It's not just the GW used a more realistic art style than the dreaded juggernaut, World of Warcraft. Guild Wars was different because it was mostly instanced (which I think might've made it easier to break down new content into meaty packs that just added a massive batch of instances in new zones). Personally, I liked the way Guild Wars was because if nothing else, you could at least say it was different than everything else in some fundamental way.

But to hell with what I think. Here's what Guild Wars 2 Lead Designer Eric Flannum thinks:

We use a lot less instancing than we have in the past. The game is structured much more like other MMOs, with the world consisting almost entirely of fully persistent areas. That being said, we have a number of different ways in which we use instancing. Dungeons, for example, are instanced areas designed for group play. We also use instancing very heavily in the players' personal quest chain to reflect decisions that the player has made on those quests. For example, Logan Thackeray, captain of the Seraph, has an office located in Divinity's Reach; his office is instanced because we need to update his status based on choices the player has made.

You can check out the rest of his interview (which includes World Designer/Writer Ree Soesbee and Environment Art Lead Dave Beetlestone) at MMORPG.com. Reading the whole thing definitely put Flannum's quote in perspective and there's some interesting tidbits about what else we can expect from the sequel to the MMO that will still always be a special snowflake in my mind.

Guild Wars 2: Exclusive Interview [MMORPG.com]

World of Warcaft is important. The developers tell Kotaku they even dared to dream that they'd some day get a million subscribers. But to tell the story of the fifth anniversary of WoW, we first have to look at the game that started 15 years ago, Warcraft.

It All Started On Arrakis

In 1992, Westwood Studios released a game that changed the way real-time strategy games were made. It was Dune II, the first RTS to incorporate mouse movement, resource gathering, technology trees, and unique weapons and units per faction, all elements that are still being used in RTS games today.

The game caught the eyes and imaginations of several members of Silicon & Synapse, a game development studio that had mainly focused on porting games from other studios. After a brief stint as Chaos Games the studio took on the name Blizzard Entertainment in 1994.

As Blizzard art director Sam "Samwise" Didier explains it, the team's fascination with Dune II led directly to the development of its first blockbuster hit, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

"Back in the Jurassic period we all loved playing games like Dune II. We got inspired and thought this game was awesome and wanted to make something like it. We were all big fans of Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien, and we wanted to make a fantasy world real-time strategy game."

Taking cues from existing titles was the norm for Blizzard in the early days. Samwise points to another early Blizzard title, The Lost Vikings, which was born out of the team's love for PC puzzle game Lemmings from DMA Design, the studio that would go on to become Rockstar North of Grand Theft Auto fame.

So Blizzard took the formula established in Dune II and expanded upon it in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, adding goals beyond simply building your army and decimating your enemies. Players found themselves rescuing friendly forces from enemy camps, assassinating key members of the opposition, and rebuilding ruined towns. It was also the first RTS game to feature hand-to-hand combat and magic.

One more important innovation was borrowed from a decidedly different sort of game – Doom. Inspired by the fun of playing Doom together, Blizzard added the ability to play multiplayer battles via modem and local area network to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, a feature that would become a key feature of the RTS genre.

Expanding The Story

While Orcs & Humans laid the groundwork for games to come, it was relatively light on story. Blizzard rectified that oversight with the game's 1995 sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, elevating Azeroth from game setting to fully realized fictional world.

The game saw the Orcs and Humans gather allies in the Trolls, Goblins, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and Gnomes, laying the foundations for the Alliance and the Horde as we know them today. The game and it's expansion pack, Beyond the Dark Portal, introduced characters and locations that would play a large part in the games to come.

Tides of Darkness also expanded on the multiplayer of the original game. In 1999, Blizzard released both the game and its expansion as Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition, allowing players to engage in multiplayer matches over the internet using the Battle.net service introduced with 1997's Diablo.

Class Clowns And Failed Comedians

Along with solidifying the world of Azeroth and strengthening the foundation for the fiction that would grow with each new game in the franchise, Warcraft II also established another signature feature of the series: its sense of humor.

"We had lots of class clowns and failed comedians on the team," explains Didier. "We never really took it too seriously. We wanted really cool characters and events while making fun classic fantasy stereotypes. We included anything we thought was cool, serious or humorous."

For instance, clicking on a unit once in Warcraft II elicits a normal verbal response. Click repeatedly on a unit for no reason and they become annoyed, spouting humorous phrases like "are you still touching me?" Samwise cites this feature as a prime example of adding humor to a game without alienating those craving a serious experience. "Only the people who wanted the comedy had to deal with it."

The Lost Chapter

As Warcraft was inspired by Dune II, Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans was inspired by classic LucasArts adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island. Development on this adventure game began soon after the completion of Warcraft II. Using a combination of cartoons and point and click adventure gameplay it would tell the story of the Orcs trapped in Azeroth following the destruction of the Dark Portal, and the rise of the famed Orc warchief Thrall, Sadly, the game never saw the light of day.

In a move that Blizzard would later repeat with StarCraft side-story Ghost, the company canceled the game days before the 1998 E3 Expo in Atlanta, despite the game being mostly complete. The animation was finished, the puzzles in place, and even the voice over work had been fully recorded, but Blizzard felt the game wasn't up to their high standards.

In an announcement issued on the 22nd of May, 2008, Blizzard explained the cancellation to fans. "The decision centered around the level of value that we want to give our customers. In essence, it was a case of stepping up and really proving to ourselves and gamers that we will not sell out on the quality of our games."

When asked if there was ever a chance of Adventures being released, Samwise was skeptical. "We're not taking the old one and finishing it. It wasn't up to par and we'd have to polish the hell out of it. DVDs are really popular because of deleted scenes, but when you watch them you can see why they weren't included in the movie. That's what Warcraft Adventures is."

Still, Blizzard felt the story of Thrall too important to gloss over, commissioning Star Trek novelist Christie Golden to write Warcraft: Lord of the Clans, a novel that bridges the gap between Warcraft II and the next game in the series, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

Further Evolution

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released in 2002, delved deeper into the lore of the series than ever before. It chronicles the rise and fall of Arthas Menethil, the prince who would become the Lich King; introduces the Night Elves and the Undead; and introduces the Burning Legion, the demonic scourge of the Warcraft universe.

Deviating from previous entries in the series, Warcraft III and its expansion, The Frozen Throne, integrates storytelling into the gameplay itself, rather than feeding the player through mission briefings. This allowed for a more seamless and immersive game, further cementing Blizzard's reputation as top-notch storytellers.

Warcraft III, like Warcraft II, included a World Editor program, allowing players to craft their own scenarios and maps, and players took full advantage of the feature, creating their own game types. One such custom game, Defense of the Ancients, gave rise to a new sub-genre of RTS, in which players control a single champion that gains levels and abilities as it battles alongside computer-controlled units. Defense of the Ancients-inspired games like Gas Powered Games' Demigod and the recently released League of Legends from Riot Games serve as a lasting reminder to the legacy of Warcraft III.

Welcome To Our World

In early 2000, Blizzard's development team found themselves fascinated by another type of game.

"Everyone here had been playing a bunch of Everquest and Ultima Online," says Samwise Didier. "It goes all the way back to the whole Lost Vikings/Lemmings thing. It was a genre we enjoyed, and Warcraft was a good fit."

Blizzard announced World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer take on the Warcraft universe in 2001, and for three years fans eagerly awaited their chance to take their first steps into the world of Azeroth, unfettered by the rules of the real-time strategy genre.

The game would pick up the story four years after the events of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, with the world split into two major factions – the Alliance and the Horde. Players would experience the battle for Azeroth from an entirely new, more personal point-of-view.

As the 2004 release approached, Blizzard was aware it had something special on its hands, though some members of the development team had more faith than others. World of Warcraft production director J. Allen Brack relates a particularly amusing story about a pep talk given by Blizzard co-founder and lead designer Allen Adham.

"Allen Adham got everyone on the team in a room to talk about how great his confidence was in the game, and how he thought we had something great. He said, 'One day this game will have a million subscribers.' No one believed that. We thought it was crazy. We thought, 'You're a liar.' There was no way that any game would have a million subscribers."

World of Warcraft launched in North America on November 23, 2004. Fan reaction to the release was so massive that the game was plagued with downtime and server queues for the first week, as Blizzard opened new worlds to deal with the exploding population. By December 2005, the game had 3.5 million subscribers. By December of 2008, that number had jumped to 11.5 million.

How does a PC game attract 11.5 million players? World of Warcraft game director Tom Chilton says the game has something for everyone.

"It's easy to learn, but hard to master, which attracts different sorts of gamers. The hard to master part keeps the hardcore players around, while the casual players enjoy the wide variety of things to do," Chilton explains. "Ultimately it's just a really good game."

Massively Mainstream Appeal

The success that World of Warcraft has achieved over the past five years is nothing short of astounding. It was the best-selling PC game of 2005 and 2006 according to NPD data, knocked from the top spot in 2007 by its own expansion, The Burning Crusade. In 2008 the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, took the top spot.

The success of the game goes far beyond sales numbers. World of Warcraft has become a pop culture phenomenon. It's been used to advertise products like Coke and Toyota, while its own advertisements have feature pop culture icons such as Mr. T and William Shatner. A 2007 episode of Comedy Central's cartoon South Park, "Make Love, Not Warcraft," won the 2007 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program.

Like Super Mario Bros. or Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft is a game that has gained recognition far beyond its already expansive audience. For a fantasy game that is strictly PC-based, that's no mean feat.

The Future

So where will the World of Warcraft be in another five years? Tom Chilton delivers a blissfully blurry outlook for the world's most popular subscription-based MMO.

"One of the cool things is: who knows where it will go next? The world itself is filled with so many possibilities. We've got outer space demons. We're about to add little green guys and werewolves (in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion). There are so many different directions you can go in. Magic, guns, machines – anything we want to come up with we can fit into the World of Warcraft with no problem."

And the continuing success of World of Warcraft doesn't preclude the possibility of a Warcraft IV. Just don't expect it any time soon, with teams tied up with Diablo III and StarCraft II.

Real-time strategy or massively multiplayer, the Warcraft universe continues to make its mark on the world, with each new game and expansion adding layer upon layer to a tale that J. Allen Brack believes could go on forever.

"We've got quite a bit to do before we run out of ideas. New people are constantly joining the team, bringing their own ideas with them. The full story will never truly be written."

Check back all week for more stories related to World of Warcraft's fifth anniversary.

The brown-eyed, pigtailed 22-year-old, who describes herself as a "reality porn star", just signed on with porn powerhouse Digital Playground and her first movie is set for a Dec. 29 release.

But that's her public face. Her secret life is one of guilty, geeky pleasures: LAN parties, Star Trek, World of Warcraft and building and modding her own PCs.

"I started playing video games when I was 13 or 14, when Age of Empires came out, and I've been playing ever since," Alexis told Kotaku in a recent interview.

Alexis refers to her gaming habits as her "alter life", an interesting choice of words for someone in her business.

"I've been playing World of Warcraft since it came out and have played every expansion since," she said. "I play Tiger Woods and other games. I love it, it's my alter life."

Unlike some other adult actors and actresses who form industry guilds or use their real names in game, Alexis prefers to play anonymously.

"My alternate live is very nerdy," she said. "I love playing people online and them not knowing who I am. It is really relaxing for me, kind of an escape, you know?

"I kind of have tried to maintain my anonymity. It's the one place I can play and not have people talk to me about what I do. For me, it's not about talking to people, it's about bashing people."

Alexis says she has a lot of characters in World of Warcraft, her favorite game, including a level 72 Night Elf Druid, a level 44 Tauren Hunter and a level 64 Blood Elf Mage.

"I usually try to play female characters," she said. "I keep a couple of guy characters too. I have several different accounts, so they have different names."

Alexis' self-professed love of gaming goes far beyond your typical mainstream gamer. Her other hobby is building and modding computers.

"I have a couple of different computers," she said. "I have a PC I built out for gaming, a Mac Pro for editing and site building and I have a server back up I host my stuff off of. I also have a Toshiba laptop."

"I'm pretty spoiled."

Alexis sounds proudest of her main computer, one she built herself and installed in a homemade transparent, baby-blue plexiglass case.

"I have water-cooling in there, I picked up the new i7975 extreme edition CPU," she said. "I have it set up as a dual boot with XP 32-bit and Vista 64.

"I don't have Windows 7 yet, but I'm exciting about picking it up. I'm going to try out the 32 and 64 to see which makes more sense."

She says she didn't get into PC modding and building until she went to college.

"I got hooked up with a bunch of kids that got into LAN tournaments," she said. "I wanted to compete and be a bad ass with a cool machine.

"I really just enjoy it, it's so different than anything else I do. It keeps me fresh and going."

Alexis says she's never had the chance to combine her career with her love of gaming culture, something like World of Whorecraft, but she would jump at the opportunity.

"If Digital Playgrounds decides to do something like that, role-playing or fantasy, I'd would love to do it," she said. "I'm a big Star Trek fan too."

I asked Alexis if she gets annoyed that people are surprised that an attractive adult actress like herself would play video games.

"It's not annoying, it's a little surprising," she said. "I've met a lot of cool women that play video games through LAN tournies. What surprises people is that I'm hot and a porn star and a player, but that has nothing to do with it, gaming is so popular now."

"My gaming should be about what I do, not who I am."

Instead the reinvention of Disney's animated world will strive to both entice children and enlighten adult with a meaty, moralistic story, famed game designer Warren Spector told Kotaku today.

In Disney Epic Mickey, gamers take on the role of an edgier Mickey Mouse, using the Wii remote to wield magical paint and thinner to reshape the around them. Mickey uses these abilities as he fights his way through a cartoon wasteland in what Disney describes as an "adventure-platforming game with light role-playing elements."

Spector says that the game won't support the Wii Remote's MotionPlus technology because the technology became available to developers too late to the studio.

"We played with it and I think that it would be a great fit for our core mechanic, but the best I can say is that in the future we'd love to do more with it," he said.

In the game's fiction Yen Sid, the sorcerer first seen in 1940's Fantasia during The Sorcerer's Apprentice, creates a Cartoon Wasteland for Disney's forgotten and retired creations. The first inhabitant of this wasteland is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney's first cartoon star created in 1927.

As the years pass Oswald starts to resent Mickey's growing fame. When Disney's mouse accidentally warps Oswald's Cartoon Wasteland by spilling paint thinner on it, Mickey is drawn into the warped world.

"Having Warren combine creativity and innovation with one of the world's most famous characters takes Mickey back to his creative roots and allows fans to deepen their engagement with him as a character – especially in video games," said Graham Hopper, executive vice president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios.

Spector says that he was drawn to the idea of working on this tale of Disney fiction both because it was a chance to "mess around with one of the world's most recognizable icons" and a chance to tell a story that is interesting to both children and adults.

"We are telling a story in this game that is more sophisticated than save the princess or you are the last space marine on Earth," Spector said. "I think what you will find is that there is some commentary about consumerism and what is truly important in life.

"If I went much further than that it would be the height of pretension."

But, Spector admits, there are some allusions in the game to T.S. Elliots' modernist and deeply influential poem The Waste Land.

In the Waste Land a hero is drawn to a kingdom made sterile by the wounding of its king. To restore the king and the land, the hero must go on a quest. The concept of the poem draws on prevalent proto-themes like the Grail legend.

And while Spector, who started his career as an academic, admits that he's aware of the potential connection, he doesn't want people to draw too many connections.

"You have to throw in literary references every once in awhile," he said.

What seems to have influenced Spector more is a children's book author who deals with heady ideas like theology, philosophy and John Milton's Paradise Lost.

"What Philip Pullman does is inspiration in everything I want to do,"he said. "You can make something that appeals to kids but is interesting to adults as well.

In December 2007, Spector wrote on his blog about how much he would love to create a game based on Pullman's Golden Compass. At the time he was already in the midst of working on Disney Epic Mickey, he said.

"I had my first discussion with Disney in September 2005, then boring business stuff happened and then we did concept art and then we separated for awhile and came back together," he said.

In September 2007 Disney acquired Spector's studio, Junction Point Studios, which was well into game concept work.

I asked Spector if creating a game based on such a beloved and widely known character had satisfied the itch he expressed in his blog about Golden Compass.

"To some extent it did," he said. "But if you ever stop itching it's time to retire.

"I think getting the opportunity to play in the playground that Disney offers, that is what this opportunity is really about for me."

"When you say you're messing with Mickey Mouse people's eyes really light up."

While Spector's vision of Mickey seems to be darker than the character's most recognizable appearances, there are still lines the game won't be crossing.

"There are lines, lines you don't want to cross," he said. "When you talk about Mickey Mouse, people are like 'Give him a gun, give him a knife,'" he said. "I don't want to do that. Why would you want to do that?

"There are lines you don't cross. I discovered there are lines that (Mickey Mouse) used to cross that are now uncrossable. He did some pretty crazy stuff, but nowadays times have changed."

What Mickey will be doing in the game is allowing gamers to make moral decisions about how to change the world around them with paint and thinner. Those decisions will have consequences that affect the environment, interactions with other characters, and even Mickey's appearance and abilities.

"The core of this game is the idea of choice and consequence, and how that defines both the character and the player," Spector wrote in a prepared statement. "By putting the mischievous Mickey in an unfamiliar place and asking him to make choices – to help other cartoon characters or choose his own path – the game forces players to deal with the consequences of their actions. Ultimately, players must ask themselves, ‘What kind of hero am I?' Each player will come up with a different answer."

The initial concept for the Wii-exclusive game was born at Disney Interactive Studios' Think Tank, Spector told Kotaku.

"The idea of a wasteland with lost characters, Oswald's return, the Phantom Blog, that stuff existed, that core was there when they pitched it to me," Spector said. "They were all sitting there showing me this stuff in Power Point saying 'You don't have to do all of this, you can ignore it' and I thought 'Why would I ignore this, it's fantastic.'"

While the heart of the idea came from the Think Tank, the way the game and its look evolved is all Spector and his team.

The team spent huge amounts of time in Disney's many vast archives, pulling concept art and files.

"I'm a research junkie," Spector said. "I started out as an academic and film historian so I had shelves and shelves and shelves of books and articles. I came into this with a good background. But Disney has amazing resources. I spent a bunch of time out there digging through files."

During one of his earliest visits Spector was shocked to have one of the archivists apologize for having only scanned 90,000 images so far.

"Honestly, you could spend days digging through the stuff we dug out of the archives."

One thing that surprisingly didn't inspire Disney Epic Mickey was Square-Enix' hugely popular role-playing game Kingdom Hearts.

"I played the Kingdom Hearts games, but they weren't much of an inspiration," Spector said. "They treated the Disney characters much more conventionally than I wanted to.

"They are not reintroducing or reimagining as much as they are offering these characters as folks you are going to interact with in a new medium."

Spector was coy about how much inspiration the game developers are drawing from the Disney theme parks.

"You might sort of, kind of recognize some scenes," he said. "I don't want to give too much away."

The designer, best known for making games like Deus Ex and Thief, said that he wasn't worried about moving from typically adult-themed games to one that may be viewed as being more for children or families.

"When this opportunity arose I had to decide, do I want to keep working on this original stuff I've been doing or do I want to mess around with one of the world's most recognizable icons," he said. "The opportunity to work with something this recognizable and profound comes around once in a lifetime. The decision was pretty straight forward.

"I'm not making a game for kids, I'm making a game gamers will be happy with."

Please note that the belt is his. We shot this a couple of weeks ago in New York City at an EA event.

Jump to about 3:40 for the start of the interview:

In the interview, the Hip Hop Gamer refers to a video post I did for my previous employer back in March. In it, I forecast that the Xbox 360 would lack many big titles for the holiday '09 season. Turns out, some of the details changed, but I was pretty much right.

Stephen Totilo PS3 Lineup Much Stronger Than Xbox360 This Holiday Season [HipHopGamer.com]

Global Agenda is an online shooter that, on the surface, plays a great deal like many other online shooters. You gain experience, level up, gain new equipment, and fight side-by-side with your teammates through a variety of maps and game types. It's also a massively-multiplayer persistent world game, in which rival agencies and alliances fight for territory, establish bases, craft, socialize, and participate in raids. It has the potential to appeal to two completely different audiences, so Hi-Rez has decided to cater to both.

When Global Agenda launches, a onetime purchase via retail or downloadable distribution will net you the full online multiplayer shooter, with no subscription fees ever required to play the core game. You still get to create and level a character, participate in co-operative missions against enemies and bosses, level your character, and join alliances. It functions much like a Call of Duty or Team Fortress does, only with inventory and enhanced social features.

Players craving something a bit more deeper, however, can opt to pay $12.99 a month ($11.99 for 3 months, $9.99 for 6) for the Global Agenda: Conquest subscription. Players who opt for Conquest again access to the more persistent part of the persistent-world game, Alliance versus Alliance World Domination gameplay. It's a massive-scale war for territory, with rival agencies capturing land, forming alliances with other agencies, gathering resources, and basically maintaining a constant vigil on their things, lest a rival group take them away.

Subscribing also allows players to form their own Alliances and Agencies, send mail, use the auction house, and participate in some of the higher-end raid content. Subscribing customers will also enjoy frequent updates to the ongoing content, which those playing the core game won't have access to.

We spoke with the game's Executive Producer Todd Harris, who explained the core difference between the two ways to pay and play. "The main difference is for folks that want to play the game as a multiplayer online game with a little bit of persistence, that's what the main package brings you. We looked at the feature set of other online games and made sure we had all of that and more. We're putting all of that into a box an letting people get it for a one-time price."

According to Todd, throughout the development of Global Agenda, testers were commenting on how enjoyable the combat system in the game is, saying they would gladly pay for it without any of the MMO features. Now they'll have their chance.

While there are many differences between the two different payment types, Todd assured me that the portions of the game that overlap - the match made PVP battles - will never be unbalanced between those subscribed to the game and those that choose not to. Any items introduced to subscribers that can be used in regular PVP combat will be available to non-subscribers as well. There will be unique items for those who opt to pay a monthly fee, but those will only be useable in subscriber-only gameplay.

As an added bonus, everyone who purchases the full version of the game gets a free 30-day subscription, so if you aren't sure what you want, it won't cost anything to see how the other half lives.

It certainly sounds like Hi-Rez has all of its bases covered on this one. The shooter gameplay in Global Agenda is extremely solid, more than enough to carry off a standalone title. We'll see how things work out for the game when it is released sometime in Q1 of 2010.

Well, now I've had my Dark Void filled in a bit by gameplay and an interview with Associate Producer Shana T. Bryant. Here's what I learned:

1) No, Dark Void is not part of any Capcom Jet Pack Heroes series
Bryant said the developer would've been silly not to make any references to other Capcom jet pack-themed games. However, nothing in the game is officially "part" of a larger overarching series to do with jet packs.

2) Yes, multiplayer would be cool — but it's not planned for the game or for downloadable content (yet)
Again, it's an obvious conclusion for the developer that multiplayer combat in Dark Void would be awesome. However, Bryant explained that it just didn't make it into the game. Nor is Capcom ready to announce any plans for DLC that would somehow introduce multiplayer. "But if it sells well," she said, it's highly likely that multiplayer would make it into Dark Void 2.

3) Nikola Tesla isn't the only real life person to make an appearance in the game
Bryant said it was almost like the developer was "cheating" by including so many real life characters. So far Tesla is the only one the developer has bragged about aloud, but I spotted journal entries in the menu screen for Amelia Earhart. There're also entries for "Akasha" and "Niall ó Loinsigh" — but I'm not sure if those are real people or not. Bryant did say that those who vanish into the Void come from all different time periods (Will and his lady friend Ava are from about 1938) — so keep an eye out for pretty much anybody on this list.

4) Hover Mode changes the nature of gameplay entirely
In the beginning, it sounds like there was only the jet pack. Then the developer decided to add the Hover ability — but nobody really made use of it. So, to entire gamers, the developer made it so that enemies lose accuracy while you're in Hover mode and there are "quite a few" Hover-based Achievements/Trophies, according to Bryant.

5) Basic need-to-knows as follows:
The game is about 10 hours long with three distinct episodes that span a total of 14 missions. The developer is relying on the game's unique air, ground and air-to-ground combat to give the game replayability. The developer isn't ready to announce DLC, but Bryant appeals your sense of economics to predict whether or not they'll go through with it. That's "If it sells, they'll release DLC — if the the DLC sells, expect sequel." Simple, right?

The answer was interesting and, I believe, accidental.

"We'd love to have video capture in our game, but why work on something that the platform holder is already developing," said the developer, who I'm keeping anonymous to cover for his accidental slip-up.

The idea of a universal, platform-level video capture system for games seems like a good idea, and one that fits in nicely with the plans that Microsoft has for the Xbox 360.

When I had a chance to sit down with Microsoft's Scott Austin, director of digital games at Live, I asked him about the concept.

Microsoft, I noted, has made it a point to try and drive innovation on their consoles with software. They were the first gaming console to fully, successfully embrace online play when they introduced the Live service on their original Xbox. When the Xbox 360 hit, the software company unveiled Achievements, something that has approached becoming almost a norm among online gaming now.

Could the ability to capture and share videos from games be the next big software development for the Xbox 360?

"We are always thinking about ways that Live at the platform level can make games better," Austin said. "I'm not going to comment on video capture, but you can assume we are thinking about ways to make things more interactive.

"Interactivity used to mean things like multiplayer, now you see more cooperative things in games."

Austin points to the in-game leaderboards of Xbox Live title Shadow Complex and the meta game incorporated in Battlefield 1943 that had all players working to unlock a new map. (The same communal unlock was in the PS3 version of the game as well.)

Communal videos then, I pointed out, seem to be a step in the right direction. And I've heard rumblings of it coming to other top games, like Dead Rising 2.

Austin was coy in his reply.

"We want to have better quality and more immersive experiences," he said. "We are always looking to innovate.

"When innovation becomes table stakes we want to move forward. We want to make all entertainment services more rich with our live services."

So is that a yes or a no?

While Cave's releases, titles like DoDonPachi, Mushihime-sama and Death Smiles, are readily available in Japan, getting your hands on them in the West isn't always easy. You'd typically need a Japanese PlayStation 2 or Xbox 360 to play them. But that's going to change, first with the region-free release of Mushihime-sama Futari for the Xbox 360 this November.

Asada told Kotaku in an interview that Cave is looking at global releases of its games, full-fledged Xbox Live Arcade titles of certain titles and Valve's Steam service as a means of distribution. None of that is set in stone, mind you, but Asada sounded upbeat about Cave's new opportunities.

"We don't know anything at this point with regards to Xbox Live Arcade," Asada clarified, "but we can say that the person in charge of these ports at Cave and the person in charge of XBLA authorizations for the United States met today on the TGS floor. It depends on where those discussions go in regard to Guwange on XBLA."

Guwange, for those who don't know, is a 1999 shooter with a traditional Japanese theme. It was the Cave game that readers of the company's blog chose as the title they'd like to see come to Xbox Live Arcade.

But before Guwange or any other XBLA ports arrive, Cave has some more disc-based titles planned.

"Right now, we're working on a few titles for localization," Asada said. Again, take caution. "This is currently all in talks. With regards to Death Smiles, we can say that it's currently in progress and hopefully soon we'll be able to give overseas users news about its release."

Asada also hinted at something unannounced, something not based on its previous releases. And something designed with a more global audience in mind.

"Right now at Cave we're working on a new title, and we want it to be worldwide," Asada said. "It's going to have to sell to a worldwide audience, so there might be a possibility that we would tailor it [to Western tastes] in that sense."

Does that mean no insect queens or gothic lolita girls? Well, not exactly.

"If we lost that, we would sort of lose what makes us Cave, so we'll have to keep that," Asada said.

What else does Cave have in its future? Despite Asada's personal preference for playing first-person shooters like Quake, Counter-strike, Halo, and Call of Duty 4 online, the company has no plans to enter that market.

But it's not opposed to venturing into totally new genres.

"Capcom Vs. Cave would be a pretty interesting fighting game," Asada said.

I'm guessing they're going to need to sell a few more copies of Death Smiles before that happens. But, hey, Capcom asked.

Announced earlier this summer and opening to the public on September 9th, the new Dungeons and Dragons Online relegates subscription fees to VIP members, allowing anyone to play for free, relying on a cash store that sells extra dungeons, quests, classes, and items for revenue. According to Turbine director of communications Adam Mersky, the early access program is already indicating tremendous success for the new business model.

"They all got a ton of points for being loyal subscribers, for being in the beta. We weren't really expecting a ton of sales...they had no incentive to. They already had access to all of the content as VIP subscribers, and we just gave them a buttload of points."

With a buttload of points and access to all of the premium content through in-game quests, one wouldn't expect the early access folks would need more points. One would also be mistaken, apparently.

"They've gone through their points, and we've already sold millions more Turbine points, and we've not even opened up the world to the public yet."

And what is selling? What would subscribers rather pay for than unlock through in-game means?

"The hottest selling items are the new Favored Soul class, which is unlockable in game, but all of our subs just went ahead and spent points on it, unlocked it, and they're playing it right now. We're real excited for September 9th when we open the world up to everyone else."

It sounds as if DDO, a game that had all but dropped off of our radar, could be coming back in a big way. We'll check back with Turbine once things go live to see if the buying trend continues.

When I first found out about ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 art book being available at PAX, I questioned whether or not it was the right time for such a promotion. Company founder and president Mike O'Brien explains why art is such a huge focus in Guild Wars 2.

"We have the best artists in the industry. I know it sounds like hyperbole, but our artists are winning every industry award here. We have brilliant artists, and that's why we are featuring the art so heavily".

You can see this in action in the trailer, first unveiled at GamesCom in Germany, which depicts pieces of concept art coming to life almost seamlessly.

"That's a theme of Guild Wars 2 - taking this art and bringing it to life."

Among all of the changes coming in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, raising the level cap to 85 instead of following the pattern set by the game's previous two expansions is one of the strangest. Blizzard lead developer Tom Chilton took a little time during BlizzCon this past weekend to explain the smaller jump.

"It's certainly different. More than anything else it's a question of what we thought was the best use of our development time and what we thought the players really want the most. With this expansion we're delivering more total level up content than we have before - it's just not all post current max level."

But don't the players enjoy the rush to level up?

"We've gotten a lot of feedback from players that don't necessarily like it when an expansion comes out and they feel that they have to level up to the new max level as quickly as possible and then go back to their endgame activities. There are players out there who enjoy the level up experience, but by no means is it all of our players."

The decision all comes down to the goals of the expansion. With a brand new 1-60 experience on hand, the team really didn't need to put the endgame that much further out of reach for the influx of new Goblin and Worgen characters.

"In this case, we're trying to better balance the time and development effort we put into the different areas of the game. We're trying to make sure we get a little bit more endgame content while still appeasing the level up crowd with five more levels."

Diablo III's rune system, as we explained last year, is an ambitious feature in which every skill for every character can be modified using various runes, changing the way the skill affects enemies. One rune might simply add an additional attack to a skill, while others have more profound effects.

"We can't really do any runes for a skill until we've locked a skill down, and we're notorious for redoing things. When we do finally decide to lock a skill down, that's the point where we say, "Okay, now we can develop the runes for this." So we design out the runes for it, and we do those last."

SO the system, itself involving a massive amount of brainstorming and design work, is dependent on having skills set in stone. With four characters revealed and a fifth and final one still waiting in the wings, it feels as if a fully-realized Diablo III is a long way off, no matter how polished the demos were at the show.

Jay continued, giving us a status on each character. "The wizard and the barbarian both have runes - the wizard has the most, and the barbarian has some. The witch doctor has a few as well, ."

After running into confusion with internal testers over why some powers had runes and others didn't, the team decided to turn the feature off until they could deliver a more complete version of the rune system.

"It was a big disappointment that we couldn't show the runes off in their entirety, but hopefully the next time we do a big unveiling of the game they'll be there."

Ozzy Osbourne took the stage around 7:45 PM at the Anaheim Convention Center to help bring BlizzCon 2009 crashing to a close. Thousands of fans screamed along as he burned through classic songs like "Iron Man", "Paranoid", "War Pigs", and the song featured in Blizzard's World of Warcraft ad, "Crazy Train." Ozzy seemed to be having a great time on stage, bowing to the crowd when he wasn't spraying them with a fire hose, but he wasn't so sure about the BlizzCon gig going into it.

"Coming here (unintelligible) to the show tonight I thought, "They're all gonna be like scientists and fucking brain brain (unintelligible) fucking audience." Glasses wearing spectacles and coke bottles. I didn't know what the fuck to expect. I kept saying to my wife Sharon, "Sharon, do you think you'll like me? Do you think they'll understand what I'm about?" And it was even better than some gigs I've done. It's a gift that I've had a good life through music."

The audience definitely understood what Ozzy was all about, singing along with all of his music - songs that were released before many of them were born. I was ushered behind the stage halfway through the set, where Ozzy's enjoyment of the crowd was evidenced across the countless video monitors scattered about the control area. Some time after the music went silent I was ushered into a well-furnished back room, where the aging rocker sat court in a chair that might as well have been a throne for the man's presence. As he talked, his hands shook, but his eyes never wavered behind his tinted circle shades.

I marveled with the man over the fact that his music has been embraced by the gaming culture - one that didn't even exist when he started his career.

"This video game where they play the guitar - my son is like "Hey dad, you gotta play this game." He's up for three days playing this game. The Rock Band people told me that up to a billion people play that game. A billion fucking people. That's a lot of fucking mouths. It's incredible. I doubt that many would buy my albums. You've gotta embrace it or you'll fall by the wayside."

And embrace it he has, though I'm not so sure he wasn't already one of us, if only in spirit. When I asked about the people wandering about it costumes - the scantily clad girls in blue paint and horns?

"I think it's fucking great. It's like the Star Wars bar."

Did Ozzy just make a Star Wars reference? Perhaps we're not so different after all.

Pardo was in good spirits when we spoke to him yesterday afternoon when I touched on the controversial subject, which has spawned a wave of forum rage and countless petitions calling for the reinstatement of feature. "You're the first person who asked me about that this weekend," he joked. When I asked if the company was still receiving flack over the decision, his good humor continued. "Only from you guys. Only from the press. Everyone else has accepted it."

Once I finished giggling, Rob got down to brass tacks.

"Everyone is going to give us flack until it's out. None of us is going to know how big a deal it is until it's out. We believe that it's really not that big of a deal - that most people are not really going to notice that it's missing. There's a lot of people out there I think that are just afraid that they're suddenly not going to be able to connect to the internet tonight and they won't be able to play. I actually think that case is extremely rare, and I think we're going to be okay."

And what of the rare cases where no direct-connection option wouldn't be okay?

"There's a few legitimate cases that we're going to try and address over time. Location-based tournaments, or let's say I'm in a dorm with a firewall or something like that, hopefully there's a way to determine that and maybe start a peer-to-peer game."

So it really doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but as Pardo said, we won't really know until the game comes out.

At 2009's Game Developers Conference, Hino talked about his marketing strategy for the Layton series and let slip the fact that Diabolical Box was heading to the US. He said at the time that he'd eventually like to bring all of the Layton games over — but nothing official had been decided.

Sadly, Hino tells us that's still the case (doubly so for the movie, Eternal Diva), but he remains hopeful that the success of the Professor Layton series in the US will carry it across the globe someday. It definitely seems like there's hope, though, because Hino confirmed that sections of Diabolical Box which require codes from the third game to unlock special rewards will stay exactly the same — leaving the door open for Professor Layton and the Last Time Travel.

Read on to find out how Hino and his team come up with the puzzle and what the deal is with Diabolical Box's fat hamster.

Kotaku: How does the team at LEVEL-5 come up with the puzzles? Do they invent puzzles from scratch or use known puzzles that they learned in school or found in books as inspiration?

Akihiro Hino: The puzzles of the "Professor Layton" series are invented by specialized puzzle creators including Professor Akira Tago, who is also the author of "Mental Gymnastics," which was a best-selling book in Japan. First, we write a game scenario, and then ask these creators to craft puzzles along with scenes appearing in the game.

For every "Professor Layton" title, we at LEVEL-5 and our puzzle creators, including Professor Tago, have "Puzzle Camp." We stay together at Professor Tago's vacation house for two or three days to discuss puzzles. We seriously discuss, from dawn to twilight (laughs), how we should arrange or polish a variety of puzzle ideas that they have invented for actual gameplay. For every "Professor Layton" title, the puzzles are invented at this camp.

Kotaku: At any point in the series, will Luke take over for the Professor and become the star?

Hino: Well, at this moment no one can really say. But Luke is the lead in a puzzle mini-game called "Luke Shonen no Nazo Book" ("The Puzzle Book of Young Luke") which is available at "Professor Layton Mobile," a website we run in Japan only.

As for the Japanese market, a new adventure will begin with "Majin no Fue (The Evil Flute)" which will be released this fall. "Professor Layton and the Evil Flute" is a story that takes place three years before "Professor Layton and the Curious Village," and shows the first meeting of Professor Layton and Luke. Before depicting Luke's future career, we are going to express how Layton and Luke came to be associates and what kind of puzzles they first solved.

Kotaku: Does LEVEL-5 plan to do anything with the Nintendo DSi system's functionality, like sell puzzle packs via the DSiWare service?

Hino: We are having internal discussions at LEVEL-5 on how we can use the Nintendo DSi for interesting projects. We don't have any concrete plans yet, but I am hoping to deliver something new and innovative.

Kotaku: What is the story behind that fat hamster?

Hino: You can play a minigame in Layton's Bag to make him go on a diet. Players allocate items they have in the correct order to make him exercise a lot to make him slimmer. Each item will impose a different amount of exercise on him, so you must calculate carefully. Please check it out!

Franchise compatible means no new band sets to replace your old ones and you can keep the music you've downloaded for World Tour as well. But there's more to Activision's plan than just a unified music system. Seriously — they brought Johnny Cash back from the dead both in the game and in the form of a live cover band at the event. And beyond that, they're already thinking about the future of the franchise well down the road from Guitar Hero 5.

Kinda looks like Cash doesn't like his cover band...

Bright wouldn't say too much about what lies ahead, but he did share some of the things his team at Neversoft has learned over the years. "We learned it's not always fun to play a four piece band," he said. "Sometimes people want to fight over the guitar, sometimes people don't want to play bass even though we added the open note. Some people just suck at drums and don't want to play it, it's intimidating. And we wanted to go green and there's a lot of guitars out there."

It's a lot like taiko drumming.

Bright also said he was excited about Project Natal and other motion-control-related E3 announcements. "We've done prototype motion controls with guitars in the past, with just the accelerometer," he said. "But you just don't get the refined data that you'd get when start throwing in things like they showed at E3. Just the single accelerometer — trying to put the guitar behind your head, the game just doesn't know. Would we be interested [in Natal]? Absolutely. I'm not saying that's what we're doing. But it's cool, it's exciting stuff. Even Wii MotionPlus... there's definitely avenues to be explored there."

The one thing Bright isn't looking forward to is the typical "Why isn't artist X in the game?" complaint most music games get. "Specifically Led Zeppelin," he added.

He also frowns on people who plan to write Guitar Hero 5 off as "not that different" from Guitar Hero: World Tour. "You have to play the game, you have to experience it. You will never want to go back to playing the old standard game. We take the stance at Neversoft that we're making video games. We're not music snobs, I mean we love music. But ultimately, we're making a video game that's fun to play and a way to experience music. Have fun, lighten up."

Guitar Hero 5 is out for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii September 1. Here, have some screens:

The buzz grew as fans, and Hollywood, questioned Jackson's choice of first-time director Neill Blomkamp to helm the big-budget project. But that ultimately became a moot point. As the movie budget escalated and the demands by Microsoft increased, not even a pair of giant Hollywood studios could afford to foot the bill for the big screen version of Halo. But fate stepped in and Jackson ended up creating an original sci-fi film with District 9.

Gamers will get to see a sci-fi collaboration between producer Jackson and co-writer/director Blomkamp this summer with Tristar Pictures' District 9. Rather than basing the film on a hit game, the duo created an original alien story and filmed it documentary-style. Jackson was on hand at Comic-Con to screen the film and talk about how Halo begat District 9.

Jackson and Blomkamp were going to bring Microsoft's Halo videogame franchise to the big screen, but when Hollywood bailed on Microsoft's demands, the duo ended up creating District 9, which opens August 14.

"Well, I believe in fate. And a lot of times in my career I've just let fate decide what happens," said Jackson. "I don't try to influence things too much. ‘Cause I kind of believe in some weird force that's out there, sort of deciding what happens in your life. And I just look back on it and think, well fate made a decision that it wasn't gonna be Halo that we made, it was gonna be District 9. 'Cause it literally happened within 24 hours. I mean, we woke up one morning thinking we were making Halo. That day we got the news that the studios, Fox and Universal, didn't want to make the film anymore."

When asked exactly what happened with the Halo film, Jackson replied, "It wasn't like the studios didn't want to make it with us, they just didn't want to make Halo anymore because they were arguing amongst themselves and with Microsoft and the rights and the deals and everything else. It was all these little politics that were kicking in."

District 9 is set in South Africa and focuses on a quarantined area where aliens have been kept for 30 years. The film literally took shape the same day that Jackson's Halo was scrapped.

"During the course of that day, 'cause we were all in New Zealand together…Neill had been working on Halo for five or six months, we decided to take control of our own lives a little bit and we thought, ‘Well, let's make an original movie. Let's keep it low budget. Let's try to finance it independently so we don't have to get involved with studio politics,'" explained Jackson. "It's sort of, do something that we can control without putting ourselves into a Halo situation again. And that's what happened. And so by the end of that day, we had lost Halo but we had started District 9."
Jackson is best known to fans for adapting the Lord of the Rings trilogy to films. He's currently producing Guillermo del Toro's Hobbit film adaptations. Jackson, who is an avid gamer, equates books and videogame adaptations on the same level.

"If it's a book or a videogame, even though you've had the experience of reading or playing that story, it's affected you, and now you can imagine it as a film," said Jackson.
"I also see the role of video games as one that will continue to command respect and attention due to the improved graphics, forms of narrative, interactive capabilities, and ways of immersion."

Jackson, who has worked with Ubisoft on the King Kong videogame and currently has a deal with Microsoft to create original games through WETA Interactive, believes that intrinsically, most videogames, and virtually all movies, do one basic thing: tell stories.

As game technology improves, Jackson believes games will become even more cinematic experiences. One result of HD graphics and advances in sound will be the sharing of digital assets between game developers and filmmakers, which will create more authentic representations of movie-based games.

One of the big themes at Comic-Con this year was the explosion of 3-D films, including the new TRON and Avatar movies. Jackson is interested in embarking in the third dimension with future projects.

"I personally love 3-D," said Jackson. "I love the fact that it's become a much more gentle experience than it used to be. It always had this kind of eye strain and lack of quality associated with it. It was sort of gimmicky and difficult. But now it's technically become easier and it's also much more…it doesn't give you bad headaches anymore. And I think 3-D is just another really great tool to help an audience step into the movie."

"When I'm a filmmaker, I try to make movies that invite the audience to step into the film and to become part of the world of the film, if I can," added Jackson. "Rather than be an audience, I try to take that barrier away so you're not just sitting watching something like a sports event on a TV screen. You're actually participating. I try to shoot my scenes in a way and move the camera around in a way that sort of invites you into the movie to some degree. And 3-D is just a tool that makes that easier. It makes it more vibrant. I haven't shot a feature in 3-D yet, but I'm certainly looking forward to doing that."

Fans can see Jackson's latest directing venture, The Lovely Bones starring Mark Wahlberg, on the big screen December 11.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Wright explains that the true key to motivating your employees is to know what motivates them, and not just from a development standpoint. Everyone has something they are passionate about, and once you discover that you can use it to help relate on a much more personal level.

...this to me is one of the important points of working collaboratively with other people - trying to get a sense of what is the one thing that makes their eyes light up, they get excited about and they won't stop talking about. And if you can get a sense of what that is from somebody, and you can harness that, that's going to have more impact on how they perform their job, how they relate to you, how you can convey a vision to them in a way that they get excited about it.

Talking about Wright as a manager and not as a game designer provides us with an interesting look into how the man operates. I think we tend to think of big-name creators like Wright and Sid Mead as if they simply give birth to video games, rather than managing a talented team of developers focused on delivering a unified vision. Wright began programming games at a time when a huge team wasn't necessary, so it is intriguing - to me at least - to see how he has developed as a manager over the years.

I particularly like how he filters prospective employees by how they react to seemingly impossible ideas...those who get excited make the cut, while those who get stressed or depressed generally don't. In the interview Wright also speaks extensively about balancing the team, and how an extremely skilled programmer who can't work well with others might be worth less than a merely competent programmer that is truly a team player.

The key idea I took from the interview is the importance of knowing who you are working with on a level deeper than many traditional managers are willing to explore. It isn't merely about putting people with the correct skills in the correct positions...it's about knowing how said placement will affect the other people around them, and what they will bring to the table in the long run. In a way, it's much like a complicated puzzle game, in which some pieces explode and others strengthen the other pieces around them. It's the getting to know the pieces before dropping them that makes all the difference.

On Will Wright's Team, Would You Be a Solvent, or the Glue? [The New York Times]

Alexey Pajitnov developed the puzzle game while working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1985. In 1991, he and Henk Rogers founded the Tetris Company to prolong the life of the casual classic.

"I expected it to be a good game, not worse than anything else," Pajitnov told Kotaku recently. "I never expected this."

His hand in creating not just Tetris but the casual games market has earned him, of not money, than at least a sort of fame.

"People ask me, 'Are you still alive? I think you are a legend,'" Pajitnov said about his experience wandering the halls of E3 this year.

While Pajitnov remains a lifelong Tetris player, he did once try his hand at creating a game that wasn't a puzzler. Ice and Fire was a first-person shoot released in 1994. It was also, as Pajitnov says, a complete failure.

Pajitinov returned to puzzle creations with games like Pandora's Box and Hexic HD, but his greatest success still remains Tetris.

"We don't look at Tetris as being a retro game," said Rogers. "It did more last year than any year it its history. We don't have to market it. Tetris is ten percent of all games sold on mobile phones."

While the classic remains popular, Rogers and Pajitnov continue to iterate Tetris. Their latest version features six people gaming together online using the familiar pieces and also new attack and defense items. It is currently being tested in Korea.

"That's an interesting evolution of Tetris," Rogers said. "The future is a country that has 48 million people living in it and the biggest casual gaming site in the country has 24 million registered users. That country is Korea. That's what's going to happen in the rest of the world."

The next evolution for the game, Rogers hopes, will be turning it into a competitive sport.

"We are going to turn Tetris into the first real virtual sport," Rogers said. "Sports like baseball and football were created at a time when our future was a lifetime of physical activities and physical fitness. But now that's not as important, it's more about mental fitness today."

"Tetris is a virtual sport that exercises the mind. That is the definition of a virtual sport."

With Tetris available on so many things, from phones to consoles, t-shirts to jewelry, I asked Pajitnov what his favorite Tetris spotting was.

"On a sky scraper," he said. "I heard about it and saw the pictures and thought, 'Wow, that's great, that's something.' I would like to have a real competition on that."