Hello!

1) Yes.
2) One month or more.
3) Twice per week, for a chance to contemplate on what you will learn and put it to use between each class.
4) Depends, per session or for the whole thing? I would suggest that you hold a “free first” session so that poor students like me can decide whether to “invest” or not. Albeit, 50-100$ sounds fair, you did do the whole tile engine series just for free! Lots of thanks for that.

Nice idea

1)Yes
2)3 Months
3)1 per week is enough
4)well dunno caz i have to multiply the number by 6 = a fortune in my country’s currency but i like the idea of a “free first”

1) Maybe, but probably yes. Depends on the subject matter, XNA covers a lot of ground. Maybe you could put up a kind of syllabus or agenda a few days ahead of each one so people could decide?

2) Again hard to say, depending on how fast things move and how long it takes to cover the topics, and the breadth of topics that you decide to do - there are too many unknowns for me to answer that realistically I think.

3) My time constraints are worse than most folks, I was only barely able to keep time with the tutorials you put out, and actually not even in terms of keeping my own coding up to date with it.

4) Well, I think the T/E tuts were great and could have seen pitching in and contributing a few dollars for something like that, although up front before I saw it I might have been a bit squeemish about it. Honestly, for 50 or 100 bucks you are talking about the cost of a book, maybe a really good book (tho price seldom relates to quality - for reference I just picked up Ernest Pazera’s long out of print Isometrics book, which I now consider a “good book”, new for 12 bucks). So I think 50 or 100 dollars would call for a lot of preparation and a balance between supporting questions from individual students and keeping things going to finish the subject matter that the group is paying that kind of money for. I might try it once but it would have to be very professionally done for low-income hobbyist me to keep it up for that price. You might be pleasantly suprised, but I suspect that the market XNA and Express Editions are targeted for is not going to support that kind of expense in large numbers, even if they seem to toss that kind of money to book publishers all the time. If I worked for a professional game studio that used XNA, or if I knew I could sell my XNA games for 50 or 100 dollars, then yeah sure it would easily be worth it. But I would be amazed to be able to _give_ away my games to 50 or 100 people! How much does a game programming class at ITT Tech cost (I have no idea of their cost, or of their quality, just rhrowing that out as a possible point of reference)?

Hey Nick,

I think that this is a great idea, but I agree with John somewhat. Time and money are always big factors, as even you have stated, and you would probably need to divulge some more of your thoughts with regard to what you would cover in your sessions in order to get much commitment.

To be more helpful:
1) Yes.
2) That would depends on the material and frequency of the sessions.
3) Once a week. (Or as many times as you can muster in a weekend?)
4) Once again, depending on the material and length of each session. Also, converting currency to the ‘almighty dollar’ may be problematic for some (like me.) But I would hazard a guess that $20-$50 would be reasonable.

I was thinking about a similar concept the other day, but on a more personal level. If you’re interested, I could outline some ideas via email.

Well, we’re coming out ahead because you’re giving away your time at $100. John said ITT , but if you took a C# course at community college it would cost you roughly $300 for a 10-12 week (30-36 hour) course. So, $100 for a one month course that’s around 10 hours seems to be on par and we’re focused on XNA rather than the whole C# language.

I would love to attend the Live Meetings if they are on the weekend. I’m working on a master’s in math and work full time, so a weekday is out for me unless you do this through the month of May while I’m on break from course work .

Sure you can buy an XNA book for $20-$50 and learn quite a bit from it, but we’re talking about collaborating with the author here and it’s my opinion that that is worth much more than buying a book to learn from. Plus, we don’t get the ambulance sounds from a book and we don’t get to see the author debug his own code.

I understand that $100 is a lot for many hobby programmers and perhaps Nick will allow you to ‘pay per week’ or some other arrangement, but let’s not diminish the worth of what he’s offering here. If we’re really hobby programmers, then we’re not seeking profits for our efforts; we’re doing this for fun. Think about it. Nick could easily contract his time for $50 hour instead of offering instruction at what will most likely be $5-10 hour. I don’t get the impression that Nick is doing this for profit.

If he wanted to charge $500, which I think it’s easily worth, then I’d have to make the decision on whether or not it’s in my budget and would simply have to lose out on the instruction. With that said, I will gladly pay the $100 and would not be offended if Nick charges some of you $25 and others $50. No matter how I look at it, it’s win/win for me.

Again, this is a donation amount. Much like getting a CD or book when donating to National Public Television! You’ve seen his previous tutorials and know somewhat of what you’ll be getting for ‘paid’ tutorials, so a free tutorial is just us being greedy.

Nick, let’s see the outline of the course. Let us offering suggestions on what we’d like to learn and allow you time to alter the course to our ‘needs’. Then, those of us interested in the specific material can choose to attend or simply wait for the next round of courses.

Would definitely be interested if you get enough serious sign-ups to make this worthwhile for your time.

1. Yes
2. As long as your interest is high, have things to teach us, and as long as you get the continued support/attendance from us.
3.Again, dependant on your time and the majority support of those being taught. Once or twice a week would be ideal for myself.
4. Dependant on the subject matter being taught, so cannot realistically put a price on it before seeing a course syllabus.

1. Yes!
2. I’d say a month.
3. Would depend, I myself am taking summer classes at college on Monday Tuesday and Thursday. Weekends would probably work best for me as others have said. However, 2 times a week, for a month, depending on the time of the class (GMT -5 here, in other words EST).
4. Depends on how much my tuition and books cost me whether I have much to spend, lol. I would def. be able to lay out at least $20 though, even though that sounds cheap, I do have to be realistic on what I can afford.

Hope that helps!

1) Yes, Content Depending
2) As long as it takes to meet your outlined plan
3) Twice a week to Four Times a week, same as a college course.
4) Again depends on the amount of content covered.

1) Would you participate in such a program?
Yes
2) How long would you like to see this go? One week?
1 month, all summer doesn’t matter
3) How often a week would you like to have these classroom meetings?
2/3
4) How much would you be willing to spend to attend an online class like this? $20? $50? $100?
Not really sure how much, but I would be willing to make a significant investment if the course has enough content covered.

What you could also do is something similar to what the guys at http://www.gameinstitute.com/ have going on. They have their own recorded power points + voice. With textbooks etc.

You could do this to be more flexible with schedules, or you could to these summer live classes record them, and offer them later to people that would want them after.

Just a thought.

Another idea, is you could cover it by topics. People could see the agenda and purchase the ones they would be interested in.

I’d be happy to help with organizing a syllabus type thing for this and maybe contributing some content, depending on how quickly I can get my next book done.

1. Yes.
2. Monthly courses.
3. 1-2/week (preferably weekends and during the morning or day US time since I live in europe).
4. 50$-100$ seems fair.

As Budoray stated which I fully agree with, imo Nick has showed what he is capable of with his TE series and other stuff here on the site. So aksing for another free tutorial seems a bit greedy. Even if Nick would do this for profit I cant see the harm in that. This will take a considerable amount of time away from his personal life not to mention debug time

I would love to see an outline proposal where maybe we could comment and give suggestions.

Maybe use the XNAWiki site for constructing the course outline?

Pokes Jim aka ‘The Mach’ to see that he’s still alive… Yep. He’s still with us! I’d really like to see that RPG implemented as course work *wink*.

If this can be arranged to be at a slightly compatible time for us GMT folks

1)Yes
2)As long as it lasts.
3)2 sessions a week would be ideal.
4)If its as useful as the Tile Engine videos then $50 - $100 would be a steal(25-50 quids cheaper than the price of a night out)

I have re-considered this, at length actually, and, after spending 50 bucks on dinner for the wife and I last night, I have decided the idea of 50-100 bucks for something like this is not so outlandish.

But my own participation would probably vary greatly depending on particulars of subject matter being covered within XNA (or the C#.NET world in general).