The Sid Meier Q&A

"One thing that stands in my mind...we got an inquiry from the Wall Street journal asking about succinctly captured tax policy," Sid Meier relates to a packed audience of GDC attendees, referring to the most surprising response to his games. "It's just a slider."

Huge laughs from the audience. Damn there are a lot of dorks in the audience...present company included. Through the hour-long interview, Meier divulged all sorts of not-so-secret secrets, admitting his geek fetish of still programming his own titles. Here were some of our favorite things he said, organized for your easy digestion...

The WiiSaber Has A Challenger

Interview: Secret Agent Clank

Today, in between our sprinting between Moscone centers to cover all of Microsoft's news, we had a chance to sit down with High Impact Games' Lesley Mathieson. She was the Lead Designer on Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, worked a bit on its PS2 port and is now Design Director on the second Ratchet & Clank minus the Ratchet title to hit the PSP: Secret Agent Clank.

And, between my heavy pants of hyperventilation at meeting the brains behind the PSP's best game to date, I was able to sputter out a few questions regarding the direction of the franchise and what sweet features we could expect in the new game.

Indie Game Design, In A Nutshell

I sat down with the developers of GameStrata today (that powerful game stats analysis site that we told you about a few weeks back). And while they didn't have any major announcements for me to break, they did enlighten me as to their gameplan for their coming—in their mind—years of success.

And I have to admit, their plan sounds pretty good. So hit the jump for their ideas on cloning Xbox achievements for PS3 users and a lot of other neat stuff.