Microsoft Finishing Kodu for This Month

Today, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft Research Matt MacLaurin announced via a blog post that Kodu is set to launch by the end of June. The project is a new programming language designed to make creating games accessible even to children. It will be available over Xbox Live and functions with the use of just the Xbox 360 controller.

IndustryGamers recently talked to MacLaurin, and he explained the origins of this unique project. "It started off as a research project and the first thing we did in 2007 was look at what had been done historically with programming languages for children... and some of those languages went on to significantly influence computer science in general. We realized no one had really updated that approach for the console age, and there's huge opportunity because 90 percent of the kids in the U.S. play video games for several hours a day. Of those, well over 50 percent want to make games... What they're really experiencing there is the desire to program," he said.

"So we tried to bang out a language using a totally new approach. Our initial paradigm was, 'You've got a handful of cards, you put them down on the table and the robots interpret them the best they can.' There's no wrong way to do it; you might not always get the result you're after, but there's no syntax error, there's no 'it won't compile' etc. So we really incorporated the process of language design into what's more typically used for a user interface design process. ... We sort of boiled it down to this seed crystal of a very intuitive and understandable approach to programming, and then we've built a design tool around that. We've been working with [GM of XNA platform] Boyd [Multerer] since XNA Game Studio was just in beta, and so we've been building Kodu on top of Game Studio since [version] 1.0."

Although more complex than the simple tools in a game like Sony's LittleBigPlanet, based on the demo IndustryGamers was shown, we could easily see how with a little bit of time anyone could start learning some basic programming concepts and create some unique titles for Xbox. We're looking forward to seeing what types of games Kodu users will design. And with free peer-to-peer sharing over Xbox Live, budding game designers should really be able to help each other get the creative juices flowing.

MacLaurin added, "I would look at this as sort of a first step in what's going to be a multi-year [process] with a lot of experiments and a lot of small and large bets in user-generated content. I think Boyd's team has made an incredible statement with XNA Game Studio in the first place, and community games... So I think Xbox is way out ahead of the curve in terms of democratizing content creation. We just want to throw the door open as wide as you can get. I mean, we have Kodu in schools worldwide with seven-year-olds basically being taught 4th grade computer science curriculum. But it's disguised as an art class and that's very intentional."

You can read more about Kodu at the official Microsoft Research website for the project.