The second and final part of my interview with the developers behind the XNA titles that hit Xbox Live Arcade last week. (Here's part one.)
Here, 'Walaber', developer of JellyCar (pictured), Brian Cable, responsible for Proximity HD, James Silva of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai fame and Jeff Pobst and Michael Austin of Hidden Path Entertainment, creators of Culture, talk about the future of XNA development...
Are there any elements of the Xbox 360 functionality you're surprised you //can// access? Walaber: To be honest I'm actually just amazed that Microsoft is letting hobby developers get full access to the Xbox 360's CPU and graphics card, input devices, and recently even Xbox Live networking... It's pretty cool to make your own video game that you can play in your living room.
Brian: When they announced online multiplayer support for XNA Game Studio 2.0, that surprised me. I didn't think they would ever allow that, as it would require interacting with their servers to some extent. I still haven't had the time to figure out how to put it into my game yet, though.
James: I was a bit surprised that when they implemented networking, they included matchmaking on LIVE - it's going to be really neat to see how people play with this. I think more importantly, I'm surprised that Microsoft took the initiative with XNA in the first place - console development has been the crazy dream that I've had since I was 11 or so.
Jeff: We're an experienced Xbox 360 developer and we have been impressed by how much access one does have with XNA to utilize the power of the platform while making a product that works on both PC and Xbox 360 with a single code base. Several features continue to get implemented as new releases of XNA have come out and support for Xbox LIVE and Xbox LIVE Arcade are just recently being implemented. This is going to allow us to consider using XNA not just for our tools, but also for full games that we bring to Xbox LIVE Arcade.
What kind of new ideas and experiences do you think will come out of the XNA? Walaber: I hope to see a lot of unique and crazy games that you'd never find available commercially!
Brian: I think you can look to Flash games as an indication of what types of experiences you can expect from XNA. Flash really lowered the barrier of entry for people who wanted to make games, and as a result that market has been flooded with all sorts of personal non-commercial projects - labours of love, experiments that may have flaws but introduce the world to new game mechanics. There's also a lot of junk, as well as a decent amount of commercial products with higher production values. Where XNA will differ is you're likely to see a lot more 3D games and there will probably be a greater percentage of games with multiplayer support.
James: It'll be really fun to see what the creative community can produce. I think "JellyCar" is a perfect example of a crazy idea that's a blast to play with. I can't wait to see what kind of multiplayer games will end up as community games on Xbox LIVE. Relatively speaking, networking is a new feature in the XNA framework; as the XNA community's creative minds get more comfortable and experienced with networking in XNA I think we'll start to see some pretty crazy multiplayer concepts.
Michael: Opening up creation to hobbyists will mean that experimental gameplay can be tried and vetted without costing a publisher hundreds of thousands of dollars. Flash has done something similar for PC - several new spins on old game play ideas like escape games and tower defence games offer a large variety of fun in easy, small bites.
Have you begun thinking about another XNA game? What sort of thing would you like to try next? Brian: If I could get away with it, I'd do all of my future projects in XNA. Those future projects are a long way off, though, but one thing I definitely would like to try if I could find a good 3D artist or two to collaborate with me is a 3D sidescrolling platformer (think New Super Mario Bros.)
James: I've been thinking a sequel could be fun, but I've got some other ideas that I'd sort of like to play around with - zombie-related ideas, of course. In the meantime, I've got absolute focus on getting "The Dishwasher" wrapped up and shipped.
Jeff: I think we're eager to fully use XNA for our own projects as its feature set becomes fully compatible with Xbox LIVE Arcade. Today we build almost all of our tools in XNA for our professional projects and this release now allows games to be posted through the XNA Creators Club launcher to a larger audience. It won't be long before professionals are able to use XNA through the normal Arcade channel as well. As we develop future games for Microsoft platforms, we'll keep a close eye on the feature set that XNA has and I wouldn't be surprised if we use XNA fully for certain games we develop.
How do you think the XNA program compares with similar concepts for PS3 and Wii? Jeff: We at Hidden Path have become familiar with each of the console platforms and there are some very exciting features in each of the hardware systems whether it be unique UI or technical capabilities. It's a great time to be a game developer and we have opportunities to make great games for all three consoles and the personal computer. For the moment, I think it is safe to say that XNA as a software language and development toolset is unique to the Xbox 360 and the PC and there isn't really a similar toolset available for the PS3 or Wii from Sony or Nintendo to our knowledge.
If you've been inspired by all this talk of community development, there's a great feature on Gamasutra explaining how to submit games for the community download service.
