Creators Club Communiqué 37
Greetings, Indie Game Creators! We have lots of news to share with you this week, so buckle up!
First up, all Creators should take note of a small change to Peer Review. As you all know, Xbox LIVE Indie Games is just barely a year old. We’re constantly growing and adapting. We listen to your feedback and the whole team does our best to address the new questions and challenges you present us!
There were some legitimate questions and concerns about the rules within Peer Review regarding Racist/Discriminatory Language as it pertains to religion or religious texts. After careful consideration and discussion with people who hold law degrees we elaborated on this rule:
Racist/Discriminatory Language
Depictions of ethnic, religious, nationalistic or other stereotypes like to encourage hatred. Historical religious text and scriptures (such as the Ye Ole (Old) Testament, New Testament, King James Bible, Koran, Torah, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc) are permitted in an unaltered or unabridged state. Citation for a passage or quotation needs to be referenced. Xbox LIVE reserves the right to review and refuse any game content.
Secondly, (this is mostly for our incredible Student Indie Game Creators that live in the mythical land called England) on Friday February 19, 2010 videogame design and development students from all over the UK will relocate to the Birmingham City University’s Millenium Point campus for the first XNA GameCamp of 2010.
Produced by Pixel-Lab for Microsoft, X48 will see which games students can create in less than 48 hours. Using Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio 3.0 the teams will build game prototypes on a theme to be unveiled during Friday morning’s initiation. The event is free to attend, but registration is on a first come first served basis at https://x48birmingham.eventbrite.com. You can read more about it at their website and follow them on Twitter!
Finally, congratulations are in order! Beloved XNA MVP Nick Gravelyn, best known on XNA Creators Club Online as “Nick Gravelyn” and for his amazing website XboxIndies.com, has joined our team here at Microsoft! Be sure to send him your congrats, but fear not! Just because he’s no longer an XNA MVP doesn’t mean he won’t still be hopping through our forums answering questions and gently guiding those who are lost.
~kathleen sanders
XNA Community Manager