17 button presses. After December's Dashboard update, that's how many it takes to get from the homepage to the Xbox Live Indie Games section — assuming you already know where to look.  (Count on more button presses if you don't.)  The only way to eventually browse the 2,000 plus titles in the XBLIG collection is to select a tile within the Games Marketplace inconspicuously labeled "Game Type."

Unlike the Genre tile, which has a sensible illustration of a bullet-pointed list, the "Game Type" tile has a stock-photo-like image of a woman in a green hoodie jump-kicking. It's not clear who she is or what she's doing, but one thing is certain: that nondescript pairing of words and images hardly make one think there's a couple thousand indie games buried within that menu branch.

While several indie game developers have spoken out about getting the short shrift in the new dashboard, only one has made a game about it. Developer Mommy's Best Games' (creator of Weapon of Choice and Explosionade) new title, Game Type, satirizes this arcane logo, following the exploits of the iconic "Hoodie Girl" as she does battle with giant advertisements come to life in a side-scrolling shooter.

That's only half the package, though. The first part of Game Type tasks the player with finding the shoot-'em-up in a fake Dashboard filled with parody ads. Hidden among propaganda for Giant Enemy Crab Seafood Restaurant and the King of Queens-esque "Fat Guy and Pretty Girl" is a mock-up of the familiar, crudely designed "Game Type" label granting access to the game within a game.

We caught up with Mommy's Best Games mastermind Nathan Fouts so he could discuss the development of Game Type and games as a satirical medium.

OXM: Was the idea behind Game Type simply an "eff you" to Microsoft or was there more to it than that?

NF: It wasn't so much a "screw you” to Microsoft as it was playing off a bad situation and trying to turn it into something good. We also wanted to educate people. The hope was that the game would get attention and subsequently the concept of this poorly named area of the Dashboard would also get attention.

OXM: What idea came first? The fake Dashboard or the shoot-'em-up?

NF: Definitely the fake Dashboard. In Game Type, there's this futuristic, prophetic new console called Media Ball. It handles all your entertainment needs. It does everything you'd want, but then you get even more inane advertisements than you currently do.

OXM: Did you consider making Game Type harder to find in the fake Dashboard to prove a point?

NF: We definitely considered enhancing the hyperbole by making players jump through 100 pages or something to find the game, but what I really wanted to do was have this insular education, so when you go to find the game you'll actually be using the method as when navigating to the "Game Type" tile on the real Dashboard.

OXM: Did you run into any trouble with Microsoft getting Game Type published?

NF: Fortunately no. The XBLIG channel is peer reviewed, so other developers look at your game and decide if it's appropriate. We had some people wondering about it, but in the end they all agreed that it was reasonable enough to be let on. But Microsoft didn't step in at any given point. I wouldn't mind if they did though, if they would A) change the name [of the tile] and B) fix the image. That's the whole issue here. To me, the "Game Type" tile on the real Dashboard is like noise. It's such a generic name that no one's going to look under it.

OXM: Do you think that games are being used enough as a satirical medium?

NF: I don't think so at all. We got called out on Twitter by a bunch of people asking, "Is this the first satire game, ever?" I don't know if that's been done a lot. There's a difference between parody and satire. We're trying to affect a change out of this. Not just enhance the humor, like a parody. I think there's plenty of room for real satire in games that's really not been explored much.

OXM: Some indie developers have praised the new Dashboard because indie games show up in the search function and suggested titles when you browse similar XBLA games. What do you make of that argument?

NF: We've got an addition and a subtraction. When you look at the old Dashboard, the original way to find the indie games channel was not absurd. What they've done is taken a step back and maybe they've gone two steps forward, but I don't think it's unreasonable to go three steps forward.

OXM: Do you have anything else you'd like to add?

NF: I hate being a negative Nancy, because I've spoken out for years now about the problem issues with indie games. But any time I talk about it, I always also want to talk about the positive aspects of indie games. For instance, the XNA team now allow bigger maximum sized indie games. You can go up to 500MB. The previous limit was 150MB. So that's pretty fantastic. The cheapest games for a dollar can now be larger in download size, too. When they're relaxing limits like that, I think it's great, and I'm really glad that the XNA team and Microsoft in general is still paying attention to XBLIG and that they care about it.

Indieverse is an ongoing weekly column where we shine some light on Xbox Live Indie Games and indie developers. Check out our archives here.