In a new interview with Kotaku Australia, ID@Xbox Director Chris Charla provided some insight on the state of independent developers and independent games. Over the course of the interview, he talked about how the program started, the goal of the program, and how he sees independent games in the future. One of the bigger things that Chris Charla revealed in the interview is that the ID@Xbox program has paid more than “$US 1.2 billion ($1.7 billion) to independent developers this generation for games that have come through the ID program.”
ID@Xbox launched in 2014 and is a program where game creators can register and self-publish their games via Microsoft’s game platforms. The developers who register also have access to the official Xbox One development kits. Since its launch, it has grown a lot. Charla said “when we first started, it was… two or three people in a three metre by three-metre space. We were packed in and just getting things going. We knew exactly where we wanted to get to, which was to have devs have it as easy as possible to have their games shipped on Xbox One. We had an enormous amount of work to do at the beginning. [But] in the ensuing five, six years — I think we’ve done that.”
Part of the work is promoting the games. At E3, there is usually some time given for ID@Xbox to promote various games. “In 2013, we had Below on stage at E3 as an independent game before ID@Xbox was announced. Then, the next year, we had a bunch of games from independent developers together on stage… In the last few years, we haven’t had a bunch of independent games together on stage. Instead, we’ve had a bunch of amazing games just standing on their own. They have really grown in stature and importance to the point where it’s easy for them to take their full place in the briefing.”
One of the more interesting aspects of how ID@Xbox works as well as Xbox Game Pass is how everything factors in financially. Chris Charla made it clear that ID@Xbox was designed for independent developers which makes the amount of money that the program has given out makes sense. Charla says that “there’s great commercial opportunity. There’s great artist opportunity.”
Talking about the future of the independent scene in games, Charla sees independent games going in multiple different directions. “I think that… you have these sweet spots that will continue to see growth. So I think you’re going to continue seeing cool games from single auters, doing really, really interesting things. And then you’ll see cool games like Untitled Goose Game or Dead Static Drive on a four-person team level. We’ve also seen some independent studios who are now approaching the 30 person level and doing bigger games. They’re exploring more multiplayer games and areas that traditional games have done. That’s what’s so exciting about the independent games scene — it’s not just, ‘oh, now everyone’s making Goose Game‘, there’s a lot of things simultaneously, and it’s really, really exciting.”