GDC & XNA: Build A Game In Four Days?
Yesterday Microsoft began its global XNA Game Studio Express contest, dubbed The Dream-Build-Play Challenge, which will serve up "worldwide game and recognition" as well as some $uper prizes to the meritorious bastard who wins. (So get cracking - build us all a great gay XNA game, boys & girls!)
But here at GDC, a very different kind of contest is underway - four days, four teams (totaling only six people), right smack dab in the middle of the lobby of the Moscone North building, where many of the keynotes and GDC events occur. That's it. And XNA Studio Express, of course. There before the eyes of god and a frenzied crowd of gamefolk, these four entrants are designing games...beneath a clock counting the hours elapsed. This is the kind of pressure that made Britney shave her melon and check into rehab for a quick nap; although the aspiring game designers look pretty cool-headed, given the circumstances. They've got to be in some kind of creative code-trance, although I couldn't see any urinary catheters or IV bags, so they must be accommodating some biological functions normally.
Jonathon Stevens and Patrick Glanville of the US are creating a 2D side-scroller; Germans Benjamin Nietschke and Christoph Rienaecker are aiming high with a multiplayer RPG (in four days? Holy crap.); Brazillian cutie Andre Furtado builds a scifi action game all by his lonesome; and the other singleton, brit Josh Butterworth, is making a 2D action game.
I'm excited to see the results on Friday...and the reality show addict in me will admit to a morsel of schadenfreude: will anyone fail horrifically? If they made it to GDC, probably not. In fact, I'm expecting to see both talented design and innovations that spring from the brutally short time available; who knows what kind of coolness will result from such pressure?
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 6 March 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: gdc 2007, xna game studio express challenge
Whoa... I'm impressed. I'll have to check that out. I can barely code with people in the classroom, let alone in a conference hall!
The one time I did a coding contest it was in 1980 and I wrote Hangman in mainframe BASIC with a little ASCII gallows for graphical flair. (I didn't win, but it's not like the winner was any more impressive... or 11 years old.)
It seems like a lot of fun, though.... I'd love to do an Atari 2600 coding contest, or maybe a DS one after I get up to speed with it.