SERIOUS THOUGHTS ABOUT XNA GSE - PART II

Where were we? Ah, yes ... "Will I succeed by using XNA GSE?".

Let's face it: like everything in life, time will tell. Time will prove you were right or wrong but, is it worth trying? Straight answer: yes, provided you are able and capable of facing and breaking through a tight membrane formed of strong competition.

Like you, everyone is competing to get community, market, publishers and or employers' attention. No matter how shared in common a colleague may behave along the road, it all summarizes to a simple fact: in the end, to some extent, everyone is thinking "that prize has to be mine!". C'mon let me hear "not me". Anyone? (don't panic, just continue reading, ok?)

So, what could make one stand out from the rest? That's the key point.

A combination of skills, dedication, commitment and perseverance (not to mention finance resources to live on day by day).

"How could XNA GSE help me achieve my goals?" Interesting question. Personally speaking, for the first time I feel someone is providing a well-designed framework for game development with great potential.

Many companies offer many solutions to developers but you always find a catch: you have to learn a new language (either for hard-coding and or scripting), the language lacks a professional GUI and or IDE or even it is not an object-oriented one, there is no way you can extend the given framework, it lacks the proper tools, it does not provide the features you need, it does not handle with key aspects of game creation as expected, plenty of bugs, poor support, and so on.

Now we have a framework that plugs into VS2005, and thus to be used with .NET languages (in the case of XNA GSE it plugs into C# Express) which offers a set of tools and features (please read part I) designed from scratch to facilitate the process of creating a game from an object-oriented perspective and last but not least, with strong support. What is more, new tools are being created on top of XNA as TorqueX or will support XNA as Visual3D.NET and I believe we will soon see more coming.

But there is one more factor that XNA GSE is trying to impose which opposses to the fact that we are all competing in the end: a community of developers that really collaborate by sharing experience and knowledge. It's like saying "Ok, we are all trying to cross the finish line first but unless we help each other it's likely that none of us will even get there!". So far, MS is achieving this goal: code snippets, solutions, implementations and complete games are being shared by and to the XNA's community and there is no indication that it will stop. A lot of people, including me, is excited about this whole thing and participates in good mood, what in turn is a lot to say (I can list a bunch of forums where members try to tear each others apart, and newbies, are fiercely bounced and discouraged).

To sum up, this time one cannot complain that "we" do not have the framework and or tools needed (ok, an implementation of one of the "big" physics libraries for .NET/XNA would be welcome, like Havok's or Ageia's) or that there is no support (either from the developer or the community), meaning, now it is really up to each of us -or our teams- to create a game that catches everyone's attention.

So let's go for it!

USER-CREATED GAMES, XNA GSE & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

There is an interesting article that discusses the topic of intelectual property rights of games created and shared by community users of XNA Game Studio Express.

Also, you will find another article regarding user-created content and the PS3 (Shhht! Apparently this is a secret).

SERIOUS THOUGHTS ABOUT XNA GSE

As we are approaching to the release date for XNA Game Studio Express v1, the following first question may come to one's mind: how successful will it be?

First of all let us consider one simple fact: if you want to program games using DirectX and C# then bear in mind that XNA is the successor of MDX, so unless you decide to implement your own wrappers to DirectX dlls (what would be like re-inventing the wheel) or try native-proned languages (like C++), you will end up using it, anyway.

Ok, but what is it with GSE? It is a framework based on XNA and mounted as an add-on for C# Express which provides a set of tools and implementations that let you program your games with ease. GSE takes advantage of XNA's content pipeline, brings a basic implementation to manage the rendering process (i.e.: initializes and sets the devices for you, handles the calls to update and draw functions, among other tasks) and let you deploy your game to XBOX360!

You may ask: where's the catch? You want it, so here you are. According to the XNA FAQ:

• In order to develop, debug, deploy and play your games on XBOX360 you will have to join the "Creators Club" for a fee of USD 99 for a year or USD 49 for 4 months.
• You cannot produce a commercial game for XBOX360 with the express version.
• When you deploy the game to the XBOX360, and want to share it with other members of the club you will also share all your content and source code.

The good news is that all of the above does not apply when referring to the PC platform. Meaning? You can produce a commercial game for PC, without paying any royalties or fees, and without sharing your source code and or content.

So? Well, Microsoft has decided to catch a larger marketshare in the consoles industry by providing developers with handy, simple and inexpensive tools to build and deploy games for the 360. What is more, by doing so, contrary to what its main competitors do (that is, Sony's PS3 and Nintendo's Wii) MS is bringing to its equation a new relevant factor: "indies".

Being and "indie", go and try to produce a game -either commercial or not- for PS3 and or Wii and come back later for further talk. Just by calculating how much it would imply to do so would discourage you in the split of a second. It is hard to start an independent project and or small enterprise in the software industry, and it is harder in the game's one.

MS has noticed those facts as well as other two main things:

1. The number of indies has increased in later years at a growing rate.
2. Many of them use managed languages (like C#) to create their applications and games.

Moreover, some serious tools and frameworks are being developed and fine tunned to work along with XNA, either now or in the near future, like "TorqueX" and "Visual3D.Net".

Thus, will XNA GSE succeed? My guess is YES.

So the question becomes: will one succed by using XNA GSE? I will let that question unanswered until later posts ... ;)