Mommy's Best responds to new Dash gripes with new shmup Game Type

@sparkster chances are they don't track anything (ok I take that back they probably do, they just don't use it for "smart" advertising) and you're seeing the games that paid the most money to be advertised the heaviest. COD has it's special little deals with Microsoft (getting the map packs early and their ads having xbox plugs at the end) and FIFA while not the most popular sports game in America is one of the most popular in the world since it's soccer and the rest of the world is crazy for that shit.

@Odog4ever Not yet at least. But I don't have that big of problem with the new update either. Microsoft may be focusing on social and video integration, but when I turn my Xbox on it loads up and starts on the games screen. Which means if I have the game I'm wanting to play in the disc tray I don't have to see any ads or have streaming video pushed on me. I can simply click go and my game starts. No fuss, no extra hassles, no ads.

I could even take it a step further and have my Xbox automatically start the game when I turn it on effectively negating the dashboard completely. I don't really see the problem here honestly. Sure the Xbox is made for gaming, but last I checked XBL still functions exactly the same as it did before they turned their focus to video. And again, honestly I think it's about time they incorporated some of these features. After all the PS3 has had an internet browser since day one, and the Xbox which is the closer to a straight up PC hasn't AND we're paying for online access. But, I guess everyone likes to complain when things change.

@Odog4ever

Why do you care that someone made a game about this?

Does it bother you that someone was motivated enough by their criticisms that they would actually make a commercial product to voice their concerns?

Making snarky comments about other people's efforts to make a difference doesn't elevate you in any way. It just makes you look like an asshole.

@NickNameless

I've seen more intelligent discourse from the gaming community about this indie game problem.

It may have made him feel better to make this game but is it really going to help the indie games section (and its devs) get more visibility on the dashboard?

No it isn't. The whole thing comes off as a temper tantrum by what I'm assuming is an adult.

@Odog4ever

most of the ads are about games?

I just turned it on and I get an ad about lesnar vs. overeem
an ad about youtube, UFC, vudu, dailymotion, netflix (is the apps section not good enough?) this shit is confusing. It's scattered all over

on the next page there is an ad for fios(again, is the apps section not good enough?), and an ad for bing (is the very first option in the main header that says BING not enough?)

the next page the video section, has a tile for my video apps (Again, is the Apps section not good enough? THREE MENTIONS OF APPS AND WE ARE NOT EVEN AT THE APPS SECTION!!). An ad for NTV whatever that is. an ad for warcraft, a game that can't be played on xbox. (shouldn't this be in the games section)

The games section is fine but it's SIXTH on the main menu.

Music, Apps, and Settigns are all fine but you have to scroll through so many scattered ads. There is a bizarre state farm ad in the apps section though.

I just finished up shadow complex, and insanely twisted shadow planet so Once I catch up on gears 2 gears 3 alan wake, and maybe reach. I think I'm selling the xbox. and I just bought it last week. I didn't spend $300 to have people shove ads down my throat

@eat it

Glossed over the part where I said "or stuff I could purchase on the market place". I don't see them advertising stuff you can do on your Xbox, including apps, as a problem.

The box does more than game now but if that's all you want to do there is nothing stopping you. If ads are truly degrading your experience of PLAYING GAMES you should sell you Xbox right now. Why put up with the frustration?

I'm not going to stop going to the theater because they play commercials before the movie and have obvious in movie shots of logos. And people aren't going to stop watching TV for the same reason. Either learn to ignore the ads or start reading books.

@Odog4ever I feel for you, man. So cynical and bitter you can't just chuckle at the joke and move on.

@Odog4ever

Jeez have a f-ing sense of humor.

I thought it was hilarious, and pretty impressive given that the guy made the game in 7 days. I don't know what I can accomplish in 7 days, but it sure as hell isn't making a video game.

I plan on buying this because, like the developer said, there ARE some good points for the new dashboard, but they are heavily outweighed by the negative parts. I don't understand your sentiment that "life is not fair" yet you rip on the guy for honest criticisms. I do not see how a person can in any way regard this as a childish rant. Nothing about this is temper tantrum-y.

My biggest complaint about the dashboard is the lack of functionality. It was clearly designed by some schmuck who got paid to make it look cool as opposed to making it functional. Also, what works on a mobile device does not necessarily work on a home console!!!

The ads are annoying as sh!t but I can ignore that. I can't ignore the awful design, and the fact that it takes 3-5 extra menus to accomplish the same task as it did before. As I've said in previous stories about the new dashboard, it looks like I'll have to use the Xbox Guide menu to actually accomplish anything.

@mrmobius

Hey, as long as they still allow games like Skyrim, Gears 3, or Saint's Row: The Third to be made for their platform, I don't give a shit who they market the system to. The day *those* games go away, then there'll be trouble.

@mrmobius

I think you are confusing the term "casual" and "everyone."

@greyseal

Agree. The cream will always rise to the top.

If a dev can't use avenues like smart phones, Steam, Independent Games Festival, etc to get exposure then they probably need to go back to the drawing board and make a better game.

Hard work can pay off. So more coding and less whining.

@Odog4ever

But MBG is 'rising to the top', he regarded as fine maker of SHMUPs such as Shoot 1up among others. Plus he was picked for the Serious Sam indie series for which he made SS: Double D. He was a finalist in Dream.Build.Play a few years back with Weapon Of Choice.

While he is slowly moving onto bigger platforms like Steam (which is bloody hard to get onto despite what people seem to think) he still mostly releases games onto XBLIG which is a much mistreated service by Microsoft. Why shouldn't he use his main skill of game development to make a game that satarizes things that he sees as wrong with the new Xbox live dashboard. He has said on his blog that he doesn't hate the new dashboard but that there are many problems with it. It is a semi-'protest' game and as such is a quick response to something. It isn't meant to be the game that launches him into the top tier of indie games that apprantly is the goal of all devs, it's a game to express his opinon on something.

Even people like Team Meat have been making games for 10 years before they 'hit it big' and Edmund made plently of silly games in response to things no more trival than the new dashboard.

@greyseal Geez...what's with all the Negative Nancys running around today?

@(Unverified)

I think we all preferred that one.

@(Unverified)

Yes. That design was an exercise in poor UI.

@(Unverified)

Actually, the new dashboard is a fantastic UI. If you use the shoulder buttons on your controller to navigate from section to section, it even acts exactly like the old blade system from the original dash.

The problem, and it's the only problem frankly with the new dash, is the placement of content on the new dashboard. Everything is scattered out everywhere. The content placement on the new dash is not as focused as any of the previous dash iterations, and I suspect that part of the reasoning for this, is to get people to look at more ads. If you have to go to three different sections of the UI just to hunt down one item, where in the previous dashboards I could have simply jumped to the pertinent section, then there is a problem there.

When I am in the GAMES section of the dash, I expect all the content there to be about games - and nothing else. I also expect to be able to easily, with a single button press, to get to every subsection of the game's section - that includes getting to the XBLIG. The fact that you have to literally hunt for XBLIG while you are in the games section, is an insult not to just the indie devs who make those games, but also to the gamers like myself who buy and play those games.

Like I said, the dashboard is fantastic - it really is the most like the original dash than anything they have done since. But if the content is scattered to the four winds, you can have the best dash and UI in the world, and it will still be next to useless. And worse still, the entire dash is more focused on movies and TV shows than it is on games. Can you imagine if the original blade dash had the content that you were looking for, spread across three different sections, and most of the blade system content was dedicated to television and movies? Well, that's exactly what they did with the new dash. They took a great dash, one that should have been the easiest in the world to locate content (ANY content) with, and then made the stuff they did not want you to find, hard to find in it. Hey, but the ads are everywhere. You can find those really easy.

And probably the worse insult to injury for XBLIG devs, is that once a person has taken the time to find the indie game they are searching for, the RELATED tab almost always points towards every Call of Duty game ever made. I was checking out an indie space sim called, Devilsong, and the top RELATED games were (in order): Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, World at War, Black Ops, Bad Company 2, Gears of War, Halo 3, Gears of War 2, Halo Reach, and Red Dead Redemption.

ROTFLMMFAO

Not only is not a single one of those games even another indie game that I may be interested in, but not a single one of those games is even remotely RELATED to a space sim. It would just seem to me, that if you are enjoying a game in the indie section of the dash, that at the very least, other indie games would take precedence in the recommended playing selection. I would expect the same if I were looking for related games while in the Kinect section (Kinect games take precedent over other recommendations), or the same if I were looking at games in XBLA, or in Xbox Originals, et al. And the very fact that the RELATED tab could not even pair me up with so much as even another game set in space . . .

@Tachyonic Cargo

I agree with everything you said, except that the new dashboard is fantastic UI. I disagree wholeheartedly.

The boxy-buttons work great for Windows Phone and mobile devices. Pushing a touch screen that has lots of large boxy buttons makes perfect sense. But navigating with a controller? Total crap. Yes, it's easier when using LB/RB to switch between tabs, but so often I accidentally switch between tabs just because I went a little too far with the joystick.

And of course the ads are just ridiculous, and not even very functional themselves. They have boxes that show 3-5 different items in a slideshow, but there's no way of controlling it. So if you see an item you're interested in but don't click it in time, you have to wait until it slides through the other pictures you're not interested in.

The "scattered" nature of the dash is only one of many of its problems. I was not a huge fan of the last dashboard, but it was much easier to get to what I wanted as opposed to now, where it takes 3-5 extra clicks for no reason.

I also feel like there's just a huge amount of unused space. This may be great for "graphic art" but not for effective "user interface."

And don't even get me started on what they did to Netflix and Hulu...

@eat it

Can't you say the same for cable tv and dvr boxes? Yet I seem to recall staring at ads all the time on those...