I’m now firmly back in Austin, Texas. Feels good to be here. Warm weather, breakfast tacos, NPR, pancakes and all of the local businesses… it certainly feels like home. Of course, there is still a mountain of boxes to unpack (amazingly, unpacking boxes goes pretty slow with a six-month old and a new startup!). Oh, and Christmas shopping… So, I’m really looking forward to getting to the other side of the holidays so life can somewhat return to a normal pace…

People are asking what I’m working on, and I’ve given some veiled hints. And there are a few folks I’ve actually explained it to offline. The reactions have all been positive — dare I say, excited — so far. Of course, my powers of persuasion are legendary (why do you think EA acquired Criterion? ).

Here’s the big, big, big picture goal: to make game making a purely creative process, to eliminate the drudgery of engineering that it currently requires. If technical neophytes can create web pages and edit videos, then why can’t they make games? Because we’re special? I don’t think so. Because it’s interactive? Folks get board games, and when they were kids, they certainly made up alot of games on their own. So, as educated adults who can use a computer well enough to surf the web and download music to their iPods, how come they can’t make a PacMan clone?

It’s time to stop approaching the problem from the engineeer’s perspective, which is exactly what XNA does… it’s an SDK. It’s not the YouTube of video games… it’s the RenderWare of hobbyist programmers! Not a bad thing, not an unwanted thing, but not everything it could be!

It’s time to throw off the shackles and storm the gates… the audience will only grow in relationship to the number of creators, and the number of creators will only grow if we mature the tools and lower the barrier of entry. Anyone can pick up a paintbrush… anyone can make a game.