Creators Club Communiqué 20

This week is a very special MVP Summit edition of the Communiqué! What’s the MVP Summit? Well, it is one of the few times per year that I actually get to meet our beloved MVPs that help us to wrangle all the knowledge related to our various technologies. We pack tons of secrets and information sharing into three days on Microsoft’s sunny Redmond campus. 

Our MVPs are key members of the community and often write the samples and tutorials I feature here each week. Like this XNA Multitouch Application using Surface(with video)!

This year we spent a good deal of time brainstorming about some awesome things to do throughout the year with XNA Creators Club – starting Thursday March 5th  (after some brief downtime) we’ll launch several new features on XNA: CCO including: RSS Feeds and the ability for Creators to change the price of their game!

We’re also changing the availability Peer Review slightly. Xbox LIVE Community Games relies on the participation and cooperation of all Creators to work. This means being active in the forums, helping to Peer Review others’ games (even if your own title isn’t in review!), and being sure to use Playtest. Despite the best efforts of our MVPs to help people understand that Peer Review is for READY TO SHIP GAMES ONLY people are still abusing it. To help people understand the serious nature of Peer Review – we’re starting a seven day wait period on Peer Review submissions. This means that if you submit a game to Peer Review and it fails or is deleted – regardless of the reason – you will need to wait SEVEN DAYS before submitting again. During this time you will be free to use Playtest, of course!

Some creators have gotten more attention from the press lately! Games Radar’s Andrew Hayward did an article called ‘Seven Great Xbox LIVE Community Games You Need to Get’. He was even smart enough to call us by our proper name so be sure to check it out and Digg it, too!

There is also now a weekly video webcast by “NicktheDude” called XNA Round-up! You should check it out! If you like it be sure to subscribe to his You Tube and Twitter.

Are you going to South By Southwest (aka SXSW)? We are! Well, our beloved Cap’n of the Starship Team XNA Boyd Multerer is going anyway… be sure to check out his panel at the SXSW Interactive Festival ‘Games By the People, For the People’ and stop by on Friday March 13 to say hello!

Finally, this week I was totally exhausted from adventures with all our kick-butt MVPs, but this particular video of a determined cat really inspired me and has given me the strength to push through the week to Friday!

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager