I just filed a positive piece about "Kodu," Microsoft's spring Xbox 360 downloadable development tool, which is designed to make game programming 3D games possible for kids -- and anyone else who is clueless about writing code. Screenshots were released for the service a while ago, but I never understood what I was looking at when I saw lines of "Kodu" code. After playing with it on Monday, I get it. If you were confused too, let me explain.

In the image above:
-Rules are being defined for an artificially intelligent blue blob (if it had been controllable you would have seen images of controller buttons here
-Line 1: When the blue blob sees an apple, it should move to it
-Line 2: When it bumps into the apple, it should eat it
-Line 3: When it bumps into the apple, the blue blob should change into a random color.

Simple, right?

On Monday, I told readers of this blog that someone at GDC made me a game in 10 minutes. I announced that I would reveal the game "tomorrow," and then, like the best game companies, I delayed my announcement. Now I'll tell. Read more...