Hi everybody! I’m happy to welcome you all to my new blog, Innovative Games! I’m going to use this post to give you a little information about myself and give some background as to why I created this blog, what it’s about, etc.

First things first, who am I?

My name is Sean James. I am a hobbyist game developer, and I focus mainly on development with Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio (http://www.creators.xna.com). In the future I hope to work in the professional game development industry, and if possible one day start my own independent game development studio.

I’ve been programming for many years, and my experience covers HTML, CSS, PHP, MYSQL, Java, JavaScript, XML, C++, HLSL, and, most recently, C#. I started off game programming with DirectX in C++, and then moved on to Managed DirectX in C#. When XNA first launched, I immediately fell in love with it, and have been developing my own games with it ever since.

I am extremely excited about the recent announcements about self-publishing XNA games over Xbox Live, because this brings me one step closer to my goal of owning a successful independent game studio.

Next, a little about the blog.

I decided to start this blog to share some of the things I have learned, and to communicate and learn from the other developers who are out there. I chose the name Innovative Games because it reflects the way I feel about the current state of the game industry and how I would like to change it.

Professional games these days cost millions of dollars to produce, which make them a huge investment for a game developer. Thus, developers are afraid to take risks or try new gameplay concepts in their game, because if they are unsuccessful, the developer could be in serious trouble and quite possibly be put out of business. The result of this is that we end up getting the same first person shooter game over and over, and games that really break the mold are few and far between.

Luckily, game development is becoming greatly simplified through products like XNA, which means that it is now feasible for one person or a small team of people to make a fairly high quality game. The result of this is less time and money is spent on development, which allows developers to try new things.

This has lead to smaller, more creative games getting more attention, and independent developers are starting to be regarded as viable sources of quality games. The huge success of independently developed games like Portal and Braid are great examples.

What this is all leading to is a game industry led by independent game studios, where huge game development studios are less common.

Anyway, that’s all for now, soon I’ll be getting started with the normal posts. Be sure to check back here often, comment, tell your friends, and enjoy what I have to say!

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