In the Beginning

I've been a gamer for about as long as I can remember.

My family got an Apple ][+ when I was around 6 years old. I still remember that the two games that came with it were "Castle Wolfenstein" and "RobotWar". The former got me into gaming, and the latter probably kicked me off as a programmer.

As an adult, I still play games, but also tend to swing back and forth between that and actually trying to make games. I've started dozens of projects, but I usually get to the point where I say to myself "Who is actually going to play this? Maybe my friends will humor me, but is it really worth all this effort?"

The along came XNA and the Creators Club.

I'm a professional C# programmer by day, so XNA wasn't too difficult to learn. And after so many failed projects, I'd already learned a lot of lessons on my own.

I've said it before on the forums, but I'm still totally shocked that Microsoft gives us access to all the tools needed, as well as a publishing platform to MILLIONS of Xbox Live players, for an annual fee of $99. This really is a dream come true, and was sufficient motivation for me to actually finish one of those projects I'd been working on. Not having any audience or publishing platform was a sufficient deterrent, but the final piece of the puzzle was now in place.

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