We caught up recently with Janelle, CEO of Protege Production (a Microsoft BizSpark startup) and Robin Tan, the Creative/Technical Director, after being included among the top 20 finalists of the Dream-Build-Play 2010 Challenge for their game Armor Valley. Below is an email interview with her:
“Congratulations for being among the top 20 in DBP 2010! Quite a feat indeed, besting the other games around the world! I remember you telling us before that this year would be a challenging one because you mentioned being ‘blown away’ with the other entries you saw. What are your thoughts about that now? Anything in particular that you think propelled you to Top 20?”
“Actually I’m still in disbelief that Armor Valley got into the Top 20, considering the quality of the submitted entries I have seen. Many of them were very creative and well polished, and considering we spent only around 5 months, I’m very happy to be in the finalist already. For Armor Valley, we tried to make something a bit more more towards aaa casual (not AAA, but the game makes you go aaaaaaahhhh), so I guess that’s our unique touch.”
“You have been programming your games using XNA for quite sometime now. Any advice or tips for those who want to get into XNA to develop their own games?”
“The only good advice, is to use Nike tagline ‘Just Do It!’. There are quite a good number of resources and community to learn from, like the forums creators.xna.com, so there’s no need to wait.”
“Microsoft recently launched the CTP versions of the developer tools for Windows Phone 7. Developers can use either Silverlight or XNA to develop applications for WP7. Do you think your game is a straight port to WP7? How do you think this will change the strategy for most game companies/developers building on XNA or Silverlight?”
“The game would not be a direct straight port. There are challenges when going from a large Xbox 360 display to a smaller phone display. We probably have to redesign some parts of the game to maximize the phone potential. I think Microsoft’s strategy of putting XNA onto Windows Phone (7) is simply brilliant. It opens the phone to many developers. Unlike iPhone where developers have to learn Objective C, which is something I keep procrastinating on. Now I don’t have to, and we can still move into mobile space. I foresee a lot of companies will do the same by releasing to both platforms. If the phone is powerful enough, it could prove to be a competition for hand held gaming devices.”
“Thanks again Janelle and congratulations! Any words you want to impart to our readers?”
“Thank you all for supporting Armor Valley!”
You can check out Armor Valley at http://protegeproduction.com/
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOtE0idVQyM[/youtube]
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