Xbox LIVE "Community Games" is a new offering from Xbox LIVE® that gives you an opportunity to share, peer review, download, and play games created by the community, for the community. Starting with the beta launch of the service later this spring, members of the XNA Creators Club will be able to submit their own game creations for self-publishing to Xbox LIVE Marketplace via the XNA Creators Club creators.xna.com website.
A community of their peers will be given a chance to download, play, and review the game and its content for appropriateness and conformance to the service's Terms of Service. Should it pass, the game will then get added to the global games catalog on Xbox LIVE Marketplace and available to gamers worldwide connected to Xbox LIVE.
You Can Be a Developer
All it takes for anyone to develop games for Community Games is to obtain the XNA Game Studio 2.0 toolset free from creators.xna.com and join the XNA Creators Club ($49 for 4 months or $99 for 12 months).
Individuals of all skill levels can participate in the making of a game for Community Games, as many games are created by teams where different members bring different skills and strengths such as game design, production, 2-D or 3-D art creation, sound effects, and of course game programming. We have received many heartwarming stories from our community members who have tried unsuccessfully in the past to create video games and yet were immediately successful in completing their games using the easy-to-use XNA Game Studio tools.
Games Montage Get an early look at the seven inaugural community games you can download and play. High | Low
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Available Games
A special preview of a subset of Community Games will made available on February 20, after the GDC keynote announcements. Be sure to check out these select Community Games, available for download from 11:00 A.M. PST on February 20 until 12:00 A.M. PST on February 26:
Little Gamers: This game is a 2-D high-definition action side-scroller based on the famous webcomic Little Gamers (little-gamers.com).
ProximityHD: Proximity takes the essence of strategy games—battles for control of territory and armies—and distills it down to a simple, easy to understand set of rules that makes the genre more accessible to casual players than ever before.
Rocketball: A neighborhood game of dodgeball explodes onto the street with fast paced multi-player action, power-ups galore, and Rocketball strikes that will tear your opponents apart.
TriLinea: TriLinea is a puzzle game that mixes fast paced action with strategy.
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai:TheDishwasher is an intense 2-D action platforming game with a unique, highly stylized look and fast and fluid action. The game's hero is a lowly dishwasher (the occupation, not the appliance) who has lost everything, including his heart, at the hands of the deceptive and evil cyborg movement and is seeking revenge.
JellyCar:JellyCar puts you behind the wheel of a squishy car driving through squishy worlds, trying to reach the exit.
Culture: Culture is a set of beautifully inviting games based on creative uses of flowers to combat weeds, paint-by-numbers, and breed new varieties.
