By now you’ve heard the news – the XNA Creators Club Online web site is back with the all-new Community Games Beta on Xbox LIVE. I’m proud to have contributed and prouder still to see that games are already coming in from dedicated creators.

I wanted to offer a perspective on why I think community games are important. It’s not for the reason you think.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. There’s been plenty of discussion about the Democratization of Video Games, and while I like the term and its implications, let’s be honest: it’s been difficult for the industry to justify so many “pipe owners” on the publishing side with Steam and other digital distribution networks barging in on the space…it was only a matter of time. Distribution isn’t the part of the equation that’s got me excited.

And, if you put your ear to the ground, you’ll hear that everyone’s talking Retro. The old new thing, the platformers, the puzzle games, the “casual” space – of course, we’re conflating generations; mixing the old with the new. Retro is Casual, Casual is Retro, it’s all cool and there’ll be a lot more Atari 2600-themed bands playing at the Triangle in short order, I’m sure. That’s great, but that’s still not it.

I’m scratching these off my worksheet. We’ve all talked ‘em to death. Digital distribution is the future, and Retro is a generational hiccup. As we grow and as we change as a culture, we’re hungry for the same things, and community games is the key to getting them faster.

I’m talking about rewards.

Pipe Dreams and Plumbers
If you remember the old days of gaming, you’ll find your own examples of games that are timeless. Play them today and they’ll appeal. They’ll challenge you, they’ll enchant you, and considering that they were probably made before you were two feet tall, it’s not on account of the graphics.

It’s not the quality of the visual or audio elements that defines a game’s lasting value to a gamer. Remember – games differentiate themselves from movies and music not just by rolling them together, but by being responsive to user input choices.

In the simplest (some would say Skinnerian) analysis, that it beeps when you press the button is more important than what the beep sounds like.

The beep, the explosion, the squashing the bad guy when you stomp on his head is reward, it is interaction. These moments are what we dream about when we dream about making games that appeal. We are in the business of creating reward experiences, from the simplest user interface rollover graphics to the most elaborate explosion effects.

It is less an academic science in the fields of both the what (a sound? a graphic? a controller jiggle?) of the rewards and the when of the rewards (when the player jumps? when they get a hundred coins? when they build a skyscraper?), than it is an experiential exercise – a trial-and-error usability study of the messiest, most disorganized order.

Why? Because games are fantasy. Any one element that ultimately contributes to a game being a rewarding experience runs the risk of sounding silly on its own.

Let’s listen in on an early, one-sided conversation about a popular video game.

…Jerry, Jerry, just hang on and listen. No, don’t put it on speakerphone, that makes me feel like you’re laughing at me.

…So I got a game idea.

…So there’s this guy, alright, he’s a plumber…what? No, what does it matter who he works for? The Italians, okay?

…I know you don’t know how to speak Italian, Jerry. It doesn’t matter. Anyway. Anyway. He hits bricks.

…What? No, they’re not on the ground, they’re in the air.

…Floating.

…Yes, they float.

…I don’t know, about twelve, fifteen feet up, they’re pretty up there.

…No, he hits them with his fist.

…No, I don’t know if that would hurt. Probably, Jerry.

…Yes, he can jump fifteen feet!

…No, no rocket boots or anything.

…No, the bricks, they – kind of bounce. Like they were made of rubber.

…No, they’re real bricks.

…No, they just act like rubber, Jerry.

…Who cares how much that’d cost in real life, Jerry, they’re not real, it’s a video game, don’t you remember?

…No, no, no, see, if he’s big, then they don’t act like rubber, they break apart.

…Well, he – uh – has to eat a mushroom.

…A mushroom.

…A MUSHROOM, JERRY!

…No, I don’t know what kind of mushroom. A magic one, alright?

…Yes, magic out the ying-yang.

…No, look, see, if he eats the mushroom, then he gets bigger!

…Bigger.

…Yep, ten feet tall.

…I don’t know, about four-hundred pounds?

…Look, Jerry, I don’t know how much lasagna he’d have to eat. That’s so racist I don’t even want to talk about that. Look. You just have your art guys draft the little Italian man and the bricks and the mushroom.

…Yes, you can call him Mario.

…And remember, he needs to jump in the air and hit the rubber bricks until he grows ten feet tall when he eats the mushroom and then he can break the bricks, okay? You got all that?

…Yeah? Good. Oh. Wait. Unless he eats the flower. Then he can throw fireballs.

…

…Hello? Jerry? Hello?

So, barring that, I have no doubt that some very capable designers can visualize these interactions abstractly, no matter how externally silly. They can weave the web before they lay in one line of code.

But I have even less doubt that we all have the capacity to create these interactions through experience. Through playing around, through quick code and easy prototyping, we can all tap into the feelings we have when playing the games we like. We can identify them, mimic them, and help them evolve into great gameplay that keeps us coming back. We don’t have to dream them – we can create them.

New School, Old School
Some of the best designers of the “old days” (and I’m looking at you, Sid Meier), were programmers. They visualized and moved into prototype as quickly as possible, to pour the foundations of their games and each reward system into an experimental mold to play with – to bring it out of the mind and into the world where it could be poked, prodded, and revised.

Big teams with lofty designers have, I think, lost much of that connection, and experimentation costs valuable dev time. First or second-round gameplay tweaks are lumped into horrendously-short “fit n’ finish” milestones. The result is little to no experiential reward tuning, no prototyping, no tactile assurance that the game is going to be “sticky” to that spot in the brain that all the great games continue to ping unfailingly.

Community games, by placing prototyping power into the hands of smaller teams, even single, independent individuals, brings the inventor/craftsman mentality of game development back from oversized teams, and the experimentation and reward designs that will be forged by these new, agile developers will, I believe, stand the scrutiny of not only the seasoned early gamers, but the brand-new generation of gamers. The mobile gamers, the Xbox 360 gamers, the cinematic gamers.

Sure, they’ll look weird. Yes, they’ll be simple at times. But the gamers of yesterday, today, and even tomorrow won’t have to call them “Retro”. They won’t have to call them “Casual”. They won’t have to call them anything.

They’ll pick them up. They’ll play them. And because the games reward the players, because the creators could be close to their game, to tweak it, to get it just right, those same gamers won’t be able to put them down.

They’ll be hooked, and those games that get it right, no matter how small, will live forever.

It’s a great time to be a creator.

Games in order: Cannon Fodder, Armor Alley, Airborne Ranger, Inner Space
Graphics courtesy: fabricoffolly.com, abandonia.com, sdispace.com, lemonamiga.com