XNAstart.com : Your XNA Game Studio Starting Point

I'll admit, I didn't know what XNA was until this past weekend. I think I heard it mentioned in a news article in August, but I never really made the connection with what it was. Microsoft's XNA Game Studio is a free tool that will allow you to create games. These games will run on Windows XP and Windows Vista, and for an additional fee, you can share the games on the XBox 360 (more on that later).

The reason I got interested in XNA was after watching a presentation given by Chris Satchell of Microsoft at America's VideoGame Expo this past weekend (in October 2006). Mr. Satchell compared XNA with YouTube... wouldn't it be great to have a community of user-created games, just like YouTube has a community of user-created videos? Where users could rank, comment, and respond to games? I thought this was a really interesting idea, with a lot of potential.

The problem I saw here is that it's great to say "Let's make a community of games created by users" but most gamers don't have Computer Science degrees. I checked out a bunch of XNA sites, which are all totally awesome, but almost every one of them is targeted at people with a lot of programming experience. My thought was, "Wouldn't it be great if I could help people with little-to-no programming experience create simple games with XNA Game Studio?" I'll admit, you're not going to be able to make the next great first-person-shooter with no programming knowledge, but you can at least get started with making games and decide if you want to learn a little bit more.

Microsoft is teaming with universities across the country to implement courses in XNA. If you're not fortunate enough to be near one of those educational institutions, or just want to try out XNA without putting up any money, this is the site for you.

You may ask why I attempt such a task. In 1996, I wrote HTML: An Interactive Tutorial for Beginners which, even ten years later, is still teaching HTML to over one million people ever year. I also have a degree in Computer Science and Digital Media from Albright College in Reading, PA which helps out, too :)

I co-created and did the majority of the programming for the Shockwave game "The Cancer Game" in 2003. This game was designed for cancer patients and survivors as an outlet to rid them of some stress. It's pretty cool, I encourage you to try it out. You may need to download Adobe/Macromedia's Shockwave plug-in.