(Note that ratings are from XboxIndies.com, which aggregates the ratings from Xbox.com’s different regions.)

There ya go – higher ratings = lower sales!  For every 0.2 stars your game gets, expect to lose 1000 sales!  At around a rating of 3.8, Microsoft will probably start taking money from you and giving it to your customers.  Yay math!  Seriously though, in terms of sales, ratings have little influence.  Below I’ll talk about the individual products (in order of their release) and what impacted their sales (at least according to the info I got from talking to customers)

Barf and Beer (2.79): It was the first drinking game on Xbox, and pretty crass.  The mediocre rating didn’t matter of course.  It was both loved and hated,  and spent several weeks at the #1 downloaded spot. Back in the day (2009) you didn’t get rich for that, but because it cost $2.50 (400 MSP) at the time (the lowest price point available), B&B has brought in the most money of any product I’ve released.  Frankly though, I don’t think it would pass in today’s caustic peer review environment, (one person actually failed it for being too gross, but you can get away with just a single failure).

Avatar Boogie (2.41): Highest quantity of sales and the lowest rating.  It was one of the first avatar products; for months, Microsoft had somehow managed to avoid releasing any decent avatar games after avatars came out, so people were starving for avatar-related content. Avatar Boogie didn’t allow players to use their own avatars though, which contributed to the low ratings (sadly, the feature was banned in review on a technicality).

In Avatar Boogie 2 (3.45), I worked around the no-player-avatar limitation and added a ton of music and dances.  People rated it way higher than the first version (and the highest of any of my products), but it didn’t mean they bought it. Was that because Avatar Boogie-ing wasn’t novel anymore?  Because there were more avatar products out?  Box art didn’t draw people in?  Probably a mixture.

Console Info (2.82):  It sold okay for what it was.  Its main selling point is that it measures the speed it can access your hard disk or USB stick, which makes it a very niche app.

Avatar Planking (2.81) created a firestorm of anger and indignation on the internet, especially among the type of people who just sit around and find things to become outraged at.  But that, and probably the ridiculous boxart and screenshots compelled a ton of people to download it, and I think the people who played appreciated the humor, even as they shook their heads.  It is on-track to pass Avatar Boogie and become my #1 game in terms of overall sales.

So basically, ratings don’t matter unless they’re really, really high.  An average rating doesn’t mean your stuff can’t be awesome.  The Wayans Brothers have already proven this in the movie industry.  I also recommend reading this awesome article written by DigitalDNA games, one of the more successful devs on the service.  It breaks down reasons why games succeed or don’t, and my findings are consistent with it.

Now here are the actual numbers for you to enjoy/revile.  May your ratings be either super-high or super-irrelevant!

Well that was easy! Face Slapper passed review and ended up on the marketplace in a week. No ridiculous arguments with Xbox Live Indie Game (XBLIG) peer reviewers about how your game doesn’t conform to some stereotypical genre that “the community” approves of. Prison rape is to Xbox Indie Game peer review as a gentle massage is to Windows Phone review. Of course the downside is it might not make any money because it’s on Windows Phone. Hope springs eternal though. [Cringes at terrible expression].

Update: The spring has run dry.

Check out Face Slapper

For those of you who were expecting a bitchfest, don’t go yet! I had to cut background music for the initial version due to a deadline I needed to meet, which saddens me deeply. If Microsoft had done their job certifying that audio capabilities of all phones were to spec as they promised consumers and developers they would be, then I wouldn’t have needed to rewrite my audio code (which worked perfectly fine on Xbox and Windows). But that’s for another blog post.  Fortunately, I’m about to submit an update that adds music as well as some gameplay enhancements, and makes Face Slapper all it was meant to be.

[Update: Game now has music and high scores, and is all it was meant to be!]

When I found a news article about some “planking craze” that was sweeping Australia, I thought maybe it was another street drug, gang initiation routine, extreme sport, or self-mutilation phenomenon that websites latch onto in order to scare out-of-touch parents: “Is your child planking?   How to detect early warning signs before it’s too late.” and “Little Timmy was like every other kid, until one day his parents found him face down in the yard.”

But no!  Planking was a harmless, easy activity.  It was the anti-extreme sports, the anti-lawbreaking hobby.  And the irony made it flippant and ever-so-slightly edgy in spite of itself.  I thought, by the same token, wouldn’t it be ironic if an Xbox Avatar, whose purpose in life is to do standard video-gamey things like running, jumping, and shooting… instead has to lay on stuff!  Match made in heaven.  Of course since planking is inherently (and awesomely) ridiculous, I had to up the ante and find the most ridiculous places one could possibly plank, as well as add interactive elements like squirming, making faces, and grunting.  The goal: make people laugh.

Now the way to check if something is edgy or lame is if it offends people.  Some Xbox Indie Game peer reviewers “got it” and thought it was hilarious, others said it was garbage and that they’d fail it no matter what the review rules said.   I will save the peer-review details for those who care, but suffice to say after two arduous months, multiple reviews, and angry statements on the review forums, Avatar Planking passed review. Most reviewers who liked it passed it incognito to avoid retribution (i.e. bogus review fails) from the haters. That rarely happens, usually people want credit for their reviews. To you unsung heroes, I salute and thank you! Someday these people will “come out,” and I will throw them a party.

In the end though, I accomplished my goal of respecting the ideals of planking and making people laugh.  Like a Wayans Brothers movie – not everyone laughs, but it’s made for the people who do laugh.