XNA Everywhere

Filling up for the keynote

Today was the first keynote day. John Schappert of Microsoft took to the stage and told us where XNA is going. The answer is everywhere. The long awaited "YouTube for gamers" is taking shape, which will make it possible for creators to put their XNA content out there for anyone to play.

John Schappert watches one of the demos.

This was nice, but nothing that had not been expected. What came next was a bit out of the blue though, in a wonderful way. Chris Mitchell came on and started talking about portable code. And showed XNA running on a Zune. Running very nicely too. This means that soon we will be able to create mobile XNA games as well as Xbox 360 ones.  Very cool. XNA developers are now mobile developers too. Wahay!

This really hardened my resolve to get a new Zune (and might explain why the larger ones are suddenly harder to get hold of). Fortunately Derek had put me on to one in stock in Circuit City, so right after the keynote I was straight out for an 8 block walk up the hill to get it. And I have. And it is ace. And soon I will be able to write games for it.

There are some sessions tomorrow on how things are going to work. I'm really looking forward to them and I'll post details as soon as I know myself. This GDC just came alive for me. Wonderful stuff. And, just to make the morning perfect, I saw someone pick up and take away one of my VerySillyGames prints....

Jack or Master

Today I went to a couple more sessions in the IGDA Education Summit. I like going to these, whilst they are not always directy relevant to what we do at Hull, they are always thought provoking. The keynote, by Ian Bogost, started by making the point that game developers will always need to know how to program. Always good to hear. Then things diverged a bit from my experience. Ian talked about the old days, when only one or two programmers made entire games, and some modern day games, for example Everyday Shooter, which have been produced by one person. Whilst there are one person bands who can do all the audio, graphics and design parts of the game it is definitely the case that when seeking employment a game developer will be employed to write code.

The way I see it, if you have knowledge of the other aspects of game development then this makes you a better game developer. If you are one of the lucky ones who actually can do the whole thing, there is no reason why you shouldn't show off by making a complete game. Whatever happens you should try to make something that will get your name out there.

One point that was made well was that if you want to make a good game you need to recognise that you will need people that are not like you to be successful. Which brought us back to teamwork again.

Exploding Umbrella

It rained today. Lots. Unfortunately I hadn't packed much waterproof, and so it was down to Walgreens (which is rapidly becoming my favourite store) to buy and umbrella. They had a big display of them right in the doorway. I don't remember seeing it yesterday when it was dry...

Anyhoo, I bought a modestly priced device which is trademarked "St. Crawford London". Perhaps Americans think that the brits are better with rain. It looked OK so I opened it up and sallied forth. Whilst waiting at an intersection for the lights to change I noticed a button in the handle. So I pressed it to see what happens..... The results were most impressive. The canopy instantly compressed at speed, dumping a load of water on myself and those around me. A portable version of instant unpopularity. I re-opened the thing whilst avoiding everybody else's eyes and slunk across the road. Stupid rain.

Learning the Ten Commandments. And other useful stuff.

No pictures today. Work beckons. I started off the day at the Education summit. The keynote was given by Ernest Adams who set out his ten commandments for Game Developer Education. I've not got time to list them all, but I was particularly taken with number 9 "Award precision and punish hand waving" and number 8 "Gameplay comes first". It was also nice to see commandment 5 making the point that you should "Require Teamwork". Some of the others weren't that applicable to us at Hull, because we concentrate on the programming aspects of games rather than the whole game production process (that way our game development students graduate as genuinely useful computer scientists) but it was nice to find that we don't break any major ones.

Next came a session on how to create a successful game development course. It was interesting to see that as one the members of the panel were keen on teamwork and communication skills. One even said that you should encourage your students to enter competitions. Go Hull.

In the afternoon I changed tack and went to some XNA presentations. There were three excellent talks on how to optimise and debug XNA games. This stuff was great. Proper computer science being used in a really strong context. At the end they gave us a CD-ROM with the sessions on it. I hope that this material will also make its way onto the web at some point. If you are into coding you would love this stuff.

Then in the evening we staggered out to a free party and then ended the evening in the sports bar.

Guerrilla Marketing

Companies come to GDC with bulging marketing budgets and brand new products to push back the frontiers of game development.

I'm here with virtually no money and Very Silly Games to promote. So, first up is to make a nice logo. My first attempt is OK, but I had to use a graphics program to produce it. My second one is created entirely within XNA, using the same font and style but rendered programmatically with added silliness. I'm going to make a tutorial on how I did it. Since I can now render text really easily I add a silly message and come up with the artwork:

So, now I have the picture I need some hard copies to distribute. Last time that we were out I noticed that the local Walgreens Pharmacy (these places seem more ubiquitous than Starbucks) has an advert in the store, 15 cents a print for 100 off. And you can upload from the internet. So it is onto the site, upload the image and ask for 100.

This works wonderfully. I don't need to pay up front, I can select the store to pick up the prints and they are ready 10 minutes after my request. I get emails along the way to keep me informed of progress.  People say that the internet is transforming the way we do things. You bet.

On the way to the conference I pick up the prints and pay for them (16 dollars or so - around 8 pounds UK) and then I start dishing them out. I've got rid of around 30 or so on tables around the place and in appropriate sessions, I should be through the whole lot by the end of the week. I'm not sure how much extra traffic the site will get, but even if I only get a few more hits it was fun getting them.