Yesterday at the Game Developers Conference Microsoft announced the Xbox Live Community Games. The new Community Games brings games created via XNA to everyone’s Xbox 360s. Basically, Community Games let anyone make games for the Xbox 360 and post them for others to play. Yes, it is slightly more complicated than that, but essentially the are trying to make the “youtube of games.” Along with the announcement they released demos of 7 of the games. They have a lot more details on their site here as well as videos of how to get the new XNA based games.

I played through all 7 of the games yesterday and thought I’d post my impressions.

Little Gamers: I’m a fan of the comic so I was a little biased but this side scroller was fun. There are a lot of different weapons to choose from and there are some funny power ups. If you’re a fan of the Little Gamers comic be sure to check this one out.

ProximityHD: This is a math based strategy game. I liked it. It was simple and easy to play but with a lot of potential depth to the strategies you can employ.

Rocketball: This is a dodge ball game with power ups. I pretty much hated it. It was hard to figure out exactly how to control the guy to get him to do what I wanted. I’ll wait for a good dodge ball game on the 360 (Pirates vs Ninjas looks promising).

TriLinea: This one looks to be a fast paced fast paced puzzle/strategy game, but I could not find any directions on how to play so I gave up trying to figure it out after a few minutes. Unless I missed it they don’t even have a controller layout showing you what each button does.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai: This is a side scrolling platformer. It has a very unique, very bloody, graphical style. I had a lot of fun with it. There are some really fun combos and it looks like the full game will give you a lot of different weapons to try out. There few in the demo were a lot of fun.

JellyCar: This is basically a driving puzzle game. You have to get from the start to the finish by using the ability to make your car grow for a limited time to get past obstacles. It has a fun, crayon drawn, graphical style. Yet, after about 4 levels I was tired of it. Probably would be fun for kids.

Culture: This one was a little odd. You’re planting flowers on a planet while trying to get rid of weeds. It is a very simple game play concept that worked well, but it is not really my style of game.

They have a peer review proces so only decent games should make it to my Xbox 360, but I think they need more than that. To be the “youtube of games” they need the types of options youtube has. There needs to be a way for people who play these games to review them or leave a quick comment about the game. Even just a 1 to 5 scale would be fine. I would even be ok if that part was on xbox.com. If they are going to be the youtube of games we need info on how many people downloaded each one and what the overall rating of each game is – like youtube does with the 5 start system and listing the number of views. Otherwise it will be a pain to search through hundreds of games to find the good ones. That is what makes youtube great. Once you watch the video you can rate it and then on their front page they list the top rated and most viewed ones. These XNA games need that same type of thing. A section on xbox.com where we can see how many times each one was downloaded or played as well as the ratings and comments everyone is giving the games. Without this type of community based info the quest to play fun games would be a real pain.

The other thing that will make or break Xbox Live Community Games is the pricing. The prices will be set by the developer. They can make their games free or charge for them. Full details will be released on this aspect, but if they are going to charge for their games they had better be really good. Microsoft did confirm that it will be a revenue sharing model where developers who charge for their game will get paid based on the people paying to buy their game, but if your game is good enough for me to pay for it then try make it a full Xbox Live Arcade title with achievements and leaderboards.

Overall, I have high hopes for Xbox Live Community Games. Only time will tell how this works out, but hopefully prices will be free/low and there will be a good system for finding the games that are fun to play.