Anilrgowda

With Windows Vista set for release on Jan. 30, you'd assume video game developers are geared up and ready to deal with the changes that each new version of Windows invariably demands. But, from the considerable chatter among developers of casual games, it appears that many are bracing for the worst, including higher production costs, pressure to get their unrated games rated, and having their games mysteriously disappear from consumers' desktops.

Discussion among members of the Casual Game Developers SIG of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) began on Dec. 18 when David Selle reported in a posting that "about 80% of the games we get from third-party developers have some kind of issue with Vista." Selle is vp of content acquisition and developer relations at Wild Tangent, a Redmond,Wash.-based developer and publisher of casual games -- small, downloadable games such as "Bejeweled" that are targeted at a mass-market audience.

"Just under half of that number are severe issues that will significantly impact a user's ability to play the game," Selle wrote. "In our network, these will have to be pulled once our OEM partners start shipping Vista on new consumer machines. Outside our network, these will die a slow but equally inevitable death (if nothing is done to fix them) as consumer adoption of Vista marches forward."

But Microsoft vehemently denies that Vista is "casual game unfriendly."

"I personally have been out talking to game developers about Vista for four years now," says Chris Donahue, group manager, Games for Windows. "I've given a ton of speeches at developer conferences, and my team of nine engineers and evangelists have scoured the world talking to anybody who will listen. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone."


["It's unfortunately a mercenary way of doing things... we do look at the sales charts to determine where our help will have the most impact... The casual developers don't sell quite as many," Chris Donahue, Games for Windows]

What is at issue is the new Game Explorer, a one-stop application within Vista designed to make game installation and accessing information about installed games far simpler than previous versions of the operating system. It also makes note of the local rating of those games that have received ratings, and it allows parents to enforce them or not. [In the U.S., the Entertainment Software Rating Board determines the ESRB ratings.] For example, if Game Explorer's "parental controls" are turned on, a 12-year-old could be barred from playing an "M-rated" game which is meant for 17-year-olds and older.

Donahue believes that Vista's new features address the concerns of many parents who fear that their children may have easy access to inappropriate games.

"You can also turn on the scheduling component that limits the hours your child can play," he adds. "You can turn parental controls on or off -- it's really up to you -- but I think parents are looking for this kind of ability."

But many casual games, which are typically created by smaller developers with skimpy budgets, are not rated for many reasons, including the fact that the ESRB charges a fee to rate games. Some developers fear that they will now be forced to go through the ratings process or risk having their games "vanish" from desktops if parents set Game Explorers to ignore unrated titles.

One SIG online posting from a game developer reads: "Out of interest, does anyone know what an independent developer with a shoestring budget is supposed to do about all this? It would be a great shame if the minimum barriers for development, which are currently extremely low, jumped up and made it hard for successive generations of developers to make their own games."

And another posting: "I work for a company that's just getting its feet wet in the casual sector. Our target audience is under 18, our budget is small, and if we have to get every one of our games ESRB-rated, that could increase our cost tremendously."

And one more: "I've read all the posts here and am wondering how is it that Microsoft is proposing to maintain the current grade push for independent content when the base costs for ESRB ratings are $2,000-3,000. That's like the complete art budget for a lot of startup developers."

Microsoft's Donahue maintains that it isn't an arduous task for game developers to comply with Vista's standards.

"Yes, there's some extra work for them, including their getting a digital signature certificate, which is a security thing that prevents the installation of malware. But doing what's needed is usually not a whole big deal. We've got scads of information for them in the SDK (software development kit) and we have a developer relations team poised to help. If you're running into a programming issue, we are ready to help you be successful on our platform. Not taking advantage of that is a mistake."

But Donahue admits that the retail games sector, which sells boxed games to stores, may be getting more assistance than the casual games sector simply as a matter of dollars and cents.

"It's unfortunately a mercenary way of doing things," he explains, "but, even though we're Microsoft, we do have limited resources. And we do look at the sales charts to determine where our help will have the most impact. Certainly we want Blizzard's 'World Of Warcraft' [currently the most popular massive multiplayer online game] to work flawlessly on day one of Vista because 8 million tech support calls would be a very bad thing. The casual developers don't sell quite as many."