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[SolarLune]

^ The site J-Snake linked showed that it's against the upload rules to upload malicious games (obviously) and that the game will be reviewed before being up for sale or download. I don't know what you mean by 'malicious games' - where would they come from?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

good to hear, but who will do the reviews? what if there are too many games uploaded each day for ouya to review?

[deathtotheweird]

ya obviously some malicious programs will slip through the cracks, probably inevitable.

you can just upload a legit game, have it approved, etc. then upload an updated version which is in turn malicious.

though I imagine the risk for doing that outweighs any benefits, and many people would report your app and it would get taken down rather fast.

anyways I would bet most people are just going to use the Ouya for emulation. I know I would.

[SolarLune]

good to hear, but who will do the reviews? what if there are too many games uploaded each day for ouya to review?

The page said "we will review the submission (as quickly as we can!)", so I would imagine the Ouya devs themselves would check games out before uploading them. If there are too many games uploaded per day, then (worst come to worst) I'd imagine it would just be like Steam now - games wouldn't really be accepted, or would take several 'tries' to get through.

@allen - That does sound possible, but what keeps someone from doing the same thing through Steam or XBLA? Maybe something that keeps user-created games from using certain commands that could allow them to alter non-game data (writing data over the Ouya's 'non-save-game' area of the hard drive)? Steam seems like it would be really open to this since it's operating directly on the computer, as opposed to XBLA or a similar service, which forces developers to adhere to the functions of the platform.

[ham and brie]

Maybe something that keeps user-created games from using certain commands that could allow them to alter non-game data (writing data over the Ouya's 'non-save-game' area of the hard drive)?

This is part of the design of Android. System files can't normally be accessed. An app can save its data to an area only it can access. There's also shared storage space, but apps that access it are flagged as having requested permission to do so, and sensitive data shouldn't be put there.

[feminazi]

all those ad gams on smartphones r malicious 

[Garthy]

This is part of the design of Android. System files can't normally be accessed. An app can save its data to an area only it can access. There's also shared storage space, but apps that access it are flagged as having requested permission to do so, and sensitive data shouldn't be put there.

To add to this- on Android each app gets its own user account which, while IMHO perverse, is a half-decent way to compartmentalise apps. The app can request additional permissions, controlled by Android, and it's *essentially* a free-for-all on shared storage once you've got that privilege. It is hard for apps to damage other apps or the system, unless the system/app in question is deliberately making it easy for the malicious app (by, say, storing critical data in shared storage).

One big weakness is that the model encourages pushing large parts of granting security rights onto the user in all-or-nothing decisions, whilst removing their ability to selectively control it. For example, you pick an app, and it wants the ability to read "phone state and identity". You can't say "bugger off, you're a game, you don't need that, and I don't want to know why you want it". It's all or nothing. Attempts to give finer control to the user can draw some negative attention from the Big G, for various reasons, meaning it's hard to fix this one in a meaningful way. But that's another topic. :}

Like any system, exploits can be found, of course. If the Ouya uses Android as a base, it'll probably be just as good- and bad- as most Android devices. Unless of course the Ouya devs put something dodgy in their own API and stuff it up in some way.

[pinaster]

Personally, I don't mind if I have to wade through a thousand Angry Zombie Jewel-ville clones to find my copy of soon-to-be-played-to-death embryonic Indie Mc-Cool Shoestring-Budget, which also comes with the warm fuzzy feeling of helping another little guy realise their personal dream. I don't mind, because it may not even *be* in the box with "pay (tens or hundreds of) thousands of dollars to join the party" printed on the side.

It's very nice that you would, but the fact is, people won't look for your game unless you are some kind of indie rockstar...
and anyway basic economics state that under perfect competition (which we can assume a casual-oriented appstore is), the price is bound to approach the running cost, which for games is pretty much 0 (all the costs are sustained to produce the first copy, additional copies are free).
So I was never really amazed that the AppStores went from goldmine to free-to-play, and I think that free to play itself will not be sustainable on the long term... the structure of an open market requires games to be effectively free.

Thinking that the good will of a few indie gamers can remove this trend is naive, because informed gamers cannot usually sustain all the development cost of a game as they are just too few and you are still forced to compete (both on price and production values) with other games for their casual gamers, just to pay for your expenses.

So yeah, I do think that the Ouya's business model is short sighted and damaging to the developers as they aim to sell hardware in exchange for free games which YOU will make without getting anything back.
Sure, there will be an handful Angry-Birds-like that will make 100x of the investment back, but the average indie will be at a loss...
and I don't know if they do this on purpose, or they are honestly believing that their console is a long-term opportunity for the devs, but their endorsing of jailbreaking definitely looks like encouraging people to think that Ouya "has free games", one way or another.
And that's a big red flag to me.

I completely agree and this is the best case scenario in which Ouya is a successful product.
Sincerely I don't understand their placement on the hardware market, but they are competing in a new and fast changing one so it could make sense but imho it's unlikely because the competition is there and will be war since day one.

[vexille]

The page said "we will review the submission (as quickly as we can!)", so I would imagine the Ouya devs themselves would check games out before uploading them. If there are too many games uploaded per day, then (worst come to worst) I'd imagine it would just be like Steam now - games wouldn't really be accepted, or would take several 'tries' to get through.

I'm not really sure how you got to that conclusion, but I disagree that that's the only way to go -- or that it would even happen. For instance, I submitted a game to Blackberry App World on january 29, as part of the Marmalade Blackberry App Program (long story short: make game for Playbook, get a Playbook and a license). Thing is, this Marmalade program isn't the only thing it's got on its hands, since they've put in motion a bunch os plans to spring some life into their store for the launching of Blackberry 10, so they ended up with a tremendous backlog of app submissions and, I'm assuming, not enough people to review them. That doesn't mean that they'll just deny entrance to most everyone who submitted -- why would they do it? -- it just means that they'll take a ton of time to get through it all. And they did, our game only got accepted last friday, almost two months since we submitted it.

The reason steam will deny your game submission is that they never claimed to be an entirely opened platform. They're submissions are heavily curated. The sole reason they came up with Greenlight was to open up a bit more. Gabe even said that even greenlight isn't ideally open enough, and that they're gonna have to think of something else, but I digress. My point is, Ouya's app reviewing process will be a lot more similar to that of Blackberry, in that they will simply judge if the content of your game is appropriate, that it follows any technical guidelines they provide and whatnot. So worst case scenario, you submit your game and have to wait a couple months to approval -- and personally, I doubt that would happen (they really don't need that extra dent on their credibility, and Julie Uhrman knows that).


Oh and to everybody who's talking about free to play, I won't get in the merit of whether it's sustainable or not since it's a big discussion in itself, but the thing is Ouya is just using the term "free to play" just dumbingly broadly. Maybe they're using that to capitalize on uninformed games who'll just think "free to play is the new thing, right? So that's cool", but it just causes confusion on anyone who knows anything about it. Bottom line is, what they mean by free to play is that your game needs to have at least SOMETHING playable for free -- and that includes demos, so it's nothing other wordly about it.


Also, this is my first post here, hey, how are you guys doing? 

[Christian Knudsen]

Anybody watch the SXSW interview? I was pretty much cringing throughout...

[SolarLune]

I'm not really sure how you got to that conclusion, but I disagree that that's the only way to go -- or that it would even happen.

You're right, that conclusion didn't really make any sense. It would make more sense for them to just wait until they can review the game before allowing it in. Also, I never said that's the only way to go. I thought that's the way app submission would go given what they said.

And hello and welcome.

@Christian Knudsen - I'm looking around on the net, but I can't find any video of it, so I'd just have to look at news articles.

EDIT: The little snippets I've seen sound pretty bad, indeed. Being vague never really helps anything, especially a brand new console that runs Android - she needed to establish the viability of the console, and what it could do besides play native Android games. I think she should have stated what the Ouya was about in general again, to kind of establish what is could be. Naturally, as an indie game console, it's not going to have AAA quality blockbuster games on it (or launch with a similar experience), but it could easily be a fun game.

She could and probably should have made the simple point that most of the great games that you actually remember and liked playing weren't on AAA consoles because of their power. Bastion, Castle Crashers, Limbo, Braid, Super Smash Brothers 1 (possibly cutting-edge at the time) - all of these weren't exactly pushing the boundaries of the console to run. Similar experiences should be more than possible on Ouya, and should be seen given the lower entry barrier than usual consoles.

[forwardresent]

@Christian Knudsen - I'm looking around on the net, but I can't find any video of it, so I'd just have to look at news articles.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/29909943

Here you go, I didn't last through all of it. I kind of face palmed and closed the window.

[vexille]

@Christian Knudsen - I'm looking around on the net, but I can't find any video of it, so I'd just have to look at news articles.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/29909943

Here you go, I didn't last through all of it. I kind of face palmed and closed the window.

Man, that woman gives off such a bad image to Ouya. She's so eager to sound cool and benevolent and "as much as a gamer as YOU", it's just embarassing. Have you seen her DICE keynote? She spent more than a third of the keynote talking about how much she loves the TV and has loved it since she was little and how she loves soap operas.

(In case someone wants to see that trainwreck:

)

I really have high hopes for the Ouya, I was a backer and all, but man, I hope that woman doesn't screw everything up.

[Christian Knudsen]

She's like those spambots that are able to string together words into sentences that seem to make sense at first glance, but as soon as you read more than one sentence, all logic is lost.

[Ouren]

[vexille]

That was an interesting discussion, but those guys are missing the point so many times. They start by implying that, since it uses cellphone hardware, it' supposed to play cellphone games, except that they're on a television -- which is not the point, it uses that hardware because it's cheap, is all.

After some nonsense about it not being able to have AAA titles, they came to the right conclusion that it's something more indie-based -- and then they mess up again saying "why would I want this if I can already have my share of indie games on xbox live or psn?" As if it were simple or cheap to have a game on that kind of platform.

It kinda saddens me that these "will the Ouya succeed" type things never touch on the real challenges it's gonna face. Like potential competition from Steam Box, if it ends up being as open as Gabe makes it look he wants it to be (they talked about this on the video, but so briefly that I don't think consider it such a big deal). And more worringly, Julie Uhrman having said that next year they will probably make another ouya with a better processor, and that "a $99 console means we're able to push yearly versions" or some such talk.

[VDZ]

Super Smash Brothers 1 (possibly cutting-edge at the time) - all of these weren't exactly pushing the boundaries of the console to run.

I'm pretty sure SSB64 was pushing the boundaries of the N64.

[SolarLune]

^Hah, I'm all over the map with my comments. A similar game at the graphical quality between Melee and Brawl in HD might be possible with the Ouya, though.

[bluecollarart]

There's a little project I've been working on with some friends, and I thought you guys might like it:

OUYA Radar - Episode #2
This week, we highlight some really cool entries from the OUYA CREATE Game Jam.


We're running a Kickstarter right now to help get us started. We're over halfway there, but we only have a few days left! I'd be really happy if you took a look at us: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ogs/ouya-gaming-source

More info:

We want to make a project to help give coverage to OUYA games that deserve it, but aren't getting noticed. This helps out gamers, but it helps out developers, too. OUYA Radar is our weekly video series, but check out our website, too: http://www.ouyagamingsource.com/

We also run community interviews with OUYA developers through Google hangout. We've done a few of them so far, including one with the Legend of Dungeon developers (

). Once we get started, these will be weekly, too.

What do you guys think? I'd love to hear some questions or suggestions. If any of you are working on an OUYA game, too, then tell me all about it!

[poe]

The girl in episode two sounds like she's patronizing me. I also hate how she's telling me things look fun. Let me decide on my own