Valve Publications [Valve via GameSetWatch]

"You can roll this around a map and it's like this clean blank canvas for combat," he said. "When it's driving around it works as a mobile forward spawn point and when you spawn into it you get additional equipment."

Jobe said the APC will also be able to deploy a piece of equipment that is "like the mother of all bubble shields" and is a couple of hundred feet wide.

Enemies won't be able to shoot into it but allies will be able to shoot out and when a Warhawk gets too close to it it came become unstable and explode.

While the APC won't have a weapon of its own it does have a turbo boost, Jobe said, which can turn the entire vehicle into a giant missile of sorts.

"I've had kills before where I've launched through a Warhawk in an APC," he said.

The booster pack will come with a new battlefield which has ten layouts and it will also include new layouts for existing maps.

While Jobe was hesitant to peg a specific date, because the pack is still being play tested, he did say that he hopes to get it out by the end of next month of the first half of April.

While Operation Broken Mirror won't come with new gameplay modes, Jobe said they are talking about creating some and if they do come they will likely be released as free patches.

"I'd hope we would add new game modes, game modes are things I don't think gamers should have to pay for," he said.

I also asked Jobe about the possibility of a single-player campaign being released for Warhawk, which was once meant to include single-player play, either as an expansion pack or episodic content.

"We made a conscious strategic decision to go multiplayer only, If we were to go single player we would probably address it in another product," he said. "As a player I don't know if I would want to play single player through episodic content. I'd be hesitant."

Jobe added that Incognito isn't just 100 percent Warhawk nowadays either.

"Right now we are working on some exciting things," he said. "But we can't make any announcements."

My experience with Street Fighter 2 CE was born entirely in my time first hanging out at arcades and then running one in the 90s in Maryland. I loved the game so much that my time spent playing it is what likely lead to me being fired from the job. I slathered more attention on our big-screen SF2 box than I did every other machine in the place, combined. I regularly replaced the cherry switches and springs on a weekly basis.

But I couldn't have told you who the game's producer was, what sort of lore was buried in the creating of such an indelible franchise or how they came about with the idea of the characters in the game.

That being said, read on.

The first thing I noticed when I saw the game, was the 2.5D effect of the graphics. Described on paper, it sounds immensely off-putting, but in action it manages to pull Street Fighter into the modern age without sullying the gameplay at all. This is done by essentially making both the background and characters 3D but forcing the characters to move on a 2D plane. What you're left with is the best of both worlds.

More importantly, the game's look seems to have returned to its origins. Sure the graphics pop, really pop, but they're very reminiscent of II and not as SNKey as I felt Street Fighter III had become. I know, blaspheme.

While the controls haven't entirely returned to the grandeur of Street Fighter II, they have mostly returned. The same can be said of the attacks. Sure you have to still use two buttons to throw (so annoying) and taunt (so unnecessary) and there are revenge, super and ultra moves, but at it's heart this is a game that strips away the unessentials and returns to what made the Street Fighter franchise so addictive: Timing.

This isn't just my opinion. When I spoke with producer Yoshinori Ono he said that there was a concerted effort to refocus the franchise with this title. Street Fighter had become too filled with moves and had lost its way, he essentially said. What the game was always about was timing, much like real martial arts, not flashy moves.

Playing the game, after years spent ignoring the increasingly annoying character-driven Street Fighter III spin-offs, was like returning to a childhood home to find that it was, in fact, larger, not smaller than you had remembered it.

The game's timing, which plays at about the speed of Street Fighter II Turbo, has been tweaked, deliberately, and I believe the hit boxes (which invisible surround the characters) shrunk, but that just gives me an excuse to relearn the game. There also seems to be a slightly longer delay after pulling off a move, or whiffing one.

In fact, I can honestly say that the only thing about this early build of Street Fighter IV that disappoints me, so far, is that it probably won't be showing up in arcades across America and that's because there aren't arcades across America anymore.

Disclaimer: these impressions are eyes-on only. No one at the GDC EA event from which this write-up stems had the chance to play.

You launch the game through the website. a big button on the front and center of the page. You go through a series of screens to select your character and join a game, and you're in. Why is this moment so exciting? The start of the game is also the end of all advertising. That's right, in Battlefield Heroes, despite EA drawing their profits from advertisements, players will not be subjected to dynamic in-game billboards destroying the mis en scene.

As for the combat, it's sort of like Battlefield Light. Players choose between 3 classes (soldier, heavier gunman and spy) and let it rip from there. The third-person gameplay is a cross between capture the flag and team deathmatch. Each team races for 50 kills, but capturing a flag gives the successful team a score modifier that will affect the fragcount (meaning a 2x modifier will give your team two kills for the price of one).

The level we saw tested featured both tanks and planes. The tank was designed to be easy to drive, with each mortar round exploding light a classic Adam West punch. The plane looked just as easy to operate, with the fun option of dive bombing a teammate to give them a seat on your wing. (Note: the pilot can also leave his seat to sit on the opposite wing, in which case the plane will land softly on the pillow-like ground). Yeah, this ain't realism.

Then there's the power-up system. On top of your base skill set, you'll occasionally have access to more powerful techniques. Do things like see through walls or replenish health. It's a balancing system for casual players, and it's one part of the game that actually reminds us more of Shadowrun (R.I.P) than Team Fortress 2.

So are we pumped? Not really. Don't get us wrong, for a free web game Heroes looks great. But for those used to online multiplayer fragfests, Heroes' simple (read: rudimentary) mechanics will grow dull quickly. It's hard to see in the promo clip above, but there's something about the physics and general interface that just feels a generation younger than the current consoles...let alone PCs.

But honestly, we're not so sure that Battlefield Heroes is intended for anyone reading this article anyway. We're betting it's EA's gateway drug for casual gamers to try out shooters. And with that hat on, the game could be quite successful.

Ugh, I wasn't really a huge fan of the original and didn't really have a whole lot of interest in checking it out... but after Tarzaning across a level and using my bionic claw to toss barrels at people and people at barrels, I quickly changed my mind.

The first thing you notice when you pick up the XBLA/PSN title (I played on the 360) is how pretty it is. Just because a game is 2D and harkens back to the bitastic days of old, doesn't mean that it has to be ugly. Capcom managed to give the game a high polish and still include echoes of the classic.

The thing I found most frustrating about the original was that moving diagonally with your claw was never very easy for me, it didn't feel fluid and it was easy to get it wrong. Not so with the remake, I was able to cruise up and down levels in record time with just the claw. And they didn't make it too easy, just smoothed out the process and precision of the controls.

The game really makes use of the HD real estate, but still has levels that feel like they belong in the original. You still can't jump down, you have to drop, you still can't jump up, you have to use your claw. But this time, for me at least, it seems to work better.

I know it's blasphemy to even hint at the fact that a remake of an arcade classic could in anyway be improved upon for a console, but from what I saw in the very early build of the game, Bionic Commando Rearmed might very well do that.

Aoyama explained that a "debate raged for several weeks" until the team came up with what they felt to be a better direction, the play history list.

Aoyama explained, ""instead of instituting some play limit...this allowed parents to monitor and discuss how much their children were playing...this is why you can't erase the play history on the console."

It's interesting to see how two companies making similar products tackled a problem (limiting play time to please parents) in such a different manner. Nintendo hoped that the list would provide constant check-up on children, initiating a parent to child dialogue. Microsoft, on the other hand, went with the more straightforward, less child-trusting approach (the even Iwata initially supported).

Which is better? I love the philosophy behind Nintendo's parental controls, but I'm betting that for most American families, Microsoft's are flat-out more effective. Thoughts?

How was it? Fun, but not revolutionary.

Let's take a step back. Battlefield: Bad Company multiplayer is all about gold. One team has it, the other team wants it. And despite the multitude of technologically advanced armaments that you and your squad have access to throughout the game, this gold is kept in simple locked chests that can be blown up with, say, 4 or 5 grenades.

While it's your pretty standard Battlefield class-based gameplay (you choose your type of character with for which you have corresponding weapons/skills), this battle for gold adds some arcadey fun moments. You see, the gold is divided into several chests—with each chest the offense destroys, the more advantages they get. Respawn points become closer and advanced weapons and vehicles are unlocked.

The result is a game the will consistently start slow are grow more ludicrous as men on foot are replaced by men in tanks and plenty of the always fulfilling air support (nothing like airstriking a defenseless building).

And it works, aided by a pretty unique and complimentary respawn system. One can either choose to respawn at their current base, or, for the gamblers out there, respawn with your squad. In other words, you enter by the action, but you'll have to dodge bullets in a possibly outnumbered/outgunned situation.

But as for these promises of destructible environments—I'm not certain that it's a concept that designers have quite grasped yet.

As a DICE employee explained to me, destruction in games is complicated because gamers really don't want everything to be destructible. While leveling a building sounds fun, the map I played on was nothing but buildings. Imagine leveling the whole playing field and being left with a few withering blades of grass on an open plain. Maybe the first time the idea sounds fun. The second or third? Not so much.

So the way destructible environments work in Battlefield: Bad Company is pretty much this: trees can be knocked over and walls can be blown through. But a building's frame will always stay intact, even if a million bajillion nuclear bombs were to drop in close proximity.

I know, the compromise doesn't sound so bad. A guy is shooting you from a window. You shoot your grenade launcher, blowing away his cover. Then you shoot him in the ass until he dies.

This part is fun, no doubt. And it opens up a slew of new strategies.

But where the game becomes less fulfilling is during those McGuyeresque moments of improvisation. For instance, you are on the bottom floor of a two-story building and decide, what the hell, I'll blow the floor out from under the sniper who's upstairs. This doesn't work. And the same seemed to apply for the moments when you could get above a building and wanted to make a surprise entrance through the roof. Certain things don't blow up that really should.

The thing is, I don't even fault the game. It seems more likely to be a situation similar to the first 3D platformers; things weren't quite right and nobody knew why. That's how Bad Company felt...just a hair off of really grasping the exciting concept of truly destructible environments.

All of that said, I'm sure many will have loads of fun with the game. And I'll definitely give it another shot at launch. No pun intended.

I wondered how they would change the jewel matching style gameplay to make this game different from its predecessor and they certainly didn't disappoint. Besides the obvious visual differences in the interface, the style of puzzling has changed as well. The round pieces have changed to hexagonal ones and extra challenge has been added by the movement of the hexagons once you have matched up your three or more. Instead of dropping straight down, your columns slide diagonally, and depending on which piece you move, the columns will fill in either from the left or the right. Gravity will have a bearing on the various movements of the pieces as well making you have to think in several directions at once.

One of the things I asked about was whether the AI was going to be improved over the seemingly punishingly difficult AI of the original Puzzle Quest. I was told that the developers had heard players issues and it was something they were working on. So hopefully this time around, our enemies from space won't have the same kind of luck that will allow them 5 minutes worth of amazing moves while we just sit and watch our health go down.

Like the original Puzzle Quest, Galactrix has an overarching storyline that ties all the puzzle battling together. In the far future, the entire galaxy is run by four mega corporations. It's not long before one of these corporations starts deadly experiments that go awry and threaten the existence of the universe. The player must puzzle battle these enemies of the universe and save us all.

There wasn't much more information given in the short demo that I saw but I could tell from what I did see that D3 definitely has another addicting hit on their hands. The changes from the original game are enough that new players will find it exciting and seasoned players will take to it immediately without feeling like they are just playing the same game over again. Puzzle Quest: Galactrix will be coming to the DS, PC and XBLA later this year, ready to fly its way into your heart and not let go.

As I'm sure you're all aware Valve threw a little party during last week's big show (We weren't invited. I blame our butchering of their song.) and during the tail end of it they brought up Jonathan Coulton to play a set. At the end of his last song he invited the Rock Band folks up on the stage to play Still Alive on their game, a really neat way to announce that the song was coming to the game.

After they finished the crowd went crazy, a Harmonix developer told me the next day. The crowd was so excited, in fact, that one of them burst from the masses and jumped onto the stage. Walking up to the 360 that was home to the song, he plucked out a memory card, plugged it in and started fiddling. At which point one of their larger of the Harmonix guys walked over and asked him if he needed help with something.

"I'm just grabbing Still Alive, everyone needs to be able to play this," he said, if my source's memory serves.

The developer plucked the controller from the rotund man's hands and deftly deleted the song, which he had already managed to grab, from the card. Better luck next time.

The Harmonix guys thought it was even stranger that he later bragged to Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos about it. Personally, I think it's super weird that he happened to have a Memory Card on him.

This year, we heard a really funny joke involving a possible 2008 game release. So funny it made out sides hurt! That fantasyland release day joke was?

In this 15 minute chat we talk about the death of the PC gaming market, how GDC has evolved and what type of character he plays in WoW... among other things.

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The real treat however was a little surprise waiting on a DS in the corner, Metal Slug 7! I hot footed it over to the corner of the room and practically wrestled the girl playing it to the ground in my attempt to check out the game. It looked great, played better and had everything you could possibly want from a Metal Slug game. So if you are ready for a new Metal Slug experience, look no further than Metal Slug 7, coming soon to a DS near you.

While the above pic may not be of the best quality, we got a few individuals snaps that are much better looking. They're behind the jump, front page visitors, because I'm pretty sure that pic of a pants-less Miyamoto is not safe for work.

Seriously, man. Put some khakis on!

Since Portal is essentially a first person puzzle game, the team initially thought it would simply end on what they thought was appropriate, a puzzle more complex than anything the player had seen before. That solution, they said, was a pain.

Their first proper boss fight attempt, when GLaDOS was just a translucent shimmery cube, was the "Giant Laser" battle. Players had to direct lasers back at GLaDOS to destroy it. It wasn't fun and the lasers were just too difficult to aim.

Boss battle attempt number two, their "Mortal Kombat" stab, was full of intensity. Missing flying, turrets spawning, an out of place firefight than belied Portal's slower paced, cerebral gameplay. It also sucked, according to Wolpaw.

Attempt number three was a chase sequence. But the pacing was horrible and there was no opportunity to communicate to the player.

Around this time, Wolpaw said the Half-Life 2 Episode Two guys excitedly said to the Portal team "Our final battle is gonna have 100 Striders, you're going to get to drive a car and fight dozens of mini-Striders. It's gonna be awesome! What are you guys gonna do?"

With a tiny team on Portal, they simply couldn't match a boss battle that epic, and they ultimately created the time limited incinerator set piece as the final fight.

The Portal team's limited resources also forced them to "trim the narrative fat" elsewhere. Swift talked about a proposed scene involving "The Rat Man" the fellow escaped test subject whose writing and sketches appear in the game's later levels.

As far as Portal's other co-star, the Weighted Companion Cube, its origins lie in addressing player frustration with finishing the "box marathon" level that features the lovable crate. Wolpaw said that he was inspired to give the Cube a little personality by what he'd been reading in de-classified government interrogation manuals. "They're great," he said, pointing to findings that people in isolation become emotionally attached to inanimate objects.

Wolpaw had advice for those trying to write a "funny" game—"God help you." He related his previous experience with Psychonauts, on which he was one of the game's writers. Upon name dropping the cult favorite, Wolpaw was met with a huge round of applause. "More people just clapped than bought the game," he joked.

"Hearing macho tough guy dialogue is annoying enough, but hearing the same joke fifty times, a couple of which may actually be funny can be much worse," Wolpaw said. He called the playtesting of Psychonauts "psychological torture", his comedic script met with silence when being pumped out of 40 monitors in the QA section at Double Fine Productions.

When the two had wrapped up their session, taking questions from the audience, the discussion quickly moved to plans for Portal 2. Swift and Wolpaw mostly dodged the question, with the latter saying "I'm just trying to bask in the moment... without people bugging me about it."

While the bass is a little bit on the easy side, the lead guitar, drums, and of course, singing are all the perfect level of challenging to make it fun. I'm already a HUGE fan of the song so playing it on Rock Band was a real treat. I can't imagine a single person with the game not wanting to pick this up when it hits the consoles.

I was a little bummed to discover that while the original singing is there and can be cranked up enough to cover your truly awful singing voice, there is no modulation for your voice while you are singing. So you can harmonize with a computer, but you can't sound like one... and we all know how awful that is.

While the internal, companywide development platform was originally understood to be built for PlayStation 3 development (specifically, Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy versus XIII), it is being designed with multiple platforms, including the Xbox 360 and PC, in mind. Murata also confirmed that a version is being readied for the Wii, which is still very early, but we don't expect it to kick out visuals on par with the PS3.

APB does have persistence and progression, if done a bit non-traditionally. But customization is one feature that APB has in spades.

Jones kicked off the early look at APB with a preview of character customization. One of the design goals for APB was to "let the player make their own action figure", putting character generation in the hands of the user and giving them the ability to make their avatars look totally unique. While deep character customization has become a staple of the MMO, APB's version may feature the broadest set of tools yet.

Jones walked us through a sped up version of the creation process, outfitting his avatar with unique identifiers—facials scars, veins, freckles, tattoos, realistic looking hair, a massive wardrobe. Using a system that might look familiar to serious Forza Motorsport 2 players, APB looks to one-up what Turn 10 Studios has done, with a decal system that has some stunning customization chops. Not only can users manipulate primitive vector shapes, they can apply shaders, textures and pre-made hi-res images to their designs, making for extremely realistic decals. These decals can be applied to anything the player wears, even to his skin, with a realistic tattoo look applied to the player generated content.

Clothing is also fully customizable, with attention paid to fit, layering and even things like tucking or untucking one's shirt.

That unique identity extends not just to your own character, but to your clan and your car as well. Car customization works just like avatar customization, so the decals a player has emblazoned on his jacket can also be applied to your ride.

Jones showed footage from the game, featuring characters fresh to the world—one thug was on an early mission, stealing a TV set in the default noob outfit of white t-shirt and jeans—and characters who were longtime APB vets. The MMO features "dynamic matchmaking" as Jones called it, essentially setting up player versus player missions on the fly. A three-player group of Gangsters were tasked with scoring some loot, then driving it to a safe point to complete their mission, a standard Grand Theft Auto-style mission set up. The moment the Gangsters crossed the line and broke the law, an APB was sent out to the game's Enforcers, the cops to their robbers.

What followed was essentially the MMO version of a Counter-Strike round, with players either driving their respective vehicles or engaging in a third-person firefight. The pair of Enforcers, two player pairs, responding to the all points bulletin eventually tracked down the bad guys, blocking them into an alleyway.

Jones said that these dynamic matchmaking battles in APB wouldn't necessarily pit players of the same level against each other. He showed a clip of a group of new players, with just a single pistol between the four of them, being matched with a very high level Enforcer. He quickly took them down, but not before destroying their low level car with a rocket launcher. Who doesn't like rocket launchers?

What we saw of APB was really exciting stuff. The team looks like they may have something special that appeals to gamers who would traditionally scoff and MMOs, but something that isn't just Crackdown Online or EverQuest In The Bad Part Of Town.

The final feature that Jones showed, was APB's ability to generate great machinima. With a group of wildly customized characters that looked like Cloud and Barret from Final Fantasy VII taking on a Cactuar and something impish, but not immediately recognizable to this FF noob. A turn based battle ensued, which quickly ended when "Cloud" summoned a decked out flaming car, done, of course, to hilarious effect.

We have dozens of screens of the game in motion at GDC, including the mock Final Fantasy VII cinema, in the gallery below. Be sure to check them out.

A number of specialty arcades and stores, we were told, have already ordered the arcade machine from importers directly. Unfortunately, Capcom is still trying to find a distributor with the reach to get it into arcade. The big hang-up, it seems, is that nowadays most U.S. arcade distributors deal almost only with redemption ticket games.

Microsoft just responded to our request for comment with this statement:

Xbox LIVE Arcade has long been known as the premier destination for digitally distributed original and classic games - making it a very appealing platform for game developers. We don't disclose details on our business contracts, but what we can tell you is that we work closely with all of our partners to provide the Xbox 360 community with the best entertainment possible while making publishing a title on XBLA an attractive prospect.

While not really a confirmation nor a denial, it does sound as if they are reacting to what our multiple indie developer sources told us was fact. We will be meeting with some of the XBLA indie development folks with Microsoft later today and will make sure to follow up with them about this issue.

Stay tuned.

Microsoft Cuts Indie Royalties in Half [Kotaku]

It's on! Masahiro Sakurai takes the stage.

After rolling the operatic trailer for Brawl, and a round of applause, Sakurai belts out his own version of the tune. He's got quite a voice!

Sakurai moves to the make up of the development staff, which required a new office set up in Tokyo. Folks from Game Arts, Nintendo and HAL Laboratories were brought on staff, including a few other unnamed temps. The staff level was about 100, but not all were full time.

He moves on to the Brawl character roster and how fighters were chosen.

Characters were chosen based on their individuality, saying they must stand out in the game. They had to consider developments costs and the time needed to include someone in the roster.

The decision to include Sonic the Hedgehog as a playable character wasn't made until 2007. Sounds like a pretty tight schedule!

Sakurai talks about four of the game's newcomers, Ike, Meta Knight, Zero Suit Samus and Snake. He points out that the suit-free Samus falls in the "supple martial arts" category. Mmmm... supple.

He says, fundamentally we had to use Nintendo's official character models. Putting all these characters in a game, side by side, requires a unified look. You can't for instance, put in someone like Bugs Bunny alongside photorealistic styles like what was applied for Link.

"We tried to reduce the sensation of things not fitting together by unifying the materials," Sakurai says.

But you couldn't modify the look of the Pokemon Trainer and Lucas too much toward some middle ground, or they'd look inappropriate.

Sakurai shows the "official" Mario design, a clean, soft, cartoony look. The Brawl version, he says, has scuffs and wear, details that were important to defining the look of the roster.

They weren't just trying to take advantage of the Wii's visual upgrade, the team simply wanted to add an appropriate level of detail. He shows the same process with Pikmin's Captain Olimar, the original version of which doesn't feature the same details like stitching that Brawl does.

One character that underwent "serious" changes was Pit. "This (a 2D cartoon version of Pit) became this (Brawl's totally new 3D model)" The team did twenty years of updating on Pit's look all at once.

Link's progression was much more natural, occurring over many games. A similar design evolution was applied to Pit.

Pit's makeover features golden head and arm bands, with a bit of anime and earnestness applied. They decided to make his scarf a different material than his toga for added character.

"I'm proud of the representation we gave Pit as a winged being."

When Pit's arrow of light is fired, it's controllable. "We made it so that his bow can be made into two parts, and use them as a sword. It's sort of like Darth Maul in Star Wars." His tights were added to give him a "youthful" image, but other costume pieces were targeting "nobility." Clearly, someone put some thought into this.

Sakurai says they gave Pit furry boots for a bit of a leg-warmer look. "We think they look pretty cute."

He moves on from "Graphics" to "Motion." In the beginning, Sakurai says that he based the move sets on what he'd like to see in Brawl. "Just thinking up moves is easy" but balance is required.

Standby, wind-up, strike and follow through are the typical motion components of a particular move. Link's "standard attack" is used as an example. Standby, he says, is the starting point of every standing action. Wind-up is the animation where the character draws back to attack. This gives the player (and his opponent) visual cues that actions are about to happen. It's simple, two-frame animation, but conveys a lot of information. Strike, that's the "meat" of attacking. Follow-through, which occupies the most screen time, and needs to look the least like Standby poses. Now you know how Sakurai breaks down a move.

The animation for Fox's up smash takes less than 3/4 of a second to play out. Realistic moves, Sakurai says, aren't always the best fit, even if you're animating a humanoid character.

How do you convey poses to animators? Sakurai used a Microman poseable action figure. Using these, he snapped photos of many of the poses that would ultimately become final animations. It's clear, even from these photos, whose animations these are, with Pit and Zero Suit Samus standing out.

He compares his Microman photos against the final version of Wario's moves. They look nearly identical. The same is true for Sonic's moves.

Now, Sakurai shows off the final animations that had to change drastically from their Microman originals, mostly to better convey motion.

He moves on to Pit's and Samus' poses. For the latter, he used a female version of Microman, which Sakurai says comes with multiple breast sizes. He unfortunately glosses over this quickly.

"For Snake, I really wanted the character to express weight." For Snake's weapons, Sakurai culled accessories and weapons from official Microman toys. He changed Snake's crawling animation from the Metal Gear Solid original, to give him a more imposing look, with shoulders raised.

Sakurai shows off many of the other characters, ones that don't have the build of a Microman toy, like King Dedede, Olimar, Diddy Kong and Meta Knight. Sakurai busts out one of the Micromen, he says in his "Ken" pose.

"One thing I'd like to point out though, is that there are no Street Fighter characters in Super Smash Bros." Consider us crestfallen!

Sakurai moves on to Parameters, the numbers of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. "Being in the brawl is more than just making the roster" his slide reads, adding that characters need to blend their own original series, Smash Bros and solid gameplay to be good adds.

Character essence, he says, is a key factor. Keeping these rules in mind is some of the most "unglamorous" work of game development.

He then compares the jumps of Mario and Samus, from their appearances in Super Mario Bros. and the original Metroid. Mario's is more realistic on its downward arc, while Samus' jump has more "float" to it. And you can't just explain that by saying that Metroid takes place in space, it has to be carried over to the game.

Similarly, simply believing that Sonic is merely a "really fast character" is an easy mistake to make. Sakurai boots up the Wii, playing Sonic, Pit and Snake on screen. He shows of Sonic's movement, saying that the weight of the character, combined with blazing fast speed, conveys his speed. He calls Sonic's double jump "gimmicky." So humble!

Taking the remote controlling Snake, Sakurai demos the Metal Gear Solid fighter and his move set.

"The more you play Snake, the more cunning your use of his weapons will become and that's how we designed it." He shows Snake applying bombs to Pit and Sonic, using the pan and scan photo feature to get a laugh out of the crowd. Everyone likes to see Pit with a face full of explosives!

Pit is now being shown. "Pit didn't appear in any other game before, but I think we've done a good job putting him in the universe and making him a good fighting game character," Sakurai says.

Sakurai takes a photo of Snake close quarter combat attacking Pit. "Look! It's Snake with wings!" he jokes.

He has Snake whip out his special cardboard box, then has Sonic snatch it away. GDC attendees think that's just hilarious.

Back to the talk. Sakurai tells the crowd that game designers must think before they act. "If you think before you act, you can reduce the workloads of your programmers and artists," the slide reads. Similarly, he warns not to fall back on the excuse "We'll never no before we try."

Sakurai skips to "Getting The Word Out." By this, he means, the Smash Bros. Dojo.

We developed homepages for the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube Smash Bros. games before, but only in Japan.

He says that the Dojo is "possibly the grandest scale ever among official single game sites." It started in May of 2007 and has seen 230 updates. At its peak, it had 1 million hits in a single day, 5 million in one week. Sakurai writes the site himself, with visuals taken by other Brawl staffers. Nintendo decides when the updates go out.

To get the word out, production staff has to take part in selling the game. He says that the game wouldn't have the buzz it does if it weren't for the Smash Bros. Dojo.

Sakuari wraps it up with that sage advice, thanking his interpreter and exiting the stage. Unfortunately, there is no QA session, but if anyone has any questions about what was shown, please make requests in the comments. I'll do my best to better explain when not trying to frantically liveblog.

Thanks for checking in!

He added that it was a Nintendo initiative to avoid misleading consumers into thinking they can buy games that can be played entirely free when they cannot (whether or not this implies an initiative to begin charging for multiplayer content was unclear). To aid in a clear cost presentation, the blue WFC logo will be joined with a similar red logo featuring the line "Pay & Play."

While we were offered no additional details, we understand that the red stands for danger.

News of Microsoft's democratization of indie game development was overshadowed this week by an increasing discontent among established indie developers that the company was halving the royalties paid to them for future Xbox Live Arcade projects, several well-informed sources told Kotaku.

Several developers directly affected by the cut told Kotaku that the once generous royalty share of 70 percent given to them by the company was within the past few months cut down to 35 percent.

The move, some believe, may be tied to Microsoft's future reliance on the recently announced initiative to deliver games created using the company's XNA software package to Xbox Live users for a still undisclosed price.

At least one developer I spoke with said they were considering moving over to Sony and its Playstation Network in light of the cuts.

Microsoft has been contacted for comment, but has not yet replied. We'll make sure to update as soon as we hear word.

Update: Microsoft has responded, and you can see what they have to say here.

I played it and Holy shit; Greg needs to give them a new score. It was kind of clear that Factor 5 put in the extra effort a little begrudgingly, but the results were amazing. This might push me over the edge into the "must buy PS3" territory. I also mentioned Greg Miller's name, and the Factor 5 guys burned a hole through my skull with their looks of hatred. I think they'll be alright once the patch is out for a while though.

GDC 2008 Crazy Shit Report #1 [DugBuzz's IGN Blog - Via QJ.net]

That's gotta be one of the best back-handed compliments ever, I'd think, and maybe not entirely accurate. Sure, Nintendo dominates software charts with first party product, but games like Capcom's Resident Evil efforts, Mario & Sonic at the Olympics and Guitar Hero III have done pretty well for themselves on the Wii.

Sony's Harrison: You Can't Get Wii's Whole Audience [Gamasutra]

That is when we jumped on-stage and pulled out our Rock Band equipment piece by piece...When they got to the song list they scrolled through an almost infinite amount of DLC until eventually they stopped on one- "Still Alive" by GLaDOS

Valve Party at GDC + Special Preview of an Upcoming DLC Song [HMXSean's Rockband.com Blog - Thanks BatDan!]

On the precipice of delving into the world of massively multiplayer online games, a genre that tends to chew up mediocre and even good games and spit them out, BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk say they're not worried, but they also have a healthy respect for the challenges they face.

"It's definitely challenging," said Muzyka. "We waited years to do this. One of our first ideas, 15 years ago, was actually an MMO but we wanted to wait until we were ready as a studio. These are big projects with big potential."

"As a type of game, (MMOs) are almost at the pinnacle of maxing the difficulty levels for development," Zeschuk added. "You have thousands of people trying to break it and mess stuff up. It's very hard technically, it's not for the faint of heart."

Both Muzyka and Zeschuk are also well aware of Blizzard, but the prospect of taking on a company that so dominates one particular genre doesn't bother them.

"We look at with great respect what Blizzard is doing," Zeschuk said. "One of the challenges with a lot of (Blizzard's) previous competitors was that guys have made various tweaks to the same formula.

"We joke that we're happy to accept half to two-thirds of the WOW market."

But with BioWare, Muzyka said, the company is really more about competing with itself than with anyone else.

"We are just going to deliver something that's world class and let gamers decide if they want to play," he said.

Zeschuk said they have a strong team of MMO developers at the company now and that they are very confident they can make something work. That's being done, Muzyka added, by identifying the areas often neglected by MMOs.

"We are choosing to innovate in a bunch of areas that no one else has innovated in this space," he said.

What Insomniac has decided to do was to share and distribute their own technology throughout the industry, in turn encouraging others to share their own tech. The Nocturnal Initiative is not, they stress, a game engine. There will be no snarky comments from Mark Rein about Insomniac stepping on Epic's toes as the program is designed to help game development peers avoid rewriting some of the basics.

"Rewriting libraries is a waste of time," said Andy Burke, tools group lead at Insomniac, and the gang on the software side hopes that releasing code into the wild, code that comes with a "liberal" open source license, fosters feedback and may encourage others to share their own work. That can lead to better games, they hope.

The first batch of code is now available at the Nocturnal Initiative web site, in easy to read Wiki format, for developers who are interested in the program. They may be interested to learn that this isn't just something that's been whipped up for good PR, this is code that's being used in production, used in development in titles like Ratchet & Clank Future and Resistance 2.

While the current offerings aren't necessarily specific to the PlayStation 3—PC and Xbox 360 developers may be interested in what's available—that doesn't mean the possibility of PS3 specific libraries are out of the question.

"We don't think there's anything preventing us from offering code specific to the Cell, which is already fairly open as it is," said Insomniac's Mike Acton, but the development team isn't setting anything in stone, it sounds. They certainly have plenty planned, as evidenced by their future release road map. Hopefully, game developers will find something worthwhile within.

Nocturnal Initiative [Insomniac Games]

Today, with the aid of countless charts tracking the exponential growth of technology over the past 150 years, Kurzweil explained gaming in the year 2029. And no, we're not "drinking the Kool-Aid." Instead we've opted to siphon gallons of the stuff intravenously into our bloodstream.

According to Kurzweil's estimates, in 2029 a $1,000 computer will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain. But instead of these systems mocking us autonomously, they will be miniaturized (via nanotechnology) and fused directly to the neural connections in your brain. We will no longer be limited by polygons or advanced lighting techniques because the resolution you see will be the maximum resolution your brain is capable of seeing. Think of it less as "SkyNet is coming to get you" than "you are SkyNet."

But if 2029 is a few years too far away, try 2010 on for size. At this time, Kurzweil explains, "computers disappear." Where did they go? Into things like clothing and glasses. Images won't be viewed from screens, but written directly onto our retinas for full A/V immersion "early" in the next decade. The boundaries between reality and "virtual" reality will blur as we're always connected to the internet at high speeds. And until we develop clear system to designate each level of interaction, "real reality's going to continue to be a little irksome."

Damn that irksome reality.

They ran a trailer for the game and while it looked good, it was a little difficult to tell exactly what we were seeing. It seemed like a very stylish, fashionable spy movie with lots of kick ass foxy spy chicks. The evening turned to the panel discussion. It was a little difficult to hear some of the speakers given the bar/party atmosphere, but the typical subjects were discussed such as the difficulty of being a woman in a male dominated industry and how to go about bringing more women into the industry fold.

This latter subject was addressed by the real announcement of the evening, the SOE G.I.R.L. scholarship. Put together by SOE and G.I.R.L., the scholarship will provide a $10,000 tuition to put towards an Art Institute education, plus a paid internship at one of SOE's many studios around the country. Interested parties can apply starting April 1 until May 31, 2008. To be considered, applicants must be a registered student at one of the Art Institute schools. The winner will be announced at the beginning of June.

If you are interested in more information on the scholarship, you can check it out here on the G.I.R.L. website.

Hit the jump to follow along and make sure to ask questions in comments.

Satchell is talking about the XNA Arcade. The question is how will games get to Live.

Who decides that it goes to the public Live?

Once it goes into review it goes into escrow, when enough people agree to the ratings that's when it gets pushed through to Live.

Will it just be for E rated games?

Actually the games will be unrated so if you enable parental settings you won't be able to see them, that's the responsible thing to do. We are talking with the rating boards around the world to ask for their suggestions. They won't be doing the ratings, but they do have a lot of experience.

In terms of payment will creators be able to set a price?

Right now we are not discussing the business model. We have a beta in Spring. Once we see the usage we will see how that can work.

Will all members be able to download the games on Live?

Yes

How will it be displayed on Live?

There will be a twist at the top. We will also provide you with a rich environment where you can do searches.

Do you plan on increasing the file size?

We really want to listen to the community. So as people start submitting in the beta, are we constraining things with that file size. That's our stake in the ground.

What are your expectations, do you expect indie developers to use it or the unknowns?

I hope it's both, we get established creators. I also hope we discover great ideas out there. There are great ideas out there in the community and if the only way to find those is to go through the ten years of study.

When we see students from computer science or game students out there, it will be really cool if big companies can see your reputation before you leave.

Greenberg: You also can't underestimate that community. We have 10 million active Live users.

Satchell: Aaron makes a good point, it is a very active community.

Why can't the 360 create Unreal Tournament mods?

Satchell: I can't comment on what Sony is doing. How are they protecting gamers from obscene content, infringing content and harmful content. What stops mods from harming your system? XNA is very secure.

Maybe they don't care about security as much as we do.

Is there a worry that if this channel does well, that some Live sales will be hurt?

Schappert: I think that could be a worry, but I think that empowering gamers... is a good thing. A lot of people could have said the same when they launched Xbox Live Arcade.

How will XNA games work on the Zune?

This year you will be able to download XNA Game studio and get your Zune and do game development on there like you can with Live.

We want to get that step done first.

I think it's really about giving people who use XNA Studios the widest platform.

Will you be restricting content by region at all?

That's something we are looking very hard at. I thought at the moment is that what you will need to do is have your game and submit it in different regions. If you get multiple region reviewed to have it available there. Conceptionally yes.

Where there be a way to design iteratively?

People will sometimes put up the source code, the game and the art and someone else will improve it.

The reviewers can give you feedback.

Who will retain those rights?

The creators will retain those rights when submitting those games.

What if creators want to create a new form of Desert Strike? Will EA get annoyed?

One of those things is the IP check, you can do parodies and inspirations of other work but if you rip off the graphics of a game it probably won't make it through the pipeline.

Will we see more Live games experiences crossing over to major triple-A titles like what was announced with Fable 2?

We keep pushing the boundaries of Live. You are seeing a natural progression of those things. If it works well in Fable. Personally I want to get my wife addicted to the mini-games and she can make all of the gold and then I can spend it in Fable 2.

You get a lot of professional game developers that are in big teams and they have a cool idea. I have a great idea and build this and be this auteur for once.

Will web publishers be able to access the stats from their game, like the number of downloads?

I'd love to make them public APIs so you could use them, that would be cool. It's not in the plan yet, but it's something we are talking about.

What's up with the Xbox 360 hardware shortages?

Schappert: This was news to me too. When we realize that we might have shortages around Christmas and we push that start button the first product doesn't show up till March. It's a complex system.

Larry Hryb implied that the Live outages were caused by the increase in users, what happened?

Schappert: Larry's podcast was spot on, the take away is right before Christmas we saw users grow exponentially and our servers were having trouble meeting that demand. We had people working well over the holidays. We are in good shape now. The hours before the Super Bowl we had 1 million concurrent users after the Super Bowl started it went down. It was the game before the game.

Anyway to add achievements to XNA community games?

There's no way to add achievements to XNA community games. How long do you think it would be until we had a game that was a "press this button to get 1,000 points?"

(From a blogger): We already have that it's called Avatar.

When will we have a blu-ray player for the 360?

We are not talking about a blu-ray player. People are buying our system to play games.

What happens to the movies that disappear?

It's not related to storage it's related to license windows.

How long until we start to see IPTV?

It depends on when a provider want to offer that service.

Would you rather see developers working on triple-A titles or on episodic content?

We would like to see both, look at Rock Band. We pioneered downloadable content with Xbox Live and I think people are clambering for it. We are going to have the best box retail games and the best downloadable content.

Will the 360 support Emotiv?

If there was enough of a demand for it, yes, in theory.

What about restoring DRM right for content downloads for repaired or replaced machines?

That's something we are still working through, that's something very top of mind. We are working on that yes.

In the interim what we are doing is giving points to those folks who bought those games and can't download them, so they can redownload those titles. We realize it is unacceptable.

Any thought of using non-proprietary harddrives for the 360?

Probably not. We take security much more seriously than maybe our friends down south do.

Do you feel an obligation to bring games that maybe aren't just about entertainment to the community, like games for younger children or education?

I think you will definitely see that from the community. There were some games that almost became finalists for the contest that were educational.

I think educational games, social commentary games are going to come. I think that's cool, for a medium of gaming that's super cool. Education is a big deal for us as well. We work

Schappert: I was talking to Cliff about this the other day, how do I break into this. I'm going to point them directly here. Everyone has computers and everyone has the software.

Annnnnd that's the big show.

Vince Desi wants to get something straight right from the get go: Uwe Boll's Postal movie isn't a masterpiece, but it is, he thinks, at least entertaining.

The funny thing is that it probably wouldn't have even been that if it weren't for Boll's decision early on to mostly ignore the treatment that Postal developer Running With Scissors turned in and take the film in a different direction.

RWS's take was a hardcore action flick, something filled with "Postal scenes", something that even the Running With Scissors guys admit, isn't Boll's forte.

Instead Boll decided to turn the movie into satire, something that Desi thinks is actually a good fit for the German director. The end result was an $18 million movie that is mostly ad-libbed by the likes of David Foley and Vern Troyer. Even Desi, who makes a significant walk-on in the film, ad-libbed most of his lines. And Boll is a man who apparently doesn't believe in multiple takes, likley one of the reasons many of his films have bombed. While that doesn't work for sweeping epics, it might just work for a comedy.

Despite thinking that the movie is worth a watch, Desi knows that most of its money will likely come from DVD sales and that the theatrical appearance is really just there to get the name in front of peoples' faces. In fact, Desi says that Universal, which is distributing the movie, is seriously considering having it open in the vacuum created by the upcoming release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

"No one is releasing a film that weekend because they know Indiana Jones will kill it, so we're thinking of releasing it then," he said. "I'm a marketing guy and I can see the Postal Guy takes on Indiana Jones."

So sure are the Running With Scissors guys that Postal will do well... in video... that they've already starting working on a rough draft for the sequel, Postal 2.

Desi sees the movie hitting this summer, and then it going to DVD shortly after. He says he's working to arrange a special edition that will include the film and a copy of the previous games for PC. Then the Postal Babe mobile games will hit (the most violent mobile game Desi says he's ever seen) and then work will start on the second movie and Postal 3 the game will be ready to ship.

"That's our 18 to 24-month plan," he said

I got a chance to check out the shooter at the Game Developers Conference yesterday with Running With Scissors founder Vince Desi and despite having only a rumored three weeks to work on it, they were able to show me a small slice of the game.

In it the Postal Guy is in need of some cash, having moved to a new town after nuking the last one he was in, so he walks into a employment office and up to a bulletin board to find a job. The only listing available, when I saw the game, was for Environmental Maintenance Specialist at Ron's Porn World.

Running through the smallish town to the new job, Desi and his demonstrator showed off how the Valve Source Engine was working for them, pointing out how they were able to put quite a number of people in the street and get them to react to things, like being shot.

The Porn World itself, a big brick building topped with an enormous pair of naked breasts, was pretty sterile on the inside. Sure there were tables full of sex toys when you first walk in, but nothing shocking.

To earn money in the level gamers have to use a shop vac, which is strapped to their back, to suck up used tissues. Desi explains that the whole point of the level is to train gamers how to use their version of the gravity gun. The shop vac can suck up, up to 100 things and then shoot them out at people.

The game, Desi promises, will also have a number of other interesting weapons. The only other outlandish one I was shown was the Badger, which was literally a badger that could be wielded like a chainsaw to cut down people in hand-to-hand combat.

While Postal 3, like its predecessors, has plenty of ways to be violent, it still doesn't force you do go through the game killing people. In fact this time around Desi and his crew plan to let gamers decide if they want to take the path of the good or the bad. Desi said if you take the path of the good you can even land a job as a cop in the game. The bad path turns you into a terrorist or zealot of sorts, they said.

But the game really isn't about the violence, Desi says.

"We want people to laugh, it's an action adventure comedy," he said.

It also won't be about sex, despite the fact that the game will include the publisher's famously buxom Postal Babes.

"The Postal Babes are in the game, but they are going to kick ass... it's not that you're going to get a piece of ass," he said.

The Postal Babes won't be the only surprise appearance in the game. Desi says, he's working to get a half-dozen or so celebrities to OK likenesses for the game. While he wasn't ready to tell me who was on the short list he did confirm one person.

"Uwe Boll will be in the game," he said, "you can kill him."

The Postal Dude will stumble upon the reviled filmmaker while he is on location shooting a film in the town and you can sit and watch him work on his film (a process that involves single takes and not a lot of heavy lifting) or shoot things up, Desi said.

The game, which is being developed for the PC and Xbox 360, and considered for the PS3, likely won't be out until mid to late 2009, Desi said, adding that he is in talks now with possible publishers.