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John Ricitiello started his DICE keynote with a list of games he's currently playing—Burnout Paradise, BioShock, Portal. The one game he's playing that we're not is Spore, a title he said he'd become "fixated" on. While John got the crowd up to speed on his gaming chops, he admitted "Deep down, I'm a business guy." That helps explain Riccitiello's publicly expressed hesitance about the ultimate success of the Will Wright "SimEverything" game. More »
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The Into The Pixel art showcase at DICE featured plenty of wonderful artwork from beloved games like God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life 2 and Rayman's Raving Rabbids, each up for auction. The piece that looked to grab the biggest bucks was the Viva PInata digital painting seen above, which closed at $1400. The winner? None other than Epic Games' Mark Rein, who hovered near the bidding sheet like a hungry wolf until the auction closed, growling at anyone who attempted to outbid him. My choice? It would've been the Team Fortress 2 piece seen after the jump. More »
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AIAS Award Winners To Get Recognition At GameStops. Last night's winners at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards will not only get a sales boost from those who caught the awards online, they'll also get a kick in the sales pants from shoppers at GameStop. AIAS president Joseph Olin told DICE attendees today that the academy has partnered with the retailer to add special mention to games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Rock Band, Assassin's Creed and others with a sticker calling out each game's win. That means you'll see yet another sticker on display cases at GameStop and EBgames across the country, promoting each title's "Game of the Year" status. More »
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Bullfrog, Origin Systems, and Westwood Studios rank as some of the best development houses of all time. They also happen to represent three of EA's most spectacular failures. "We at EA blew it," said EA CEO John Riccitiello at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas this morning, "To a degree, I was involved in those things, so I blew it." More »
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The 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards were held last night at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, with twenty-six awards handed out honoring the best gaming of 2007. Sixteen of those awards were split evening between BioShock, The Orange Box, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, with COD 4 walking away with the coveted Overall Game of the Year award. Rock Band took home three awards including Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack and Family Game of the Year. Nintendo saw two awards - Adventure Game of the Year for Super Mario Galaxy and Handheld Game of the Year for The Phantom Hourglass. Puzzle Quest took home Downloadable Game of the Year, justifying all of those long hours I spent playing the damn game on the DS, PSP, and finally via Xbox Live Arcade. Along with the game awards, the night saw former Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi given the Lifetime Achievement Award and Blizzard president and CEO Mike Morhaime entered into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Congratulations to all of the winners - we were so very surprised. No really! Hit the jump for the full list of winners. More »
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Like Afro Samurai? Excited about the Namco Bandai console game of the same name? Buddy, have we got the ghetto captured, shaky-cam video for you. During Roger Hector's DICE presentation today, the VP of Development at Namco Bandai Games showed off the first trailer for the game, which looks to stay true to the series' trademark art style. Hector showed off work in progress versions of Afro, in 2D and 3D form, a transition the character seemed to make with ease. Hopefully, we'll get a direct feed version of the above clip soon and put this whole bush league video capture job behind us. More »
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Tetsuya Mizuguchi, founder of Q Entertainment and best known for his work on Rez, Space Channel 5 and Lumines took the stage at DICE today to talk about the future of gaming and give attendees a quick history lesson on all things MIzuguchi. His talk, titled "Art vs. Commerce" focused on his career-long struggle to balance the artistic and the fiscally responsible. From the wildly successful Sega Rally—which sold 20,000 full-sized arcade units and 1.5 million on consoles and PCs—to the commercial underperformer Rez—a game for which he declined to offer sales data. More »
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Microsoft Game Studios head Shane Kim was on the receiving end of a barrage of questions from the New York Times' Seth Schiesel today at DICE. He probed the VP on a number of topics ranging from Bungie's decision to go independent to who's winning the console war to Microsoft's potential entry into the portable gaming market. More »
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Blizzard Entertainment execs—Mike Morhaime, CEO and Co-Founder, Rob Pardo, Senior VP of Game Design, and Frank Pearce, Executive VP of Product Development—took the stage this morning at DICE to talk about the company's history "From Developer To Worldwide Publisher." The three spent a good portion of their "conversation" talking about one of the aspects that makes Blizzard unique, their commitment to quality and gameplay above all else. More »
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Pirates of the Caribbean helmsman Gore Verbinski keynoted this year's DICE summit, doing his Hollywood best to inspire a packed crowd of game developers with grand visions of development utopia, all the while slamming financier Disney for limiting his involvement in Pirates of the Caribbean licensed games. The director of the Pirates trilogy told DICE attendees that "Gaming is no longer dismissible as a hobby" pointing to his own recent and "visceral" experiences with games like flOw, Bioshock, Second Life and Halo 3. More »
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The Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain Summit, simply known as DICE, kicks off today and I'm currently en route via rented Chevy Impala to the Red Rocks Resort in Las Vegas to cover it. Scheduled to appear and say interesting things are EA CEO John Riccitiello, Microsoft Game Studios VP Shane Kim, Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Morhaime and many, many more. While not in the habit of making surprise game announcements, these industry folks always have something attention (and headline) grabbing to say. More »
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When we broke the news of Jim Ward quitting LucasArts last week, I mentioned that he would no longer be speaking at the DICE conference this week. More »
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LucasArts president Jim Ward surprised the developer on Monday with news that he was leaving the company he's been with for nearly ten years. More »
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The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences recently added a clutch of new speakers to their 2008 Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain Summit in February including newly appointed Entertainment Software Association president Michael D. Gallagher and Masaya Matsuura, the man behind PaRappa the Rapper. More »
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