I hadn’t realized how cool the Halo 2 stats site on bungie.net is until Scott blogged it . This really brings the online experience to a new level. It’s so cool, that I had to create a new flair for my blog linking to my stats page (I also put up a link to my games RSS feed). Granted, my stats so far are pretty lame – I’ve only played one multiplayer game so far and I came in 5th. (I did spend most of last night playing the campain.) Maybe the public nature of the stats will drive me to improve them. I haven’t joined a clan yet, but when I do I’ll create a flair for that too.

The coolest thing about this is that it sets a new bar for online experience. ESPN Video Games and EA Sports are nowhere near this level of detail, but I imagine they are taking notice.

I didn’t join the midnight madness, but I did pick up Halo 2 at the company store today. There was a line around the building before the store opened this morning, but by lunchtime it was down to a 15 minute wait. Like many others, I was on the multiplayer beta, but I’m guessing nothing compares to the real deal. I’m not going to get a chance to play until tonight 😦 but I sure am looking forward to it. Quick reminder – my gamertag is RayTracer, though I’ll probably start off w/ the single player campain.

I wonder how many Xbox owners called in sick today?

I’ve been playing a bunch of Rallisport Challenge 2 since I got back from Tech·Ed. I haven’t seen many of my Xbox friends online when I’ve been online, but I just setup the MSN Messenger / Xbox Live integration. Cool idea, but none of my friends are online right now, so there’s not really anything to see, yet.

On a similar note, Cory (who provided my Xbox Live Flair) has an app called Xbox Friends where you can see your friends playing habits in addition to their current status. For those who don’t have it, I can save you the bother of installing it to find out my habits – all Rallisport Challenge 2 all the time!

Update: I also signed up for Xbox Live Alerts as well. This isn’t as useful as there are a wide variety of alerts types and I have to have one delivery profile for all of them. I want to be notified in email if there is new downloads, but on MSN Messenger if a friend logs in. This appears to be an MSN Alerts wide issue – alert settings are per alert provider, not per alert type. Not very useful to be notified in email that a friend was online…yesterday.

I used to say that everything we build should be a platform except for games. What’s interesting is that games are becoming platforms in their own right. Dungeon Siege has the freely downloadable Siege Editor which allows you to “rework nearly every aspect of the gaming world, making Dungeon Siege not only a game, but also a platform for those who wish to create their own spells, dungeons, and even entire worlds.” There are several projects that do just that. And Dungeon Siege II is coming later this year, which looks amazing (all trailer graphics were rendered with the game engine). If RTS is more your speed, Relic – developers of Impossible Creatures – has their developer network which provides both a companion tool for enhancing Impossible Creatures as well as the Impossible Creatures SDK “which includes source code from the IC engine that can be used to create Total Conversion Mods for IC” (Relic Developer Network requires registration). Of course, there’s also the Allegiance source code which was released a few months ago.

I guess the new viewpoint is that everything we build should be a platform, including games.

I’m way behind on blog reading as well as writing, so maybe other have covered these, but I feel compelled to mention them anyway.

Microsoft XNA is an odd name (we sure have a fascination with the letter ‘X’) for a very interesting looking game development platform. You can check out the videos to see some idea of the capabilities, but trust me they’re pretty impressive (of course, they are pre-rendered – I wanna see them render in real-time on my machine). In addition to the graphics capabilities, they’re bringing Xbox Live to Windows. And the FAQ implies that the XNA will be part of the DirectX SDK & Xbox XDK, meaning that there won’t be any additional cost for it. I wonder how this toolkit will impact the non-industry programmer. i.e. can I use it to make 3D games?

I’ve blogged before about my interest in machinima – which is frankly why I’m interested in XNA. Now, Lionhead studios and Activision is coming out with The Movies, a simulation game where you get to manage a movie studio. What’s cool is that you can actually make little movies (according to the FAQ, average length is between 30 seconds and three minutes, but you can make full-length movies if you have the patience) Horror movies and westerns have screenshots, but you can make sci-fi, action, comedy, romance, thriller and romance movies as well. I don’t get much game time these days (I’ve gone back to work my way thru the original Splinter Cell before buying Pandora Tomorrow) but I know this is one I’ll get as soon as it comes out.