[casual_games] A Response from Microsoft

[Christopher Natsuume]

I forwarded our conversation to an old friend of mine in the MSFT game
technology group, and he passed along this information, which is very
informative:

______________

(feel free to repost this to the list)
 
The ratings issue is something the casual game industry needs to engage on.
Anyone can see the writing is on the wall with respect to the potential for
governmental action, but I agree that the current ratings system and boards
have major economic and procedural issues for low-cost games. There has,
however, been a bit of misinformation in this thread about Microsoft's
position on Parental Controls, unrated games, and our role in the process.
 
Microsoft does not expect every game to be rated. We strongly encouraged
those games that are rated to expose this information in the Game Explorer,
but the default when enabling Parental Controls is in fact "Allow unrated
games". Obviously parents may set to "disallow unrated games" in which case
they can allow specific games on a case-by-case basis once they are
installed. Parental Controls enforcement itself is disabled by default, so
it is something that has be 'opted in'. We are not involved with the ratings
process itself, nor do we police them. That is between the publisher and the
ratings board. Microsoft just provides an OS-level way to enforce them if
desired by the user.
 
We do hope that most developers and publishers will digitally sign all their
executables & dlls. We leverage digital signatures in Windows Vista more
than we have before, and it does provide for some level of protection from
many common forms of malware. For a few specific things, signing is
mandatory (kernel-mode drivers on Windows Vista x64, digital signatures are
required for the Game Explorer to trust the rating information provided by a
game) but for most things it is not required, although the dialogs that
surface this information are more alarming for unsigned programs. Getting a
digital signature is not a huge burden and is not thousands of dollars per
game. It is a few hundred dollars per publisher per year to obtain a code
signing cert, and it can come from any of the trusted certificate
authorities. It is basically the same kind of cert you need to run a secure
SSL website.
 
The issues with User Account Control are a near universal problem in the
game industry, and even the broader software industry. The Windows Gaming
Developer Relations Groups have been trying to get game developers to pay
attention to Limited User Accounts on XP for 7+ years precisely because of
what was coming. Unfortunately when it comes to deployment issues, "least
best effort" is all too common a standard and until things start breaking
few people proactively took action. There are a few new things to do for
Windows Vista that help (notably embedded manifests with <trustInfo>
blocks), but if you have a game that worked fine under Limited User Accounts
on XP it shouldn't be having any major issues on Windows Vista.
 
It seems clear that few people on this thread have fired up a build of
Windows Vista and/or read the many DirectX SDK technical articles that cover
working better with the Windows platform. No doubt since so many of the
casual devs have stayed with DirectX 7 or 8 and are therefore 20+ releases
of the SDK behind, the visibility of these articles has unfortunately been
minimal for them.
 
The first step is to get informed. Get the DirectX SDK (December 2006)
release from http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/ and check out the technical
articles in the documentation. In particular, read the "Games for Windows
Technical Requirements". This is a great summary of what we feel are the
best practices for making games that run well on Windows Vista, as well as
Windows XP. None of these requirements should necessarily prevent supporting
older versions of Windows, although you are basically on your own
particularly for Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, and ME. There are also some GameFest
2006 presentations on these topics linked from the DirectX Developer Portal.
Note that the online MSDN Library version of the docs is currently still the
Oct06 version, which will hopefully be updated in the next few days.
 
Another good step is to get a copy of Windows Vista. If you have an MSDN
Subscription, RTM builds are available now. Older RCs are still floating
around here and there, although obviously RTM is the best. Try playing with
the Game Explorer. Try enabling and configuring Parental Controls (note
these are disabled if you join the machine to a domain). If you don't have
access to an MSDN Subscription or an RC build, then get a copy when it
releases in January.
 
In the long run, the game-centric features of Windows Vista which improve
the platform overall. One of the posters was complaining how they can't rely
on 3D to work for the "average" machine. Windows Vista goes a long way to
making "average 3D" both stable and usable (shader model 2.0 Direct3D 9 is a
pretty decent min bar). There are some new things to do with regards to
deployment you should be doing, especially to support Game Explorer, but
there are also alternatives to traditional installs as well (purely
side-by-side and per-user installs for one). We have tried hard over the
past year to make sure the latest DirectX SDK contains all the information
you need to make great games on Windows Vista, so that would be the best
place to start.
 
-Chuck Walbourn 
SDE, Game Technology Group 


-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Matthew Douglass
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 1:57 PM
To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Slow death for the current generation ofcasual
games?

The game itself decides during installation whether or not to add itself to
the Game Explorer -- it is completely opt-in.  (I should note one exception
-- there are a few legacy games that MS auto-detects and adds to the Game
Explorer -- but if you're in this category you probably already know it).

Also, as far as I know nothing stops you from adding yourself to the Start
Menu as well as to the Game Explorer (and in fact, that's what we're doing
currently).  

And a final note -- when Parental Controls is installed the default option
is to allow unrated games to be played.  So that at least helps a little.
The system is defined to allow ratings from multiple sources; maybe the IGDA
(or someone else) can start a rating system more oriented towards the casual
game space.

Matthew

-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Audry Taylor
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 12:46 PM
To: casual_games at igda.org
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Slow death for the current generation of casual
games?


>>Vista has a 'games' menu that is different from the typical program menu. 

>>The preferred (by MS) behavior for games is to install your program 

>>shortcuts there only and not install like a regular app.


Are restrictions being placed on how regular apps are installed?  Will Vista
attempt to classify incoming programs as "games" or will it accept whatever
category the program classifies itself as?

Another question this brings to mind is how will programs that provide
games, but aren't games themselves, be classified?  If a user downloads and
installs Steam, will it join the regular apps or the games?

I work for a company that is just getting its feet wet in the casual sector.

  Our target audience is under 18 and our budget is small.  If we have get
every game an ESRB rating, that could increase our costs tremendously.  That
would be frustrating, to say the least.

_________________________________________________________________
Dave vs. Carl: The Insignificant Championship Series.  Who will win? 
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwsp0070000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://dav
evscarl.spaces.live.com/?icid=T001MSN38C07001


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