Man this past weekend was fun! I had a blast getting to hang out with Nathan (creator of Weapon of Choice), Amy (his wife) and everyone who came out to play the games! We had a good turnout at both locations, and as far as I could tell, everyone really enjoyed playing Weapon of Choice- and we got a little interest going for our game too.

Now for some pictures:

Nathan, Amy, and I

Owlboy on the big screen

It was really nice to meet Nathan and discuss game design with him and dig deeper into Weapon of Choice. He had lots of entertaining and great stories about how he came up with ideas for the game. There's a lot to that game, and I really recommend it to anyone to download and play on their Xbox 360's (it's only $5!). He played Owlboy and gave me some suggestions and comments about the game, and I was really thankful for that. It's great to spend some time with people who are currently doing the same thing you are (developing a game with XNA for the Xbox Community games) and since they just released their game, I got to learn about their experience with the system.

Thanks Nathan and Amy for letting me tag along, and thanks a bunch to Waba Game and Computer Arena for hosting the events!

Unreleated to the party, we've got lots of new stuff coming up with Owlboy and we can't wait to show some more of it. Thanks for reading and I'll catch you next time!

XBox Live Community games launches today, and with it is an exciting title by Mommy's Best Games called Weapon of Choice. It's a lot like a psychadelic version of Contra, with some new gameplay elements (forget the completely unfortunate dying from the old days.) I recommend the game, and it's available to all Xbox Live users through the new Community Games section for only 400 MS points.

So what does this have to do with us? Well, this weekend Mommy's Best Game is holding a launch party for their game, and it happens to be nearby where I live! I spoke with them and we agreed it would be a great opportunity to spread the word about our indie Xbox game as well. It's short notice, as I just found out about this today, but if anyone is in the Atlanta area this weekend, I'll be there demonstrating a work in progress demo of Owlboy, answering questions about the game and XNA development, and just generally hanging out and chatting with people. The party will be held on both Friday and Saturday, at two different locations- so pick whichever works best for you.

Friday, November 21: Waba Game in Duluth, GA 7PM-9PM

Saturday, November 22: Computer Area in Roswell, GA 3PM-5PM

Click read more for google maps directions to both locations!

Read More..

I was visiting the local free zoo here in Athens one nice Sunday afternoon, and I saw that they had a special owl exhibit going on. I couldn't help but snap a few pictures for the other owl fans.

Meet Atari, she's a barn owl.

This guy had a little bit of stage fright..

That's better. He's all calmed down for now

And that's the end of the line for this unfortunate owl!

With the release of the first screenshots of Owlboy, I noticed we had got a lot of requests and questions about porting it to other consoles.

Man, it would be wonderful to release Owlboy on different consoles, but there are reasons that we're not moving forward in that direction at the moment. Well, as far as I know, both Nintendo and Sony havent' opened up their Wii and PS3 consoles for homebrew development like Microsoft has. As far as I know, developing for WiiWare and PSN is a lot like the current XBox Live Arcade: You need to buy expensive dev-kits and go through some sort of approval process. XNA and XBox Live Community games is a different beast entirely, anyone can use the dev-kit/framework (XNA) for free, and when XBLCG is released, developers will be able to publish their games for a very low cost ($50-$100USD if I remember correctly..) 

D-Pad Studios isn't a big business, or really a business at all. We're a few guys who are working together on making some games, in our free time. I'm a full time student and I've got a part-time job as well. Therefore, we don't have the kind of funds to do a real port to WiiWare or PSN. I've read rumors that both Nintendo and Sony are going to release something similiar to XNA and XBLCG, but I really think they are waiting for Microsoft's version to be released and see what success they get on the business side of things (XNA is already a success in my book, there's so many developers using it right now!).

As for DS homebrew, its a really cool platform, but I don't think we'd really have a large target audience there. We don't have a publisher or anything, so digital distribution is really the route that we're aiming for. The DS would require us to make lots of cartridges ourselves, or just provide a ROM file for people with the proper tools to play with. Neither are a real good solution for a team like us. Without the game being sold in the large retailers, it would surely not reach enough people considering the amount of time it would take to port to the DS.

I hope that the other console makers will follow in Microsoft's footsteps. It's an exciting time to be a part of the Indie-game community- I personally think that XBLCG will be a great success and the others won't see a reason not to allow their consoles to be more open. The digital distribution methods are great for the little guys like us, it'll be a revolution similiar to internet downloads for indie PC games.