The biggest difference between the two games is that Assassin's Creed allows the users to do just about anything, moving up and over the whole sandbox environment using Parkour-style moves, but doesn't reward players for the fluidity and beauty that authentic Parkour demands. On the other side, Crackdown has specific Xbox Achievements that encourage players to be more fluid and artistic with their movements, but permits fewer grab points and forces the player into a more linear, less free and experimental path. What Robertson doesn't refer to is the upcoming game Mirror's Edge, based solely around the art of Parkour. If these two elements are married in Mirror's Edge, it could be a big Free Running hit. Then again, if it's only those elements, I can't imagine long-term play possibilities for the game.

Game Culture Vultures: Parkour

So what's your reason for not finishing games? Or do you complete everything you start?

Opinion: On 'Completion Anxiety Disorder' [Gamasutra] [Pic]

Hit the jump for the top 20 devs on the list.

1. Nintendo Kyoto (Brain Age, Wii Play)
2. Infinity Ward (Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare)
3. Blizzard Entertainment (World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade)
4. Electronic Arts Canada (FIFA Soccer 08, NBA Street: Homecourt)
5. Valve (Portal, Team Fortress 2)
6. Konami Japan Studio (Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer, Dance Dance Revolution Universe)
7. Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank Future)
8. Capcom Osaka Studio (Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Monster Hunter Freedom)
9. Electronic Arts Tiburon (Madden NFL 08, NASCAR 08)
10. BioWare Edmonton (Mass Effect, Jade Empire: Special Edition)
11. Bungie Studios (Halo 3)
12. Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin's Creed, Naruto: Rise Of A Ninja)
13. 2K Boston [& Australia] (BioShock)
14. Harmonix (Rock Band)
15. Bandai Namco Tokyo (Ace Combat 6: Fires Of Liberation, Beautiful Katamari)
16. Square Enix Tokyo (Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Front Mission DS)
17. Game Freak (Pokemon Diamond/Pearl)
18. Epic Games (Unreal Tournament 3, Gears Of War PC)
19. Hudson Soft (Mario Party 8, Mario Party DS)
20. Neversoft (Guitar Hero III, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground)

Nintendo, Infinity Ward, Blizzard Top First-Ever 'Top 50 Developers' Countdown [Gamasutra]

Catching Up Casually: A Chat With Alexey Pajitnov [Gamasutra]

5. Consolidations
4. Catering to the Wii Audience
3. The Rise of the Shooter
2. Indies Going Major
1. Mainstreaming of Handhelds

It's a solid list. Who would have thought that Blizzivision would be born? Or that all three of the biggest consoles wouldn't touch handheld sales? But I'd probably swap 3 or even 4 to something more like, a "Rift between casual and hardcore gaming." Hit the link for their pretty convincing arguments.

Gamasutra's Best of 2007: Top 5 Trends [gamasutra]

Examining complex processes is never an easy task; thus, approaches that try to divide such complexity into smaller parts that can be more easily understood are necessary. This is called analysis. Analyzing the game design cognition process is a critical part of developing a deeper understanding about how such process works.

Therefore, we propose [a] layered view as a breakdown of the game design cognitive process, where each layer corresponds to a generalization or abstraction of the layers below it, and a specialization or concretization of the layers above it.

It's shortish and well worth a read through if you have the time and inclination.

Game Design Cognition: The Bottom-Up And Top-Down Approaches [Gamasutra]

However you describe it, it's hard to deny that the sensation of controlling a digital object is one of the most powerful — and overlooked — phenomena ever to emerge from the intersection of people and computers.

There are lots reasons for this, but the main one is that game feel is slippery. It's mostly subconscious, a combination of sights, sounds, and instant response to action. It's one of those 'know it when you feel it' kinds of things. If it's off by just a little bit, a game's goose is cooked. If it's "responsive", "tight", and "deep", it can be magical.

It's a pretty quick and interesting little read, though nothing world shattering - although it brought to mind a number of those incredible games I've fallen in love with over the years (or not), and precisely why that may have been.

Game Feel: The Secret Ingredient [Gamasutra]

It's a history, an homage, a bit of a love letter, and a fun read overall.

What Zork seemed to contribute more than anything was the idea that the computer could simulate a rich virtual environment much, much larger and nuanced than the playing fields seen in games like Spacewar! or Pac-Man. Furthermore, the game demonstrated the literary potential of the computer. Thousands upon thousands of gamers have been charmed by the wit and elegance of Zork's many descriptions.

GameSetWatch also pointed out that Matt Barton, the author, made the full interviews available on his own website, so you can find them here.
The History Of Zork [Gamasutra]

So is the PSP a failure, as many overly critical of Sony say? Ed Barton from Screen Digest says "The only way in which the PSP can be perceived as anything other than a success is by comparison with the Nintendo DS." Well, that and maybe Sony's expectations that the device would be the Walkman of the 21st century, maybe.

There are some excellent insights here, with potentially surprising sales data to back up the PSP's "success". It also appears that Phil Harrison's GDC speech on Game 3.0 has analysts thinking about the PSP's potential in the user created content space.

I think the PSP could potentially have its best year yet, with PS3 interactivity, more unique software, better PSone support and a potential form factor redesign. Oh, and God of War PSP. Let's not forget that. Michael McWhertor

Analyze This: Is There Anything Wrong with the Sony PSP? [Gamasutra]

I think [Nintendo] intentionally dried up supply because they made their numbers for the year. The new year starts April 1, and I think we're going to see supply flowing.

Matteo adds that the company is "pleased" with upcoming allocations of Wii and Nintendo DS supply, hopefully indicating that party game lovers as yet unable to secure a console will have a better chance starting in April.

Matteo and crew also touched on the current state of Sony hardware, calling the PLAYSTATION 3 Euro launch "very good" and speculating on a PlayStation 2 price drop. My take on the latter? Don't hold your breath! Michael McWhertor

GameStop: Wii Shortage 'Intentional', PS3 Euro Launch 'Good, Not Great' [Gamasutra]

Gamasutra is reporting that both Nintendo and Sony have signed up to make some showing at the upcoming E For All Expo.

E4A is widely believed to be the public, spiritual successor to the old E3 and will be held in late October at the LA convention center.

According to exhibitor information passed on to Gamasutra, both Nintendo and Sony have planned large booth presences at the event - though, since the event is currently limited to the LACC's South Hall, the two will maintain smaller spaces than in previous E3 exhibitions.

Based on the exhibitor list, last modified on March 6th and relatively early in the selling cycle for the show, some of the remaining booths are currently reserved by companies such as IDG Entertainment itself, Future Publishing, G4 and TechTV, DirecTV, and the World Series of Video Games Tournament.

The Gamasutra story also has some information about the contract required for exhibitors including the fact that it prohibits anything that is sexually provocative and has restrictions on noise levels. Brian Crecente

E For All Expo Details Reveal Nintendo, Sony Presence [Gamasutra]

Oh, the internet drama. Phil Harrison's said many stupid things, but he claims he's been misquoted by a game site. Just listen to what he tells Newsweek's N'Gai Croal:

I want to clarify something. You put something on your blog about how comments from videogame executives can come back to haunt them. Of all the things I've said—and there are plenty of things should come back to haunt me—what you quoted was not one of them. The quote in question actually came from the GDC Europe interview that I did onstage with [Game Developers Conference director] Jamil Moledina a couple of years back. He was asking my view on Microsoft's two SKU strategy. The point that I made, which was not clearly reported in the Gamasutra piece [that Level Up cited], was that Microsoft had introduced two SKUs, they were effectively two different products: one with a hard drive and one without. And that while I wasn't going to talk about our particular SKU strategy at that time, whatever strategy we would adopt would not confuse developers and publishers, because the underlying platform would be with the hard drive in every machine. So I stand by what I said.

Yup. Phil Harrison, a very tall and powerful man, is attacking a game site for its journalistic integrity. For a quote from 2005. Gamasutra's Simon Carless took it personal and put up the defense over at blog GameSetWatch, clearing laying out why the original Gamasutra article was not totally off base and even talking about the Pope. Swing by GSW for the gory details. My take: Happy to know the execs are finally reading the sites. That, and "hi" Phil. Brian Ashcraft

Harrison Takes On Gamasutra [GameSetWatch]

One reason why, in a list of very long reasons is:

We also have a lot of faith in the ability of, in particular, Sony, which we see has really got a huge amount of development resources, and they are backing the PlayStation 3 to enormous unprecedented levels for a first party publisher.

One of our core beliefs is that no one buys one of these plastic boxes on technical specs alone, people tend to buy them for content. Our forecasts at the moment are based on the belief that PlayStation 3 has this level of support. The numbers that we're seeing now for the Nintendo Wii, they've come out of the blocks fantastically strongly - no one would deny that - however it's incredibly early in the hardware cycle. There's still another five or six years to play out on this one, and the first big battleground will be Christmas of 2007.

It's an interesting perspective, one that makes me want to read the full report. However, I don't have $3260 lying around for the PDF and I don't think I can expense this one. Michael McWhertor

Screen Digest: PS3 To Lead Through 2010, Wii 'Great Unknown' [Gamasutra]

Bellfied tells Kyle Orland:

Capcom, unlike most other developers, doesn't have dedicated strict boundaries between each of its development teams. We actually have one pool of development talent at Capcom and those individuals are basically assigned based on the timescales of each product we're working on, so everybody does work on a variety of content and games at Capcom... with the exception of Clover [...] it was managed by [Atsushi] Inaba-san, [Shinji] Mikami-san and [Hideki] Kamiya-san, and the three of them were essentially the individuals that made Clover, plus with the team staff they had about 80 people in total.

Our games need to at least break even and add value back to our shareholders, so it's impossible to make games that are not profitable over and over again. What actually happened is Mikami-san, Kamiya-san and Inaba-san chose to leave the company and do something else and the rest of the Clover team was just incorporated back into the rest of Capcom's development talent pool. So in fact, while three individuals left, Clover Studios as a separate entity was merged back into the rest of the Capcom teams and today, still, the talent we had, with the exception of three people, is still remaining at Capcom.

While some could make the argument that three very key figures are no longer in the Capcom camp, it would be a disservice to undermine the work that the other 77 Clover staff did while in their employ. Still, we'll continue to lament the closing of Clover while looking forward to see what SEEDS can come up with.

The rest of the interview should not be missed, as Bellfield talks about a number of interesting subjects, including how community feedback influenced the design of Lost Planet, his take on the AIAS awards and Capcom's exclusion, and the surprise success of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. A very good read. Michael McWhertor

Interview: Capcom Vice President of Marketing Charles Bellfield [Gamasutra]

No, we're not talking about the absolutely genius show starring Scott Bakula, we're talking about games, of course! In particular, multiplayer games. Gamasutra has put together a list of the most important, groundbreaking multiplayer games of all time compiled from comments by readers and industry professionals. The list of games was so varied, that they decided just to list the best comments that they received for certain games. The esteemed list includes titles like Wii Sports, Double Dragon, Battlefield 1942, Bomberman and Golden Eye.

What, no Gears of War? But.. but.. it's like the greatest multiplayer game that was ever created on the face of the earth. Oh, wait, they said groundbreaking... dang, back to the drawing board. Flynn De Marco

In light of the news that Neversoft would be taking over development duties for future Guitar Hero games, many wondered what original creator Harmonix would take on next. Now, we know just a bit more about the company's upcoming development plans, with Harmonix producer Daniel Sussman telling Gamasutra:

We are instead working on a different music game project, one that is a bigger and more ambitious endeavor than we felt we could pursue within the bounds of the Guitar Hero franchise.

Fascinating! Perhaps the MTV-owned Harmonix will revisit the online music gameplay they experimented with in their 2003 PlayStation 2 game Amplitude. The most recent trademarks from Harmonix include such tasty titles as "Battle of the Bands", "Rock Gods" and "Gods of Rock" which makes one wonder what direction they're pursuing.

Whatever they're working on, we're looking forward to it, all the while hoping Neversoft can keep the Guitar Hero party train running smoothly. Michael McWhertor

Harmonix Talks Guitar Hero, New Music Franchise [Gamasutra]

Industry rag Gamasutra has published its Quantum Leap awards for 2006, citing five video games from the past year that excelled in "innovation and advancing the state of the art of the industry." You already know number one. It's Wii Sports.

Gama editor Frank Cifaldi sums up nicely why the tech demo pack-in nabbed the top spot.

My mother, who hung up her gaming gloves for good after beating Super Mario Bros. 3 within a month of its release (love you, Mom), swearing to never play a video game again, practically snagged the Wii remote from me last Thanksgiving, after watching me bowl in Wii Sports. If that's not revolutionary, I don't know what is.

While the rest of the top five may not contain many surprises—save possibly Elite Beat Agents—it's the honorable mentions with which you should familiarize yourself. More obscure titles like Nintendo's Bit Generations series and Ray Hound are definitely worth the small investment. I know I fully plan on putting Dotstream on my personal "best of" this year. Michael McWhertor

Gamasutra's Quantum Leap Awards: Most Important Games, 2006 [Gamasutra]

I'm pretty disappointed in the Xbox 360. I think Microsoft is doing everything right: Games are good; Xbox Live is amazing; and the console is not prohibitively expensive. Yet people are just not buying. The console is lagging behind my initial expectations by at least 200,000 units per month in the U.S., and I don't know why.

Microsoft is surely due for a price drop this spring, with some stand out original titles in the pipeline, as well as Halo 3. Will 2007 be the year of the Xbox 360? Will the non-hardcore crowd finally bite with unproven IP like Lost Planet, Blue Dragon, and Mass Effect? It sure worked for Gears of War. Michael McWhertor

Analyze This: Wrapping Up the Year in Gaming [Gamasutra]

The San Francisco-based developer, currently working on both Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising for Sony Online Entertainment and Star Trek Online, saw a large reduction in work staff this week.

According to Gamasutra's anonymous source, the lay offs were due to budget issues, but in an official statement Perpetual prez and co-founder Chris McKibbin explained they were related to "content production roles [coming] to an end."

Gods & Heroes will see a delay to Summer '07, with no word on the status of Star Trek Online. Since the latter hasn't made much of an appearance outside of artwork and bare Enterprise hallways, don't expect to see that any time remotely soon. Michael McWhertor

Report: Perpetual Entertainment Lays Off 35, Delays Gods & Heroes [Gamasutra]

Simon Carless, who is, I'm sure, even busier than I am, just announced that he's moving GameSetWatch from the daily post-a-thon model to the thoughtful post occasionally model. Not that the two can't ever meet, they do, I believe, meet quite a bit on Kotaku. But trying to maintain a daily site with a lot of quantity and quality can be overwhelming at times and knowing what Carless does in his non-existent free time, I understand the decision.

For those of you who don't know Carless, he also oversees Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra and the upcoming and annual IGF/Independent Games Summit. I'm sure right about how, with GDC quickly approaching, his brain is about to asplode.

What he says he wants to do is shift to a "Merc News" game-blog level. That's interesting, because I've long felt that Dean and Nooch's approach to blogging is the perfect model for a newspaper blog. I'm always pointing their site out to my editor's at the Rocky because it proves my theory that what newspapers are good at is original, longer content, not short bursts of information, aggregation and meme. Brian Crecente

The Future of the Future [GSW]

We outsiders will Nintard, Xbot, and Sony Defense Force each other to death, but what do people in the industry think of this year's newest consoles? With which next-gen system are they aligning themselves? Industry pub Gamasutra took the time to ask video game professionals across the industry what they'll be buying this holiday season.

One Ubi Soft employee responds:

Already got my Wii, through the company we got it on the launch date. And I'm not planning on buying a PS3. I worked on two Wii titles (and helped a lot of other projects), PS3 is too expensive and I love the Wiimote!

But the more interesting (and potentially relationship ruining) responses come from the Anonymous types:

I'm a pretty loyal Sony consumer, but as I did with the 360, I'll probably wait a while for them to work out the kinks.

And:

Where's the 3rd option? I'm saving my money for Gears of War and an HD-DVD drive for my 360, and staying away from these two consoles for now. I may get a Wii at a later date after I play one and see how it feels to wave my arms around for a few hours of serious gaming, but I don't for see getting a PS3; I'll stick with my 360 thank you very much.

Opinions are divided, but lean more toward the less expensive Wii. There is certainly no lack of jaded responses here! Michael McWhertor

Question of the Week: Are Games Industry Professionals Buying PlayStation 3 or Wii?

How many universities does it take to make a bad video game? It sounds like nine, according to Gamasutra.

The big G reports that a consortium of nine universities led by Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University, is working on a game that will teach children how to deal with bullies.

The thing is, it sounds like a very basic game. You know when your lead developer uses the phrase "synthetic character" that you're in trouble. Brian Crecente

Edinburgh University Developing Anti-Bullying Title [Gamasutra]

The Academy Awards. Hollywood's opportunity to bask in itself and spend loads of money on limos, parties and wooing Academy members to vote for "important" motion pictures. Last week, Gamasutra ran an article, which compared a planned Japanese game award show to the Oscars. The Academy's sue-happy lawyers jumped down Gamasutra's throat:

The headline reads [before it was edited] "Japan Plans 'Game Academy Awards'." It refers to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to create an award for the country's video games industry. Regardless of whether or not this ACADEMY AWARDS reference was derived from an outside news source, it is nonetheless concerning to the Academy. We consider the use of the ACADEMY AWARDS name in Gamasutra's headline as damaging to our rights by tending to dilute the ACADEMY AWARDS mark's unique identification with the Academy or incorrectly implying these awards are in some way connected with or endorsed by the Academy.

Thing is, the "Game Academy Awards" bit came from a Japanese newspaper, The Yomiuri Shinbun, and was simply quoted by the site. So to prevent the Oscars' "unique" identity to be diluted, the Academy strong-armed Gamasutra to remove a quote from a major Japanese newspaper.

Just know Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that hopefully this Japanese "Game Academy Awards"—I'm quoting here as it's not connected with your dog and pony show—will be nothing like the Oscars. Judging by your track record (take for example, stiffing Martin Scorsese in favor of Kevin Costner for Best Director), I can only hope that the Japanese "Game Academy Awards" will be nothing like the "Movie Academy Awards." Otherwise, fat chance Miyamoto or Kojima will ever get recognized. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [GameSetWatch]

Simon's got a nice round-up on GameSetWatch of some of the interesting games-related stories you may have missed in the past day or so. And I don't just say that because he links both to Kotaku and one of my Rocky articles.

Some of the non-Brian content includes a story by the SJ Merc News about Dean Takahashi's story on Electronic Arts and original IP, Grand Text Auto's negative take on The Escapist's academic gaming story and Bizarre Creations decision to start cease-and-desisting PC clones of Geometry War.

There's also mention in there that Jack Thompson also sent him a nasty letter. I guess he likes to spread that sort of stuff around. Brian Crecente

GameSetLinks: Eno, Otakon, Geometry Wars [GSW]

The paper quotes Dr Versitz Piroska, the lawyer acting for MGE and Mithis, as saying: "A number of complaints have been filed with the Budapest police with regard to the illegal removal of software and hardware connected to the Battlestations: Midway, Joint Task Force and other games... [with complaints of] unlawful penetration into Mithis' computers, copying, sabotage and deletion of games' data and infringement of IP rights."

According to The Sunday Times, Budapest police have confirmed the basic details of the story, indicating that two investigations are proceeding on two separate subjects: "on suspicion of breaching of authorship rights law."

Today, SCi seemingly issued a statement saying that the newspaper may be confused, but doesn't appear to actually deny what the newspaper reported.

In a statement given to Gamasutra by SCi head of communications, Chris Glover, the company suggests that The Sunday Times has confused the games Battlestations: Midway and Joint Task Force as a single title and that the majority of complaints referred to in the article do not therefore relate to Battlestations: Midway. Indeed SCi suggest that there ware no specific allegations against the company.

SCi has admitted that in November 2005 the company exercised its contractual right to take over development of the game, following dissatisfaction with MGE. According to SCi, MGE then demanded compensation and when none was forthcoming made an official complaint to the authorities in Budapest, relating to the ownership of intellectual property rights.

Jane Cavanagh, CEO of SCi Entertainment said; "We would never normally comment upon such relatively minor matters and have only done so to clarify the position. We wish to correct what we believe are a number of misleading statements and material inaccuracies, particularly in this instance as allegations raised in the article appear to relate to a totally different and unrelated company or companies."

In my experience, when a company is under investigation for illegal hacking, theft and sabotage and they didn't do it, they usually just say so.

Very odd stuff going on over there. Brian Crecente

Breaking: SCi Denies Theft Reports on Battlestations: Midway [Gamasutra]

Unfortunately, Gawd's Museum of Dissected Games doesn't cover bad games. It doesn't have a 'What Went Wrong' section. But it's a fascinating third-party resource of postmortems about some of our favorite retro games. Gawd, a developer himself, hacks apart old games in his spare time and writes what makes them tick. It's a new site, so the only postmortem available is Carmack & Romero's Dangerous Dave 2 but it's a fascinating, if slightly technical, read into a game many of us old schoolers have loved and forgotten. And check out those awesome Dave death animations!

We hope someone will follow this up with a spoof site, 'The Museum of Dissected Gamers'. There's a couple Kotaku commenters Eliza and I would like to submit. Florian Eckhardt

Gawd's Museum of Dissected Games

We could quote every other sentence, but since no one reads anything on Gamasutra Postmortems except "what went wrong", here's a lesson learned from the intrepid Schadenfreude team:

We should have used motion capture for the in-game characters, but we simply did not room for it in our budget. Thus the characters dance very badly, but that is all right — we Germans are traditionally known for our stubborn and fastidious natures and our fondness for zeppelins, not any innate ability to shake our groove things.

We love Accordion Hero. Hey, Sparky, thou sultry mynx - when are you going to get around to actually finishing your real game?

'Schadenfreudian Slips': Postmortem - 'A Tight Squeeze': The Making Of Accordion Hero [Gamasutra]

According to a Sony head, the Killzone details dished out alongside those two are legit.

For my weekly bet, I'll wager a 6-pack of PBR and a box of Tabasco Cheez Its that we'll see these games announced at or before E3.

Sony Officially Denies God Of War 2, GT4 Online Reports [Gamasutra]
Eurogamer Leaks God of War, Gran Turismo Info - Then Pulls It [Kotaku]

Gamasutra has started its own blog. GameSetWatch is edited by Simon Carless and written by a laundry list of some of my favorite bloggers: GeenOnStun's Michael McWhertor, Wonderland's Alice Taylor, Edge Magazine's Brandon Boyer, LostLevel's Frank Cifaldi and Insert Credit's Brandon Sheffield.

Can't wait to read it.

Game Set Watch [Official Site]