Microsoft is putting a lot of its eggs in the indie development basket, announcing during its February keynote at the Game Developers Conference that it will allow games created using its XNA Game Studio development program to be shared with (and sold to) other gamers via Xbox Live. We've already seen part of that program in action, via the seven trial games temporarily released following the keynote (while a recently-launched private beta test of the XNA Creators Club is in progress), but Microsoft is also encouraging use of XNA Game Studio with student developers via the newly established Game Development track in its annual Imagine Cup technology competition.
Though otherwise allowed to go in any direction with their games, the student development teams were bound by one highly specific guideline: the games must promote the message of creating a sustainable environment. Following several months of competition (the contest began last September), the list of participants was whittled down to just six finalists: Team BAAM! from Germany, Team Drunk Puppy from Belgium, Team ECOThink from France, Team Gomz from Korea, Team Mother Gaia Studio from Brazil, and Team SiSS from Germany. The winner will be announced at the Imagine Cup finals, which is being held in Paris, France from July 2-9.

Microsoft showed off the six finalists' games earlier this week at the Expo Night at the Games for Change Festival in New York City on Tuesday, June 3. We caught up with Chris Satchell (shown below during the GDC keynote), chief XNA architect and general manager of the XNA group, via phone prior to the expo to talk about the Games for Change event, the future of "serious games," and when (and how) we might see these environmentally conscious games via digital distribution.



1UP: Tell us a bit about the partnership with Games for Change and what you hope to accomplish with this initiative.

Satchell: Well, you know about the Imagine Cup ?we have 100,000 students a year in 100 countries take part in these programming challenges. This year, Xbox and Games for Change teamed up to have a game-focused track that would not only be about creating games using XNA Game Studio, but also socially responsible games about the environment, and really gaming that teaches about a sustainable environment. So that was the partnership; we've partnered with them before, but this time we kind of wrapped it into this competition format and supplied the technology infrastructure to say, "Hey, go make your game but make it about this social issue." And today, we've been looking at the results of that partnership, and I'm blown away by what these students have created.

1UP: What can you tell us about some of the finalists' games and their approaches to this theme of creating a sustainable environment?

Satchell: The first is just that the quality is pretty outstanding. I've been playing quite a bit and what's really blown me away is how they've managed to package this issue ? which could be a very dry issue ? and make it a real playable game. And they've taken different approaches to it. I haven't had a lot of hours with all the top six finalists, but the three I've been playing I love; and that's not to say the other three aren't good, it's just the ones I've been really playing are.



You see something like Future Flow, from an interestingly-named team called Drunk Puppy from Belgium. They make really good beer in Belgium, I wonder if that's why.... Anyway, back to Future Flow. They took a hex-based puzzle game, and they populated it with a city that basically doesn't work, and what you have to do is connect these hexes together. Like, "Oh, my apartment complex needs power and water, so I need to connect it to the water refinery and the power plant." And, "Oh, but the power plant needs oil and water." So you do these connections, but as you start using them up for resources and these things come online, the pollution goes up. So you have to start saying, "Well, do I really need a steel factory, or could I sell it and replace it with a solar energy plant, and then upgrade it and then start using that versus fossil fuels." And so, what you're trying to do is exchange these hexes in your city and connect them in a way that finishes the challenge, but really reduces the pollution.

That was one approach; another approach I really liked is from Brazil by Mother Gaia Studios, and it's a game called City Rain. Imagine SimCity crossed with Tetris -- so I'm playing on a 2D grid, and I've got all these variables about my city, like the employment rate and health and security. Not only have I got to balance those for my community, like a Sim game, but to protect the environment, I've also got to do all this with city blocks falling from the sky like Tetris, so I have to plug them together and upgrade buildings in real-time. And it's really fun, because you try to make decisions in a timeline, but you try to do the right things for the city, and you've got challenges you're doing like, "Build a research center to research the new type of recycling technology." It's like a tech tree -- "Oh, I need to get a landfill with a university next to it."

But in the meantime, my city's asking for parks and police and other things, so you're trying to balance running and building this city with trying to improve the environment at the same time. It's a really fascinating balance you get, plus you're doing it all under the pressure of these city blocks falling. I like the two different approaches; [Future Flow] is very cerebral, like "How do I connect these things up together to get the best outcome?" and [City Rain] is like, "Uh oh! The police station's falling from the sky, and I better put it somewhere. I shouldn't put it in the forest because I'll get complained at." I found out last night, much to my dismay, that you really shouldn't put a landfill in a forest next to a river. [City Rain] is very apt to tell you about how bad that is for the environment, and [ask], "Don't you know that you're actually playing an environmentally sensitive game?" It's actually kind of fun to do the wrong thing and have the game educate you about why it's a bad idea.

1UP: What kinds of guidelines were on the development teams, and what has been the process so far to get them to this point in the competition?

Satchell: Really, the guidelines were that you have to be a student, you had to use XNA Game Studio, and the game had to have an environmentally conscious message to it. There were submission dates and things like that, but those were the big three constraints on the developers, and then the developers were really free to go and pick whichever issue they want and approach it whichever way they want. And of course, from us, they got all the technical documentation that goes on with XNA Game Studio, and our samples, and papers, and starter kits they can use. There's lot of resources, and we've actually found our community is pretty self-sufficient as well, so they had lots of technical resources. It was really down to their creativity about how did they think or imagine you could tell a story or speak more to this social issue through a compelling game. And that's what I love, I mean, it's just really the creativity from the teams that's shone through, and I've been very surprised at just how good the games are.

1UP: Is the goal of something like this ultimately to get a playable game out there for gamers to play, or to get young, creative developers to think about new ways of designing games?

Satchell: I do think it's around the developers, the students applying their talents to something creative and learning from that process, but I think where you get the real value is when these games get out and people start playing something and they're sort of taking on this message. What's great about it is that it's not browbeating you, like, "Everything's bad, you must do this." Some of these games are quite subtle in how they introduce you to this concept. You find yourself thinking along the lines of, "Oh man, I really want this to have this happen in my game. I want to open up a housing project, but I don't want to put another power station in. How can I get more power into my city without doing that?" It's really fun when you realize you're thinking that way and starting to think differently about it, rather than just, "Build factories! Build power plants! More power! Get it in!" So that's kind of fun.

Now here's what I think is key. You've probably followed the discussions from the GDC keynote about XNA and the distribution of games on Xbox Live. We're in the beta at the moment. It's been going a couple of weeks, going extremely well. It's a fairly small beta, but already we've had 46 games either published through the catalog, or in the catalog being reviewed right now. At the end of the year when it launches fully, all of these games that are built in XNA are now going to have a distribution platform to reach these 12 million-plus gamers on Xbox Live. I think that the real big value is going to come when everyone else in our community can play these games on their console and really enjoy them. I'm sure they'll be distributed on Windows as well, and I think you're going to see both sides of it.

But you put that together, and that's kind of the magic you've got there: creativity on developer platforms and on distribution platforms. You can reach out to the world with that creativity. And when you get people starting to play this, and people make the choice to play socially responsible games, hey, I think that's when we start to win, and we start really educating people on some issues.

1UP: The Imagine Cup website talked about the winners potentially appearing on Xbox Live Arcade or the MSN Games website. What kinds of qualifications will be on these games before they go to either service, or will it go through the peer review process via XNA Creators Club?

Satchell: We can still review the games and talk to the developers about if it's appropriate for them to work with our production staff to bring it to Xbox Live Arcade, just like we did with the games from the community, like The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. And then there's a lot of extra work if you want to bring it up to the Xbox Live Arcade standard, so probably the winner will talk to them about that. But if you think about it, there are lots of great games here, so what's exciting is being able to take the other people and put them through the community review pipeline. We've got the opportunity to do both here and expose gamers to these cool games, rather than just the top game. We've got a great method and a great distribution platform to let them see lots of these games.

1UP: Do you think we'll start seeing established studios and developers get into these serious games, or is this something that's still really brewing in the independent community?

Satchell: That is a great question. I just don't know. I think it can be hard to do innovations on a social theme when you've got lots of salaries to pay, stockholders to pay, etc. It's a little harder for the professional studios, so I do think it will start in the community like we're seeing now, and academia and independent studios. But you know what's going to happen -- there's going to be a breakthrough game, and people will find that gamers are really interested in good games that talk about the social issues, and I think if that's the case, professional developers will pick it up. But I do think it will start from the community, and that's really where the groundswell will come from.