Maker
LET THE
X GAMES
BEGIN
If you’ve ever wanted to try making a video game, here’s
your chance. By Alex Handy

For an engineer, designing consumer electronics is a his books and want to make the next Halo. LaMothe nerve-wracking endeavor. Years of preparation and replies to every one of these inquiries with the same research are required to create and manufacture command: “I tell them to make Pong. If you can new equipment, and nowhere is this more evident make and finish Pong, you can make a real game.” than in the video game market. Zero hour for the Trouble is, most of them can’t.

EE ninjas of the video game world is looming on the LaMothe has something of a reputation within
horizon, as Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo prepare the games industry as the Yoda of game design. He
to launch next-generation gaming hardware for the doesn’t work at Electronic Arts or publish million-
2005 Christmas season. dollar titles, but he does encourage and teach the
Independent video game hardware designers are a next generation of prodigies, and those that prove
dying breed, however. The three big game companies themselves will be rewarded. Do or do not — there
have something of a monopoly on the talent in this is no try.
limited pool, as evidenced by the relatively small Yoda carries a staff; LaMothe wields the XGame-
market proliferation of fresh video game hardware. Station (XGS), a $200 video game console kit
This is primarily due to the fact that almost all video ( xgamestation.com). With all those billions of dollars
game-oriented educational institutions focus exclu- and trillions of yen wrapped up in new console
sively on the software and art side of the industry. launches, it would seem that anyone else trying to
André LaMothe wants to change all that. At 37, sell gaming hardware would be doomed to failure
LaMothe is fond of griping about the kids today: they — especially if your console has only 128KB of RAM
can’t read binary, they never finish what they start, and an 80 million instructions-per-second processor.
and they constantly bitch about the quality of games But then, there’s a lot about the XGS that doesn’t
that they could never hope to create themselves. quite fit with traditional console design wisdom.

“What these guys do today,” he grumbles, “most of The XGS is not made for playing games so much
them shouldn’t even be calling themselves program- as it is for making games. The simple demos included
mers. They write scripts. The APIs do everything for with the console, such as Pac-Man, Tetris, and a
them so they never need to learn the hardware.” basic racing game, are offered up not for entertain-
With around 15 books under his belt and hundreds ment, but for hacking. Indeed, the XGS manual,
of games published, thanks to his know-how, written by LaMothe’s apprentice Alex Varanese, has
LaMothe’s earned the right to complain. He often a section that explains how to easily modify these
receives email from aspiring designers who’ve read demos and games. Varanese also wrote a number