00:11I'm Chris Charla, and I'm the director of Idea at Xbox.
00:14Idea at Xbox is Microsoft's self-publishing program for digital games on Xbox One.
00:19So we enable independent creators, independent developers to make their games on Xbox One and self-publish them.
00:26We have more than 250 developers who we've sent dev kits to, and today we're showing kind of like the
00:31first sampling of games that are going to be coming for Xbox One via Idea at Xbox.
00:38Well, Super Time Force, I guess you can call it a retro-inspired 2D running gun shooter, something like Contra
00:43or Metal Slug, if you're familiar with those things, but with a time-traveling twist.
00:48So at any point, you can sort of go backwards or forwards in time, and in doing that, see the
00:53future or alter the past.
00:55And when you do that, you're actually adding another iteration of yourself into the timeline.
01:00So as you play and rewind, you're going to be building up an army of yourselves to sort of, you
01:05know, tackle the overwhelming forces stacked against you.
01:19So Strikesuit Zero is a space game like we always wanted to make.
01:23We used to play games like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Wing Commander, Colony Wars.
01:27And what happens is that you can actually turn into the Strikesuit, you stop dead in space, you can go
01:31in any direction, backwards, forwards, left, right.
01:33More like a third-person game, but that means that you can do just incredible things.
01:38You can see a swarm of fighters, pound a little bit, pound them a little bit in normal flight mode
01:43and fighter mode, but then go in amongst them all, turn into the Strikesuit, basically click virtually every button on
01:49the Joypad, and you turn into this, like, death blossom, and just kill them all in one massive go, which
01:53is what everybody wanted to happen.
01:55What we're showing today is a four- to eight-player arena sports game that bizarrely combines, like, basketball and,
02:04like, Smash Brothers and Super Mario and all of these weird genres that we all loved growing up.
02:09And I think that was kind of the thing that came out of asking people for so many ideas.
02:12But, well, I'm sure a lot of people were looking at the Xbox One spec and, like, looking at the
02:16Kinect and looking at, like, what it can push as far as how many polygons or anything like that.
02:19But we saw it and we're like, eight players.
02:22Whoa, this thing could have eight players.
02:24I haven't played an eight-player game at home since the Saturn.
02:26Whatever we do, it's going to have eight controllers, and we're going to try to make it as fun as
02:29we can with that.
02:33So the game we developed is called Spectra.
02:35It's an eight-bit procedural racing game.
02:37So you play authentic eight-bit music, which is made only with Game Boys, by quite a well-known chip
02:42-shoon artist called Chipsil, who's worked on Super Hexagon before, if you've heard of that.
02:45And essentially, the game listens to that music and generates a race track based on it, and you have to
02:49try and race down it and not fall at the edge.
02:50It's interesting you said F-Zero, because the whole game was inspired by that kind of old-school NES and
02:54N64 and PlayStation F-Zero, kind of Quantum Redshift, which is an Xbox game.
02:59I don't think anybody remembers anymore, but I loved that game when I was 11.
03:06Lots of people make games with Kinect that do not require a controller, but we wanted to try something completely
03:10new.
03:10So we said, okay, we're going to make a game that requires a Kinect and a controller.
03:13Since it's an experimental concept, it's quite hard to explain.
03:16But basically, you have to imagine, like, a normal platform game in which, instead of one level, there's two levels,
03:23but the second level is behind the first level, right?
03:26So normally, you would only see the first level, but with this Kinect game, the silhouette of the player is
03:31like carving a hole in the first level, so you can see also the second level.
03:35And that's what the indie scene is about, trying new things, new state of place, new rules.
03:40In the program, we're really just trying to reduce friction as much as possible so that independent creators can ship
03:45awesome games on Xbox One,
03:47and that players have an opportunity to play a huge variety of diverse content on their Xbox.
03:52We're actually on a Microsoft Accelerator in the UK, and they hooked us up with the guys at the IdeaXbox
03:57team,
03:58and they'd seen our game before, which was predominantly a mobile game, and they're like, you guys should get this
04:01on a console,
04:02and we think we've got one you should be interested in.
04:03It was a really big win to be able to work with the hardware early on, see the revisions, and
04:09even, you know, be part of the process
04:11to see what kind of changes were needed in the development kits and things like that to help make the
04:15process more smooth.
04:16And then we started getting check-ins on phone of, you have everything you need. I've never had that experience
04:21before.
04:22Especially comparing it to the last time on 360 where they had the indie game program, but it was sort
04:26of very limited scope.
04:28This time it's kind of like all out, just you can have everything, go crazy and see what comes out.
04:32You know, nowadays, as a small developer, you can reach out to communities, you can do things, and you can,
04:38as long as you make a great game,
04:39and you talk about it a little bit, then hopefully people will come and, you know, really enjoy it.
04:45We started this program by going on a huge listening tour, talked to more than 50 different developers about what
04:51they wanted in an independent publishing program,
04:53and we haven't stopped listening. We're still out there all the time talking to developers, listening to developers, working on
04:59making sure we're making the right changes to the program,
05:01and just trying to make it so that we lower friction for them, so they can ship great games that
05:06players can experience on Xbox One.
05:09A lot of work has been really gratifying, but then to walk in here and, like, suddenly see all the
05:13games, it's just like,
05:14OK, this is real, like, wow, like, this program, like, we're shipping a lot of games, and this is just
05:19a fraction.
05:20I mean, I think gamers are going to be super excited to see what these independent creators deliver over the
05:25next year, year and a half.
05:26I mean, this is going to blow you out of the water.
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