Creators Club Communiqué 48

Hello, Creators!

Man, are we ever tired! We’ve just returned from our whirlwind adventures at Penny Arcade Expo (PAX East), where nealy 60,000 gamers attended the three-day event and good times were had by all! You can see and read about our Boston adventures in our previous Team XNA Game Studio blog post. You can also see some of the love that the video game enthusiast press gave to the Xbox LIVE Indie Games in attendance; here’s a snapshot!

• 1UP.com’s Christina Sanchez offers an in-depth preview and videos of Ska Studios’ upcoming sequel, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile! James Silva has a list of additional media coverage on his site!
• Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo spent some time at Mommy’s Best Games booth checking out their anticipated co-op title Grapple Buggy!
• The Bitbag got a chance to do a quick video interview with yyrGames’ own Aaron Teplitsky!

Seeing all the support the attendees was absolutely fantastic; making us even more excited for PAX Prime in September!

This weekend (April 2nd-4th) is WonderCon in sunny San Francisco. Martin Robaszewski of Bioroid Studios will be in booth 1418 with the latest build of their hit XBLIG Cyborg Mice Arena as well as giving attendees a sneak peek of their upcoming Cyborg Mice web comic! Be sure to say hello to them!

Meanwhile, on XNA Creators Club Online, there has been a small change to Peer Review and a reminder that are worth noting.

Avatar Usage: Clarification was required to our Peer Review Avatar Usage Guidelines.

• • Player interacts with their avatar as if it’s a separate character
    A player’s avatar does not have an autonomous personality or instinct. The avatar is under the control of the owning player. It can have idle animations and can respond appropriately to game events but it should not interact with the user as if it is separate from the player, or try to get the player’s attention in an annoying manner. A cut scene is allowed, as well as replay, as long as the action makes sense within the gameplay.

  • Added: An exception is made for relevant titles (sports, cohort adventure games, etc.); it is permitted for a game to allow a user to temporarily switch control from their primary Avatar to that of a computer controlled Avatar—teammate.

We’ve also posted a reminder in regards to the Peer Review Terms and Conditions. We’ve noted a great deal of bargaining, trading, begging, and shilling to Creators for an exchange of games in Peer Review. To preserve the integrity of the entire Peer Review system this is absolutely not allowed…EVER. If you see it, you should be sure to report it to us through Creators@microsoft.com

xxoo

~kathleen sanders

XNA Community Manager