Torque X-- why we're doing it.

Hello everyone. We're all back from Gamefest now. I hope you all found the announcements there as exciting as we do. It killed us not to be able to talk about this stuff for so long with the community. As soon as we figured out what Microsoft was doing with XNA Game Studio Express and their XNA initiatives overall, we wanted to go tell everyone... sort of scream it from the mountain tops, because it was such cool news. But you can imagine, we were under some major non-disclosure constraints. :) Happily, we did get a chance a couple months ago to let the GG Associates in early on the Torque X plan, and Microsoft themselves came down to have a chat with the GG Associates. That was very cool of them.

Reading all of your comments in blog comments, the forums, the devshots, etc here, it seems everyone pretty much understands what's going on with Microsoft's XNA initiatives, and with Torque X as well. I'm really glad too that everyone recognizes what an opportunity this is. I see that there are still a few questions now about the details on how everything we're doing is going to fit together though, and what the overall plan from our side is. Now that we can speak freely, I'll do my best to try and answer the questions I've seen so far.

There is a lot to say, so I'm going to split this up into two blogs. In the first, I'll just share some general thoughts on what I think this all means-- our plans, Microsoft's plans, and how I hope they'll affect the picture for game makers of all kinds. In the second, I'll try to answer the questions I've seen about Torque X itself.

Digging right in then... let me just say that, personally, I find the stuff the XNA team is doing to be amazingly cool. This is the first time that consoles have really been opened up to small game developers in a meaningful way! And the fact that Microsoft is going to be focusing now on making it easier for people to make games on their own is obviously a neat thing for us to see here at GarageGames. It's great to have Microsoft onboard the train!

For indies, the fact that you can test gameplay ideas on a real console is a big deal. Until now, indies have been virtually locked out of the console space. The console manufacturers tightly control what companies get console development kits, and almost all of them go to major game studios and big publishers. Before Xbox Live Arcade in fact, it was practically unheard of for a small, independent team to get access to a devkit. And even when a team went through the rigmarole of applying for a console devkit and somehow getting approved, the kits typically cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars-- again, setting it out of reach for most small indie teams. Now, it'll be easy to determine if your game idea is appropriate for use on a console-- you can tune the control scheme, optimize your art and color design for display on TV, get familiar with and take advantage of the console hardware and its tricks, etc. That's nice, in that it helps you plan and decide whether it's even possible to deploy your game cross-platform, on the biggest videogame platforms that there are. It's also very nice in that even with the advent of Xbox Live Arcade, and downloadable game channel announcements from the other console manufacturers, it's still going to be hard to get a slot approved for a console. If your game is appropriate for use on a console, and you want to take it there, you can bet it's going to be a lot easier to make your pitch if you walk in with a working prototype up and running and playing well on an Xbox 360!

This is a pretty major deal for educators as well. Torque is used in well over 100 university game development courses around the world, and one of the questions we get asked most frequently by educators is "is there any way my students can get console game dev experience?" There are a couple good reasons they ask this question. First off, the "cool factor" of developing games and then playing them on a console is a major draw for attracting and retaining students. Second, the majority of jobs in the game industry are for positions on teams doing console games. Concordantly, good schools hope to give their students experience that will be most applicable in the real world, and console development is where it's at. With this new announcement from the XNA team, of course that FAQ from educators is easy to answer. Yes, you can teach your students the ins and outs of console game development.

The other thing is just how cool this is for anyone with a gleam in their eye and a good idea for a game. There are a lot of people out there who are interested in making games, but who aren't interested in trying to be true "indies" and get their games out to tons of people, or sell them successfully. Lots of people just think it'd be fun to make games. For those folks who are aspiring or enthusiast game developers, this XNA Game Studio announcement from MS is pretty frickin cool too. I can only imagine how cool this announcement would've been to hear back when I was first learning programming and making little games on my own. To be able to do it, and then invite my friends over to play the game I was working on right there in my living room... wow! That would've rocked. In fact, I bet there is a bunch of young people out there right now who plan to download this stuff the night it comes out... and probably end up being "sick" for the next few days. :)



Besides the fact that Torque X and XNA Framework-based games can be played on the Xbox 360 with the Creator's Club, there's the whole fact that the XNA team (and GarageGames) are getting behind game development on managed code. If you're a dyed in the wool, to the metal C++ coder like myself and most of the engineers here at GarageGames, your initial reaction to the idea of managed code game development was probably like ours was initially: extreme skepticism. But after doing some detailed research, and what I'd say was some really good engineering work, we decided that managed game development could be the real deal. And now that we've had quite a few months to work in the managed environment day in and day out, we all have to agree-- it's totally possible to make your games performant with managed code. Witness our Marble Blast Ultra demo, which looks just like MBU under native code, but with even more cool stuff going on. We've got entirely shader-based rendering with normal mapping, specularity and the usual bling, fully dynamic reflections and environment mapping, particles, all the gameplay code, sound, continuous time physics and polysoup collision detection against a level with about 20,000 polys (which, btw, is being rendered presently with no LOD). All running in 100% managed code. If you caught the video of the keynote we helped with at Gamefest, you know it ran amazingly smoothly. So, yeah, managed gamedev is for real. In our demos so far, we've seen framerates that are strikingly similar to those we see in equivalent native code demos.



Once the performance question is out of the way... thinking about managed game development gets really exciting. It's commonly accepted that working with managed code results in a big productivity gain. Some studies show results as high as 2-3x in coder productivity. In game development, gaining even a 20% boost in code productivity is a huge win. That frees you up to ship more games, with more time to focus on the important stuff-- making the game fun!

So, beyond educators, enthusiasts, and indies, we actually think this push toward managed code game development is going to spread through the industry as a whole. Certainly for Casual Games houses, managed game development is something that bears very serious consideration. Working with managed code is very, very nice, and we bet eventually even big commercial game projects will catch on to it.

Alright, great... the fact that people can play the games they make on their own Xbox 360's is cool.. and the fact that managed code for games is feasible and easy to use is neat... but why is GG helping out with the push on XNA? I hope the answer there is obvious. Microsoft is pushing forward on the same exact goals GarageGames was founded to enable. We've been out here trying to open up game development for everyone with the passion and drive to create their games for the past several years. It's awesome that the message has caught on, and Microsoft itself gets it in such a big, revolutionary way! This new stuff Microsoft is working on is right in line with our mission at GarageGames. They are taking a really nice approach with it, and we'd be silly not to help. :)

I get very excited thinking about all this. Here we go with Microsoft, hopefully getting a ton of new people interested in making their own games. And alongside Microsoft, we're trying to provide technology and tools that will make it easier than ever for people to actually make the games they have envisioned. I can't wait to see what people do with it! I'll be shocked if we don't see a bunch of very cool, very creative games come from all this. That's exciting in and of itself... but now think for a second. Take that expected growth in the number of people who will be working on their own creative games, and combine it with the fact that it's been decades since do-it-yourself game makers have had so much opportunity to get their games out to lots of people. With Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all getting behind the idea of downloadable games on their machines, consoles are opening up to a degree never seen before for smaller game developers. Online game distribution proves more and more successful every single day, and is now working for games of all kinds and sizes. Even the retail boxed channel appears to be opening up a little bit again for small games. Jeff says he hasn't been this jazzed about the state of the industry since he first started. It's been that long since small teams have been able to get their games done and out to good distribution. And we can see some other revolutionary changes on the horizon... Add it all up, and you can see this stuff having a big impact on the games industry as a whole. It's certainly possible... and the cool thing is, all of you, here, are at the epicenter. If the storm comes, I hope it's you all who are making the waves!

That's it for this one. Just thought it was worth explaining some of the reasons we thought this stuff from the XNA team at MS was so cool, and why we decided to back it. Tomorrow, I'll try to answer a bunch of the questions I've seen about Torque X, what exactly it is, how it plays with XNA Game Studio Express, how it fits in with existing engines, etc.

Thanks for reading.