GDC Gears of War 2 Vids Available on XBLM

BioWare Weighs In On Sexuality In Games

With so much controversy around the sexuality in Mass Effect, I'm kind of surprised it was so long before Bioware provided their thoughts on the matter. But at GDC 08, BioWare's General Manager Ray Muzyka gave his opinion on how proud he was of the team at BioWare, and the game they've created.

We're proud of the mature plots that we build into our games. They're really appropriate for the type of story we're trying to convey. And romance is part of that. It's part of life. It's part of an interaction — a healthy relationship with other people.

Bioware Talks Video Game Romance In The Post-'SeXbox' Era [MTV Multiplayer]

Game Industry Turns Tables On The Press

One of the numerous panel discussions at GDC last month did things a little bit differently, setting up a panel of video game journalists, lead by Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, to answer some of the questions game industry professionals have for those that write about them and their work. The panel consisted of 1UP's Garnett Lee, MTV's Stephen Totilo, Game Informer's Andy McNamara, Geoff Keighly of GameTrailers.tv, and our very own Brian Crecente.

The group covers a variety of topics, including the responsibility of a game journalist, the role of the reporter versus that of a critic, the impact that the emerging casual game market is having on game journalism, and one question from an anonymous contributor about the pay structure of gaming sites. One of the most interesting discussions, though, surrounded the influence giving a score to a game has on not only the game, but whether people will read the article:

'The Power of Free to Play'

Adrian Crook had an interesting presentation at the GDC Worlds In Motion Summit on the issue of free to play games - where they've been, where they're heading, good things, bad things .... He's put up the slides and speech over at his website, and while the narrative redux is apparently not as zippy as the original presentation, it is an interesting listen.

Crook points out some growth challenges to free to play, though he notes these are definitely not deal-breakers for the business model. First, there are virtual property challenges. "At some point that's going to be decided by the courts. Hopefully we're out ahead of it," Crook said, pointing out Eric Bethke's forward-thinking endeavor to create an avatar bill of rights. Second, there are differing broadband speeds. And rising development costs will become an issue now with the advent of Electronic Arts' highly-polished Battlefield Heroes. Larger-scale F2P products are going to raise the quality bar, Crook says.

The talk clocks in at a little over half an hour, but if you're interested in the free to play model, it's definitely worth taking a look at.

The Slidecast from my F2P GDC Presentation [Free To Play]
Adrian Crook Talks Free To Play [Worlds In Motion]

Street Fighter IV Impressions From The Street Fighter III Perspective

Game Developers Choice Awards On Tonight

For those who didn't attend GDC last week, there's another chance to catch the Game Developers Choice Awards/Independent Games Festival Awards megashow. Condensed to a 30-minute segment for an X-Play time slot, to catch the event, set your DVRs for G4 at 8pm (eastern) tonight. (You could watch it in real time, but we were pretending you had plans or something.)

Not only is this the first developer-powered award show to make it to mainstream television, but everyone who attended was entertained by some extremely funny acceptance speeches. Tune in and enjoy.

G4 To Show Game Developers Choice Awards Tonight [Gamasutra]

GDC Attendance Hits Record High

The 2008 Game Developer's Conference saw an all-time high in attendance numbers, as the GDC team has announced that over 18,000 people walked through the convention hall's doors. The five day event featured 400 sessions, 300 exhibitors, and enough Force Unleashed coverage to keep Tori happy (okay, the GDC team didn't announce that, but it's still true).

Battlefield Heroes Impressions

Bionic Commando ReArmed Impressions

Whiling away the time between sessions of Street Fighter IV ass-kickery (mine, not anyone elses) and my interview with Yoshinori Ono, I accidentally made eye-contact with a Capcom flak. The handler, notice my lack of doing anything, was quick to thrust a 360 controller into my hands and point me toward a screen showing off Bionic Commando ReArmed.

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.

Nintendo Almost Used Microsoft-Style Parental Controls

GDC, DICE, E3 Could All Be Press Invite Only Next Year

When the Entertainment Software Association announced two years ago that they were downsizing E3, cutting attendees, and in particular the amount of journalists invited, down to a fraction of former head-counts, there was a lot of consternation among the working press.

What if, people wondered, favoritism and nepotism were the rules of the day. Would journalists be blocked from covering E3 if they didn't write positive stories or angered a publisher?

So far, that doesn't appear to be the case, but now both the Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) summit and the Game Developers Conference are moving toward an invite only system and the same concern is rearing its head.

But the heads of all three organizations say they're going to great lengths to make sure that doesn't happen.

An Interview With Street Fighter IV Producer Yoshinori Ono

So a funny thing happened at last week's Valve party.

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.

We tried, at this year's GDC, to have a quiet sit down with a number of different developers. And for a number of different reasons, many of them fell through, but I was able to beg 2K into giving me 15 minutes with one of the developers who probably most adversely effected my college career: Sid Meier. If it weren't for Civilization it probably wouldn't have taken me six years to get my two bachelors degrees... OK, that's probably not true, but I did spend a shocking amount of time playing his games in college.

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.