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...

On Casual Games
"The word 'casual' is kind of a tough game to pin down...I'm not that interested in doing simple games, but, if you look at the budgets, games we made 10 or 15 years ago are 'casual' by that measure."

On Civilization 1 Addiction
"We hadn't made a game up to that point that had that addictive quality...kind of scary when we first realized...here was a portent of the future, how games could really become something people really wanted to spend a lot of time playing."

On Railroad Tycoon And Games Of Yore
"A lot of what we did was trigger your imagination...we just did a little bit, but the player added a lot of the experience...imaginations are still around today."

On Why He Programs
"I'm more willing to waste my time that somebody else's time."

On How You Design Civ
"The temptation with Civilization is to throw everything into it...computers can handle that, but humans can't."

On What He Plays (Tact Edition)
"I guess it's like, you do something all day, you want a change of pace. I haven't really played any other strategies."

On Vocation
"My hobbies are [in] music, but there's no money in music."

On The Era
"It's kind of a golden age, I think, for gaming."

On Civilization Revolution
"It's really kind of a designer's dream to repair a path...go back in time with a lot more knowledge and a lot more experience."

On Making An All-Encompassing, Career Highlight Game Like Spore
"No."

The gameplay started in a Tie Fighter hanger, our male protagonist looking down at the cleanly-textured room. Everything is understated, save for the size. It's so massive that I found myself mentally categorizing other games that had indoor environments with ceilings that reach 150+ feet in the air.

And it reminds you that force powers are truly the intended focus of the game. Because while our male protagonist was indeed holding a lightsaber, he opted not to use it all that often. Sure, part of the gameplay decision was for our benefit, but when levels employ so much vertical space, sometimes propogated with Tie Fighters floating by (ready to be plucked out of the air), the saber feels so tedious.

We watched as the jedi made short work of the Storm Troopers (effortlessly lifting them and ran into the spaceship's hallways (also some of the largest we've seen). The blast doors were satisfyingly bent open ala The Force and then new troopers got the taste of some lightsaber.

Then something really bothered us. We noticed that when the troopers died, green orbs popped out like we've seen in God of War. While we're sure these orbs are intended to fill the force meter, their fantasy-based nature really sucked us away from the hyperrealism of gorgeous floating Storm Troopers, grabbing on to any near object in attempt to save life and limb.

Even on the large projected screen, the game looked very nice. We can only imagine it scaled down to a more manageable, non-jumbotron size. Unfortunately, there was one pretty cool image that you'll never see.

In an early concept video, designers rendered a mock battle between a jedi and a rancor (large humanoid monster). After battling for about a minute, the monster swallows the jedi.

Needless to say, this didn't end well. The monster was struck with a lightsaber ulcer so bad that its body exploded. And despite a packed hall of hoots and hollers in response, the content was too spicy for the ESRB to designate a "T for Teen" rating.

And it makes us wonder how long it will be until we're choosing between uncensored version of games and their "radio" edits.

Even playing this admittedly buggy tech demo of a light saber battle, we were impressed by the responsiveness of the controller. Maybe it was the audio tracking technology (think sonar as opposed to IR) or maybe it was the fact that 3/4 of the television's frame was covered in receivers (as opposed to the Wii's tiny "sensor bar"). Don't expect to see this as a PC peripheral...ever. They're aiming for large contracts (like a console manufacturer) and commercial applications only.

Insert generic Star Wars quote here along with a snort laugh.

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.

"Why Clank?" I asked. When Ratchet has been the star of so many successful games before, what's the motive behind firing the star?

Fan demand, she answered, without a pause. "People love the character...beyond that, Ratchet has stuff on PS3..." And it supports what appears to be a new strategy for Insomniac/High Impact Games. Ratchet will push the technical boundaries through big explosions and epic landscapes on the PS3, while Clank will represent the PSP platform with a few less gallons of napalm and a touch more stealth. (Whether or not this platform distinction will continue beyond this title is uncertain. Though, we're guessing if Clank is successful in his solo career, he ain't rejoining the boy band.)

The new PSP style is a tough balance to find, as the last thing developers ever wanted is for Clank to "feel like secondary version of Ratchet." And at the same time, Clank's trademark puzzle-oriented levels could wear on the player over an entire campaign. Spy gadgets are the compromise here between bazookas and bowie knives—boomerang bow ties, for instance—and "Clank Phu" melee compliment Clank's mini bots.

What's this new protagonist mean for porting your old guns from Size Matters to Secret Agent Clank? Not happening, it appears, though small playable Ratchet levels will feature some of your favorite guns of old.

Then again, many of you aren't reading this article to hear about stinky old gun ports anyway. You want to sync your PSPs with your PS3s, unlock new content, be treated as "special" for spending so much money as a company-loyal consumer. But if these cross-platform features exist, Mathieson is playing coy. All she'd offer was the code most of us have heard about from Tools of Destruction that will unlock goodies for PSP owners.

So as for exploiting hot possibilities like the PSP's Wi-Fi connection for a little bow tie boomerang backup on the PS3...it appears to be just another sticky dream for the time being.

UPDATE: A special thanks to Stephen Totilo for tactfully pointing out the game's real title...that I'd incorrectly pasted no less than four times.

Jamie Cheng (Klei Entertainment)
In the 80s, games were very cheap to produce, but then things got crazy expensive. Now games have come "full circle."

Noel Llopis (Powerof2Games)
"Indie is style and attitude," just like Indiana Jones' hat.

Ryan Clark (Grubby Games)
"[Indie development] is not for the faint of heart...it takes more than great hair to be the next Jon Mak."

Jacob Van Wingen (Gastronaut Studios)
"The first game I ever showed anyone was the first game I had published," but he'd made games for 10 years prior.

Jon Mak (Queasy Games)
Current programming technologies "welcome a new group" of gamemakers who aren't as technically minded, so it should bring games that are not as rule heavy. He also added that people think too hard about categories. "Indie music is you go to the store, you buy a guitar, and you just fucking rock out. That's it."

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.

Achievements
No one knows what Sony will do with the PS3's version of LIVE achievements. Whenever their service rolls out, there's a good chance that achievements could be quite different. But GameStrata, while aggregating all of your sweet online play data, could somewhat easily build their own achievements into any game, PS3 or Xbox 360. While you might not see it on the console itself, it would be built into your online profile...and that's worth something, right?

Console Support
GameStrata's graphs of your shot accuracy percentages are nice-looking, no question. But without integration onto the actual console you're playing, all their efforts could be for naught. I want to see my stats in (essentially) a real time in my real game environment. There's no reason that publishers couldn't stream stats into their games, the team told me. In fact, they claim that there's a good amount of interest to develop such integration. And technically it would even be possible to get the data on your XMB or Xbox menu system, but that's a more doubtful proposition for obvious reasons.

Clan Integration
But maybe the most promising GameStrata feature that's on the way in the near future is expanded clan support. Imagine taking a 5-person team and stacking up its stats against another 5-person team. Challenges could be issued (ala Nike Plus, for those who've used it) for specific matches, like HeadShot Battle or Accuracy Fight. The possibilities for unique matchmaking are truly exciting, and specific challenges could do a lot for adding variety to stale maps or tedious deathmatch gameplay.

User Incentives
Right now GameStrata users can accrue points for doing a number of things on the site, like quiz/message board participation. But if they can straighten out the logistics with third parties—an admittedly big if—GameStrata would like to offer these points as exchangeable or real world money, like PSN savings. Once again, we'd put this probability at pretty low—but one thing that's working in GameStrata's favor is that in working closely with publishers to do all this data tracking, the publishers could find it worth their while to reward the hardcore (GameStrata-sing fanbase), all while extending product longevity through occasional, light DLC discounts.

So are GameStrata's plans just a bunch of marketing BS? Possibly...even probably. But there's a lot of legitimate potential in their technology if the integration process isn't too much of a burden on publishers. So we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Oh, and for the record, GameStrata has very much noted that they need to support COD4 and Halo 3...whether that means a deal is in the works or not, we will see. Apparently a major announcement is coming in the next 30-45 days and they are in serious negotiation with 4-5 publishers beyond their current lineup.