Today at Day of .NET Ann Arbor, I got a chance to sit in on the XNA 101 session that Dave Redding was giving.

I’ve read plenty on XNA (the .NET game development platform), but I haven’t really gotten much chance to play with it just yet. Dave’s demos were excellent. He showed us how to create a simple game of pong, and had good references to how to really jazz up your first game.

He also showed some of the demo games that have been created as projects to learn from. The graphics were as good as any I’ve seen. Dynamic lighting, textures, and animation were excellent in the Racing Game demo. Xbox controlled integration was also very simple.

If you get a chance to see Dave give this talk again (maybe at a GANG meeting?), I’d recommend you check it out for some inspiration to create your first game.