The Maw developer not keen to idea of Community Games

I think the community games are a little overpriced, if they were brought down in price they might perform better.

"But the sheer amount of titles and amount of lower quality games tarnishes the program's goal."

Agreed.

I think we're all still waiting for that killer app. That and no cheevos is bad news indeed. They should let community games have as many cheevos as XBLA games since they can be the same price.

There are a few gems in Community Games. Try out Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp if you haven't already. I do agree about the pricing and quality of most of the games. My goodness, the fireplace screensaver was a top seller for like a week. Are people nuts? What was that, like five bucks. I'm sure Microsoft is enjoying the extra cash though.

There are a handful of heat community games worth playing for around $5.00 - no more.
while its a great idea for up and coming startup programmers, the volume of not so great games outweighs the good ones.

Most of them are also only like 200 points. And honestly some these community games for 200-400 points are way better games than some of the 800-1200 XBLA crap we get.

I thought the whole idea behind XNA/Community Games was to let people make DIY games and share them... to show what the average Joe Blow could do and hopefully discover that wunderkind that no one knew about... and if that's my expectation, then Comminuty games is falling right into it because I would expect there to be 1 good game for every 100 cruddy ones.

Now pricing... that's a different story. That's something MS needs to re-consider.

You all are talking as if this should be more like an indie-games community... which I disagree. Indie games should be on Live Arcade, not Community Games.

I think the distinction really comes from XNA. Twisted Pixel developed a game using XNA and so it's on Community... so the question is, if Capcom were to make a game using XNA, would MS file that under Arcade or Community? And Maw was a PAX award winner... it definintely should NOT be under Community if you ask me, even if programmed used XNA.

The best solution really is to divide up into more categories... Community for home-brew DIY, Indie for smaller upstarts, then Live for the established developers.

Some of the Community Games are really quite good, while some aren't. I think not having achievements was a missed opportunity for some viral marketing. I've noticed among my friends that whenever one of us plays a fairly obscure game, some of the rest of us tend to buy it after seeing it show up on his profile. Also, some cool but extremely simple games like Machiavelli's Ascent would benefit from having developer-set goals in the way of cheevos.

They should have achievements.

I think there needs to be a community games review website. I don't have time to download all of the demos. I want to hit a website and read honest reviews of games. I'm sure there is some wheat in the chaff. Just finding it isn't worth the trouble.

Wish there was some sort of system that gamer could use to rate the games, like 1-5 stars depending on quality. Also the really abbreviated timeframe to play trial versions is ridiculous. On one game, my time was up before I could finish reading the how to section from the game menu. I don't mind paying 5 bucks or so for a good game but I hate pay that much for crap.

Of course Twisted Pixel would rather publish for XBLA than CG. They can. CG is for people who can't publish to XBLA.

I think that, Community Games needs to be open longer for people to notice it, and create better games. That and the pricing isn't something im always fond of.

I just haven't enjoyed any of the random ones that I have tried. I think once reputable media starts reviewing community games than maybe I will try out some of the gems. Until then, there are plenty of quality games that I haven't played yet so Community Games don't even really cross my mind.

Its the same complaint I have with the app store for the iphone. For every gem you have fifty turds. Who wants to sort through fifty turds for the one gem?

I think "Games without shackles" is a terrible slogan for XBLCG (if they're still using it), because it's totally untrue. If MS were a British company, I would report that to Trading Standards.

There are some hefty restrictions about what you can include and what you can do, not at all "... without shackles".

You can't supply your own rich presence text or achievements (there's a set of shackles), you can't even do the bare basics of testing your own code on the 360 as it's the dominant platform without paying first of all for XNA Creators' Club and, I believe, an Xbox LIVE Gold subscription (under UK pricing, that's a £100+ set of shackles just for the privilege of testing your own code on a console) - unlike Zune and PC which lets you test and deploy for free, you just have to pay to submit them to the XBLCG service itself. Granted I test my games on PC with a wireless controller adapter plugged in but really, I shouldn't have to pay to deploy it to my own console just for offline, local testing purposes.

XNA doesn't provide any default support for video playback and to do so requires a dodgy set of third party libraries which cause licensing issues when deployed to the 360 (another set of shackles, jeeze), all games uploaded get a Microsoft-supplied nag screen slapped on the front and there's a reasonably tight filesize restriction.

Not to mention that I've yet to find more than two games on the XBLCG that I can honestly call half decent. Some of them are absolutely atrocious even by amateur and hobbyist standards, and what's that one with the fireplace all about? 400MS Points for a screensaver? Yeah, seriously.

Also, I agree that they're shoved into a dark corner of the dashboard and are difficult to find. I certainly found this myself and, to be honest, the sub-par quality and the restricted development model really doesn't make it worth the effort.

Develop your games on PC, for PC, using any tools you like. XBLCG really isn't worthwhile in my opinion.

So, I love the idea of Community Games - of having a way for anyone to get their game in front of millions of players.

However, from the strict perspective of a user, I've mostly given up on CG's, mainly because of the fifty-turd effect, as mentioned by another poster. The occasional golden nugget is not worth wading through the crap. I only tend to check out ones that are mentioned as particuarly good by friends, podcasts or blogs.

Here's my advice to MS on CG:
1: CHEEVO'S! I'm loathe to spend space bucks on what is ostensibly no different a product from an XBLA game without some sweet, sweet cheevos. Any complaints about 'too easy cheevos' are irrelevant. With the likes of Avatar and the 2K6 games in the retail channel, there is no gold standard for cheevos.

2: RATINGS! A simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down would be sufficient. There desperately needs to be a way for me to see what's wheat and what's chaff from the dashboard.

I've found some really great Community Games---Audiball and In The Pit are both the kind of enormously creative sui genris thing that could happen nowhere else, and a few others, like Weapon of Choice and Groov, are delightful.

But the problem is the good games being buried under the lazy crap. So I think people are right that Achievements, star ratings, or some other system by which you could crowdsource quality control is what's needed, to let the really standout games get the notice they deserve.

Most community games I have seen have really been of poor quality. We the gamers should be able to vote on each game we try.
If a game does not meet the standards and voting numbers then it should be removed so that we don't have to scroll through it on the list of games. It is already getting cluttered.