Sandbox? Really?

DFTGames · March 2013

Well, I just found out about the Sandbox system, so basically if one has not a paid marketing campaign has little or no chances to get out of that. Sorry guys, but if this approach is confirmed we are out of this platform, keeping it just to offer porting service to people that want that.

Very sorry guys... bad move... unannounced and very bad surprise.

Dreamwriter · March 2013

You'd need marketing for people to get your game anyways - I mean think, the system launched with over 100 games, and having tried a bunch of them, some of them are pretty bad cell-phone ports. And this is just launch, imagine how the system will be in a year, with potentially thousands of bad games on there. Even without the sandbox system you'd need marketing to get people to see your game, this way at least the end-users have a place they can go to for games that are probably somewhat decent. It's definitely a great thing for end-users, and will make the OUYA more successful than if it wasn't there, which is good for us developers - more potential customers is a good thing.

bishop · March 2013

How is this a great thing for end-users? There is literally no way for me to find the kind of games that interest me. There is no way to filter out game genres I don't care about. Even the Play Store is better.

DFTGames · March 2013

With this in place your marketing cost needs to be twice as big... worthless, really.

Dreamwriter · March 2013

bishop said:

How is this a great thing for end-users? There is literally no way for me to find the kind of games that interest me. There is no way to filter out game genres I don't care about. Even the Play Store is better.

What are you talking about? The non-sandbox area (the place I was saying was making this a great thing for end users) makes it really easy to filter by genre.

DFTGames said:

With this in place your marketing cost needs to be twice as big... worthless, really.

How does this mean your marketing costs need to be twice as big? I don't understand.

bishop · March 2013

Dreamwriter said:

bishop said:

How is this a great thing for end-users? There is literally no way for me to find the kind of games that interest me. There is no way to filter out game genres I don't care about. Even the Play Store is better.

What are you talking about? The non-sandbox area makes it really easy to filter by genre.

But the sandbox is where the majority of games is.

Evgiz · March 2013

The sandbox is a good idea imo, but it should have a better search function/genre system in order to find good sandbox games and help them get out of there!

SpoonThumb · March 2013

I think (hope) this is just a temporary solution. If discovery tools get better and allow users to be matched / find the games they're really interested in, then it will work out for the better.

Also, you can't expect the store to do all your marketing for you. The balance is hard to get, as clearly demonstrated on the App Store/Google Play, where it is hugely in favour of those with the bigger budgets. But there has to be some basic, coarse filtering to get rid of the real garbage and no-hopers. Everyone can at least get a few fans and friends/family to give it the +1 and download/play time, so if OUYA make the barrier at that low level, then it should work in everyone's favour.

I do agree that including a hidden and unannounced barrier is not terribly developer friendly

salromano · March 2013

Perhaps Ouya can add genre filtering within the Sandbox category? Like Sandbox -> RPGs, for example, to see all the RPGs within the Sandbox.

Ayrik · March 2013

I think that's the first step

JonAbrams · March 2013

To be honest we didn't expect so many games so soon!

We'll come up with something to make finding games in the sandbox better. The current paging system is admittedly a stopgap solution to prevent the sandbox from crashing the store.

Feedback from threads like this is great. Thanks!

RobJ · March 2013

Cool to hear you guys are actively addressing this! Curious to see what you come up with. Keep us posted!

DFTGames · March 2013

JonAbrams said:

To be honest we didn't expect so many games so soon!

We'll come up with something to make finding games in the sandbox better. The current paging system is admittedly a stopgap solution to prevent the sandbox from crashing the store.

Feedback from threads like this is great. Thanks!

Hey Jon,

sorry for the following... but I'm bad at politics and PR... as any old school coder, I'm blunt and I do speak my mind.

No matter how you change it, the sandbox itself is plain wrong. Players will tend to avoid a bucket of shovelware and will point at the "official" games. BTW, it's always been very hard to get stars/reviews/thumbs-up from users, so whatever you'll come up with to dig games out of the SB (SB = ShitBucket, not SandBox!) will be subjective and basically unfair.

It's already difficult (costly!) to get conversions with a normal store without any ghetto (SB, mind the meaning!)... introducing a SB will double the cost, so honestly publishing on Ouya it'll be worthless until the SB approach stands, no matter how much work you'll put on it: a ghetto stays a ghetto even if you try to make a beautiful one: you should learn from Microsoft's Xbox Indie Channel, not repeating that error.

I'm porting a game as per my client request, but I guess he's just wasting his money.

P.S.: those that have put $700 in this project with promises of highlights and all will be real pissed at ye.

Oriku · March 2013

DFTGames said:

P.S.: those that have put $700 in this project with promises of highlights and all will be real pissed at ye.

That would be quite a few on here. =/ Not very happy with the essentially no response from Ouya on the promotion that was promised when I purchased the kick-starter dev kit and at the same time rigging a competition. I have money to spend on marketing, but now I am forced to spend multiple times what I paid for speculatively in the kick-starter to compensate for that post-fact and in indirect only means as there is no way to directly advertise on the Ouya device itself.

Floppy · March 2013

I honestly don't know how to improve this sandbox concept ,

but i'm still convinced a "mini sandbox" for each game category could be helpfull

if the current sandbox idea is maintained, ( i really hope not ) on each category ( "genres,retro,"hear" etc..) you'd have a bunch of 3,4 smaller game icons coming from the sandbox

SpoonThumb · March 2013

You're unlikely to get out of the sandbox just yet as I think right now, there just aren't many people with OUYA's, since they have only just started shipping them. The only ones that have one are game devs and maybe a few lucky ppl who got theirs in the post already.

Having said that, seems a few games have made it out already. I suspect the threshold for getting out is actually pretty low right now

kiwicoco · March 2013

Maybe instead of the sandbox area, we could show a couple of sandboxed games among the results in each genre, and just let the algorithm give the non-sandboxed games more exposure.

Like the sponsored results in Google are interspersed with the real results, only here instead of sponsored entries, we'd be showing undiscovered titles.

That way those games would get an equal shot of proving themselves, without requiring a player that actively decided to take the risk of playing sand boxed games.

They'd be right up there among the proven hits, but just show up less often than those.

Oriku · March 2013

Assuming the system is automated, I propose a collective test. Somebody uploads a test game, and we all +1 it together to see how many +1s it takes to get out of the sandbox. Anybody have something they don't mind putting up there? Perhaps the JamesC test?

SpoonThumb · March 2013

kiwicoco said:

Maybe instead of the sandbox area, we could show a couple of sandboxed games among the results in each genre, and just let the algorithm give the non-sandboxed games more exposure.

That's a really cool idea. I wonder whether it'd be worth putting a banner over those games to identify them as temporarily from the sandbox. Something like "Wildcard" or "Try This!". That'd help avoid game devs seeing their game has made it out of sandbox, only to find it was just temporary for a couple of days and now they are back down there again. Equally it might defeat the point as people think "oh, that's just a temporary game from the sandbox" and skim over it

Floppy · March 2013

Floppy said:

if the current sandbox idea is maintained, ( i really hope not ) on each category ( "genres,retro,"hear" etc..) you'd have a bunch of 3,4 smaller game icons coming from the sandbox

kiwicoco said:

Maybe instead of the sandbox area, we could show a couple of sandboxed games among the results in each genre, and just let the algorithm give the non-sandboxed games more exposure.

uuh , yes ? that's what i've said , glad you like this idea too ^^

Magnesus · March 2013

I think the whole idea of sandbox is horrible. Reak about the XBox which had similar thing for indie games and it was abysmal for developers.

Oriku · March 2013

SpoonThumb said:

kiwicoco said:

Maybe instead of the sandbox area, we could show a couple of sandboxed games among the results in each genre, and just let the algorithm give the non-sandboxed games more exposure.

That's a really cool idea. I wonder whether it'd be worth putting a banner over those games to identify them as temporarily from the sandbox. Something like "Wildcard" or "Try This!". That'd help avoid game devs seeing their game has made it out of sandbox, only to find it was just temporary for a couple of days and now they are back down there again. Equally it might defeat the point as people think "oh, that's just a temporary game from the sandbox" and skim over it

While that idea would work now, it doesn't scale and won't work for very long. Eventually instead of currently a 1/100 chance of being noticed, it would be 1/10000 or 1/100000. The odds of finding any content dramatically diminish as the pool of software gets bigger.

Oriku · March 2013

Youtube is probably the best corollary as it has immense tons of content. How do people find content on youtube? By following people/companies and seeing what they like/upload. Also by searching for this or that. By their automatic if you liked A you may like B (which is probably a SVD solver over a sparse matrix). I'd be happy to help with the automatic solver if need be (by contract). The proper algorithms are pretty complex, but also probably some of the most valuable. By integrating into your social networks to see what you friends are watching. Last but not least by checking out what is globally popular broken down by broad categories (the least effective method for me personally).

kiwicoco · March 2013

Floppy said:

Floppy said:

if the current sandbox idea is maintained, ( i really hope not ) on each category ( "genres,retro,"hear" etc..) you'd have a bunch of 3,4 smaller game icons coming from the sandbox

kiwicoco said:

Maybe instead of the sandbox area, we could show a couple of sandboxed games among the results in each genre, and just let the algorithm give the non-sandboxed games more exposure.

uuh , yes ? that's what i've said , glad you like this idea too ^^

Oh got it! Totally didn't get your wording the first time around.

I wouldn't make them smaller though, probably wouldn't even differentiate them from the rest.

See, I don't think this should be a binary deal, I think every game should get something like 100 or 1000 initial impressions by being mixed in the main results. If the game gets downloaded and played enough, then its score goes up and gets shown more. Otherwise it'll fade out to be found via search or lists only.

In other words, I don't believe there should be a sandbox ARENA, but I like the idea of the O-Rank (was that the name they used? can't remember) and giving every game a fair chance to move up the ranks initially, then letting it prove it's own worth.

That's also much more useful in the long term, because what happens after the bell curve for a game has died down and it's been lingering for years with minimal usage? I don't think it should stay prominent but sending it to a sandbox might be confusing if it was out of it at some point in the past. So just give it a rank and let it show in the later pages of its genre, as well as searches and lists.

arcticdog · April 2013

DFTGames said:
P.S.: those that have put $700 in this project with promises of highlights and all will be real pissed at ye.

Yeah. I've been a little curious about that as well. I can guarantee anyone who's spent that amount of money (myself included) didn't expect this hurdle to be in place.

One could argue that relying on app store promotion isn't enough. But it would have been nice to know that this promotion isn't even in play until you've been "discovered" by enough people in the sandbox.

I can understand how this is a bit of a Catch-22 for OUYA (If a dev kit developer creates a crappy title, it should be held to some form of scrutiny.)

Not sure what a good compromise is here that also keeps the integrity they're trying to achieve. Maybe these games are allowed into the categorization right away anyway. Even with categorization, there's no guarantee of discovery after they get a significant amount of volume outside of the sandbox.

arcticdog · April 2013

Oriku said:

SpoonThumb said:

kiwicoco said:

Maybe instead of the sandbox area, we could show a couple of sandboxed games among the results in each genre, and just let the algorithm give the non-sandboxed games more exposure.

That's a really cool idea. I wonder whether it'd be worth putting a banner over those games to identify them as temporarily from the sandbox. Something like "Wildcard" or "Try This!". That'd help avoid game devs seeing their game has made it out of sandbox, only to find it was just temporary for a couple of days and now they are back down there again. Equally it might defeat the point as people think "oh, that's just a temporary game from the sandbox" and skim over it

While that idea would work now, it doesn't scale and won't work for very long. Eventually instead of currently a 1/100 chance of being noticed, it would be 1/10000 or 1/100000. The odds of finding any content dramatically diminish as the pool of software gets bigger.

Depends where it gets done. If it's done on the "Play" screen, a row of a few undiscovered games could be displayed there (as long as it was very clear that those aren't games that have been downloaded). Those games could be based on the genre tags the user has actually downloaded games for, and weight those genres more if they are liked or played more often.

Is there a danger of players ignoring them? Sure. But there's also a chance they won't.

Another idea might be an incentive program of some sort. Maybe OUYA would be willing to credit users a certain amount of account credit to try games that haven't been discovered, and apply some sort of ranking to them (though that would probably require a thumbs down button in addition to the thumbs up to accurately capture that rank).

Some rules would have to be applied here to discourage abuse:

- Require the user to spend a certain amount of time in the game.. which can't really be counted against their engagement timing totals). The only issue here is it forces a gamer to sit through a bad game when they know immediately it's not something they like. But perhaps that's the price to pay to get a game credit. More importantly, if you're forced to sit through a bad game to get your credit, you're more than likely to give an honest "thumbs down"

- Limit the number of games they could play for credit in a day/week/month.

- Only users who've actively participated in purchasing games can qualify for the incentive. This allows better insight into the kinds of games the player typically plays and enjoys so they're not presented with games they're likely to dismiss simply due to the genre.

OR

Maybe a revenue sharing program. Let popular developers promote others developer's games (but let the developer choose who they allow to ride on their coat tails) and get a kickback from the fledgling developer until they get popular enough to be kicked out of the nest.

@OrangePascal wrote a really good article about how developers gain success by building a brand (buying your game might garner a fan base for your games in general). This would sort of play on this idea. I don't remember if the store currently allows you to look at other games made by a developer, but I think it's something that really should be put in there if it's not.

Evgiz · April 2013

@kiwicoco

Perhaps one of the rows in each genre could be the sandbox?

Like so:

Adventure games

Popular [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]

Sandbox [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]

HolySmokesBatty · April 2013

What about the idea of reversing the order.

Categorize games from the start, and maintain a level of surfacability, based on player response. If you get excessively bad reviews, then you get dumped into the sandbox, where your game sits until you update, after which it could be placed at a resonable position, with an "Updated" banner or something, to say "Hey, this game just hopefully got better".

Evgiz · April 2013

Wouldnt that make the store constantly flooded by shovelware?

Oriku · April 2013

kiwicoco said:

I wouldn't make them smaller though, probably wouldn't even differentiate them from the rest.

See, I don't think this should be a binary deal, I think every game should get something like 100 or 1000 initial impressions by being mixed in the main results. If the game gets downloaded and played enough, then its score goes up and gets shown more. Otherwise it'll fade out to be found via search or lists only.

In other words, I don't believe there should be a sandbox ARENA, but I like the idea of the O-Rank (was that the name they used? can't remember) and giving every game a fair chance to move up the ranks initially, then letting it prove it's own worth.

That's also much more useful in the long term, because what happens after the bell curve for a game has died down and it's been lingering for years with minimal usage? I don't think it should stay prominent but sending it to a sandbox might be confusing if it was out of it at some point in the past. So just give it a rank and let it show in the later pages of its genre, as well as searches and lists.

While that would be great for mass appeal games, the problem with that is that it ignores any sub-culture which is less than a certain probability. For example, if your game is really only interesting to 1 out of 500 people then you have maybe a 50% chance of getting out of the sandbox (or less). I don't think that would scale as well as it sounds.

Oriku · April 2013

The big problem with relying on curation is that its non-consumer focused and based on what a small group of people think is good, and not necessarily what YOU, the consumer, think is good. So while curation sounds great in concept, in reality its probably one of the worst ways to do things.

If ouya wants success in its store, then they need to focus directly around an individual consumer own specific taste. Dictating taste through curation will have limits to success and complete customer appeal.

You can think about it like this. Curator A has some hidden variables which determine his overall taste. Consumer B has 75% similar taste to Curator A and so has a certain probability per game pick of liking that particular game. Consumer C has only a 15% taste match with Curator A and will like fewer games picked by Curator A.

Even if you had a dozen wildly different Curators, each creating their favorite picks from the sandbox, the hidden variables are so complex and diverse that you would not hit 100% of the market, not even close.

Ok, so with this frame of reference of how a curator is good or bad. Lets consider anything which involves promoting things from the sandbox to genres effectively a curator. This Curator is the population at large via likes and has an average optimal taste match, it however, like an individual hand-picked curator by Ouya, fails to grasp large portions of the market. I haven't done the math, but I suspect it may be 50%+. This means that if your game doesn't match the average optimal taste, then your game is ignored.

What does that mean to game creators? If your game doesn't match the games already in the store in style and taste, don't bother publishing on Ouya, cause you will be ignored.

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