GDC 2009: Indies, Avatars, and Awards A-Go-Go!

Every year at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco the videogame industries top minds gather together for a week's worth of melding their space brains into faster, smarter machines. This helps many of them make the magic that we all enjoy playing on our Xbox 360s and Windows PCs!

Team XNA kicked off the conference with some exciting announcements for developers of all levels from Pros to Indies. One of the more exciting announcements specifically for fans of Xbox LIVE Community Games is that with the release of the latest version of XNA Game Studio, our Creators will gain access to Xbox LIVE Avatars and Xbox LIVE Party systems! That means you could see your Avatars populating Community Games this year! 

As the XNA Community Manager, naturally my eye is drawn to the Independent Games Festival at GDC. Every year, the games these Indie devs show off get more and more incredible! Each year more platforms open up to aspiring developers, as the Xbox 360 console did with the launch of Community Games last November, so the number of indie games also increases!

This year there was not a single time that I visited the IGF area of the GDC expo floor when the place wasn't hopping. People stood in lines to get their hands on all sorts of these incredible, award-winning games. Team XNA is proud to say that the top prize awarded by IGF went to a game developed with XNA Game Studio! Erik Svedang's Blueberry Garden went home with the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and $30,000! Previous winners IGF award winners include Xbox LIVE Arcade hits Braid and Castle Crashers. There were even a few Xbox LIVE Community Games that were entered in the competition, nominated and/or on display at GDC including: Audiball, CarneyVale: Showtime, Funky Punch XL, PercussONE, and Petank Party! You don't have to wait in line -- you could go and download them from Xbox LIVE Community Games now!