MVP Status Renewed!

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:19:49 GMT

Yes, MS saw fit to renew my MVP Award for another year. I guess I did something worthwhile during the year to earn it. Since George will make me look bad with his list, I'll have to do one myself. :)

XBL Radio Podcast

I started the year off by participating in a podcast with the guys over at XBL Radio and a couple of developers talking about XNA and the possibility for gamers and game developers. You can download the podcast from here.

Tech Editing

I did the tech edits for two XNA books, Ben Nitschke's Pro XNA Game Programming book and the as-yet-unreleased Expert One-on-One XNA Game Programming book.

Forums

I continued helping out on a couple of forums - the Creators Club site forums, GameDev.net, and the Game Programming Wiki forums, although my posts on the CC forums lagged behind a couple of others. But hey, one of them is on the XNA team and another sits around the house for a living, supposedly doing software development (yes, I'm talking about the Z-Man ;) ). I'm guessing Nick just doesn't have a life (even more so than me) to have upped his post count so greatly.

Blog

Although I didn't make as many posts as I wanted on this blog, I think I did manage to get a couple out there that someone hopefully found useful. I'm determined to finish my serious on RPG game dev using XNA and get my RPG Starter Kit out there before MS releases theirs. :)

XNA Book

I guess the biggest thing I worked on was the book I'm co-authoring for Wordware. While not quite aimed at the same audience as Ben's, hopefully it'll help people out. The fact that it's been updated for XNA Game Studio 2.0 (which threw a big wrench in the works and has delayed it a bit) is a plus. I'd love opportunity to do another, maybe on RPG game development in XNA (maybe even an MMORPG!!! :D OK, so it wouldn't be an MMO, but it's cool to dream, right!?)

Maybe George and I will set a precedent for the other XNA MVPs and we'll get more of us talking about how great game development using XNA GS can be! ;)

I Feel Great!

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:02:40 GMT

This is just too good to pass up (the chance to laugh at Sean I mean). Remember that old NutraGrain "I Feel Great" commercial? OK, so maybe you don't. If not, click here first. Then watch this:

Video: I Feel Great! - MVP

I'm still waiting for my millions of devoted fans.

MVP Summit Summary

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 04:06:21 GMT

Well, I survived my first Microsoft MVP Summit. Outside of the time when I was actually in the game industry and working on games that one could find on a store shelf, the Summit was one of the best and coolest events ever. To be able to actually meet and talk to many of the people that I had only known online was great. The 4 days were jam-packed with sessions that gave me some good knowledge about XNA and VS (which I attended in order to be able to justify my company picking up the tab for the flight and my time off :D). Between the sessions, it seemed like I was also stuffing food in my face. The people that told me I'd eat well weren't kidding!

Kudos to the team that planned the event. I don't believe it could have gone any smoother. It's incredible that an event could be organized for 1700 people and not hit a major snag. If there was one I'm not aware of it. I did read posts in the MVP newsgroup that some people had problems getting home due to bad weather but that's Mother Nature's fault. My flight to and from were uneventful, although sitting in an airplane seat for 2 and 4 hours on the two flights each way were rough on the backside. Next year I'll have to try to get a 1st class ticket. It'll probably still be rough, but at least I'll feel better about it. :)

Day-by-day summary:

Sunday - I arrived in Seattle on Sunday afternoon as the leaders over at the vbCity site were invited to a dinner by the awesome guy that runs the site. Big thanks to Serge for the dinner. It was a good time. I probably gained a couple of pounds from that meal alone!

Monday - registration and Expo day. Registration was a matter of 5 minutes as I got there as soon as it opened and I think people were mostly arriving after I was already registered. There were probably a couple of hundred people there, but there were about 10 lines (divided by the first letter of the last name) and it seemed like they were getting people through quickly. Got my bag full of goodies and headed over to the Expo. Shocker, there was a ton of food there! I tossed down some snacks and check out the half-dozen or so areas they had set up. Got a t-shirt from the .NET Micro Framework guy who showed off some cool uses of the Framework. Met my MVP Lead and many other people from different areas. Everyone was very friendly.

Dinner was divided up by regions at two hotels and the room for the Americas was monstrous. Great food again, although the entertainment didn't quite match it. All the MVP team people were introduced and made to do silly things with balloons and such. I left quickly after they were finished and headed out with a couple of the DirectX guys to the rooms were various things were going on. The highlight had to be geek karaoke! I wish someone would post the many, many pictures that were taken. I believe there was video as well. Maybe it'll show up on YouTube eventually. Some people were ok and some were not so good. The not so good were more entertaining (just like American Idol! ;D). I played some Gears of War on the 360s they had setup in another room, but my skillz are very weak from not playing in too long.

Tuesday - Keynote day. Stuffed my face at breakfast (see a trend beginning here? :D) and headed to the room for the keynote with Bill Gates. By the time I got there about a hundred or so people were already congregating outside the doors. When the doors opened it was a geek stampede to get seats. It was crazy. You'd have thought they were giving away something to the first people to get front row seats! I think I ended up about 10 rows back and on the end right in the middle. Great seat. The Canadian MVP contingent ended up occupying 3 rows of seats behind me. They clearly organized before the Summit as they were all wearing red hockey jerseys with a big mapleleaf type logo and Canada mapleleaf patches on the shoulders. Have to see about getting some shirts for us DirectX guys or something. We can't let Canada show us up. :)

Bill gave a good keynote, covering from the beginnings of MS days (anyone remember the famous "64K should be enough for anyone" quote? :D) to where he sees technology headed. It'll be very interesting to see if everyone happens and it'll be very cool if it does. He then answered about a dozen questions from the audience. Several dozen were still lined up when time ran out. I know they were disappointed as I believe this was the last time he'll be doing a public speaking gig.

There were a couple of .NET type sessions that I hit afterwards and a Games for Windows session where they revealed what's now publicly known - Games for Windows - LIVE. Unified network for PC and 360 multiplayer gaming. Very cool stuff. Got to see some more video of Crysis, it's looking great! Not much else revealed here that isn't already public knowledge unfortunately.

Dinner this night was at the Museum of Flight. I actually didn't eat much here (mainly as I was still stuffed from the food during the day) and spent time wandering around. Got to check out the flight simulator they have here (I believe it's an F16 type simulator, but I don't remember exactly). Did my best to break it with loops and rolls but it survived. They have a room set up with instruments where anyone could sit down and jam but I didn't get to show my my drum skills. They guys that were there when I checked it out were very good. I'm not sure who they were though. More geek karaoke and geek dancing. I heard they were supposed to have Guitar Hero 2 setup but I never did find it. :( Overall, a pretty cool night.

Wednesday/Thursday - The sessions today were all about DirectX and XNA. Good stuff. The future of XNA is looking incredible is about all I can say. The team is dedicated to making it the best possible tool for game development that they can. They're all great guys too. Dinner on Wednesday was in the Millennium Cafe on the MS campus. Again, I was stuffed from earlier and didn't really eat much. Spent most of the time talking with everyone, which was great. The Program Manager for Live Arcade stopped by and I chatted with her for about 15 minutes. Even though she wouldn't hook us up with any cool secret info, I still appreciated the fact that she came down (I'm going to be sending you an email Trisha, so be prepared ;) :D ).

We ran out of time Thursday afternoon in our open Q&A session unfortunately. We could have talked all day about stuff I'm sure. Guess we'll have to resort to the old newsgroups and forums to talk. Not as much fun though.

I grabbed a quick lunch back at the main MS campus, got in on the DirectX MVP team picture and jumped on a bus to the airport. I sat at the airport for about 2 hours as my flight didn't leave until 7 p.m. Got a little bit of work done on my Dream-Build-Play game and watched some videos on my laptop. I got back in to Baltimore at 6:30 the next morning. 8( Went home, grabbed a quick shower and breakfast and headed into work. I can't decide if I'm dedicated or just dumb.

I'm still recovering somewhat from the week. I've got a lot of info to sift through and a lot of catching up to do still in the various forums I'm on. An incredible time overall. MS really takes care of the MVPs. I'm looking forward to attending again next year, assuming I managed to maintain my status. :)

Machaira's Space: MVP

MVP Status Renewed!

I Feel Great!

MVP Summit Summary