With my usual overblown sense of self-importance, I have a small annoucement to make.  I've been away for a bit again (partly holidays, partly illness, and partly a weird kind of inertia and dispair) and I've come to one important decision. I'm absolutely NOT stopping writing games, but I am now leaving the XBLIG arena.  Previous visitors will know my longer-term opinion of how XBLIG has been managed but I now feel that the channel is irredeemably compromised, particularly in the light of the sales levels seen by Breath of Death and Cthulhu Saves the World in their PC incarnations - and my hearty congratulations to Zeboyd for the thoroughly deserved win.  This isn't just a case of following the money (although that has certainly helped inform my decision), but rather after almost 2 months of thought, research, keeping a loose eye on the forums and sales figures and seeing the same old problems going round and round and round I can no longer see any artistic, commercial or reputational advantage to selling games on XBLIG.

Again I'm not going to bang on about Microsoft's management, the quality or quantity of titles or the attitudes of other members of the XBLIG community.  I've had a couple of famous falling-outs with some other indie devs but the matters on which we disagree is not part of my decision. 

So, where does that leave the 2 titles I've been sitting on for the last few months?  Well, YoYoYo has NO Xbox-specific code so I'm going to restart work on it for Windows.  I had also been working on an Avatar-based "simple simon" type game but that project is now dead, since Avatars are only available on the Xbox platform and I have no interest in creating a PC version since it was mainly designed to try and capitalise on the teen demographic of the channel.  But none of this is really what I wanted to tell everyone today.  Deep breath time!

I'll keep this brief:  When YoYoYo is finished, I will be starting full-time work on Space Pirates from Tomorrow for Windows.  This will be a COMPLETELY new project with NO old code being reused.  I've already started on the orbital mechanics functions and creating screen mockups but this was really to see how advanced some of the game concepts are in my imagination.  Right now we're looking at about 87,000 stars taken from real star catalogs, some settled and some not, and a whole load of new gameplay avenues to explore including buying, building or operating your own space stations and industrial operations, totally online play, and some military stuff too.  I'll be fleshing this out as development starts, and I'll be taking regular breaks to work on smaller, bite-size games (including PC versions of all our other old titles) as well as doing other non-game work.

My time as a member of the XBLIG community has been amazing.  It's rare to be exposed to such a range of talents, abilities, ideas and dreams and I've learned more about the sharp end of programming in the last 3 years than in the whole of my career previously.  Not only that, but some of the folk I've met along the way have been fantastically supportive, friendly, helpful, funny and generous.  I can't neglect to mention the team of MVPs who've tried so hard to support us and put our views to Microsoft as well as offering hours and hours and hours of free advice and support over the years.  When the first Space Pirates came out on XBLIG and bombed, they were not just a help but they kept me focussed, helped me learn from my mistakes and to move on.  I'm not going to pretend I was ever a prefect member of the community but the MVPs always inspired me to try and do unto others as I would be done, helping out where I thought I could, offering contributions to the many lively debates on the forums, and trying to put across my own perspective on indie game development.  I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone I came across during my time working on XBLIGs - even those with whom I fell out - and wish you all the success you deserve in the future.

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