I'm considering experimenting with game development. Which is a better investment of my time, learning XNA or learning how to write a Facebook game?
+2
A:
I would definitely invest time into learning XNA. Who knows how long facebook will be around.
Gthompson83
2008-09-24 19:35:21
Who knows how long XNA will be around? It's not inconceivable it would go the way of Managed DirectX and be supplanted by another framework.
Jimmy
2009-12-09 19:29:23
+3
A:
Facebook isn't even a gaming platform--it's a social networking platform. You might want to rephrase the question to say Flash or DHTML. They can't really be compared.
Mark Cidade
2008-09-24 19:36:40
Um... DHTML is AJAX, so yes you can compare Flash and DHTML just fine. But, yes anyway, comparing Facebook Development to XNA is like Apples and Oranges, but he's asking which is more usefull/valuable.
Chris Pietschmann
2008-09-24 21:35:38
A:
I would say that the games you can make with XNA are far more richer than the HTML/Flash based Facebook games. Of course you could probably make more money from a Facebook game :)
Mladen Mihajlovic
2008-09-24 20:10:40
+7
A:
I wouldn't perceive Facebook as a gaming platform. If you want to learn how to write a game, XNA is the way to go. I'd highly recommend picking up the XNA Unleashed book to walk through some of the basic XNA and game concepts.
That said, http://creators.xna.com has a ton of fantastic content and examples that do some pretty advanced things.
In short, go XNA.
Gabriel Isenberg
2008-09-24 20:12:08
A:
XNA is a framework designed to make games. Facebook, not so much.
If you're not familiar with game development, XNA should give you a pretty good idea about how professional game development workflows go.
On the other hand, Actually finishing a simple text-based/tile-based game for Facebook using Flash / DHTML is probably a much more realistic goal than finishing a complex game where you have to deal with meshes, collision detection and cameras.
Leo
2008-10-23 20:03:42
A:
I say learn both XNA and the Facebook platform. You can integrate Facebook Connect into any type of application allowing your XNA game to connect to Facebook.
(If it's a 2D game you could even use Silverlight and have your game run directly in the browser)
Lucid00
2009-07-31 09:33:47
+1
A:
Considering the amount of material out there about XNA (do a search on SO for instance), I would recommend starting XNA instead of Facebook.
Start at XNA Creator's club and go from there...
Sune Rievers
2009-10-28 21:59:18
+1
A:
You can do both :-)
- Write an XNA Game
- Publish it on the XBox
- Port it to silverlight using SilverSprite: http://silversprite.codeplex.com/
- Write a Facebook app which hosts the silverlight game.
- ...
- Profit!
Joel Martinez
2009-12-09 19:26:52