increasingly aware that developers from underrepresented backgrounds or with underrepresented voices were underrepresented on Xbox. Part of our promise to players is that we’re going to supply them, through the ID@ Xbox program and other programs, with the broadest array of games possible. If we weren’t getting games from underrepresented developers, we were failing in our promise to our players. So we started the developer acceleration program back then as a way to help them get their games onto Xbox. What we find is that really frequently, developers from
One of the things that we do is try and provide
information to developers so that they can see it early and be thinking about it during development. There’s a lot of things that if you think about it early in development, like ensuring that there’s a color blind mode, or ensuring that your video game is accessible - even if somebody doesn’t have access to audio, whether that’s because of, you know, a disability or just the equipment situation - can make it so that the player will understand what’s happening in the game and can continue to play. These are things that as long as you are thinking
about them early, they’re really not super difficult challenges to overcome, but you have to be thinking about them early. So we do everything from publishing white papers about how to best accommodate these things, to providing platform features for things like colorblind mode, to even providing developers the opportunity to have a game tested for accessibility. We partner with folks who can actually look at a build and kind of give an accessibility score so developers can know where they can do work. It’s something where there’s an enormous amount of passion internally at Microsoft, to make sure that when we say gaming is for everyone, that it’s truly for everyone, and making sure games are accessible is a crucial part of that.
You recently announced an acceleration program to support under represented developers. How does that program go beyond what ID@Xbox already provides? We just announced the program publicly, but it’s actually been running since 2019. We just became
22 | MCV/DEVELOP June 2023
underrepresented backgrounds are usually on their first or second game, and they may lack access to capital and also to some of the social networks that other developers have. So we work to address both those points. First by doing deals where we would help pay for the port to Xbox, so a developer bringing a game to Xbox can do it in a revenue neutral way. They can begin a business relationship with Xbox and with the Xbox player base with very low risk. Second, we’ve started a series of talks to help
underrepresented developers understand different aspects of Xbox, like maximizing your marketing on Xbox and other things. We have regular talks from folks at ID@ Xbox with the developers in the acceleration program. It’s not information that we don’t provide elsewhere. We do dev talks on a regular basis, but we want to make sure that folks have access to this and sometimes in smaller groups, people are less nervous to ask a question or that kind of thing. It’s about making this as comfortable as possible and just getting people that platform access. This year, we’ve also started helping developers in some
cases with funding prototypes, where a developer has a great idea for a game but is a little bit undercapitalised and needs to get to that first playable demo stage so that they can help the world understand their game when they’re out pitching to publishers, or Kickstarter or whatever else. It’s been a really successful program. We
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
