GDC 08: Microsoft Announces Community Games
In an epic follow-up to last year's debut of the XNA toolset, Microsoft's John Schappert announced at his keynote address today the creation of the Creator's Club and Community Games for XBLA. Just the basic details were outlined, but the program should allow the 800,000+ souls who've downloaded XNA to create games not just for special contests (DreamBuildPlay had over 200 submissions and four winners), but for submission for peer review and distribution on the Xbox Live Arcade.
"Democratizing game development and game distribution" was the catchphrase, and while the specifics will of course bear this out, it looks like a relatively simple process for XNA designers to submit their creation, ensure that it doesn't contain objectionable or trademarked content, and get enough positive peer reviews from to merit online distribution. Welcome to the Creator's Club.
We saw some examples of the fruits of XNA, including award-winning Dishwasher, a 2D murderfest driven by an undead dishwasher on the rampage; Jelly Car, where Tonka trucks meet Jell-O; Little Gamers a stick-drawn sidescroller featuring a lil stick-head fighting an army of zombies with shotguns, beer and rocket launchers; and a glimpse of a game called Culture that - during a flyby 2-second video - looked a bit like LittleBigPlanet or Spore, only with flowers springing up from a lovely little planetoid.
"Create, Submit, Review, Play" appears to be the formula for Community Games creation - to check out for yourselves if you think the new system will rock your world, four XNA-created games have been made available for trial download now. Go! Play! Judge!
tiny dancer
Posted to GDC, Hot Stuff, Video Games on 20 February 2008
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Name: Dave
The Little Gamers title wouldn't happen to be the same one being developed about the web comic would it? www.little-gamers.com for those not in the know.