiq/kotaku).
If you think back to when these downloadable channels (XBLA/PSN) were announced, they were supposed to be the “anti-retail”: good royalties for all involved, smaller/less “epic” games (quirky ideas which would never have been approved by a publisher), basically a mecca for small teams. In hindsight we were perhaps naive to buy into what was apparently empty marketing speak, however we really believed that something worthwhile and interesting was happening.
Fast forward to now: royalties (allegedly) suck, casual games outnumber proper video games (this will have to wait for a future post for further discussion), the vast majority of titles are “disappointing” (this is perhaps a more politic choice of words than “utter crap”), and small teams are being actively funneled through publishers.
As gamers it was unbelievably depressing for us to try literally 80 games and enjoy less than 8 of them. As we mentioned in the article we no longer bother to try XBLA demos because of this.. we just wait until we hear something good about any given game. So, we’re back in retail-land!
The fact that the channel is glutted with crap IS a real problem that shouldn’t be dismissed. The “diamonds will always stand out” argument doesn’t work when gamers have ceased to pay attention to XBLA due to how badly the last 10 demos they tried sucked.
As developers it was incredibly frustrating to see Nick pitch his game — which is really awesome, but a secret for now — only to be told that “genre X is oversaturated”. It’s only oversaturated because, for example, a piece of crap like Street Trace somehow got in early and is now preventing actually good games from being made. Before you call us arrogant for bad-mouthing another XBLA game, note that in this case it was a direct quote from X360 Magazine UK (”A piece of crap.” [Issue 26, p.118]).
Those who point out that retail has the exact same problem as XBLA are correct — but that doesn’t somehow diffuse our argument, if anything it just reinforces it since XBLA was meant to correct the problems endemic to retail games and that whole shebang. If my soup tastes like garbage, I would hope that the waiter’s explanation isn’t “yes, but most of the food we serve here tastes like garbage”!
This ties in to the larger rant of “why do the majority of games TOTALLY SUCK ASS?”, which is a very complex topic. Certainly everyone is to blame — gamers, developers, publishers, press. Hopefully someone will figure it out before consumers become totally jaded and it’s music-industry-style meltdown time.
We don’t expect everyone to be perfect. We’ve made some crap games ourselves. Making a game that sucks shouldn’t be a big deal — it happens, you learn from it. What is inexcuseable is when you make an utterly crap game, and then RELEASE IT ANYWAY.
What’s even worse is when your job is to decide which games to release, and which games to cancel, and you choose to release, for example, some lightweight neon bunny match-3 and then cancel something interesting like, say, a physics-puzzle-based Thrust-like game.
Also, we should mention that any developers whose games we singled out shouldn’t feel too bad, since we also think that “The New Super Mario Bros” pretty much sucked (especially when compared to SMB3 or SMW), and we didn’t like Halo or Halo2 (haven’t tried 3 yet). So.. take it with a grain of salt? You’re in good company at least. 
And, be cognizant of the fact that this is all our (very?) subjective opinion — N+ receives it’s share of poor reviews, too — it’s impossible for any game to resonate with every single person who plays it.
Hopefully we’ll have something good to write about next post — heh.
p.s - we’re not “fanboys” as some have accused.. we just can’t afford a PS3 yet! SSD:HD is pretty crap though, so it looks like Sony aren’t immune either.
Topics: n+, news, rants | 78 Comments »
N+ XBLA: Taking the World by Storm
By M&R | February 26, 2008
First off, the new IGN blog post is up. This week, we take a look at N+ XBLA and provide some helpful tips and stuff. Check it out here!
There are two crazy important things to note in this post. First, people have been getting this wrong all over the internet, and it’s time the record was set straight:
N+ for Xbox 360 LIVE! Arcade was developed by Slick Entertainment and published by Metanet Software.
N+ for DS and PSP was developed by Silverbirch Studios, published by Atari, and licensed by Metanet Software.Metanet also provided all level design for N+ XBLA and Single Player level design for N+ DS/PSP (and acted as Consultants), but you already knew that
and second, yes, Metanet Software’s official Xbox360 Gamertag is “w00tteen74″.. it’s a long story
Early reports of N+ downloads are amazingly good — we’re so thrilled that players worldwide have been giving N+ a chance. It was our main goal to get N+ to a new audience, and so far it seems to be going well! Thank you, Xbox360 gamers everywhere, for playing N+. You rock!
We apologize for 14-4, Master Control. Don’t hate us! But isn’t it incredibly rewarding when you finally beat it?
We’ll be releasing new level packs shortly, containing brand new levels for both Single and Multiplayer, some classic levels from the original N, and a whole bunch of new ninja-related goodies for you to enjoy. Look for those soon!
Nick from Slick put the N+ Postmortem slides in image form here. You should check out his DevBlog too, which has some great insights.
We’re really happy with how N+ XBLA turned out.. so far the only disappointment has been our total lack of #1s on the leaderboards. We’re still trying though!
Topics: n+, news | 48 Comments »
The Ninja Has Landed
By M&R | February 20, 2008
Yes, at painfully long last, N+ is available on XBLA worldwide!
We’re stuck here at GDC for the next few days, so now is your chance to get on the leaderboards before we arrive back in Toronto and “throw down”. Booyah!
The XBLA has been updated with all sorts of fancy new info, check it out here!
We put the N+ in FUN+.. you can add the FU.
Topics: n+, news | 59 Comments »
N+ on XBLA this Wednesday (the 20th)!! YES!!!!!!!
By M&R | February 18, 2008
Seriously, it’s been killing us to keep all the news about N+ quiet. We have really big mouths, and it’s hard to shut that down. But, finally, we’re FINALLY allowed to share the good news with everyone. N+ will be available for download for 800 points on this Wednesday, February 20th, at 9am PST. Yay!
We feel like maybe there’s not as much buzz as there could have been, but the orders to keep it all under our collective hat came from Microsoft’s marketing department, and presumably they know a lot more about this sort of thing than we do.
At this point we’re completely anxious, worried that it’s too hard and no one will buy it because the graphics are so minimal and stylized (though stylish), and after struggling with the demo for the hypothetical 3 minutes you have before people get bored, they’ll give up instead of pushing on and finding their inner ninja. All we can do is hope people will see/play past all that and get incurably addicted. And then addict their friends!
There are also a couple sets of really cool gamerpics and themes in the LIVE Marketplace — we would have liked to put them up for free, but this is apparently against policy. It *is* a bit frustrating: it seems silly to us that gamers have to pay for something entirely superficial and not even part of the game! In any case, we’ll try to have preview pics up on Wednesday, so at least you can see what you’ll be getting. There will also be one or two level packs coming in the future, though we don’t really know the timing for that yet.. but we figure 450 levels should keep everyone busy for a while
The GDC is looking like it’s going to be great. Raigan’s got a presentation on Monday, and Mare and Nick are doing the N+ XBLA post-mortem on Tuesday, so we’ve still got some work to do.. but we can’t wait for Wednesday!
Topics: n+, news | 35 Comments »
N+ Launch Party Widely Regarded as “Best Party of All Time”
By M&R | February 14, 2008
Well, the N+ XBLA launch party was last night, and it was a smashing success! Check out the pics here. The room was pretty well packed by the end, and it was difficult to pry the controllers from the crabbed and clawlike (read: N+ addicted) hands of our guests when it was time to close the event.
There were 4 Xbox360s set up at the party, and participants could play local multiplayer on each console, which meant we could accommodate lots of players — good thing, too! There was rarely a system free, which we take as a good sign.
We did a few interviews you should see shortly, and generally had a great time celebrating the hopefully really really soon launch of the game.
In other news, there’s a new IGN Developer blog post for you to enjoy: http://blogs.ign.com/Metanet/. This week we catalogue some of our favorite freeware and shareware games. Scintillating!
And we’re off for the Game Developers Conference next week. Yay! The GDC is always a good time. This year, both of us are doing talks at the Indie Games Summit. Raigan’s talking about how creating and tweaking your own system and parameters can lead to a more interesting game. Mare’s doing a postmortem on N+ XBLA with Nick from Slick Entertainment. We’re totally excited and can’t wait to get there. And who knows, next week might see the release of N+ XBLA, which would be super cool…More on that later!
Topics: n+, news | 21 Comments »
N+ vs N+
By M&R | January 30, 2008
Before getting to the actual subject of this post, we should point out that the latest installment of our IGN developer blog is up: http://blogs.ign.com/Metanet/
To make up for the lack of substance last time, we’ve packed 8 pages of Q&A into a single column! Aw yeah.
We’ve also updated the N/N+ website: http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/
We’re still in the process of digging through our webmail to find all of the N-related pics submitted over the past couple years; one of the best new ones is this halloween costume. Classic — inadvertently homicidal robots are definitely the new ghosts. Take that, Pac-Man!
Now for the actual blog post:
One thing that’s becoming increasingly obvious as we near the launch of N+ (and the interviews/marketing/etc. this entails) is that there is some confusion regarding what’s different between the various versions. In hindsight we should have simply used two different names to denote the two different projects.. perhaps N^X for the XBLA version, and.. well, part of the problem is that we could never figure out a better name than N+. Aside from N++ of course, but that was deemed too geeky even for a game where level numbers are counted from 0.
As a result, there are two totally different games being released called “N+”: one on XBLA (developed by Slick Entertainment), and one on DS/PSP (developed by Silverbirch). It’s actually more like 2.5 games, since the DS and PSP versions are the same in terms of the game itself (graphics/design/physics etc.) but differ in terms of content, each having completely different levels.
In order to reduce the confusion — and if we might be so incredibly bold as to analogize our game with one specific series of gaming masterpieces which influenced us — we’ve developed an explanation which we feel is both concise and easy to grasp intuitively, while working on many different levels to explain the sundry subtle differences between the various forms that N+ is taking:
If N was Super Mario Brothers 3, then N+ on XBLA would be Super Mario World, while N+ on DS/PSP would be The New Super Mario Brothers.
This can be taken in many ways, in terms of differences between the various platforms themselves, to differences between the art direction and gameplay of the titles, to differences in the lineage and development teams behind each title… it’s a remarkably apt metaphor (or simile or whatever, smart-ass).
Since our meaning may not be as obvious as we ourselves feel it is, here’s the long version:
The XBLA version is a super-improved evolution of the original: it supersedes the flash version in that the low-level movement and feel of the physics and control is identical, while many solid improvements and exciting new features have been made at higher levels. Multiplayer and augmented graphics and sound being the biggest ones, but there are tons of smaller ones such as modification to buggy enemy and object code, the addition of new enemies and objects, and the happy removal of the glitchy-collision-when-running-up-hills bug! Plus now we can sit on the couch rather than at our desks
Anyone who likes N will absolutely not be disappointed by N+ XBLA.
Of course, this cuts both ways — those who don’t like N will more than likely find that N+ doesn’t change that, though it is definitely much more friendly in terms of level progression and learning curve. Perhaps “less intimidating” would be a better way to put it…seeing your ninja’s corpse repeatedly savaged by robots may not be all that friendly. Anyway, since anyone who doesn’t like N more than likely has no soul, and/or really sucks at games, nuts to them.
The handheld versions, in contrast, are more of an alternate take on N than a revision of the original. The style/design in general, as well as the feeling of moving the ninja, are definitely more “influenced by” than “identical to” the flash version. We worked very hard with the developer to make sure that the movement and feeling of controlling the ninja are as close as possible, but in the end platform differences (such as screen resolution, lack of floating point, and many other factors) made it impossible to get it perfectly right. Running and jumping is still fun and fluid, and is definitely very close to the original, we just want to make sure that die-hard fans are prepared — the handhelds are definitely different-feeling than the flash version. Don’t get us wrong, this is not necessarily a bad thing, some people might prefer how the handheld versions feel.
In terms of design as a whole, we don’t agree with some of the decisions that were made with the handhelds; this seems to simply be a consequence of the unfortunate nature of licensing something and given the vague title “consultant” vs being in charge of production and able to more closely guide development. Mostly these are smaller things, which have been termed “nit-picky”, such as the choice of font, menu layout, interface, graphics etc., however we feel that these things do make a difference. David, the project’s producer at Atari, has been terrific and helped us shape things as much as we could, however at the end of the day the developer also had their own ideas about what N+ should be, which unfortunately didn’t always match ours. We should point out that the developer behind the XBLA version, Slick, also brought in ideas for N+, but we mostly agreed with them; they were in many cases additions we hadn’t considered but felt were perfectly suited.
As a result the handhelds are not the games we would have made, whereas the XBLA version is exactly what we wanted. The emphasis is important, because we realize that what we like and what everyone else likes aren’t always the same thing; we’ll have to see which version ends up being considered “the best” by everyone else. If it’s not completely obvious, we aren’t exactly experts when it comes to making games or predicting the reaction of the retail market. We know what we like, and our well-educated opinions in this regard are primarily what we go on.
As it stands now, we can say that the handheld version of N+ is among the best platformers we’ve ever played on DS/PSP. It’s a good game; we just don’t think it’s as good a rendition of the original flash game as the XBLA version is — and this may or may not matter to anyone else! It’s very hard for us to say sometimes whether the differences are “better” or “worse”.. we’re so close to the project that all we can see is all of the things we disagree with, and that makes it hard to objectively evaluate the project as a whole. Also, we’re not sure how many people will be buying N+ because they like platformers and/or ninjas, and how many will buy it because they know and like N; the former is probably far more likely.
So that basically covers the differences. Of course, there are also many similarities between the two versions of N+. Most notably (to us) is that the level design in all versions of N+ is much better than in the current flash version. This is probably just a product of us learning and improving over time; looking through the flash levels there are only about 200 out of 500 which we would consider “as good” as the levels in N+ (one caveat is that we didn’t make the multiplayer handheld levels).
The difficulty curve in N+ is much more gradual than in N — levels are still insanely hard at the end (especially some co-op levels on XBLA — yikes!), but the progression is much more gradual. To counterbalance this, we tried to made sure that the easier levels all have little tricks or dangerous alternate paths which expert players can use to get better scores — this way anyone who’s beaten the game won’t be bored by the “intro” episodes when they replay it. The game is definitely still very hard!
And of course, all versions of N+ feature the addition of various co-op and competitive modes of multiplayer, which might be the most exciting new feature. It can definitely get intense!
Anyway, hopefully some combination of our ingeniously concise analogy and the rather more verbose version following it has helped to, at long last, clear up exactly what the difference is between N+ and N+.
[Insert funny ending here]
p.s - AAAAAAAARRRRGGHHHH!!!!!!! We’ve just heard that the N+ XBLA launch has been delayed from “very very soon” to “very soon”.. damn it!!
Topics: n+, news | 53 Comments »
IGN Developer Blog
By M&R | January 15, 2008
The first article in a series we’re writing is up on IGN, you can check it out here: http://blogs.ign.com/Metanet/2008/01/15/77103/
We were feeling pretty silly when we wrote it (writing it at 1am the night before it was due may also have played a part). It was meant to be one of those “who are you and what are independent games?” intro blurbs — we were just so bored with writing those that we went CRAAAAAAAZY!
The plan is to write one of these every two weeks until the handheld versions are released. Later articles will hopefully contain some actual content; the series is meant to introduce IGN readers to the wonderful world of independent gaming, which probably isn’t usually covered on IGN. So we’ll be talking about our favorite games, offering suggestions and encouragement for making your own games, and much much more. All the while shamelessly plugging N+ at every available opportunity. Hooray!
Topics: news | 11 Comments »
It’s The Final Countdown!
By M&R | January 10, 2008
At long last N+ XBLA is finished the final certification process! Woo!
We’ll post as soon as we hear about release dates/etc.. in the meantime, why not check out Nick’s blog?
(note: the handheld versions are still firmly lodged in various stages of development)
Topics: news | 14 Comments »