So this is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while and just got around to getting it done now. XNA Game Studio has been brought to you guys by one of the hardest working and most dedicated teams I have ever had the honor of being a part of. You already know some of the team members through the forums and such, but it’s time you really get to know them! With that said, I want to kick off the “Team Interviews” series! I ask questions, a team member answers them, and I publish the interview here for you to read. I am delighted to start this series with one of our framework developers: Yuichi Ito
Who are you and what do you do at XNA?
My name is Yuichi Ito. XNA Framework developer.
What did you work on before joining XNA?
I’ve start working for Hudson when I was 18 year old and my first title was Bomberman `94 on turbo graphics.
After that, I’ve worked for Sega and did some work on the Dreamcast system library. Then I moved to U.S to work for Digital Anvil at Austin Texas (yee-hah!!). I worked on a particle system with editor for Freelancer, then on porting the particles system to Xbox. I also worked on XML based data system, physics based character movement, and animation for Brute Force.
How did you join the XNA team? Tell the story!
Unfortunately, Digital Anvil studio was shutdown at end of 2005. I’ve been working for game industry for more than decade and notice that it getting harder and harder to make game you want. Most games spend a couple years in pre-production and are then rushed into the production phase. And I’m not going to tell you about more details because I think you guys are already know about such realities.
But one day, one of junior programmers at studio told me “I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore. Because what I suppose to be doing is game programming but what I’m doing is tool programming.” And that’s when it struck me. When I was working on first title, it was so fun to work on it because I could concentrate on pure game programming the entire time.
Why did game development become such a boring and painful job? I’ve already had some (but not enough ;D) fun but seems like young people mostly suffer from that pain. I asked myself, how could I make them happy?
Then I met Boyd Multere and heard about XNA. I was so excited about his plan that I was practically begging him to join the XNA team.
What features did you work on for XNA 1.0 and 2.0?
On 1.0, I designed and implemented the math library. I also worked on BasicModel, BasicEffect, and XACT build.
On 2.0, well, I was not working on 2.0 stuff that much. I was working on other thing that I can’t tell you right now…
What’s their favorite bit of XNA, and why?
There are so many things!! But my most favorite feature of XNA is networking.
Networking is so simple and the API is easy to use, and of course it works as expected.
What is your favorite Xbox game?
There are so many things!! Especially last holiday season. I bought game for almost every single week from thanksgiving to Christmas. (E.d hmm…looks like we pay our devs too much)
But most favorite game is COD4. Why? Because I beat it and got 1,000GP.
Share some tips and tricks for using XNA
Back in the day, when I was working on any kind of game, I usually have game dev environment that is a game editor that runs on Windows and talks to the target platform. For example, you can change parameters on windows and that apply to target platform in real time. On XNA 2.0, you can use networking to achieve this. The trick is XNA networking only connects to applications that have the same assembly GUID that typically in AssemblyInfo.cs. So, easy way to let your game editor talks to the game is set same GUID value to editor side GUID.
Last words?
As I mentioned before, my goal is make game development easier and more fun. So if you feel that anything you do is too hard, not fun on XNA, let us know about it. We happily work for you.
Oh, and if you find any bugs, blame Nazeeh, he is Tester, all his fault. (E.d. While true, we can’t neglect the fact that HE put the bugs in there in the first place!)
Interview Comments
I wanted to thank Yuichi Ito for taking the time to answer my short interview. Now I ask you guys and gals, do you like this series? If so, what other questions do you feel I should ask? This is your chance to really get to know the XNA Game Studio team more personally. The people on this team are amazing and I am honored to do the introductions :)
Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below. Don't forget to subscribe to my RSS Feed!
This first interview was a great read. I can’t wait for the rest of the interviews.
Good interview, looking forward to meeting the rest of the team.
It would be good to know if the team members Blog, if so what is the address, and if not Why Not?
Don’t you have bugs to find? Or Warcraft replays to study? ;-)
This was a cool idea Nazeeh! Keep ‘em coming.
Nice interview !
That’s a good idea.
But we demand pictures ! :)
Keep up the interviews, it’s great to hear from the team.
Additional questions:
What were some of the problems faced when developing the framework?
or
What was the most challenging component to work on?
Really nice interview! keep going with this.
some questions i would like to ask:
- What skills do you need to join in the XNA team?
Cmon, go ahead and tell us what he has been working on. :)
I tried to find out, but he has two very large guards standing outside his office door. They hit hard too!
Forget the games. Tell us about all of the hot chics he gets to date. Or better yet. How about an interview with the other team member’s significant other? Personally, this cracks me up, because I don’t know why my wife stays around with all the extra hours I put in each week just to keep a project on track. I imagine the deliverables are just as tight in your world. Thanks for blogging frequently. Nudge Mr. Shawn about his please.
I’ll second the pictures suggestion. This is great stuff, and I hope you go through the entire team!
Definitely on pictures, and a great idea to have an interview series. Thanks!
What about getting Ito-san to work on a sample illustrating the technique mentioned in the “Share some tips and tricks for using XNA” section. I believe I understand the concept as an editor that talks to the game in real-time but the implementation is leaving me. I suppose by linking the GUIDs it’s easier to talk to the game through COM but how one goes about doing that specifically is where I’m having trouble. Can an editor on Windows talk to the xbox360?
Anyway that paragraph kinda opened my eyes a bit about the possibilities of an editor. I mean this is straight .NET on the Windows side so there’s no reason to think of this differently than say Word automation through COM, yet one typically doesn’t think of a game in the same manner.
Hey Jeremy,
I’ll point Ito to your comment and see what he has to say. It is a good point! Thanks for bringing it up :)
Nice post. Christian Dillstrom had a book mark to your blog site. Any idea why? He is mobile and social media marketing expert, so your weblog is example of something.
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