>> Welcome back everyone to GDC live.
I'm James and we are here in beautiful San Francisco and
I have my bearded friend joining me.
>> Yeah, I am impressed.
>> Yes. It's been a slow transition
known as who I am, but it's okay.
>> Yeah.
>> And we're here, we're talking about Dream Build Play.
This game competition that
just finished. Correct, is that what happened?
>> That is correct.
>> So, what the heck is
Build Dream Play? And what's going on?
>> Yeah. So, Dream Build Play is
a contest of Microsoft that actually ran for
about five years in our old XNA days.
>> Okay. Yeah.
>> So, they wanted indie devs to build games for
Xbox 360 and Windows
phone and so they created this competition.
It ran for about five years and then we
stopped about four years ago.
Last year, we were talking about how do
we re-engage with the indie devs and show
them that we're here to support them
and trying to make them successful,
and what better way to actually bring back
a much beloved concept.
In fact, the last GDC we were here,
before we launched it,
no one knew we were relaunching
and we actually had people coming up to us and saying,
"Can you guys bring back Dream Build Play?"
It was such an awesome launching pad for my career.
I've heard from friends that,
"Can you bring that back?",
and we were like, "Yeah, oh my God".
>> Who doesn't love free promotion
of the game that they're working on?
>> Yeah, exactly.
So, that's what we did.
So, we launched last June,
and we let developers build
games in over six month period.
They could bring in games they
already started working on.
But we had till December 31st for them to submit games.
We had four categories.
We had a console, PC,
mixed reality, and as I said,
we really wanted to support
them and make them successful.
And so not only did we have
that cool competition with the four categories,
we kept it alive by doing two things.
One, we had some additional sub-contests
like a developer diary
contest where we actually challenge
you as an indie dev to write about your experience in
building games on the Microsoft
ecosystem, which was fantastic.
We had dozens of blog series right,
not individual posts, series.
The winner actually ended
up doing about eight or nine posts,
spanning a six month period from when he started with
concepting to now my game is in
the store and everything in between.
And some of them were really deeply technical and
it was fantastic to see them all coming out with that.
We had other contests sponsored by partners like
Izola, HyperX, and Unity.
And then the second thing we did was,
we grew Dream Build Play up to the community as well.
And so the website, you can see behind us.
Well, I know these are some of the finals we have.
But we also have
this community where any developer even now,
the contest is done,
but the community is still there.
You can go in there and create a profile,
and the profile is more than just your name,
picture, where you're from.
It actually lists out all different ways
people can connect with you.
All the technical skills you
have and what games you've worked on,
And we don't care what platform you've built on.
Just show us the games.
>> Got it. So, I'm a new game dev,
I use the right Xbox 360 games back in the day.
So, I can go on there, I can create my profile,
but I can't work on a new game for Android or for IOS.
Yeah. I'm using Monogame or maybe I'm using Unity,
and I can create my own little game dev profile.
>> Exactly. And then what's great about that
is let's say you were doing all that stuff.
We didn't have audio engineering, right?
That's not a skill, that's not in your forte.
You can go in that community, filter
by audio engineering is a skill.
See that I might have that,
check out the games I've worked on and say,
"I like the sound quality in those games."
I'm going to reach out to him by anyone of
those different social connections
that he's put out there.
And so that's what we did that for.
We're really trying to help the community
find each other and support each other as well.
And so Dream Build Play really took off.
We had almost 6000 developers signed up for the program.
Almost 2000 actually have
those public profiles and we had
hundreds of games on that contest. So, it was fantastic.
>> That's awesome. I think for me
as someone that does a lot of app dev,
I'll always so interesting in game dev.
When I start out a new game,
it's circles and squares
and terrible things because I'm like,
I'm not an artist, I'm not a graphic designer.
I need to go maybe find
some people and maybe are like, "Hey,
I totally can help out or if you win the challenge,
I get a bunch of cash to pay
some people which is really cool too.".
>> Exactly.
>> So, I'm looking at the website.
This is a dreambuildplay.com,
and only I am seeing the finalists.
So, these are categorized by, I see PC games.
>> Four categories. Yeah, and
so you'll see the number one won,
that's $100,000 cash prize was the cloud powered games.
You have Stellar Conquest, Clash of Camelot,
and Hadron Effect.
We had the finals for this live finals.
We actually streamed live through MxO,
and all of the finalists just dialed in through Skype.
We really wanted to show the spectrum of Microsoft and
how we fully embrace the cloud and all those things.
We could have had a live finals and
had everyone in the theater,
but we thought why not actually use the cloud properly?
>> Yeah, use it. Yeah.
>> So, we had our judges here in
San Francisco just before GDC.
They all got to go hands on with all these 12 games and
then I did this Skype Q and A with
each of the teams for where were they were,
Romania, the UK, Singapore, Italy,
Canada, and the US,
like it was a fully global thing.
I should say in the community, there's
over a hundred countries.
>> Wow.
>> Developers represented.
>> Make sense, developers,
that art and design in using game play,
designers are everywhere at the world.
>> So, this is the PC category,
that $50,000 for this,
The Forbidden Arts, Goscurry, and Imperatum.
And if you want just look at the other two categories
and I'll talk about the winners.
>> Yeah.
>> Mixed reality where
we challenge people to build for all ends,
all the Windows mixed reality platform.
>> Yeah, can you get to
talk about the two categories there?
Because it says mix reality, but there's obviously
VR in the whole aspect. So, what were the aspects?
>> It was all combined.
We said, hey, you need to build
a game in the mixed reality spectrum.
>> Okay.
>> And it's up to you how you want to do it.
These are all Windows mixed reality games.
There are all like full VR experiences,
rocket NX, Winelands and Prison Bhosle.
One of the things I love about
this particular category I get
really excited about this stuff. So, apologize.
>> It kicks me and I love it.
I don't know anything about it. It's all crazy as magic.
>> But I think about these all 12 games that we
ended up being in the finals are all different genres.
There is one FPS, there is one sports game.
And that's even true here in mixed reality,
were you think mixed reality is a bit
more constrained with what you can do with it?
No. You have a sports game,
you have a virtual reality experience
where you are in a prison trying to be
a crime lord and then you
have this thing where you swing from
tree to tree in this open world bottomless type universe.
And it's fantastic.
And then we have final category
console.This one we actually challenge
developers to use the new Xbox live to create
this program to actually build games for Xbox.
>> So, right there,
while you can just break down, what is
the Xbox Live Creators Program?
>> Xbox Live Creators Program is
a free program for any indie game dev to be
able to publish our game on Windows 10 or X Box
One and implement Xbox Live services.
It gives you like 80 percent of
the Xbox Live stack for free, no NDA required,
no additional cost as long
you've got a dev center account,
you can basically tick the box and it's as
simple as ticking a box once you've implemented that.
The absolute minimum you need if you want to go on
the console is Xbox Live game attack,
because you want to be out to see.
>> Yeah.
>> Who's playing the game.
>> Makes sense.
>> As long as you've got that in the dev center,
you got your game as a checkbox. I want an Xbox as well.
>> Nice. That's awesome.
>> How easy is that?
>> I love really, as a developer,
it's easy and just like
I need to go and do this little thing check,
and now I have a bunch of functionality.
>> Yeah, and when we had the finals
and then let's get onto that now.
When we had the finals, it was interesting to
see how many of these converted?
Some of these actually came from
other platforms and I was saying,
" It took me like three weeks to pull this to Xbox."
>> That's really cool.
>> Right.
>> Yeah.
>> So, that's pretty impressive.
>> Did you want to play this as a role play?
>> Yeah, lets get that going.
>> Let's go over here. I'm going to go full screen
on this puppy and go for it.
So, these are all the finalists.
>> That's correct this is all the finalists, yes,
some fantastic visuals but more importantly all of them
had a really impressive game play, really fun.
The ones where you know somebody I was like,
"Whoa, I don't know if I can handle it."
>> Yeah.
>> But touch the clouds stuff.
The PC category is my personal favorite.
We actually had such a hot contest in the PC category.
So, many great games in that.
That one they had that little sort of arcadey type
one goes scurry was probably my personal favorite.
I'm glad I wasn't a judge and had to decide.
But so, let's run through the winners
because I know that's what we want to do today.
>> Sure.
>> And so in the cloud category
>> Let's go one by one so these are the finalists, right?
>> Yeah, these are the finalists.
The game that won is a game that next to with the cloud.
We had an additional requirement that,
what do you do with Azure?
>> Yeah.
>> Right.
>> There's a lot of things we're talking a lot about
Azure: is it my connectivity,
is it my leader boards,
is it my you know what all am I doing,
am I doing physics rendering on the backend.
There's a lot of things you can do.
>> Exactly, exactly.
And so the winner is Stellar Conquest.
Those guys used Azure to procedurally generate galaxies.
>> Whoa, all right.
>> Right.
>> It's very cool.
>> And to manage all the multiplayer aspect of
it and they did some really clever things
where you think you're in this world with
potentially hundreds of thousands of other players,
but because of the way they can do stuff in Azure,
they didn't need to do a lot
of overhead to just be out of
hand what you were doing in the Stellar, you know.
>> And this is really nice when
you tap on one of the games,
you actually get to learn about
the team that was creating it.
>> That's right.
>> Run over them more, see.
>> We have screenshots shots, we have a trailer.
Every game had to have a turn trailer.
So, if you scroll past to these five screenshots,
the last one will be a video
as well showing off the game itself.
>> Here we go.
>> So, yeah, it's fantastic.
This is the space conquest game.
It was actually inspired by
an old VBS game in the early 90s.
I think it was and the guy's been wanting to
recreate that experience in
a whole new way. So, this is what he did.
>> Yeah, very cool.
>> It's been a one man guy.
It was it really humbling watching
him when we announced the winner.
You know $100,000 is
a pretty significant chunk of change.
>> It's a good chunk of change, yeah.
>> And he was literally in
tears overwhelmed with what that could mean for him.
He's been slaving away.
He actually even had a call that
three of his kids who apparently
were watching this stream live on an Xbox is like,
"Hey, guys. Guess what?"
>> Yeah.
>> So, that was fantastic, so.
>> It's pretty awesome also in the chat too.
It's kind of cool because as a game viewer you start
learning about the other services that we
provide like there's Cloud Saves,
there's Xbox Live Integration.
Those may not be some
of the things you think about integrating.
But sometimes like contests they kind of push you
forward to try some new things, actually finish the game.
>> That's right, yeah.
>> It's not that intuitive, so.
>> I know all of these games one of
the requirements was they actually had to get
into the store because we
really wanted to push that their office.
>> So, I can get this today.
>> All of these are available through the store.
>> Very cool.
>> Yeah.
>> All right, so let's go into the next category
here, the PC.
>> This is my favorite category and
these three games were just really fantastic.
You had Forbidden Arts which was.
Overwheel was a 3D will be you would run around in.
And then when you would dive into
a level it was a 2D platform.
That's why it is it is one of
the 2D levels you can see how 3D even that's.
>> Yeah, that's really good.
>> Goscurry is one of
those twitch games where you know that
the road sort of builds as
you are traveling and then you're going to
make that call which way you turn.
>> Yeah.
>> But that have
such a rocking soundtrack
on that as well, it's just fantastic.
>> Very cool.
>> And then finally the winner,
Imperatum, is basically a sci-fi Diablo.
>> Nice.
>> I should say it's an action RPG.
>> RPG.
>> But, you know, all of us know what,
an action RPG is via it being the Diablo.
So, these guys when they were asked why sci-fi.
They were like, there's so many of
these great action RPG games
played that are of
fantasy and there's very few that are sci-fi.
And so that's what they did here.
Did you see the video there at all?
>> Let's say that one is not actual problem.
>> Okay, so.
>> They may have taken the unpost contest so we'll.
>> Yeah.
>> We'll follow up with them on that.
But you know you can see that kind of thing.
It's a really interesting as of mix of magic
and sci-fi like and technology.
So, it was really cool. One of the things
that these guys was a really interesting back story
because the main developer used to
be a competitive multiplayer gamer.
>> Oh nice.
>> And then ended up with Crohn's disease and so,
he had quite a long recovery from that and then
wanted to give back to the gaming community.
And so, we decided to create this game but built into
the game of bonuses if you're taking a break, right?
>> Oh, nice.
>> So, you are going to get penalized.
It's like, "Hey, every hour,
if you take a five-minute break.
You get extra in-game bonuses."
>> Wow, very cool.
>> And power ups and things that you
don't otherwise get to
really encourage you to say you know what.
>> Time to take a break.
>> Jump up.
>> Yeah.
>> Walk around come back you know.
>> Love it.
>> That was really cool as well.
They threw that in there.
Mixed Reality, this is the one where
the judges were just so.
How do we decide between the two?
>> It's category I mean.
>> And they're also different too, you look at.
>> Yeah.
>> Online Battle Arena,
Action adventure and Simulation I mean.
>> Yeah.
>> I mean there's no overlap right.
>> No.
>> Except for that the roller makes reality.
>> Except the roller makes reality.
>> Yeah.
>> And they'll also immersive and so real feeling.
It was really interesting when the decision
finally came to us as controls.
And one of them had just had
this really intuitive control
now like we don't even know how
you doing that with it a mixed reality
controls to make it feel so much like hands.
But I want to pull out rock
record and X as well because it's
like a 3D breakout.
>> Oh, very well.
>> Where you know competitively playing and
trying to hit the ball against the wall which is
full of hexes and
just the challenge of being on to sort
of to trick show out some things.
And so, it was fully 3D on tablets.
>> That's very cool.
>> So, the winner was prison boss, those guys you know.
Here's one of the questions I had for the judges.
How many of you guys had to roll your own cigarettes?
You basically had to build up a case of contraband
and really control the jail and there was
multiple jails you could actually get into.
>> I love them,
I've given some of that.
The actual graphics and some of
the animation style there going on and getting out is
very interesting and then so you're in here
in VR essentially and your hands are there.
>> That's right.
>> Doing other work.
>> Windows makes reality controllers.
And as I said the worked are always different tricks.
If you swivelling the controller
in this particular way and
you hold on the button in this way,
your hand can actually close.
You can see those fingers like.
>> Yeah.
>> And all the joints were unanimous that it was
just such a natural feeling that
they didn't even realize they were
just using a controller that we were using.
I felt like I was using my hands.
>> That's very cool.
>> So, that was fantastic.
>> Yeah, I'm going to go try this as soon as I get home.
>> Yeah, let's go.
>> I was going to
last category before we get out of here.
>> The last category comes from so,
are these all done on the Xbox One?
>> That's right. Yeah, you configure on the Xbox one.
You can actually search through
the Xbox Live Creators Program.
It's called the Creative's Collection.
>> Nice.
>> And you'll find these guys there.
A couple of them of are ports from other platforms but
that didn't mean they were
excluded because it still works.
>> It wasn't a lot of work. Yeah, it's working.
>> Well, apparently, it wasn't a lot of work.
But we've got three such different things.
We've got a fighting game like
Mario Brothers Super Smash,
Kings Guard Tower defense game and then Train bandits.
It's one of those twitch games that,
you know like, you just stand on
a train and bandits are coming on.
>> Coming on non-stop.
>> In either direction.
You got to fight them off and it's just like
a slap game but with a little bit
of different ways of fighting off the different guys.
>> Very cool.
>> And that was really cool.
But the winner was Fighties.
>> Was Fighties?
>> Fighties, these guys were super interesting.
Two twins from Hawaii
build this game and it
was because of their love for Super
Smash Bros. And they wanted
to have their own sort of fighting game.
>> Yeah, looks like there's some tower fall.
>> Yeah and all.
>> Type of inspiration in here as well.
>> Yeah and they had a level
editor as well which I think was
the tipping point for the judges was that Noely was it.
Did they build this game that you could play
but UGC was featured heavily as well?
Log here, create own and so
the developers were talking about how they've
seen some really creative things.
Did you could say it's a classic fighting game?
>> Yeah.
>> Some characters are Malay,
some have missed out
and so that had to really unique weapons and
characteristics and abilities so
just a really fun game to play.
And then with that UGC just really took it over the edge.
>> And I love that you can go to dream.play.com,
learn all about the games,
go and download and play all the games right now.
>> That's right, and it's been
awesome. Thank you so much for coming out.
>> Yeah, of course.
>> And go through all the winners and
congratulations to all the developers,
not only just that one,
but everyone that entered.
>> Exactly.
>> I know how much hard work it is.
>> Yeah.
>> It really shows in paid off an awesome promotion.
>> Cool.
>> Cool. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah, and stay tuned for more and live from GDC.