As children we hear the saying “time flies” quite frequently; 2011 is the first year of my life where I can completely relate to these words. Throughout this year I turned 18, graduated High School and released two video games onto Microsoft’s Xbox Live Indie Games platform. I can not even begin to write down all of the things that I’ve learned this year, but it all started with my first 3D game attempt.

During 2010 I spent a lot of time working on my first XBLIG title “Honor in Vengeance”. I was 17 at the time, and was hard at work studying the math involved with 3D programming so I could finally fulfill my dream of making a 3D game for  the Xbox 360. Being a math drop out didn’t help me much, but the way math was presented in school never made much sense to me. The way XNA is structured helped me A LOT with learning about matrices, vectors and so on. Eventually, I was confident enough to start the game and by the end of 2010 it was completed.

Due to the rules of XBLIG I was unable to submit “Honor in Vengeance” for publishing until I turned 18, which wouldn’t be until January 3rd. After a few months of waiting, 2011 was here and my birthday was right around the corner. The minute I turned 18 I eagerly uploaded the game for approval. I never thought to upload the game to the “playtest” section (which I didn’t have prior access to due to my age) to get feedback because I had just waited for what had seemed like forever to release this game, why waste more time on feedback? [This Content is Exclusive for Insider]

By Michael Hicks