Sarah Bond Doubles Down on Xbox Indie Support: ‘True Culture Is Born in What You Do When Things Are Really, Really Hard’

Sarah Bond Doubles Down on Xbox Indie Support: ‘True Culture Is Born in What You Do When Things Are Really, Really Hard’

ByNews Polite

Last summer, I tweeted an observation that surprised me from the Xbox & Bethesda Game Showcase and a handful of follow-up Xbox events: a slate of diverse games, many made by diverse creators, presented and marketed on a stream to millions of viewers by diverse presenters, all under the slogan of “Gaming for Everyone.” I realized it felt different from the Xbox I remembered from my childhood. Different in a very good way.

My tweet got picked up at the time by GamesIndustry.biz and inspired an interesting history lesson on the shifting of Xbox’s messaging over the years. You can read their writeup for the full rundown, but in summary: Xbox’s brand identity used to be quite literally “edgy.” It was focused on “hardcore” gamers, its marketing was almost exclusively masculine, and, frankly, the whole business felt rather exclusionary. Xbox of the early 2000s was for “gamers,” maybe, but not for me, despite my love of games.

But at some point in the mid-to-late 2010s, something began to change. Now the key phrase isn’t “edgy,” it’s “everyone.” This has extended not just to Xbox’s most overt advertising, but also to more subtle things like who it puts out front to announce new games or initiatives in its public presentations. It encompasses Xbox’s accessibility and sustainability efforts, its philosophy around reaching players on platforms other than just Xbox consoles, and its efforts to diversify its portfolio and game libraries.

I bring up this observation in front of Xbox corporate VP Sarah Bond in an interview at the Game Developers Conference. We’re talking about Xbox’s new ID@Xbox Developer Acceleration Program, which is intended to specifically support underrepresented developers with resources and assistance in bringing their games to Xbox. Appropriately, Bond’s wearing a “Gaming for Everyone” shirt in our interview, which she references when she talks about the program:

“There is a real truth to the culture of Xbox and our belief in this statement,” she says. “And so a lot of our support of indies is actually grounded in that. That traditionally the gaming industry has not actually been representative of all voices, has not actually been accessible to all creators. We see in music, in video, a lot of citizen creators. [But] we are years behind in the gaming industry as a result of that.”

Gaming for Everyone, Forever

Since its inception ten years ago, ID@Xbox has paid out over $4 billion to independent developers – up from $2.5 billion this time last year. There are now over 5,000 total developers in the program across 100 countries, with over 3,000 games in active development. Over 700 developers joined just this last year. The program offers developers access to two free development kits, waives fees involved with updating games, in addition to a number of other perks.

But with the ID@XboxDeveloper Acceleration Program, Xbox is taking things a step farther, and includes non-recoupable assistance offsetting porting costs and monthly webinars on topics like marketing, certification, and more. It’s also piloting a prototype initiative with a small number of developers offering non-recoupable funding and support in creating a game prototype that “accurately communicates their vision.” The program has been quietly operating for some time now and has already supported 100 games, including A Space for the Unbound, ValiDate, Hoa, Wayward Strand, and more.

Xbox corporate VP Sarah Bond tells me at the conference that the company wanted to finally publicly announce the program in an effort to ensure developers they hadn’t reached yet knew the support was available.

“What real diversity is, or real inclusion is that everybody has equal access,” Bond says. “That even things that we don’t even imagine or we can’t even see or know that someone is going through, that we make sure that those stories can come to us.”

Bond sees Xbox’s role in uplifting underrepresented developers as critical to transforming not just its own portfolio, but overall gaming culture. She points out that ten years ago, she and I – two women, me a reporter for IGN, and she a corporate VP at Xbox – probably wouldn’t have been sitting in the same room together for an interview on this topic. She wears colorful dresses on camera in official Xbox presentations to showcase new games and initiatives – an intentional move to showcase that games are for people who look and dress like her, and everyone else too.

You don’t magically fix [culture] overnight. But it also has to change because it’s literally what is being uploaded into our children’s brains.

“

“I mean, it’s crazy,” she says. “I run developer relationships for one of the world’s leading gaming platforms. That is nuts…You don’t magically fix [culture] overnight. But it also has to change because it’s literally what is being uploaded into our children’s brains. What do I want to go into their brains? Who do I want them to experience?

“And so yes, we’re doing it because we believe in the business of supporting indies. There’s a business there, but there’s also something far more fundamental, which is about shaping what the next generation is seeing and playing and experiencing…And a game has this incredible power to take you through a story or an experience unlike anything where, unlike a movie where you just sit and have it come at you, you have to participate in it. So there’s a business opportunity, but there’s also I think sort of an imperative about what we want the world to be and what we want people to experience, and how you actually create shared understanding over divides.”

Creating Culture Amid Chaos

I press Bond a bit though, because historically, support of indie developers has been a bit like a tide. In speaking with smaller creators for other pieces on the struggles of indie development, I’ve frequently heard the refrain that all three platform holders, not just Xbox, have often been fickle about indie support. When they don’t have AAA games to sell or need a full library for a new console, the money and support for indies pours in. But as soon as all eyes are on the big AAA release of the moment, that support dries up, leaving indies late to the party in the lurch. Is Xbox just using indies to fill out its Game Pass library and storefront until it can get some of those long-awaited AAA blockbusters out the door?

“That won’t happen because it’s not actually how the industry evolves,” Bond replies. “Every couple of years I see a game come out and it comes from an indie studio, and it’s the biggest game in the world…Our commitment to indies is not cyclical. It’s because it’s actually fundamental to where games come from and where we actually believe that the next big game will come from.”

She notes that few indie games end up being massive hits on the level of, say, Vampire Survivors. But she says Xbox wants to make sure that when those games hit, they’re already on and supported by Xbox.

“In the end, players play AAA, but players also love indie and they love discovering new things, and it’s about the breadth. And Game Pass shows that too…all of these things get to exist together. And so I see us just dialing up our commitment to indies over time, even as we’ve had more of our own studios, we’ve never backed down because…even if a studio is small, doesn’t mean they’re not going to create something that’s incredibly powerful.”

I point out that supporting these games costs money – money Xbox may not necessarily recuperate if they support too many games that don’t take off. And the company was just hit with mass layoffs that impacted multiple Xbox Game Studios at a time when numerous other gaming and tech companies are cutting personnel and initiatives amid fear of deteriorating economic conditions. Is there a world in which greater powers at Microsoft might hand down an edict that Xbox needs to taper off that support in favor of money spent elsewhere?

Bond replies that at least in terms of gaming, there’s no current expectation that continuing to make bets in an over $200 billion industry is going to be a problem for Microsoft or Xbox. But more importantly, she emphasizes that the goal is to create a “holistic portfolio” that gives Xbox latitude to take bets on games that may not necessarily pan out – because others (the Vampire Survivors, if you will) give them that latitude. Plus, the games that don’t succeed the first time are made by studios that now have the experience to return and hit a home run on their second or third game, and feel immediately comfortable with Xbox as a home for those successes.

This is the environment that cultures are made in…True leadership is born in what you do when things are really, really hard.

“

But more importantly, she adds, Xbox is currently existing in a tumultuous economic time, and it hasn’t backed off indies. It’s doubled down, both on indie support and its commitment to the aforementioned cultural transformation within Xbox that indies are a key part of. She describes a recent positive experience she had where leaders within the company were asked to sit down with their teams and conduct refresher sessions on company cultural attributes – Bond found being asked to focus on culture at a time of “wars and uncertainty and banking meltdowns” pleasantly surprising and encouraging.

“I thought that that was really meaningful because actually this is the environment that cultures are made in,” she says. “It’s easy to be hearts and rainbows when you’re up and to the right. But it’s not really meaningful. True culture. And true leadership is born in what you do when things are really, really hard. And when you have to make trade-offs. And I hadn’t even thought about it until you just asked this question right now. We’re sitting here launching the Developer Acceleration program in this environment. There’s no greater testament to the fact that we’re just like, you stay the course on the things that really, really matter over time and don’t get shortsighted or confused by what you’re seeing. Because then you haven’t built a culture at all.”

I take us back to the developer acceleration program at the end of our conversation – let’s say it’s successful. What does Sarah Bond envision it looking like in ten years?

“I’d be at GDC,” she says. “My daughter would be with me. And I would run into a developer who says, ‘Did you work at Xbox once?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah.’ And they’d say, ‘I just want to thank you, because I got my start through the Developer Acceleration program. And because of that program, I actually took my first steps and now I have my own studio and I’m mentoring other people to do the same. And I just want to thank you because I don’t know if I could have done that without Xbox.’”

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.



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