XNA Launch Event

We got up nice and early and headed for the university. Unfortunately, thanks to traffic, we were a bit later arriving on campus than I wanted, but still in time to do a bunch of interviews for the press.

The morning talks were all about how the XNA technology works and how it fits into to the games industry. The answers, by the way, are very well and very well. It is really easy to use and, whilst not yet applicable to "top of the range" games is going to find increasing favour in the games industry as they come to terms with just how much easier it makes things.

Then it was lunch, another interview, and then time for my bit. The talk seemed to go OK, the audience were polite enough to laugh at most (but not all of) my jokes. You can find the presentation, complete with clip art, here.

Then Peter Molyneux gave his session. Which was excellent. The most important thing that came out of his talk was the emphasis that he places on communication skills. You should be good at your part of the game production process. You should be brave enough to take your ideas and champion them passionately. But you also need people skills. If you can't persuade, argue, admit when you are wrong and keep as many people happy as possible during the rollercoaster ride that is game development then you are going to have a hard time. That was very good to hear. At Hull we push those aspects of professional development very hard indeed, and it was good to hear one of the best game creators in the business echo them for me.

We even made the BBC News.

And then we got in the magic bus for the trip home.

One of these students has won an XBOX 360 at the XNA launch event. Can you use your powers of observation to discover which one?