Metritron

So, I made another game in 48 hours but this time for Molyjam 2013. It was based on this quote from Peter Molyneux: "We've got tons of graphs and data coming in, and looking at that is the most inspirational thing I have seen as a game designer, ever."

Molyjam Page (with download and stuff): http://www.molyjam.com/games/58

I'm sticking to my philosophy that if you can’t draw, and you've got to make something in 48 hours, you should keep adding boxes until it looks good or you can’t see. I'm not sure which one I accomplished.

Maybe it’s worth moving this into general discussion as I'm about to rant about something.

After I finished this game I decided that since it’s XNA-based I could show some love to XBLIG and do a port. Okay, and to make some money since I’ve been unemployed for like a year now, but the trial was 40% of the game and would be a dollar. It has a proper level structure spanning 40 levels (455 waves but most of them are generated with a deterministic random function so hey), title screen, saving and loading of progress and high scores, new enemies, bosses, bullet patterns, music; it’s a much tighter game than the one I made in 48 hours as you would expect. You could maybe even describe it as a proper game. But then I went to submit and I got this error.

I'm surprised nobody is talking about this because it really is worthy of many dramatic headlines, especially given current game journalism narratives surrounding Xbox One and independent titles. After you pay $99 for your "Xbox LIVE Indie Games Annual Membership" you may find, and nobody quite knows why because there is absolutely no dialogue with Microsoft at all, that you have an account the Creators website doesn't like. If you have such an account then most pages on the Creators website will refuse to work; meaning you cannot read anything, submit anything or do anything.

If I had to guess I would say it's because I brought the membership through my 360. I'm not really up for spending hundreds of dollars trying to find out what's causing Microsoft's shitty service to be shitty, though. I will stress that this is definitely not a local issue, it's server side, it doesn't matter how many different browsers, computers or internet-capable devices you try, you will not be able to access the important areas of this website. Turning your $99 into a rather convoluted and time-limited HDMI out.

And this is not a recent problem because of a blip in the website that will be fixed in a few days time, it has been happening for at least three years and nobody at Microsoft higher than a Community Manager has commented. Here's people complaining about it dating back to 2010 with no resolution or official word from Microsoft that this problem even exists.

[list][*][email protected] about this issue, apparently the correct course of action, and I have heard exactly nothing. Not that I'm missing out much, judging by the responses people have received.

I also spoke to support about another account issue, namely removing a credit card from my account - because unlike every other company ever you can't just hit a button to do that. I brought up this problem but the 'agent' wasn't equipped to deal with this (which is fair enough, of course) and linked me to the Creators website where I could contact their support instead. I already knew this wasn't great advice. Firstly, as soon as I log in the page gives the redirect loop error I'm trying to contact support about, but secondly after I created a new account just to try an access support I found it redirects to the "Are you developing for Windows Phone or Xbox?" page, from which both choices just dump you on the respective front page again. Amazing.

Now, call me cynical, but am I right in thinking that if there was an error that caused Microsoft to not actually charge the annual $99 for the indie games membership somehow that wouldn't go unfixed for three fucking years?! Again, I'm surprised there isn't much of a stink about this. To reiterate yet again: you hand them a hundred dollars, get nothing, and they are completely silent about this even being a known problem.

I did post in the community section that you can mostly access even with an otherwise-useless redirecting account. I posted in the thread "Re: Redirect loop - cannot get to anywhere on AppHub" which only dates back to 2011 but was the most recent complaint thread and had ~72 replies at the time. There has been a lot of responses but most of them reiterating that Microsoft has abandoned this and it won't be fixed. At least it does sound like it is possible to wrangle a refund back from Microsoft, although other posts reiterate this is not and easy process.

Hopefully I can use what I've learned in other projects instead. Or maybe I could just release it for free on PC or something. Have some screenshots, I guess?

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