Braid for XBLA Announced - YAY!

I've had to keep tight-lipped about this for a while, but Braid got announced for XBLA.

The post about it on GameSetWatch has a good comment thread by Jon (the developer) and Simon (of GameDev mag and IGF) on some of the issues around indie games and the IGF.

I'm really excited to play the final version. Braid is one of the few games that I've played in a long time that has REALLY made my brain hurt!

Will game schools let students actually *make* games?

In a conversation with some Digipen students at the IGF at GDC (their game was a finalist), I was *shocked* to learn that they didn't actually have the right to commercialize their game, but that the Digipen school owned the rights to any games created by their students.

I was shocked. I was also naive. I turns out many of today's educational systems are imposing unreasonable copyright terms on students in their media programs. To my knowledge this isn't happening with written works so much as with film, games, etc. I can't see why one would be treated differently than another.

In an interesting development, Boing Boing today posted something about students at USC's film school protesting the copyright policy, and petitioning to have the right to have their works licensed under Creative Commons.

I hope they are successful, and I hope places like Digipen follow suit (or are forced to).