Microsoft's XNA-Based YouTube for Games
To facilitate the creation of games for the YouTube-style Community Arcade, Microsoft has been pushing the XNA game development platform, a push that continued in force at the conference. In fact, the publisher's expo booth was entirely branded around XNA, as opposed to Xbox.
A free development kit called XNA Game Studio Express was released in December. At GDC, Microsoft showed off some of the games that were made with the suite since then. XNA is said to theoretically make game development so easy that some users can whip up a working PC/Xbox 360 game in just a few days. Evidence of this came in the form of a contest held in a lobby at the convention center, in which various teams built games against a countdown clock. On the last day of the conference they each had a fun playable game, or at least a working prototype that could be polished with more time.
Professional developers have also started using XNA, including industry veterans Bill Dugan and Jamie Fristrom of Torpex Games (Fristrom is perhaps best known for designing the swing system in Treyarch's Spider-Man 2). Their debut game, an abstract topdown co-op shooter called Schizoid, will be the first XNA game to officially make the jump to Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft held a joint presentation with Torpex to illustrate how XNA helps developers make games faster and more efficiently.
Jamie Fristrom described looking for a prototyping tool for Torpex's first game. He tried various tools including PyGame and Microsoft's own DirectX system, but wasn't satisfied with the results. "The number of hoops you have to jump through just to get a gamepad working at all was pretty daunting," he admitted.
That was when Fristrom stumbled upon XNA. It took him very little time to get up to speed with its programming language. A game prototype was finished within a few days, and Torpex decided it was fun enough to keep developing. It was polished to the point where it could be shown to the XBLA team, with the intention to eventually port the game to the more heavy duty C++ to run it on Xbox 360. Instead, Torpex decided not to port it and to just keep iterating on the original prototype, while the XNA team helped them add achievements and other Xbox Live features, which are currently not yet available for most XNA game creators.
Schizoid will be the first XNA game to become a commercial XBLA download. Said Bill Dugan, "The first thing that really impressed us about XNA Game Studio Express is the ability to go from 0 to 60 in a matter of days. In two months we had something we were showing to Microsoft."Dugan also praised the ability to iterate extremely fast. Instead of having to plan everything in advance--and having to stray from those plans if the gameplay doesn't turn out as expected--Torpex prefers iterative methods that allow ideas to be tested immediately. "For Schizoid we're developing a new core game mechanic that's really different from any other game out there," Dugan said. "Especially when trying to prove that something brand new is fun, you have to work on it a lot--over and over and over again--or else it's going to be one of those situations where you cross your fingers and pray that it is going to be fun by the time you are done with all the development."
While Torpex could have easily gotten an Xbox 360 development kit based on its members' past reputations, this proved to be unnecessary. "Jamie and I were able to make this thing work with the purchase of a PC, the purchase of a $400 consumer Xbox, and a $100 subscription to the XNA Creators Club that lets you run your games on the Xbox 360," said Dugan. "In normal game development I was accustomed to spending somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000 per person on the development team for all the hardware that you need."
Dugan compared their cost structure to the movie Clerks, which famously cost only $22,000 to make. "Making a video game is way more expensive than making an indie film these days," he said. "I think in this particular environment it is kind of reversed. Now it's close to [a situation where] you spend a couple of thousand dollars and you get a complete development environment. Your real cost of development is your time."
Some footage of Schizoid was shown, but there was no playable demo, leaving little to say about the gameplay. However, its development process might give some idea of what to expect on the Community Arcade and Xbox Live Arcade when XNA development kicks off in full force.
Microsoft Game Developer Group marketing director Dave Mitchell pointed out that indie XNA development has already led to unexpected results. A video montage showed dozens of vastly different games based on Space War that were made in a competition. One team created a complex technique to make real-time 3D graphics look pixelated as in an old Commodore 64 game.
Most XNA games shown so far have been fairly abstract and basic games, Schizoid included. I asked how far developers can take the graphics with this platform. Mitchell replied, "I would argue that many of the games you saw in the previous console generation could be created in this environment. A Halo 2 type caliber game could be created in XNA. Halo 3 no, Halo 2 yes."
When asked how literally the YouTube metaphor for the XNA games delivery mechanism should be taken, Microsoft said they aim to create much better filters to surface the good content, while not trying to bury other content. Another difference from the YouTube model is that indie creators of XNA games can potentially make money off of their creations. "There's definitely a business model behind it," promised Mitchell, "so that if you've created a top-rated game, we want to make sure you are financially compensated for it, as well as us being able to reinvest in the platform itself."
Microsoft sees its XNA initiative partly as a talent pool for Xbox Live Arcade and Microsoft Game Studios. This is a somewhat exciting prospect, given the traditionally closed-off nature of the game industry. "We have to do a good job actively monitoring that so that we can react to it when we see great talent, whether it's an individual or a great intellectual property," Mitchell explained. "I can assure you that other members of the industry are going to be doing the exact same thing."
