Yesterday I attended a meeting that set me thinking: how could I, as a trainer and consultant, use more of the things that my students, my customers and I love about gaming? In one of the courses I teach, we do a simulation of a software development project and everybody likes it even though at times it may look silly to 'play' on the job.
One part of playing is "the things you do" (try, fail, try again, fail again, try yet again, succeed a bit, go up a level) the other is "the things you use" (dice, score list, pawns)
One of the things I would love to use for my courses, seminars and as a consultant is XNA Game Studio[1]. XNA is aimed at helping developers build games for Windows and the Xbox 360. Last night (in my part of the world) beta 2 of XNA Express was released[2].
To get a quick glance of what it can do for you look at these articles[3][4] from the ZMan.
Now I will drift of in dreaming and trying to find out how to use this wonderful tool in my day-to-day work...
[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/XNA/default.aspx
[2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gse/
[3] Part 1 - Templates and Render Targets
[4] Part 2 - Content Pipeline