The framework and tools team has been hauling A over the last few months to get this to you and they are justly proud of themselves. A key factor in the beta is that you can't deploy to your Xbox in this version - this is mostly to try out things while developing on your PC.
Get setup here if you are new to it all:
http://creators.xna.com/en-us/3.0beta_mainpage
If you have the previous CTP or run into problems, our amazing setup pm Aaron Stebner's blog is particularly helpful:
http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2008/09/16/8954720.aspx
Get help from folks in the forums here:
http://forums.xna.com/forums/
In a move that entirely trumps When Cods Collide in 2.0, we have Goat Attack by John Kennedy on the new 3.0 stuff:
http://blogs.msdn.com/johnkenn/archive/2008/09/17/goat-attack.aspx
Live it vivid!
I was trying to describe Gnomedex to my teammates at lunch and realized a few things:
- most folks are not used to conferences where the conversations about the sessions (captured in twitter, pathable, irc) are as critical or influential as the main materials of the session. If you aren't online as well as in-person, you are missing the show.
- the only way to make sure you have some hand in that "other" conversation is to do what Sarah Lacy did - incorporate the wiseasses and the commentators into your talk by passing the mike ("share power" kind of gestures)
- the first thing people think when they hear gnomedex is that there are a bunch of gnomes running around, which frankly, would only be true after a certain amount of drinking...
- I missed my chance to talk about Mars Rover team lead Scott Maxwell aka "chauffeur for science" " who said...."if it doesn't seem impossible, we are not interested."
I think the reason this conference resonated so much with me was that it didn't just talk about technology - which geeks can talk about on end, one up each other about, spin like doctors around - but what you could actually DO with it. Some folks love technology for its own sake - they love fiddling with the bits, the syntax, the hardware's nuts and bolts, the details that keep colectors collecting and turbines churning. Some folks are really eloquent about talking about what techology can, could, and will do to change things that are agnostic on tech per se: how close you are to your friends, how world nations can communicate, how stories can be told that spark change.
I think XNA as a framework, set of tools, and XNA's community platform is cool as a technology set or I wouldn't work on this team. But it's always been compelling to me to see how people make things with XNA that I would never have thought of or suspected would be done with these ingredients. I was telling someone at Gnomedex that the recurring image from last year when the team was being assembled to do all this was...the college student with the big grin and the big check, where that student has sold enough games on marketplace to create a future career or at least decent beer money out of the deal. And then I see all the eco-games that students are making, teaching people about how to save the planet.
What new games will you challenge us with? What new games will you make change the world?
Live it vivid!
Gnomedex isn't over today, but I've been having some observations I'd like to indulge in....
The close of Gnomedex yesterday with Ignite Seattle's presentations segued into the morning of Gnomedex today with the Portland Ignite crew showing off their blitzkrieg of ideas. Like Seattle' initial Ignite events, Portland rapidly expanded to capacity even after changing venues. This morning some highlights of what we learned:
- how to get a decent car for $1,000 (really)
- boiling water using nuclear power (no really)
- why is David Hasselhoff so popular in Germany? (showed a photo that should not be shown anywhere involving dogs. Just no. No.)
- the true inspiring story of cup o noodles in graphic novel format (mmmm mmm good)
Sarah Lacy lead a boisterous but not negatively confrontational discussion on blogging. As the center of a controversy at South by Southwest interview with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, purposefully altered her format to be more interactive - "like comments on a blog" - and she got it. I thought she had a lot of poise while still nudging people to explore the fatigue of the A-listers and the echo chamber, vs. the newer or perhaps less advertising-sponsored blogs that don't resemble media organizations. People were still buzzing as we went to the coffee break.
Eve Maler (xmlgrrl) gave a great talk about "vendor relationship management" and identity issues. Businesses are familiar with managing the customers and customer data to create relationships. Customers aren't used to think of it the other way... what if my information was controlled and offered in a way that I could manage people who want to sell TO me.
The UW folks who created Adeona - a way to secure your laptop - had slow demo but some interesting ideas about weaknesses of current tracking systems.
At lunch, I got to sit with Vanessa Holfeltz, the associate reactor director of the nuclear reactor at Reed College. She is a 20something math major who studied for over a year to be trusted with the responsibility of working full-time on the reactor. (There are memory drills and weekly testing). Her envy of the Seattle ignite crew boiled down to one word: animation. I guess the Portlandites have a stricter presentation requirement than Brady insists on up here.
What was fascinating to me was:
1) I never had a student job that made such a good story
2) she knew an English major who had worked on the reactor - this wasn't just for math or science geeks
3) the reactor coming to Reed was the work of one scientist in the 60s who fundraised 300k - and now it's an educational resource for the Oregon community.
Ignition and reactors are great metaphors for outcomes that technology events aspire to. The Ignite format is brief, fascinating, technical and humanly engaging - the brains of the people watching or hearing the talks are meant to get fizzy at the end. Reactors likewise imply (you hope they imply) a controlled but powerful reaction from energies contained inside the individual particles. One particle can have a powerful cascading effect.
Beth Kanter's amazing fundraiser during Gnomedex is an example of this sudden explosive outcome, ignition to action. And my other thought: It's not just for geeks alone. Reactors can be run by all brain types.
So on this sunny weekend in Seattle, we can ask ourselves - what action can we take, as singular beings as we are, that can have such powerful and uplifting effects? Whose brains can we light up by the things we say or text we write? I'm so done with the Olympic torch imagery by now, but in the olden days you had to literally hand over some flame to get the fire to your own hearth. What flame will you pass today, this week, this month, this year to change the world?
Gnomedex is a very different blogging conference from others I've been to.
The closest I can come to it is a mix of the Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposiums, which always have a backchannel and alternate community applications going simultaneous with the speakers, Blogher, which had a very real-world-meets-tech vibe, and a party hosted by tech people one knows.
First up was Kris Krug, who showed amazing photos full of light and humanity - and great tips on how to look for the catchlight and the humanity as we tote our cameras around to change the world.
- make sure your background is clear (no flagpoles growing out of people's heads)
- look first at your sources of light including the light in people's eyes, reflections, puddles
- isolate variables by looking at aperture first and then tune the rest of your camera (aperture controls light levels but also depth of field)
Second was Tara Hunt and Larry Halff talking about the opening up of magnolia, a social bookmarking site. They broke the news at Gnomedex so it was interesting to see how
After a break, we heard from Ben Huh of icanhascheezburger.com. I stood up and asked him a question about how they moderate that site, because he had just finished explaining these amazing facts:
- when the site started it got 50-100 LOLCats a day. In March of this year, they were getting 5,000 LOLcats a day. They now have a database of 800,000 LOLCats. He answered my question about how they handle bad content by explaining their network of sites, which includes the Fail blog (which isn't always safe for work, but you can find it linked on the main site) gets about 250,000 votes on the content per day which sift good content upward and complain to the team of paid moderators he has hired. The moderators post on twitter and facebook and do other chores besides determine what the LOLCat is really saying.
Danny Sullivan, search engine guru who just moved here from the UK, made a great pragmatic example of how exposed Web search has made us - he phoned one conference attendee while giving the talk, showed another one a car of their friend, and in general reminded us of the spookiness of modern technology life. You can take content out of Google search results - maybe - but then you have to contend with the phone directory posting your phone number online if you haven't rendered it unlisted. People are using information you give them in more contexts than you expect. Youhhur house on Google maps. Your sunbathing neighbor sunbathing with someone not her husband. Etc.
This was a great juxtaposition to the next speaker, 16-year-old Mark Bao CEO of Avecora. He and his schoolmates are not worried about privacy, take texting and Facebook for granted, and email is a forgotten medium to them. He's already sold 3 apps to Facebook and wants to live a life of meaning and make meaningful money in the process. (That might be a bit too flippant, Mark seemed like a genuinely altruistic young geek upstart rather than a materialistic one). Francine Hardaway did a great job of interviewing him and interspersing her own observations on how technology changed the game for her generation. Mark's presentation noted that his generation expects technology to make them connected 24/7, which meant more work time bleeding into other parts of their life, but also that his idea of working wasn't a 9-5 job but an entreprenuerial one.
Beth Kanter and Amanda Koster did a one-two punch set of presentations for using social media for the greater good of humanity. Beth's non-profit fundraising reached new heights where it was discovered she'd raised more than $2,000 online during her presentation for a cambodian child to go to college, and that didn't count the $600+ contributed in the auditorium AT Gnomedex. Amanda Koster, profesional photographer and founder of salaamgarage showed us what normal amateur photographers could do to raise awareness of conditions in other countries.
The impetus for salaamgarage, which takes amateur photographers to other countries under the auspices of NGOs like Doctors without Borders...She had gone to Western Kenya to do a photo/video documentary about the effects of AIDS and she chose to focus on the survivors. The most haunting moment for me came when her video subject, Caxton, said "“I want to be seen as someone who exists.”
The IgniteSeattle medley was the usual fast-paced fascinating ride and of course one where I didn't catch all the names. The Digital Fairytale I had seen earlier at another Seattle event - the story of a woman who becomes her digital existence in a disturbing way (I won't spoil it if you have the chance to see it again at Ignite or dorkbot or elsewhere locally), a slice of 3d turned into sculpture as part of a UW degree project, a litany against fear, a political geek manifesto, how to change the world from the guy at worldchanging.com, and the special treat of Matt Harding from wherethehellismatt.com explaining why he dances and how, and a frenzied minute or so where the audience got up to join him (including yours truly - see Tris Hussey's photo here).
Thus ended Day 1. :)
After a sequence of extremely fortunate events, I will be able to attend Gnomedex this year for the first time ever!
For those who don't know, Gnomedex is a blogger conference - a social media conference - an unconference - and a heck of a good time talking with folks who care about online community.
A nice rollup from an attendee last year (that dodges' the Dave Winer-Jason Calcanis debate :) ) : http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/top-10-highlights-from-gnomedex-2007/
I hope to post more about the experience tomorrow!
Betsy
Sometimes blog posts from other people just combine in my head.
I was reading Rory Blyth's Are You Passionate About Utilizing Your Core Competencies To Effect Strategic Outcomes? about corporate-speak and then read Dare Obasanjo's great post about the Second System effect (basically when a team goes nuts putting in all the frills they cut just to get 1.0 out the door).
First off, anyone saying I "effect outcomes with core utilization of my strategic diversity" (Japanese-Irish-female type) is just saying I'm my normal Betsy pain in the assness, giving my opinion on where I think the project should go. In that spirit, I'd like to add a few more items to Dare's list, while talking about the way those flaws might be packaged .
Aside from can't do it all, pick date or features as your goal, and don't lose site of what made v 1.0 work, I'd suggest these as other project pitfalls:
Juicy Fruit Syndrome - Because X system worked so well to do A, it MUST work well at doing B because the technology is similar - even if the business purpose of B is not the same. Yes, you can use chewing gum to stick notes to walls - but do you really want a world of gumwads instead of post-it notes? You have a young SQL backend? What a coincidence, so do we! Maybe they can date!
Feature Arguments Built on Sand- Speaking of date, this next one is more a corollary of date driven vs feature driven dilemma but in this dilemma, there is a shell game going on as the team struggles to define where the application is going.
An easy example is if a someone may say they want the feature cut because there's no customer value - but it really has more to do them hating to have to code it. Or, wanting to add a feature to be added because it's "cooler technology". Or because the system is "simpler and cleaner" with that feature cut, unless its a cleanliness that the customer sees.
No matter what your team says, they are not the customer (this goes for pms too, me included). If an agile team can't point to the key business/customer scenarios that are the most important, the team as a whole needs to level-set with the product owner and make sure they are on track.
Sometimes that product owner is the executive sponsor, whereupon you darn well better make sure you align the right higher level scenarios, but sometimes it's an external partner or stakeholder who really knows the customer better than you.
No Real Friends V 1.0 gave you something for customers to sink their teeth into and give you feedback. In the rush to get in all the second system features you scrupulously cut so you would finish 1.0, take the time to ensure you aren't alienating your existing customers or at least have talked with them about why their experience will change. Yes, there are such things as vocal minorities and yes there are such thing as edge case champions. They are most commonly found on your own software team because as previously mentioned, the team doesn't count as the customer. :)
Can't cross the chasm without the early adopters helping spread the word so you get the later adopters who are more mainstream. So 1.0 worked - but 2.0 might not without folks who believe in you, helping.
Why Listen to Marketing? Despite the age-old tensions between marketing and development teams, marketing teams can keep you on the straight and narrow. They are the ones doing the surveys, tracking Web site metrics,and noting sales numbers. They know exactly how much it cost you to get that guy to buy your widget. They will know the windows for your business opportunity have a time limit because its their job to track the competition. They trick your product out in the press and in ad campaigns. Boy, is it a bummer to launch a product or a Web site without them watching your back. Don't forget them even though they ain't coding. Sometimes the spoken word is worth more than the carriage return.
Live it vivid!
The last couple of weeks - despite the celebration that gamefest 2008 provided naturally around the accomplishments and the hopes of my team - have been bittersweet.
"Before there was Google, there was Pat."
Dr. Cote was my high school Advanced Placement European history teacher. She was one of those teachers whose factual knowledge was the least of what you learned from her. During the time that I learned all about the age of Enlightenment (and had to role play Voltaire along with my peers playing other philosophers at a dinner she held called "How to Raise a Child"...) her husband died. She kept teaching. We'd kept up while I was in college and when I visited the Boston area, I'd try to stop in and see her.
A lot of what I really learned from Dr. Cote was personal and more about the doing than the saying. What's it like to lose your partner and keep going? What's it like to be an older woman working on your second career that really is your dream? What's it like to have the world in front of you, waiting to be savored, with endless fascinating stories of history?
She had 9x the energy I did, and she was always going overseas. This, on a high school teacher's salary with occasional proctoring work. Her house was filled with things from her travels - art, music, books. Her emails to me were always breathless, run-on sentences.
Dr. Cote was a polite older woman who would curse like a sailor in Boston traffic, and she had this inexplicable poodle fascination. She was always doing, doing, doing - and doing it for other people. She recognized when things got tough and just kept going. If there was anyone counting folks who live it vivid, she was one.
Her death these last few weeks had me pondering what I had learned from her and also, what things I might do better about remembering about having a full life. Then of course, Friday, Randy Pausch dies.
I saw "The Last Lecture" lecture like many did - on the Internet. It swept through the XNA team, actually, when we were first planning all the stuff that would become the community games pipeline.
I bought and read Pausch's book, but never met the guy. Instead, throughout shipping the XNA Community Games beta, late at night, I would go back to his ongoing news page. To see "the box scores", celebrate the moments of fame (he went back to speak to Carnegie Mellon students at graduation, spoke to a number of political bodies, got a bit part in the Star Trek movie) and try to understand how he kept having fun in the middle of fighting for his life.
Reading between the lines about what he was not saying (chemo is not fun and I have no idea how he was able to joke about it except maybe, why not? he had nothing to lose..). He made the most of his last months of life, knowing he was ill but also that was the way he was, and Dr. Cote made the most of her months of life, just because she was Dr. Cote and unstoppable until the last.
Maybe that's the key ...unstoppable until the last.
Live it vivid!
I am back to the salt mines after a day of booth babin' at XNA Gamefest.
It was very cool to see all the MVPS again, hear from customers about what they hope we can do for them in the future, and chat a bit about peer review (no, it's not the same thing as certification and TCRs).
It was also cool to be in the keynote audience and see Boyd and Chris talk about what we've been waiting waiting waiting to talk about: you guys getting paid to make games for the Xbox. The Web site FAQ goes into even more detail: http://creators.xna.com/en-us/XboxLIVECommunityGames.
I'll be watching the blogosphere and the forums to see what you guys think.
Oh yeah, George Clingerman double-dog-dared me to put the When Cods Collide Game up through the submission process. I guess it's a good thing peer review isn't really a quality measure, cause one thing you will notice is that it's labeled for the wrong platform. I'm not offended if you mock it. I think.
But anyway, watch for it. Music by Mad Malcolm is probably the only thing worthwhile in there. :)
Hurrah Torpex! I remember the demo of this game Schizoid at last year's Gamefest booths..such a wild and different style of gameplay. Now you can get it on Xbox LIVE and make your brain dance in new ways :)
Those of you wanting to top When Cods Collide (and I hope you do!) please check out the 2D Game tutorial the amazing XNA Dev Edcontent team has produced!
The team is getting geared up for Gamefest (booth duty rosters being sent round) and just the general excitement of slide decks. <g>
Meanwhile our work to advance from beta advances. All during this blaze of sunshine which frankly I love, but tempts one away from work...
Live it vivid!
So I went home early today with a snoggy head cold...which gave me the perfect excuse to try out the beta code and the community games launcher. It's a bit tricky I admit - once you redeem the code, you have to go over to My Games Area, make sure you have XNA Creators Club indicated at the top and THEN hit the Yellow Y button for download...then automagically all this cool stuff shows up! It really is like being part of a secret club. (Thank you Michael Klucher for all your hard work on this part of the magic)
And scrolling down.....(there are actually more games as I put this post together, including Sumo...the photos are from earlier this afternoon)
Double checked to make sure the game classification was represented properly...hurrah for the Violence, Sex and Mature Content scores! (Thanks to Paul Tidwell for making that magic sentence happen).
Got the splash screen for Little Gamers after the download....
And away we go...I love rocket launchers.... I really do....
So, it all begins here. Writing a game that someday thousands of people will play on their Xboxes. Or, if you are more an armchair dev, helping other people fulfill their dreams by reviewing their game.
Http://creators.xna.com now has what you need to get started.
You can buy a creators club membership...which unlocks the special abilities to submit and peer review games.
Learn the guts of making a great game with guts...playtest at home with your friends by beaming the game to your Xbox.
Submit your game....recruit reviewers on the forums....
Use your creator code (on your profile)....to download the community player and play other people's games.
The team has busted butt to get this out to you- be sure to give us feedback on the connect site (you can file bugs and take the surveys there). Dave Weller has posted more details on the XNA Team blog.
(You know, I hate the long silences I have to observe before shipping something like this (Live QnA drove me nuts the same way)....such a relief to finally get to talk about stuff!)
Betsyedit: trying to get the datestamp to show up right.
....talk to Let's Kill Dave for more details! Can you say - changing the game on a Zune?
I had one afternoon and one evening this week with our beloved XNA MVPs and it really was a treat. Game developer MVPs are a different breed - they tell more bizarre stories on less beers. Ask George Clingerman about the mustache he doesn't have.
....I am eternally grateful to George for praising my cod game blogs btw.I need some undeserved praise once in a while.
Andy Dunn remainds himself. The Zman. Watch out when you go to his blog - somehow I ended up on a blog page with a Lane Bryant bra ad.
Nick Gravelyn had an interesting take on Seattle having come from Michigan where the buildings in his town were much shorter. Raised a glass with Catalin Zima and Michael Morton (Ziggyware.com)
I met a lot more MVPs - some DirectXish, some XNAish - and after a few gin and tonics, promptly forgot their names. That's why Dave Weller has the swanky job of organizing those kinds of events - my face/name memory is atrocious. :( Sorry guys!
At least we got to show them some sneak peaks of things we are working on and get feedback.
Also my new red streaky hair do. I have to admit, when my hair stylist got done, (she works at Vain which is no stranger to odd hair) she did step back and say...."Er, your workplace won't mind, will they?"
And I said, "Naw, I work at Xbox!" :D
Let's just say...it beats that magenta thing Charles Torres talks about in my Ch9 video. Though not sure how much it will fade if Seattle ever sees the sun again.
Bummer to see Dare go "unblogged". I respect his decision, but hope he will be back. He was an interesting voice, to say the least.
I fielded some questions recently about blogging and engaging an audience from a coworker in another team this week, and realized the awesomeness of time passing, if that makes any sense. I've been upfront about passing the tiara and all the projects I've worked on since being Blog Queen. I tried to set up my successors for success, and create resources for people to go to that can be advice, or other people. I remember when I first chatted with Eileen Brown about blogging..now look at her bringing entire companies together (and blogging about it).
People still ask me for advice, and I still care about this medium, regardless of what social or community app I have sunk my heart into this time. I will still yak endlessly, to whomever will listen, about the power of the conversation a company can have with its customers, when it is two-way, when it is real people talking to real people, when we are authentic. I'll say it if you are a VP, or someone I don't know from another team.
I guess it's ironic or perhaps just lame, that I myself am not a key blogger - "I'm no Scoble" (or Chris Sells, or Raymond Chen, or...). But I think it's been more interesting to enable the conversation than be it - I already know what I would say, what's wild and fun is what YOU would blog about. If Randy Pausch can have fun still, health-challenged as he is, then what are we waiting for?
The best is yet to come in the blogosphere.
Oh yeah - that not-blogging- thing I'm working on - XNA community games beta - ya, we are still plugging away at it. :) Long nights of Diet Coke and Red Vine. Sorta like Wine and Roses, only a ton fizzier. :)
Live it vivid!
Finally finally finally I get to blog about this. :) This is the team I am on you know - I am a pm for the community games team in XNA. But I've been so busy today at the conference, really other people are doing a better job of blogging it now.
:)
There are 3 parts to this blog post - the big community announcement, how you can get games you can play RIGHT NOW, and where developers can find out more about developing community games for Xbox LIVE at GDC.
Oh yeah, and I finally fulfilled a dream of playing Dishwasher with the creator, James Silva. Dean or Cyrus have the photo of the actual playing where I basically hacked randomly and James wreaked carnage.
Announcement
Dave Weller has a long blog post here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/02/20/announcing-xbox-live-community-games.aspx
And there's more going on at the XNA Creators Club Web site:
http://creators.xna.com/whatsnew.aspx
I offer some photos....
Chris Satchell, below, talks about opening up the Xbox to community games.
The initial list of community games is:
• The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai (I played this at Gamefest and could not stop)
• JellyCar ( I loved the sound effects of this game - squishy and addictive)
• Little Gamers (much carnage with cute characters from the Web site)
• Proximity HD (This game got Dax addicted)
• Rocketball (great multiplayer game - met them at Gamefest - playtested with friends and pizza)
• TriLinea (the one game I have not played yet)
• Culture (if you like flowers you will like this - non violent)
How to get community games now is in the FAQ posted here: http://forums.xna.com/ShowThread.aspx?PostID=46554
If you are a visual person, Major Nelson and Michael Klucher show you in video format how to get the community player and download the games:
http://www.xbox.com/NR/rdonlyres/29B2AC5C-DB2C-4A6E-81B8-2AB3C59E509F/0/vidgdcxna001lo.asx
For GDC-goers, the breakout sessions about community games (Albert Ho and Dax Hawkins presiding) and the Zune announcement (which Michael Klucher is speaking on) are tomorrow afternoon in room 3002, Moscone West. They will have additional info not present in the FAQ or other locations. More to come!
Live it vivid!
