Wondering got us to asking, so we asked around. And people like Ken Levine, Sid Meier, Gabe Newell, David Jaffe and Aaron Greenberg were kind enough to provide us with answers. Some wanted world peace. Others money. One wants to hear less Wham. Not sure Santa's the right person to be asking that of.

Anyway, without further ado, here's what some of the video game industries biggest names (and, uh...us) hope to find under the Christmas tree come December 25.

Pete Hines, Bethesda
"I'd like to see the USA make it to the semifinals of the World Cup, or Wake Forest make it to the Final Four. Or both. And I'd like enough time to get through the pile of new games I need to play and haven't gotten to yet. And money. And world peace. But mostly money."

Gabe Newell, Valve
"I decided I needed a hobby, so I started teaching myself how to be a machinist. I've got a CNC mill, surface grinder, heat treat furnace, and lots of other devices designed to launch various body parts across my garage at high velocity while on fire. Once you start going down this path, it makes putting together a Christmas list pretty easy as there's a near infinite amount of stuff that you can convince yourself you need. For example a year ago I'd never heard of Harvey Tool's 270 degree undercutting end mill (#23204-C3), and now I can't imagine how I'll be able to make it through Christmas day if I don't get it in my stocking. Band-Aids would also be nice..."

Sid Meier, Firaxis
"A Rickenbacker guitar! Playing and composing music is my second most favorite thing to do – next to making games of course! I've wanted one of these guitars for a while – hope Santa is reading this article."

Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft
"The Wire box set. Because you can never have too much knowledge about the how the game is played."

Hideki Kamiya, Platinum Games
"I would like lots of cute girlfriends for Christmas because I don't really have any cute girlfriends right now."

Todd Howard, Bethesda
"I'd like more time to sit in my basement and play video games. I don't know that I've been nice enough to my family to deserve that though, because I'm usually in my basement playing video games."

David Jaffe, EatSleepPlay
"As an agnostic who celebrates BOTH Christmas and Chanukah, my wish list includes: tickets to the Jay-Z concert at Staples center in March (I THINK my ex is getting them for me, but don't tell her I know, cool?!?), a fantastic time with friends and family over the holiday, for the spirit of God/the Universe/whatever you choose to call it to continue to flow thru me and the amazing team at Eat Sleep Play so we can provide fans a great deal of joy and happiness in the new year; great jobs for all my gaming colleagues who are out of work right now; and finally and most importantly: health, understanding, love, and much peace to us all, especially to those who are suffering. Much love, ya'll! Have a great holiday!"

Ken Levine, 2K Boston
"I'd like to get a working internet connection, Comcast! My guildmates need me! And damnit, I've been good enough to deserve a trip to the Scarlet Monastery."

Randy Pitchford, Gearbox
"All I want for the holidays is for single vendor DRM to die and be replaced by a global/universal identity and credential system that is loved and adopted by all. If that can happen, I guess it would also be cool to get one of those Taun Taun sleeping bags :)"

Frank O'Connor, 343 Studios
"Is it too much to ask Santa for a 50 inch Samsung LED TV? It's not because of the picture so much as it's the absolute, wafer-thin flatness of it. I have already been cheated, by life, out of a flying car. I just want a TV that looks like it would melt in your mouth. And then I could watch a documentary about world peace on it."

Ben Judd, Capcom
"If I could get anything for Christmas it would be a reduction in the amount of times I had to hear "Last Christmas" by Wham! in the various convenience stores, department stores, even the local pork cutlet shop. All of those not living in Japan, thank your lucky stars you this song doesn't have nearly the exposure in your country as it does in Japan. I have a very high threshold for pain... I even didn't mind Hanson. But hearing this song more than 100 times in a single 30 day span can break any man. Any man."

Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, Microsoft
"I need Bioshock 2 to be worthy of the first game. I need it to be great! Can't start next year with a broken heart."

Atsushi Inaba, Platinum Games
"I'd like a deserted island, surrounded by emerald green seas. I think even if I really shouldn't, having an island would make me feel like taking a vacation."

Luke Plunkett, Kotaku
"What do I want, readers? I want the complete Battlestar Galactica collection on Blu-Ray. I'll probably end up with something else, since that's so damn expensive, but we're talking about what I want here, not what I think I'll get."

Brian Ashcraft, Kotaku
"A weaker Japanese yen — way weaker. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD PLEASE!"

Stephen Totilo, Kotaku
"I want all my comics to magically turn into trade paperbacks, my old cassette tapes to suddenly be on my iPod and all my video games accessible from harddrives instead of discs. And I want all of that to be indestructible and always accessible, please? Oh, and more time to read would be nice."

Michael Fahey, Kotaku
"I want to know how to read and speak Japanese for Christmas. It would be lovely if this was something you could receive in a box with a neatly-wrapped bow around it. See, I've imported Final Fantasy XIII, and while I am to the point where I can make out a word in katakana if you give me a few minutes, I am relatively sure that won't do in this situation. Other than suddenly having knowledge of a language that takes years to learn, my list mainly consists of harder-to-find games. Bust-A-Groove for the PlayStation (I own a Japanese copy I can't play in anything,) and Thousand Arms. I would kill for a nice copy of Thousand Arms, probably my favorite RPG on the PlayStation. I suppose killing isn't in keeping with the season. I'd...hug an orphan for a nice copy of Thousand Arms."

Amanda Glasser, Kotaku
"Well, since I didn't get The Hangover on DVD for Hanukkah, I'd like that for Christmas, as well as Family Guy's Something Something Dark Side. The holidays are usually a real drag at my house and I'm forbidden to play video games because it's not 'spending time with the family,' so I'll need funny stuff like this to watch while the family is in the same room with me.

"Also, I'm still holding out for that pony."

Owen Good, Kotaku
More than anything I want a conference championship in either football or men's basketball for North Carolina State University. That's all. Not a Final Four. I don't even care about the Orange Bowl. Just a fucking Atlantic Coast Conference championship, which I've won a thousand times on my Xbox 360 in NCAA Football and Basketball, but which my school hasn't seen in real life since Jim Valvano and Bo Rein. Both coaches died young, and tragically. My wish doesn't really have much to do with games, unfortunately. But you asked, and when I honestly think of something that would make me happier than I have ever been in years, if only for a day, that is it.

PIC via Matti Matilla's Flickr photostream

1975, Jaws — "It was the Village East theater in Birmingham, Alabama. And we rode in my sister's husband's Trans Am…I have certain flashes of scenes, like the scene where Roy Scheider pulls the license plate out of the stomach of the shark. I remember that. They're just flashes. I remember it being very scary. My brother was traumatized, to this day. I loved it." — Twisted Metal and God of War creator David Jaffe, born in 1971

Video games all but smell of popcorn. They have been influenced by the movies, arguably more so than they have been by any other art form, save for other games. And the movies that influence them most appear to be the biggest, the summer blockbusters.

Play a game or simply visit a game development studio — watch for the posters, the action figures or listen to the mentions in casual conversation — and the influence of summer movies is apparent. A week can't go by without noticing the sway big movies have on creators. Last Wednesday, while showing Kotaku his game The Saboteur, Pandemic designer Tom French cited Indiana Jones' bigness and coolness of action as an influence on his game's anti-Nazi adventure. Over the weekend as I neared the end of Ghostbusters: The Video Game — itself an offspring of summer movies — I saw a late-game scene in which one of the heroes flees from a massive rolling boulder.

"[Summer movies] are touchstones in a sense they are generational touchstones," Stephen Alexander, veteran gaming artist at 2K Boston told Kotaku. "Games tend to reference them a lot, because the people who are making them are making them for people who are like themselves. Or they make the assumption, that because I like this, the audience will like this."

Prints of Aliens and Star Wars can be lifted from Gears of War and Halo, Star Fox and Final Fantasy. Also, the Indiana Jones films and Predator. T2 and Tron. Jaws. Top Gun. Independence Day.

1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark — "Indiana Jones meant nothing to me. It looked like a boring Western. I had no interest in it. I remember watching the review on Siskel and Ebert in the house with my parents — the whole family was over — and I was like, ah that seems kind of cool, whatever. My dad said, 'Yeah let's go see that.' …It was sold out, so we sat in the car, which I think was this 1970s-era brown Cadillac. And we just sat there for two hours, hanging out as a family, waiting for the next show to start. Eventually we got in, and, I'm not shitting you, it changed my life. It changed my fucking life. This is what I want to do. To live in that world and to be in that world, not so much Indiana Jones' world — though that would be great — but the world of creativity and escapism and summer excitement in terms of film and video games… It just opened the world of geekdom and film-loving and it affects me to this day." — David Jaffe

Summer movies touch everyone, not just game creators. But they may have a stronger grip in a community where it's not uncommon for a development studio to shut down for the afternoon so the team can catch the latest summer flick at a rented theater. That was a mandatory outing just a few Fridays ago, for 2K Boston, when they went to see Up.

"The great thing about the blockbusters is having the common vocabulary," 2K Boston designer Bill Gardner said. "Who doesn't talk about the Predator's cloaking device, whatever the hell it's called? And the T1000 and all that stuff, constantly touching on these reference points."

In the lingua franca of video games, George Lucas is king. "Star Wars pops up all the time," Gardner's colleague at 2K Boston, Stephen Alexander, said. "And that's where a lot of games draw from because it is such an iconic journey to go on and it has such emotional resonance and pays off so well."

But game creators don't borrow from all the summer hits of the '80s and '90s. Alexander may see some Goonies in Zelda, but he guesses that's just him. Ferris Bueller's Day Off doesn't seem to have informed many games. Back to the Future's influence, if it exists, is subtle.

1982, E.T. — "I remember seeing it at the Brooklyn Mall theater and [film company people] handing out the buttons and I was just like, 'Oh my god, I got a button.' And now the PR department is like, 'Big fucking deal, we made a million buttons.' But to a kid in Alabama who was in love with the movies, especially Spielberg and Spielberg's movies, this was like the Holy Grail." — David Jaffe

For all the love E.T. gets, it's had only a light touch on games. Alexander has a theory why. "The real power of E.T. was that emotional bond between E.T. and Elliott," he argued. "Emotional resonance is something that games are still wrestling with… I haven't seen too many games that have managed to pull that off." Ico is the only game he can think of that fits.

The more bombastic, escapist summer movies exert the most influence. They are, according to developers like Alexander and Gardner, parallel works to video games: They share the goal of escapism. The best blockbuster movies and the best blockbuster games take you out of yourself, on a ride.

1983, Return of the Jedi — "[My mom] had come to check me and my neighbor out of sixth grade. We were going to go to like the first show at one o'clock. …I was so excited, I couldn't keep my mouth shut. The word got out and my math teacher, Mrs. Vance, who to this day I don't forgive, basically had a shit fit about it and ended up calling my mom and stuff. It became this big deal and she wasn't going to let me — whatever the fuck — graduate sixth grade. Ultimately, I ended up going to the movie, and I remember waiting in line. It was all the people who show up for a summer movie the first day. It was a big deal. …And I remember, after that point, really trying to recreate that for the rest of my junior high and high school experience. I remember hoping — hoping so bad — that Willow would have this huge line and it never really did." — David Jaffe

Some developers bristle at this or at least laugh off the overwhelming influence that summer movies have. Alexander and Gardner's boss, Ken Levine, said as much to me in January 2007: "Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is Lord of the Rings and Aliens or variations of that. There's great things in that, but you need some variety… Look, I just steal from other sources."

Aliens is the one that gets the eye-rolls a lot. Another drop-ship? Another group of space marines? Another tough-talking black sergeant? Another drab color palette? "When it came out, Aliens' visual design was so amazingly fresh and almost mind-blowing, it's not surprising that so many people have taken it and used it to make their space game," Alexander said. "It is a rich ground to place a game in, but it seems like people have gotten a little bit lazy in using this visual language at this point."

But don't blame the summer movies alone for this, Alexander said. "A game creator has a brilliant flash of inspiration and they mimic something from Aliens, for example, and it's incredibly successful and then other creators mimic that game. I don't know that it's everybody drawing from the same source. I think games are maybe borrowing too much from each other in some ways. You fall into the 'it worked once — let's not be risky — and do it again.'"

1989, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — "When Last Crusade opened I was such a total fucking geek. I didn't care. I was in high school. The cement had dried on what kind of geek I was going to be. My brother, with me and a couple of my buddies, we all had logos of Last Crusade painted on the back of our cars like it was homecoming." — David Jaffe

There's another draw the summer films have for game creators and the publishers they work for: Bigness.

There's spectacle that surrounds the release of the film expressed in long lines, big ads, talk-show guest appearances, commercials, souvenir cups, national — international — media attention. It's natural to want that.
"The spectacle around the summer blockbusters is something to envy," Gardner said. "You want to break into the mainstream and get people talking, but when you come down to it, as envious as I may be, I try to focus on what we're doing right more than anything else. When it comes down to it, I don't know if we'll every be able to emulate that type of hype."

Still, while the siren song of summer movie status can be hard to resist, it can cause problems when game companies misuse the model. Taking the rate of explosions from a Michael Bay movie and injecting it into a game won't make the game as exciting as the Bay movie. Even a summer movie fanatic like David Jaffe knows this. Borrowing a key scene — the visuals, the audio — doesn't play to gaming's core strength, interactivity. So developers should best bear their influence with caution. A little nod here or there can be a nice touch, of course.

2005, God of War — "God of War is the game I always wanted to make. And there's a huge influence of Raiders of the Lost Ark in God of War. Pandora's Box is the Greek mythology version of the Ark of the Covenant. Actual moves that Kratos does in God of War are directly an homage to what Indy does in Raiders of the Lost Ark. When Indy kicks over that statue when he's in the Well of the Souls, it's the exact same animation — obviously Harrison Ford or the stuntman did it for real — we had Kratos mimic what he did with his body with the giant column when he first gets to Athens." - David Jaffe

So maybe the summer movie blockbusters are safe from video games ripping them off wholesale. And maybe games will continue to find their own way to develop as a unique medium. In fact, games have already been seen to be exerting their own influence on the summer films: see the sidescrolling action sequence in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones or the increasingly video-game-like action scenes and car chases in so many other summer films, like Terminator Salvation and The Bourne Ultimatum.

That doesn't mean some creators won't want you to feel that summer movie feeling when you settle down in front of one of their games.

2009, Eat Sleep Play — "There is a literal aspect to the influence these things have had. But then, more importantly, there is a philosophical impact that the summer movies have had from a standpoint of wanting to provide, for my audience — look I understand that we don't make movies, we don't reach as big of an audience — but I still take the responsibility of the audience we do speak to very seriously. And, as much as I look at the works of [Flow and Flower development studio] That Game Company or [Ico creator Fumito] Ueda when he does Shadow of the Colossus, I'm so okay leaving that level of emotion and that level of meaning to someone else. I want to be the guy who provides the escape. I want to be the guy who provides the video game equivalent of the summer blockbuster." — David Jaffe, co-founder of game development studio Eat Sleep Play

(Movie poster images via the Internet Movie Poster Awards site.)

Jaffe, best known for creating hack-and-slash God of War and vehicular-combat Twisted Metal, said that he will be there on the show floor, but the project he is working on doesn't seem as though it will be.

"I'll say it right now, because some people are speculating: we're absolutely not going to be at E3," Jaffe said in his video update. "I will be there... but we're not showing anything."

That's this year, so what about next year? "Next year, I fully expect us to be on the show floor," Jaffe added. "Part of me would love to announce at E3, so you walk into the Sony booth and bam, there's our game."

After Jaffe posted a snap of an email, speculation is swirling that Eat Sleep Play is working on a PS3 version of Twisted Metal.

Jaffe: We're not taking our game to E3 [VG247]

This week on his blog, David Jaffe - the series' co-creator - posted a screenshot that seemed to discuss the development of a game involving vehicles. It lists some things Jaffe "would like to see ... [by?] the milestone," which some have taken to mean a deadline before E3 so the title can be unveiled there.

Jaffe apparently thought blurring out some of the blocks of text was enough - until a guy went in with Photoshop and did a superduper CSI enhancement that partially revealed the words. So he went back and posted the pic with the words blotted out in solid red, and finally just removed the damn thing altogether.

You can see in the pic (via Joystiq) that he talks about animations involving a guy getting dragged behind and thrown from a car. Jaffe exhorts his team to give the game more personality. "Right now it's so dry, it needs to feel [like an?] action movie."

Maybe they're working on cinematics for a Twisted Metal announcement down in L.A. I've tried contacting him but, of course, if he ripped this sucker down after everyone started picking it apart, doubtful he'll comment.

Rumor: David Jaffe's Next Game will Feature Cars [Joystiq]

LightBox Interactive will be working on several new games for Sony Computer Entertainment of America and the "Playstation family of platforms."

Incognito was founded in 1999 in Salt Lake City with Scott Campbell and David Jaffe, both of whom left in 2007 to form Eat Sleep Play. Incognito was perhaps best known for their work on the Twisted Metal games and their release of Calling All Cars and Warhawk for the Playstation 3. Jobe, on the other hand, may be best know at Kotaku Tower for handing me my balls.

According to the LightBox site, the transition from Incognito to LightBox has been nearly a year in the making and no jobs were lost in the transition. The studio plans to relocate from Salt Lake City, Utah to Austin, Texas this Fall.

Our team is comprised of members that made significant contributions to the games Twisted Metal:Black, War of the Monsters, Warhawk and all of its expansion packs. We're currently engaged in a multi-year, multi-title parternship with Sony Computer Entertainment America developing games for the PlayStation family of platforms.

No word on whether Incognito still exists or if it is now an empty shell.

LightBox Interactive

"Honestly, I really think it's a marketing thing," says Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li actress Kristen Kreuk. "There's a built-in audience. But realistically, if you are trying to sell a film, you have a huge audience already."

Case-in-point: Max Payne. While it was generally panned by critics, the movie took the box office's No. 1 spot during its opening weekend and ended up turning a profit of around $50 million.

"It's the same as with sports," explains David Jaffe, creator of God of War. "If you're a sports fan and the home team is losing, you'll see the game in the hope your team will turn it around."

One day, Hollywood will. Epic exec Mark Rein is optimistic, stating that big time movie producers like Jerry Bruckheimer, Peter Jackson and Thomas Tull are taking them seriously and treating them with importance.

"If you treat your material with importance then filmgoers will take it seriously. Did you ever think a theme-park ride would make a great movie? Jerry Bruckheimer did," Rein said, "and he made three awesome movies based on it (the Pirates of the Caribbean series). Now he's working with Prince of Persia. Peter Jackson created three movies based on a taking a classic fantasy novel seriously and won a Best Picture Oscar. Now he's working with Halo. Thomas Tull reinvented Batman and Superman and now has one of the biggest movies ever with The Dark Knight, and now he's working with Gears of War and World of Warcraft. So yes, I see good to reasons to be very optimistic about the film versions of these and other games."

Adapting games has proven hard, but Hollywood will figure out how to do it. As Jaffe pointed out, "Comic books are much easier to adapt into movies because they are traditional story telling. Games are harder to adapt because at their very core, they're games."

Hollywood's passion for the video game [Japan Times] [Pic]

We actually did invite Gears developer Cliff Bleszinski, but his handlers said he was too busy. But Jaffe certainly wasn't some sort of alternate or sub, as the head of his relatively new studio, Eat, Sleep, Play and the lead designer of God of War for the Playstation 2, Jaffe knows his stuff. He also surprised quite a few people recently when he called Gears of War 2 not only the best game of the year, but the best looking console game he's ever played.

Jaffe solidifies his position as one of Kotaku's favorite developers in this podcast where he discusses what he likes about Gears, how God of War 3 will compare and his take on the Playstation 3's successes and failures in 2008.

Despite being exclusive to Sony, Jaffe even talked about his interest in developing a Wii title.

The famously outspoken developer also talks about the ups and downs of blogging on his own site and how he too missed prom. We almost even got him to spill some beans on his next big project for the Playstation 3, but it sounds like we're going to have to wait for an update on his blog for that.

Watch Video Podcast - Gears of War 2 on your iPod or Zune!
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Don't forget to check out our other Holiday podcasts:
A Very Special Kotaku Holiday Podcast
Media Molecule Talks LittleBigPlanet Moderation, New Pitches and How The Found Out About That Recall
Resistance 2 Podcast: Multiplayer Tweaks Coming
Call of Duty: World at War: Balancing Historic Realism With Fun
Castle Crashers with Major Nelson
Chet Faliszek Talks Left 4 Dead's Future
Home Could Remain in Beta Indefinitely

And that it was "HOLY HOLY HOLY FUCKING HELL!!!!"? And everyone got their hopes up? And then the God of War III trailer came out?

Well, while some of us thought the thing looked absolutely spectacular, even in tiny-vision from 200 feet away, some of the more emotionally invested forum dwelling creatures disagreed that it looked any better than God of War II or a pile of dog excrement or something along those lines. And that it certainly didn't look like any painting come to life that they'd ever seen! Apparently, they've taken it up with the Eat Sleep Play founder, who felt compelled to respond in the Jaffe fashion.

He addressed his detractors on his blog today, writing that what we witnessed last night during the Spike TV VGAs wasn't exactly the footage that got him so excited.

"It is NOT the thing I was raving about- as I made clear in a video post a week ago- but I still think it looks darn good," Jaffe wrote. "To me, the stuff Spike showed when viewed in proper resolution looks like a AAA God Of War to me. It doesn’t rock my world but it doesn’t look: meh. It looks like I’d expect a next-gen GOW to look."

Jaffe clarifies that the gush-worthy stuff "has not been shown outside of internal Sony meetings" and that he hopes it will be shown soon, maintaining that God of War III "remains the best looking console game I’ve ever seen…beyond Gears 2 which so far is the best looking console game ever released."

We can't wait. We're readying our patented console graphics wow-o-meter so we can do this scientifically.

SPIKE AWARDS + GAME AWARDS IN GENERAL [DavidJaffe.biz]

I thought GEARS OF WARS 2 looked about as good as a next-gen game could look....and that game is currently- and will probably remain- my game of the year. And hell, I think I actually get to vote on that kind of stuff in some circles :) And unless I get blown away by POP or something else I missed, GEARS 2 is the SHIT....this year. Dudes and dudettes, fucking WAIT till you see the amazing graphics...just fucking wait.

Oh, we'll fucking wait, Jaffe. Not like we've got anything else to do on the God of War III front but wait and take your word for it.

VGXPOWTF?!? [David Jaffe]

Tristan has become a indie developer and he doesn't even realize it. He spends hours sitting in front of the television adding to his level, figuring out ways to torture gamers, defending his creation. Last week he called me to the television for a play through. At one point I decided to break from the obvious path and drop down to the floor of his level, far from the beaten path. Once there I realized I couldn't get back up. I'm stuck, I said. Oh, I'm going to add scorpions there dad.

Watching his interest in game development grow, I suggested that he write up a letter asking for advice in game design, which I would then email off to a few developers I know.

Hit the jump to read what David Jaffe, Matrk Pacini and Cliff Blezinski had to tell him

Tristan's Letter

Hi my name is Tristan. I am 7. I am making a level for LittleBigPlanet.

I have already started my level and it has flames. It has a giraffe with a tree. It has crabs. It's really fun. When I'm finished I want it to have flames everywhere and some ghosts in it. I want it to be really scary. I was thinking of making the whole level underground. I also want people to have to jump a whole bunch. I think I will call it The Tristan Level.

Do you have advice for me about building it?

Thanks,
Tristan

Cliff "Dude Huge" Bleszinski - Epic Games Design Director: Gears of War

Sure.

When in doubt, add zombies and exploding barrels. Your review score is guaranteed to go up by at least 3 points across the board.

David Jaffe - founder EatSleepPlay: God of War

Tristan, hey!

Well, it sounds like you are off to a great start with your level. Very eager to give it a play. I love to jump!

As for advice, I would say the following:

a- make sure you give the player lots of rewards for trying cool things...little treasures and rewards for exploring your map, battling all the ghosts, helping the giraffe reach some fruit on the tree, whatever. Just make sure the player feels like you have gone in before he/she got there and set up lots of cool surprises for him. The player is looking to YOU to make sure they have a good time. Don't let them down.

b- at the same time, if you are not having fun, then change your level. You should do creative work mainly for you. So make sure you enjoy your level first and foremost, otherwise, what is the point?

c- Tell your dad to make commenting on his website easier. It really is a right pain in the fucking ass. I hope he will not show you those bad words.

d- put in more jumping. Man, I love to jump!

Good luck on The Tristan Level, man! That is so cool that your are enjoying the game! Looking forward to your creation!

David

Mark Pacini., Game Director Armature Studio - Metroid Prime

Hey Tristan!

I heard you are building a level for LBP and so far it sounds really cool! (who wouldn’t like fire and giraffes) If you are looking for an easy way to make your level as fun as possible, I wrote up a little level design tidbit that was often used when we were building the environments for the Metroid Prime series. I hope you find it useful!

Try to not show the answer before the player knows the question – If you have a simple puzzle in your level, do not show the player the solution before they know what they are trying to solve. Here is a simple example: You have fire in your level, right? Well, imagine you had a pit of fire that the player could not cross. (It is too long to jump safely across) The only way to cross it is to shut it off by pressing a button. Well, where do you put that button? If you put the button right in front of the fire pit, (See ‘A’ below) the player will probably push the button and shut off the flames before knowing that’s what he needed to do. One place you may want to put the button is above the fire pit, on a platform that the player can reach. (See ‘B’ below) That way, the player is more likely to run into the pit and realize he cannot get across. When he finds the button above the pit, he will probably feel more rewarded because he figured it out on his own. This is the basic principle behind building good, rewarding puzzles.

Is God of War a swipe of 2002 screenplay? Let's look at the complaint in depth [Boing Boing Gadgets]

The full details of the complaint are available at GamePolitics, but the gist of the complaint is that while both God of War and Bissoon-Dath and Barrette-Herzog's are rooted in Greek mythology, seven pages worth of "suspicious" coincidences are provided.

The claimants note that their works were provided to Sony Pictures in 2002, three years before SCEA shipped God of War. Sony's response to the claims are available at the original report in boring legal PDF format. We greatly anticipate the salty Jaffe video response on the matter.

Sony, Designer David Jaffe Sued for Alleged God of War Copyright Infringement [GamePolitics]

You know David Jaffe, right? He might've made some video games — we have some vague recollection of that — but he's mainly known now for his mouthing off. Apparently, Jaffe's public online assessment of one of our nation's vice presidential candidates got some attention, mainly from site GamePolitics.com, who gave Jaffe a bit of a hypertext-lashing. Jaffe's back, not making video games again, and defending his assessment of Alaska governor Sarah Palin's fuckability. Too bad we'll likely never see Jaffe's Homeland, because it's clear the man is passionate about his politics.

The VP pick... When I found out about McCain's VP pick, I was like, "Okay, look, there's no way the Republicans are happy about this at all." And there you go, they're raving like this is some great choice. So if anyone who's watching this is a Republican, please comment and explain to me... You know, it doesn't seem like the Hillary thing is gonna work for most women. I can't imagine most women, or voters in general, although certainly women in this case, are going to say, "We didn't get Hillary, we'll vote for this lady.

I think she's, you know, kind of cute. She's the perfect definition of a MILF. Not to, you know, disparage her or anything. I'm not trying to sort of make it about that, but it's like that's what I see when I look at her. I didn't love Hillary but I looked at her and I saw experience and intelligence... you look at this woman and you see a MILF. That's what you see.

Her experience doesn't really seem to indicate that she would be all that great as a vice-president and certainly not a president. What are they thinking? The more important question is why am I seeing so many Republicans saying this is great?

Video clip below, Jaffe starts talking about Palin at about 3 minutes 40 seconds in.

God of War Designer David Jaffe Reduces Sarah Palin Candidacy to Lowest Common Denominator [GamePolitics]

Jaffe writes that he met with Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon way back in the mid-nineties to discuss such a venture, but that "nothing - clearly - ever came of it."

Of course, this was when arcades were still viable and Twisted Metal was but a fledgling series. They were also the heady days of Cruis'n World and War Gods, two indicators that it was probably best for all involved that Twisted Metal Arcade never saw the light of day.

Still, we'd love to have a peek into the alternate universe where it did. If only for the laughs!

SAN DIEGO COMIC CON 2008 [DavidJaffe.biz]

The best part of the article comes at the end, where they mention the people they want to hear more from. They need to just sit Tim Shafer down in front of a PA system and have him deliver a running commentary for the entire length of the show.

The 10 People We Hope Will Shut the F*** Up at This Year's E3 [Crispy Gamer]

Please stop putting Spiderman games in big open sandbox environments where you swing around and do oh so slight variations on 4 pretty dull mission types (chase/race/collect/etc) and then once in a while toss in a boss fight and/or a somewhat unique mission.

I LOVE Marvel Comics and I LOVE the promise of games based on Marvel Comics. But why can't you guys make a game that feels like a comic? I don't mean art style wise; I don't mean like Comix Zone with panels and cliche stuff like that. I mean feels like a comic in a story based, narrative way: a game that shows off the OTHER aspect that makes Marvel Comics so special: The characters/story. It's not JUST about the powers, you know. But your games are always ONLY about the powers.

Won't somebody be kind enough to let David Jaffe make a Marvel game? Just listen to that passion! Our Spidey Sense tells us he's got a great Marvel game in him.

Dear: The People Who Make Marvel Comics Video Games [DavidJaffe.Biz via CVG] Pic]

At a Euro press event earlier this week a Nintendo PR person, flustered by a question about storage space on the Wii, starting talking about "how “geeks and otaku” were the only people who would want this issue addressed."

If true, Jaffe says, it's a sign of either Nintendo's unbridled arrogance or the cluelessness of a single PR person.

YOU SHIT ON MY HOUSE!!! YOU SHIT ON MY HOUSE!!! [David Jaffe]

Why the do we even try? [Jaffe's Blog]

Jaffe explains how Heartland came to be and came to not be, as the game was a bad fit with the Warhawk developer from the get go. The intended follow up to God of War was planned as an emotional response to the Bush administration, but at the core, Jaffe says "what we really wanted to do was create the definitive shooter for the PlayStation Portable." That, obviously, didn't happen, and it doesn't sound like it ever will.

Inside David Jaffe's Heartland [The Escapist]